The Reform Platform

Seven changes that would make children safer in Australian early childhood education and care. Each one names the instrument that would deliver it.

My son disclosed sexual abuse at daycare. The investigation closed with no offence detected. Other children had been named. Witnesses who mattered were never interviewed.

He wasn’t the only child in that investigation, and he isn’t the only child in Australia.

I’ve been counting the cases. Across five men now sitting on more than a thousand charges between them, not one of those offences was detected by a childcare centre or a regulator at the time it occurred. Every one was stopped by a digital footprint that triggered an external forensic investigation, usually by the Australian Federal Police. Not by a parent complaint. Not by a colleague. Not by a working with children check.

So the cases we know about aren’t the ones somebody noticed. They’re the ones where the offender posted, and was caught posting.

My son isn’t in that count. Neither are the other children at his daycare. That’s how I know what the count measures, and it isn’t the scale of the harm. It’s the reach of a single detection method.

I’ve set out the arithmetic in The Illusion of Safety and counted the cases in The Daycare Hunting Ground.

I’m asking for seven specific changes, and every one of them is achievable inside instruments that already exist.

What follows is what I put to members of parliament, regulators and the sector. Each ask names the mechanism, because a demand without a mechanism is just a feeling. Where the evidence has a limit, I’ve said so.

Who's asking

I’m a psychologist. I prepare single expert witness reports for court, which means I’m appointed to assist the court rather than either party, and the discipline is to be useful to someone who has to weigh evidence without being told what to conclude. I’ve spent three years applying that same discipline to this.

I’m also on the other side of what I’m asking for. As a psychologist I’m a registered health practitioner. My registration, my qualifications and any conditions on my practice sit on a public register anyone can search by name. A client can ask to see a man or a woman and be accommodated. I can be reviewed. I accepted every part of that when I registered, because it’s the arrangement you accept when you’re trusted with people who are vulnerable to you.

I’m not asking early childhood educators to accept anything I haven’t.

I ran a company for fifteen years with more than fifteen staff. So when I ask for a positive duty on directors in ask five, I’m asking for something I would have had to carry myself.

Before that I worked in HR in aviation and in mining, both in safety. That isn’t a metaphor I picked up for ask six. It’s where I learned what a safety culture is, and what it isn’t.

In aviation, safety wasn’t a value. It was a system. Incidents went to an independent investigator. If you didn’t trust your employer, there was somewhere else to report. Training ran on a cycle rather than once at induction. You could not spend a week in that building without knowing what the organisation was afraid of.

In mining I sat through the inductions and then ran them again, regularly, not because people had forgotten but because safety was something you practised rather than something you learned once. Since 31 March 2022, a company officer in Western Australia who knowingly disregards a serious safety risk that results in a death faces up to twenty years. In Victoria, a person in authority who negligently fails to act on a substantial risk of a child being sexually abused faces up to five. In New South Wales, two.

Aviation worked it out after enough people died. Mining worked it out after enough people died. Both times it took liability, not conscience.

I’m a mother. My son disclosed. That’s the part people lead with when they describe me, and it’s the part I’d give back first if giving it back were possible.

I write The Protective Insight, and I’m writing a book, The Signs We Miss. For it I’m interviewing other parents whose cases closed the way ours did. Several were later contacted by police and told their child had been identified during a forensic examination of a device.

That’s the whole argument on this page, arriving from somebody else’s kitchen table instead of mine.

What I'm asking for

Updated August 2026

Safe Start: every parent gets protective behaviours education at enrolment, and the service has to deliver it

When you enrol a one-year-old, you’re told about sunscreen, allergies, nappies and fees. Nobody says the words child sexual abuse. The greatest risk to that child is the one thing not mentioned.

That silence isn’t neutral. It tells parents the risk isn’t real.

Safe Start would require every approved service to do four things.

Hold a documented child safety conversation at enrolment, with a named staff member. The conversation would cover the service's child safe policies, every adult who may have contact with the child (including agency and relief staff), how allegations are managed, the circumstances in which parents will be notified if an educator is stood down, and how concerns can be raised through a pathway independent of the service. Not a pamphlet in an enrolment pack. A conversation.
Record that the conversation took place, including the date, the staff member who conducted it, and the parent or guardian who participated. The record becomes part of the child's enrolment file and is auditable during assessment and rating.
Teach protective behaviours from twelve months of age, in developmentally appropriate ways using a specified evidence-based framework, rather than leaving the decision entirely to individual services.
Give parents the same language their children are learning, so home and the service reinforce one another. Protective behaviours work best when children hear the same messages from the adults they trust. Yet there is currently no requirement for services to equip parents in this way.

The duty sits with the service, not the family. No parent is penalised for declining or missing the conversation, and no institution can later shift responsibility by saying, ‘We gave the parents the training.’ The obligation is to provide it, record it, and make it part of every child’s enrolment.

The mechanism. Safe Start requires amendments to the National Regulations and the National Quality Standard rather than a new Act. Approved services already operate within this compliance framework, with assessment and rating, regulatory monitoring and Commonwealth oversight already in place. The documented child safety conversation should also be made a condition of Child Care Subsidy approval, providing national coverage through an existing approval and compliance system.

The evidence, and its limit. Protective behaviours programs consistently improve children’s safety knowledge, protective skills and willingness to disclose abuse. The Cochrane review found no evidence that these programs increase children’s anxiety or fear. What they have been shown to increase is disclosure, not prevention, and that distinction matters. My son disclosed. He did the thing these programs are designed to achieve. The failure came afterwards.

Investigate these as digital offences, because that's what they are

In one recent operation, roughly 2.5 million files were seized from devices, in a matter alleged to span 2009 to 2025. It began with a report about an uploaded file. Not a parent complaint. Not a centre. Not a disclosure.

The evidence in these cases lives on devices, and it’s found by forensic examination. Yet the standard response to a daycare allegation is to test the account of a two year old. A barely verbal child is the weakest possible source of evidence and the strongest possible target, which is exactly why that age group is chosen. Our detection method is calibrated against the precise vulnerability the offender selected for.

So: a minimum investigative response standard for any allegation in a regulated childcare setting. A specialist child abuse trained investigator assigned. Any interview conducted to an accredited forensic protocol by someone trained to do it. Expert consultation obtained before any decision to close.

And a warrant application covering the worker’s devices should be the presumptive step, with a decision not to seek one recorded and reviewable. Sworn and targeted, not a sweep of a workforce. Every daycare allegation should also trigger automatic referral for a device and online nexus check through the Commonwealth child exploitation stream, whether or not the local investigation proceeds.

On cost. Sixteen years and sixty two services is more expensive, in every currency there is, than examining a device at the first allegation.

Register the profession, and publish the register, exactly as health and teaching already do

The occupational therapist who sees my son for forty minutes a fortnight is on a public register I can search by name. So is his kindergarten teacher. The person who changes his nappy for eight hours a day is on a register I’m not allowed to see.

The National Early Childhood Worker Register went live on 27 February 2026. Providers must record their workforce and update it within fourteen days. Parents can’t see any of it.

When I ask why, I’m told privacy. That answer doesn’t survive ten minutes of reading.

No legislation gives childcare workers privacy over health practitioners. There is no statute anywhere protecting them. Under the Privacy Act the default is that personal information isn’t disclosed, and the exception is disclosure required or authorised by an Australian law. A public register exists only where Parliament has legislated for one.

Health has that legislation. Section 222 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law requires the National Boards to keep registers, and AHPRA publishes them. Teaching has it too, in every state. The Victorian Institute of Teaching, NESA in New South Wales and the Teacher Registration Board of Western Australia all maintain registers anyone can search by name.

Early childhood education and care is governed by the Education and Care Services National Law. That Law contains confidentiality provisions and no publication mandate. Same privacy default, no carve out.

So privacy isn’t the obstacle. Privacy is the default for every profession, and Parliament has already overridden it twice, for health and for teaching. It has simply never been asked to do it a third time.

And the sharpest inconsistency isn’t between childcare and health. It’s inside education.

Early childhood teachers, the degree qualified ones, are registered and publicly searchable already. Western Australia since December 2012, Victoria since September 2015, New South Wales since July 2016, the ACT since April 2024. Certificate III and Diploma educators are not. Same room, same children, and it’s the unregistered ones doing nappies, toileting and sleep checks, which is the highest contact intimate care in the building.

That isn’t a privacy principle. It’s a qualification hierarchy quietly imported into a child safety system, and nobody has ever had to defend it out loud.

Three things, then.

Register early childhood educators as individuals, not only their employers. The worker register is already slated to become a national educator registration scheme, so the vehicle is being built right now.
Publish it, on the AHPRA model. Name, registration number, status, qualifications, and any conditions, undertakings, suspensions or cancellations.
Create an individual disciplinary jurisdiction, because at present none exists. The regulator makes findings about providers. Screening units make working with children decisions under separate legislation. Reportable conduct substantiations sit somewhere else again. No body holds a disciplinary jurisdiction over an educator as a person, which is precisely why there's nothing to publish.

Findings, not reviews. I can leave a public review for my son’s occupational therapist. I can’t leave one for his educator, and people assume that’s a privacy rule. It isn’t. Health practitioners are often businesses you choose and contract with directly, so they’re reviewable the way any business is. An educator is an employee of the service you contracted with. The reviewable entity is the centre, and the centre already is reviewable. What I’m asking for is the other thing health has, the part no review site provides: the regulator’s own record. AHPRA doesn’t publish star ratings either. It publishes determinations made after a process with natural justice. Conditions, reprimands, suspensions, cancellations. That’s the standard I want, because it’s the only one that would have told me anything useful. A review tells you a parent was unhappy. A finding tells you a regulator agreed.

Then use the register to detect patterns. One man is alleged to have worked across sixty two services over sixteen years. Frequent movement between services is a known offender pattern, and for the first time it’s detectable, because the register records where people work and when they move. Run the analysis. Flag the anomalies for proactive review instead of waiting for a complaint.

The mechanism. Registration and publication require amendment to the Education and Care Services National Law through Education Ministers, the same body already building the scheme. Pattern analysis requires nothing beyond an operational decision by ACECQA and the regulatory authorities. The system was built six months ago.

A reportable conduct scheme in every state and territory

We’re told nothing can be done without a conviction. That’s not true, and it’s worth being precise about why.

Reportable conduct schemes already operate on the civil standard, independently of any criminal proceeding. They require the head of an organisation to notify the regulator, investigate, and report the outcome. They run in Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT and Tasmania. Queensland’s commenced on 1 July 2026.

South Australia and the Northern Territory have no standalone scheme. Children in two jurisdictions have no equivalent protection, for no reason anyone has ever explained to a parent.

And a substantiated finding still doesn’t reliably follow the worker across a border or into a working with children decision. That’s the gap that lets someone work at sixty two centres.

A correction I’d make to my own earlier framing. The criminal standard binds the prosecution. It doesn’t bind services, regulators, employers or reportable conduct investigators, all of whom decide on the balance of probabilities. What’s actually happening is standard creep: decision makers importing a threshold they aren’t bound by, and treating no charges laid as though it were a finding that nothing happened. It isn’t one.

Enforce the law that already exists, and extend it

People assume there’s no criminal liability for a person in charge who leaves a known risk in place. There is.

Victoria has had the failure to protect offence since 1 July 2015, under section 49O of the Crimes Act 1958. It applies to a person in a position of authority in an organisation, expressly including childcare services, family day care and kindergartens, who knows there’s a substantial risk that a child under sixteen will be sexually abused by an adult associated with the organisation and negligently fails to reduce or remove it. New South Wales has had an equivalent since 2018, alongside an offence of concealing a child abuse offence.

The question nobody has answered is how many childcare directors or approved providers have ever been prosecuted under those provisions. I’m seeking that number. If it turns out to be near zero, then we have a law that was passed to end a conversation rather than to protect a child.

The extension I want is narrower than people expect. Not liability for abuse occurring, because a director who did everything correctly can still be deceived by a determined offender, and punishing an outcome nobody could prevent is neither just nor passable. Liability for the absence of the scaffolding. A positive, auditable duty to have specified safeguards in place, with an offence for failing to have them, whether or not harm has occurred. That’s how workplace health and safety law already treats a duty holder. It bites before a child is hurt rather than after.

Borrow the architecture aviation already has

When a plane crashes in this country, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau publishes a report explaining how the system permitted it. Nobody is prosecuted by that body. Its only job is to work out what failed and tell everyone. Aviation also has confidential, non punitive reporting through REPCON, which protects the identity of the reporter, and recurrent training on a fixed cycle.

Childcare has none of this. Three things it should have.

A confidential reporting line for educators, run outside the employer and outside the regulator's enforcement arm, with legislated protection of identity. Educators are the people best placed to notice grooming, and right now they have to report it to the person who employs them and who has a commercial interest in it not being true. That's a design flaw, not a culture problem.
A no blame investigation function. Every fatal aviation accident in Australia produces a published report. Not one daycare abuse case does. That's the largest structural gap in Australian child safety and almost nobody is asking for it.
Recurrent, competency assessed training. Mandatory training arrived in February 2026. It should recur on a fixed cycle and be assessed, not attended.

Review that examines the evidence, not the paperwork

I’m often told parents already have somewhere to go, and that’s true. You can ask police for an internal review. You can go to the Ombudsman. In Western Australia you can go to the Corruption and Crime Commission. I did all of it.

The problem isn’t that review doesn’t exist. It’s that review examines the wrong thing.

These bodies assess process. Was procedure followed, were the steps documented, was the file handled correctly. They don’t assess whether the conclusion was right on the evidence, and they don’t hold the subject matter expertise to know what a competent child sexual abuse investigation should have contained in the first place.

So my son’s investigation was reviewed and found effective. It was found effective without the adult carers ever being interviewed. It was found effective without anyone speaking to the other children who had also made reports to police.

You can satisfy every procedural requirement and still not look.

And a file often closes on a benign alternative explanation that was never tested. A physical sign is attributed to something ordinary, the attribution isn’t examined by anyone qualified to examine it, and the file closes on the hypothesis rather than on a finding.

Three changes.

Merits review, not process review. A family should be able to have the conclusion re-examined against the evidence by someone with child sexual abuse investigative expertise, rather than have the paperwork audited by someone without it.
A reviewer who can send it back. Where witnesses weren't interviewed or an expert was never consulted, the review should be able to require that work be done, instead of rating the investigation effective.
An evidenced reason, not an assumption. Where a file closes on an innocent explanation for a physical sign, that explanation should rest on a documented forensic medical opinion, and the family should receive it in writing.

The mechanism. Police commissioner policy, and the governing legislation of the oversight bodies that already exist. Nothing new has to be built. The Ombudsman, the integrity commissions and internal review units are already there. What they lack is a merits jurisdiction and the expertise to exercise it.

Where things actually stand

A lot changed between September 2025 and February 2026, and it’s worth being accurate about it, because arguing for something that already exists costs an advocate more than the argument was worth.

The National Early Childhood Worker Register went live on 27 February 2026, visible to regulators and providers, not to parents.
Mandatory national child safety training applies to all staff, volunteers and students from 27 February 2026.
Personal mobile phones have been banned in services since 1 September 2025.
A CCTV trial is running in up to 300 services under a $189 million package.
Attorneys general agreed on 14 November 2025 to six priority actions on working with children checks, including mutual recognition of negative notices, with implementation expected by late 2026.

So the fight has changed. It’s no longer about whether something will be done. It’s about the reach, the quality and the enforcement of things already begun, and the machinery is still being built. That’s exactly when amendments are cheap.

I’ve written a children’s protective behaviours book. I’m advocating for a standard, not for a supplier. If a standard is set, my book should have to meet it like everyone else’s, and I’d accept exclusion from any approved list of materials.

Nothing on this page is directed at a named individual. Every ask is directed at a system, an office or a provision. Some matters referred to are before the courts and nothing here is intended to comment on them.

None of these seven asks depends on anyone agreeing with me about what happened to my son. They’re each defensible on their own, and most of them are cheap.

No offence detected is not a finding that nothing happened.

If you work in policy, regulation, journalism, health or the sector itself, and you can move any one of these, I’d like to hear from you. If you’re a parent, the most useful thing you can do is ask your service for the enrolment conversation described in ask one, and tell me what they say.

Get in touch

If you can move any one of these, or you’re a parent who asked your service the question in ask one, I’d like to hear what happened.

Last updated August 2026.

Sources for every factual claim on this page are available on request.