Existing systems to protect children have not worked, Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan has admitted, and the state will move to establish a register of childcare workers “within weeks.”
The decision follows the revelation that alleged child sex offender Joshua Dale Brown had been sacked from multiple childcare centres before he was arrested earlier this month.
He is charged with 70 counts of abusing children aged between five months and two years at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook between April 2022 and January 2023.
The 26-year-old from Point Cook worked in 20 facilities in various Melbourne suburbs and Geelong over the past eight years, and had been fired from at least three of them.
The subsequent police investigation has uncovered the fact that regulators and his employers missed crucial details about his behaviour, failed to pass on or escalate previous investigations into his conduct, and then inadvertently provided detectives with incorrect information about his work history.
Allan said both state and federal regulations governing the sector needed to be strengthened.
“There has clearly been systems that have not worked,” she said, calling the register a common sense measure.
“We’re acting to bring this about immediately … and there is more work that needs to be done. There are systems that need to be strengthened. I absolutely acknowledge that.”
Far-Reaching Review
The sector is currently the subject of a review by former South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill and senior public servant Pamela White. They are due to report back on Aug. 15, and Allan reiterated that her government will accept all the pair’s recommendations.“I want to be clear that if there is more action to be taken to keep children safe, then we will absolutely take it,” Allan said.
Allan refused to comment on Brown’s case or the “decision taken by the independent regulator.”Concerns about Brown’s behaviour with children had been reported to Victoria Police, the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP) and the education department in 2023 and 2024, but rather than triggering a Working With Children check, the matter was referred to his employer.
Though the company substantiated both allegations, the CCYP used its discretionary powers not to escalate the case, thus allowing Brown to continue working in childcare.
The Victorian government failed to meet a July 18 deadline set by the state’s parliament to publish details of enforcement actions taken against childcare operators.
In New South Wales, thousands of pages of similar documents have been tabled by the Minns government over the past few months, revealing cases of physical abuse, inappropriate sexual behaviour, serious injuries to children and subsidy fraud.
The Victorian register will eventually be absorbed into a national register, as announced by Federal Education Minister Jason Clare last week.
