Speaker 1: Just a warning before we get started. This episode discusses
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse. Please take care while listening. Are children
Speaker 1: safe at childcare?
Speaker 2: I believe right now they're not safe.
Speaker 1: That's a huge statement.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: This sector is in crisis and that's why the governments
Speaker 3: really have to act urgently, because children aren't safe.
Speaker 1: Adele Ferguson is an investigative journalist at the ABC. She
Speaker 1: spent nine months reporting on the crisis unfolding in Australia's
Speaker 1: childcare system. So once she heard last week that a
Speaker 1: childcare worker in Victoria was charged with more than seventy
Speaker 1: offenses relating to sexual abuse of children. She says the
Speaker 1: allegations were disgusting but not surprising.
Speaker 3: When it comes to sexual misconduct and offenses. At least
Speaker 3: one a day are reported in Victoria, WA and New
Speaker 3: South Wales. We don't know how many across Australia because Queensland,
Speaker 3: Northern Territory in South Australia don't have a reportable conduct scheme.
Speaker 3: And what we do know is there's a lot of underreporting.
Speaker 1: Now twelve hundred children, some as young as five months old,
Speaker 1: are being tested for sexually transmitted diseases and the government
Speaker 1: is scrambling to stop something like this from happening again.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today
Speaker 1: four Corners reporter Adele Ferguson on the dangers in an
Speaker 1: industry driven by profit. A National Children's Commissioner Ann Hollands
Speaker 1: on what needs to be done to protect children in care.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, July seven. Good evening.
Speaker 4: We begin with one of the most distressing child sex
Speaker 4: abuse investigations in Victoria's history.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of children are tonight the waiting urgent. Adell thank
Speaker 1: you for speaking with me. Can you just lay out
Speaker 1: for us the allegations that have emerged in the last
Speaker 1: few days about sexual abuse in Victorian childcare centers.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was a twenty six year old called Joshua
Speaker 3: Brown who was arrested and charged with seventy counts of
Speaker 3: sexual abuse of children. Eight children between the ages of
Speaker 3: five months and two years, so very young.
Speaker 5: Police have records of the man working at twenty different
Speaker 5: childcare centers between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty five, most
Speaker 5: of them in Melbourne's West. The state government, how is
Speaker 5: it that.
Speaker 1: That could happen? What safeguards are in place to stop
Speaker 1: perpetrators working in childcare centers.
Speaker 3: They are supposed to be working with children's checks, but
Speaker 3: they're deeply flawed. So each state is different. In Queensland
Speaker 3: you have the blue card and other states that's the
Speaker 3: working with children and what happens is you have to
Speaker 3: have been charged with a serious offense to lose you
Speaker 3: working with children check, so you might be under the
Speaker 3: radar and so you have a working with Children's check,
Speaker 3: which is what happened to the gentleman in Victoria. And
Speaker 3: in terms of working with children checks, if you're in act,
Speaker 3: for example, and you've been investigated and you've been suspended
Speaker 3: from a childcare center, you can just hop to another
Speaker 3: state and get a working with children check. Privacy protects
Speaker 3: these people because the states don't share things. And that's
Speaker 3: why there's been caused to have a national register for
Speaker 3: ten years and it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1: The man who was alleged to have molested children in
Speaker 1: his care worked across several centers. On the surface, it's
Speaker 1: hard to understand how he wasn't caught by our colleague. Sooner,
Speaker 1: can you tell me what you're reporting is uncovered about
Speaker 1: why it is that childcare workers may not report abuse
Speaker 1: if they see it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a number of reasons. One, how do these
Speaker 3: people get away with it? You know, in the case
Speaker 3: of Ashley Griffith who's now in Jay Off the Life,
Speaker 3: he worked across many centers and it went under the
Speaker 3: radar anything. How does that happen when this guy had
Speaker 3: tripods and was filming in the childcare center.
Speaker 6: One of Australia's worst ever pedophiles has been sentenced to
Speaker 6: life in prison without the possibility of parole for twenty
Speaker 6: seven years after confessing to raping and abusing scores of
Speaker 6: girls in childcare centers across Australia and overseas.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons is lack of supervision. There aren't
Speaker 3: enough staff. There's a lot of gaming of the system
Speaker 3: when it comes to staff to child ratios. But in
Speaker 3: terms of the reporting of it, it's mandatory to report.
Speaker 3: But there's two reasons why it often doesn't happen. One,
Speaker 3: a lot of educators don't understand child protection policies. They
Speaker 3: don't understand and the mandatory reporting that's required, so they.
Speaker 2: Don't do it.
Speaker 3: And the other reason is they're too scared sometimes if
Speaker 3: they report anything they get retribution or they become a
Speaker 3: pririe because they're dobbing in a workmate.
Speaker 2: And so there's those two.
Speaker 3: Things that they're not protected when they do the mandatory
Speaker 3: that they should, but they're not protected.
Speaker 2: From the system when they do.
Speaker 1: Your Four Corners investigation into the childcare sector revealed that
Speaker 1: even the dodgy ist providers who aren't meeting basic standards
Speaker 1: are still allowed to operate. Can you explain how that works?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the problems is there's been this.
Speaker 3: Explosion in for profit operators, private equity listed companies, overseas operators,
Speaker 3: and they're putting profit before children, and because there's such
Speaker 3: a demand for childcare centers, the regulators seem to not
Speaker 3: have the appetite to go after them. So when educators
Speaker 3: do something wrong, in many cases, when you're looking at
Speaker 3: the regulatory documents or you're talking to parents, not a
Speaker 3: lot seems to happen. So, you know, when the Minister
Speaker 3: for Education is saying we're going to beef up penalties
Speaker 3: because they're not.
Speaker 2: High enough, I'm thinking to myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good idea, but the regulators aren't even
Speaker 3: using the penalties that they have. So there's a problem,
Speaker 3: and I think one of the reasons for that is
Speaker 3: if they go in hard and shut a center down,
Speaker 3: they're worried what are the implications for parents? Where do
Speaker 3: the parents put the children.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of focus by the federal government
Speaker 1: on expanding access to childcare. Within that, what focus has
Speaker 1: there been on safety?
Speaker 3: Not a lot, as we can clearly see. It's only
Speaker 3: since this terrible incident happened in Victoria that governments are
Speaker 3: coming out saying we've got to do more. Jason Clair
Speaker 3: was on seventh thirty saying we haven't done enough and
Speaker 3: we've got to move faster.
Speaker 4: We're taking action, but not enough action has happened, and
Speaker 4: not fast enough.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Safety has not been on the agenda. It's all been
Speaker 3: about affordability.
Speaker 4: The honest answer to you is that this job will
Speaker 4: never be done, that there will always be bad people
Speaker 4: that try and break through the net. That doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that you do nothing, though. That means that we've got
Speaker 4: to do everything that we possibly can to make sure
Speaker 4: that our children are safe. That's why people are talking
Speaker 4: now about CCTV or about an educator register about improving
Speaker 4: Working with Children checks. None of that is a silver bullet.
Speaker 4: None of that is going to guarantee every child is safe.
Speaker 4: But all of it are the sort of things that
Speaker 4: are necessary if we're fair income about doing it.
Speaker 3: What the government is saying is by September they will
Speaker 3: have a working national Working with Children checks. There also
Speaker 3: needs to be a national registration scheme for educators so
Speaker 3: that we can track who they are, how often they've
Speaker 3: moved around. We have that for age care, we have
Speaker 3: it for teachers, we have it for medical practitioners. We
Speaker 3: don't have it for child care workers.
Speaker 1: After the break, the National Children's Commissioner Ann Holands or
Speaker 1: a national response that could protect the voiceless. And you
Speaker 1: called for stronger regulation of the childcare sector. What would
Speaker 1: that actually look like. What sort of things would change
Speaker 1: to make sure that there is stronger regulation.
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, I think we need independent oversight
Speaker 7: and monitoring. What I'm unclear about is how independent the
Speaker 7: current regulators are in the states and territories. Secondly, they
Speaker 7: need to be properly resourced. So you know, we've heard
Speaker 7: allegations that they're not visiting centers very often. That's because
Speaker 7: of a lack of funds. And then thirdly, they need
Speaker 7: to have teeth to act. They need legislation that enables
Speaker 7: them to take the actions that are necessary. So on
Speaker 7: all three counts we seem to be lacking at the moment.
Speaker 1: Another thing that has been floated at the moment is
Speaker 1: that all child care centers should have CCTV surveillance within them.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that.
Speaker 7: Well, I think the recommendation came out of the New
Speaker 7: South Wales review after the Four Corners episodes, and I
Speaker 7: think that recommendation said that you'd only have CCTV for
Speaker 7: the dodgy providers. Well, the dodgy providers shouldn't be operating,
Speaker 7: so forget that, they should be out of the game.
Speaker 7: And I note that Good Start Early Learning, which is
Speaker 7: the largest not for profit provider in the country, have
Speaker 7: already announced that they're going to install CCTV everywhere, so
Speaker 7: I think we take the lead from them. I think
Speaker 7: it's good practice.
Speaker 1: We've also heard a lot in the wake of these
Speaker 1: allegations that our discussion has emerged about banning men from
Speaker 1: working in childcare centers. Do you think that that's a
Speaker 1: legitimate proposal policy that the sector could adopt or is
Speaker 1: are the other factors that need to be taken to
Speaker 1: an account.
Speaker 7: Well, look, I think it's an overreaction, and I perhaps
Speaker 7: understandable given how outraged we are across the country right now,
Speaker 7: but I don't support it. You know, I think there
Speaker 7: are very good childcare workers of both men and women
Speaker 7: in the sector who are doing an amazing job. And
Speaker 7: I don't think gender is the issue here. When we
Speaker 7: look at the reportable conduct issues that have emerged, there's
Speaker 7: a lot that are from female childcare workers, a lot
Speaker 7: of physical abuse, neglect issues. You know, there are problems
Speaker 7: across the board. So I don't think we should be
Speaker 7: focusing on male workers, especially when we're really short of workers.
Speaker 7: We need good workers of both gender. Kids need role
Speaker 7: models of both gender. We just need better screening and
Speaker 7: recruitment measures. We need better training of staff, all staff
Speaker 7: in centers, from boardroom to the sand pit. Everyone needs
Speaker 7: to know what to look for in terms of grooming
Speaker 7: and risky behaviors. And we need that strongth regulatory scaffolding
Speaker 7: that we've just discussed.
Speaker 1: You said, National Cabinet must make child safety and well
Speaker 1: being a key priority in the same way that women's
Speaker 1: safety is a top priority. What would that actually look
Speaker 1: like an well, you know.
Speaker 7: That could be done with a stroke of a pen, Daniel.
Speaker 7: There could be a decision made by the Prime Minister
Speaker 7: that you know, we need to prioritize child safety and
Speaker 7: well being and he get his state and territory colleagues
Speaker 7: to agree to that. With women and women's safety, what
Speaker 7: it looks like is that there are reports to National
Speaker 7: cab it on reform actions that have been agreed on
Speaker 7: and all the states and territories work together with the
Speaker 7: Commonwealth to progress reforms. So everybody's at the table and
Speaker 7: there is accountability at the top. And by the way,
Speaker 7: we do that because we see women and women's safety
Speaker 7: as a critical national issue. So it's a very good
Speaker 7: thing that we're doing that. Currently, when you look at
Speaker 7: the list of issues for National Cabinet and it's publicly available,
Speaker 7: you won't see the word children anywhere on that list.
Speaker 7: I think that's a very important missing piece in the
Speaker 7: terms of accountability for action on these previous Royal commissions
Speaker 7: and inquiry recommendations that now it's being admitted that we
Speaker 7: were too slow to and act them. Why because there's
Speaker 7: no accountability to do so. The other thing we need
Speaker 7: is a cabinet Minister for children. Why do we have
Speaker 7: cabinet ministers for women, We've had them for decades. It's
Speaker 7: because it's an accountability mechanism. It provides national leadership and
Speaker 7: coordination across the portfolios and keeps whimen's issues front of mind.
Speaker 7: Who's doing that for children? No one. Another mechanism that
Speaker 7: I've recommended in a report to Parliament last year, as
Speaker 7: well as a Minister for children as well as national
Speaker 7: cabinet oversight, is a Ministerial Council on Child Wellbeing. So
Speaker 7: this would be a council of experts from different disciplines
Speaker 7: that would provide advice to ministers about what needs to
Speaker 7: be done. Again, we don't have any of that for children.
Speaker 1: What does it say about our society and that we've
Speaker 1: relegated the care of our oldest and our youngest to
Speaker 1: systems driven by profit and which we see time and
Speaker 1: time again. I write with abuse.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, I spent a lot of time asking
Speaker 7: myself why are children sidelined and often invisible when it
Speaker 7: comes to policy? When you ask about that in terms
Speaker 7: of children, well, they don't vote, for a start, they
Speaker 7: don't have a voice and there is no accountability mechanisms
Speaker 7: in place. What does it say about our society? Well,
Speaker 7: I think it shows actually a gap between what people value.
Speaker 7: Ordinary citizens value, they value children, they value older people right,
Speaker 7: and what politicians are spending their time thinking about.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for your time, Thanks Daniel.
Speaker 1: There is specialists help available for people who have experienced
Speaker 1: sexual abuse. Kids Helpline is a free confidential counseling service
Speaker 1: for young people aged from five to twenty five. You
Speaker 1: can reach them on one eight hundred five five one
Speaker 1: eight hundred. They're available twenty four hours, seven days a week,
Speaker 1: or you can call one eight hundred Respect, a counseling
Speaker 1: service which also supports people affected by sexual assault. They're
Speaker 1: also available twenty four to seven. Also in the news,
Speaker 1: a thirty four year old Sydney man has been arrested
Speaker 1: and charged after the doors of a Melbourne synagogue were
Speaker 1: set on fire on Friday night. The man is alleged
Speaker 1: to have poured flammable liquid on the door of the
Speaker 1: East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Synagogue and set it alight while
Speaker 1: people were inside taking part in Shabbats. Home Affairs Minister
Speaker 1: Tony Burke visited the synagogue over the weekend and says
Speaker 1: the arson attack was an attack on Australia and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has announced he has formed a new political party
Speaker 1: called the America Party. Musk has been floating the idea
Speaker 1: of a rival political party since exiting the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and becoming an outspoken critic of Trump's signature legislation known
Speaker 1: as the One Big Beautiful Bill. That bill passed both
Speaker 1: chambers of Congress last week, but has been criticized across
Speaker 1: the political spectrum. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.