Delayed disclosure in childcare is the norm, so why are we treating silence as safety?
Part one of two. Subscribe to have part two delivered to your inbox, its free. Subscribe now My son, under five, told me, and I thought that was the hard part. I thought I had the training. As a psychologist I had sat in the other chair for years while adults described things from their […]
Childcare Closures: Parents Aren’t Buying the Safety Promise
The closures Edge Early Learning appointed administrators on Tuesday. It lists 68 centres, 42 in Queensland, 24 in South Australia and two in the ACT. Three of the South Australian centres were already closed after breaches found by the state’s Education Standards Board. Hours after the administration was announced, the ACT regulator ordered the Charnwood […]
Childcare Closures: Parents Aren’t Buying the Safety Promise
The closures Edge Early Learning appointed administrators on Tuesday. It lists 68 centres, 42 in Queensland, 24 in South Australia and two in the ACT. Three of the South Australian centres were already closed after breaches found by the state’s Education Standards Board. Hours after the administration was announced, the ACT regulator ordered the Charnwood […]
Child Safety Is Our Highest Priority: What Mining Knows That Childcare Doesn’t
When I enrolled my son in childcare, nobody said the words. Not on the tour. Not in the enrolment pack. Not in the parent handbook, not in the induction chat, not in the fifteen minutes where they walked me through the sleep room and the sunscreen policy and the nut-free rule. Nobody said child sexual […]
Following the Lightscape
There is a version of this story week that ends with another trauma trigger defining the week on Thursday night. In that version of the week, a short protective behaviours session with my son turns into a conversation about childcare. He offers it casually, the way children always do it — mid-activity, half-distracted, as though […]
I Didn’t Ask About CCTV Because I Was Embarrassed
For a long time, I was loud with police and silent at childcare pickup. I filed submissions to ministers. I wrote letters to the Corruption and Crime Commission. I sat across from detectives and named names. Then I’d get to the school gate and I couldn’t ask a straight question about who was on shift […]
The Woman in Women Who Win: The List, and What Antoinette Lattouf’s Book Taught Me About Advocacy
I met Antoinette in October 2025, in the middle of my daycare advocacy crisis. She took me under her wing at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, exclusive parties and all, and I supported the launch of her sold-out Perth book tour soon after. About a month ago she asked whether I would write a […]
The Daycare Hunting Ground and the Ledger: Why I Count the Cases the System Refuses to See
Recently we were heading out—an ordinary trip, talk of the shops at the local centre and going into the city—when my son, out of nowhere, brought up the police officers he sees on our city trips. The police seem grumpy and mean, he said; they “just lock people away.” I told him that sometimes locking […]
Everyone’s Criticising Meghan for Bringing the Children. I’m Wondering Why She Brought Them at All.
On Friday, at Highgrove, Archie and Lilibet met their grandfather for the first time in four years. Within hours the British press did what it always does. For those of you who are new to my column, I write about how child sexual abuse hides behind normality, professionalism, and the reassurance of respectable institutions, and […]
When Your Child Becomes the Age You Were
No one tells you that a child can walk you back into your own childhood. You expect the sleepless nights and the school forms and the tantrums in the cereal aisle. You don’t expect the morning you look up from the bench and feel something drop in your chest, because the child in front of […]