How Systemic Inaction and a Culture of Risk-Shifting Enabled a Predator and Put Our Children at Risk
The horror revealed by the arrest of childcare worker Joshua Brown charged with more than 70 sexual offences involving eight children is not just about one predator. It’s about an entire ecosystem of negligence, silence, and institutional cowardice that allowed the abuse to continue for nearly a decade across 20 childcare centers in Victoria from 2017 to 2025.
But what’s worse? It could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. And it would have been if Australia had a centralised, accountable national regulatory framework for early childhood education and care.
Instead, we have a patchwork of under-regulated jurisdictions, finger-pointing, and a bureaucratic blame game that puts children last.
WHS and Legal Duties Ignored: All Childcare Centers Evaded Responsibility and should be charge with offences.
Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) principles require identifying, reporting, and managing risk especially when the risk involves vulnerable people. Under both federal and state WHS laws, psychological harm and failure to act are legally actionable. Yet in this case, centers:
- Failed to report known or suspected misconduct to regulators within required timeframes;
- Knowingly employed an individual under investigation, allowing further abuse;
- Shifted the problem to other centers instead of protecting children violating not only ethics, but their legal obligations under WHS and child safety frameworks;
- Misled families, creating the illusion of compliance while knowingly exposing children to harm.
This wasn’t a failure of knowledge. It was a failure of courage, leadership, and consequence.
A Broader Systemic Rot: No National Oversight, No Accountability
This crisis is not confined to a few negligent childcare centers. It reflects a national regulatory collapse.
Where was the watchdog?
Currently, there is no centralised, real-time national database for childcare workers — no system where red flags, incidents, or staff movements across state lines can be effectively tracked. Each center operates in silos. Each state holds its own limited dataset. The result? Known risks vanish between jurisdictions.
Just as police checks, Working With Children Checks, and staff complaints are inconsistently managed, so too are training records, sanctions, and regulatory breaches. Australia has allowed infrastructure fragmentation to become the norm.
This failure is neither new nor surprising. It’s just deadly and it’s happening not only in childcare, but across our most vital services.
It’s Not Just Childcare: Australia’s Fragmented Governance is Failing Us All
Australia urgently needs centralised national systems to manage and regulate all essential services. The same failures seen in childcare are replicated in:
- Aged Care – Inconsistent provider oversight, fragmented complaints handling.
- Health Care – State-by-state hospital networks with duplicated systems, rising costs.
- WHS Regulation – A splintered system of state safety bodies, varying standards, and enforcement failures.
- Emergency Services (Fire, Ambulance, Police) – Disparate training, equipment standards, communication platforms.
- Construction Safety – Different “white card” systems in every state, despite mobile workforces.
- Driver Licensing – Eight separate state databases, multiple ID standards, massive admin overhead.
Why does a single citizen need to register separately in every jurisdiction?
The technology exists. The political will does not!!!
The cost of inaction is children harmed, services duplicated, money wasted and lives lost.
National Leadership Is Needed ……… Now
We have been calling on the Australian Government to create a National Governance and Safety Integration Framework that:
- Unifies data across states for early childhood educators, health professionals, WHS breaches, and emergency responders.
- Implements a national educator register with red-flag alerts for misconduct, retraining needs, and legal action.
- Standardises training and induction systems (e.g., a single national White Card system, managed by Comcare).
- Establishes a National Drivers Licence one card, one system, fully integrated.
- Replaces siloed regulators with a national body for each critical sector with real-time enforcement powers.
- Digitises reporting and compliance portals, cutting billions in administrative waste.
The Economic Reality: Billions in Savings, Millions in Lives Impacted
A nationalised, streamlined system across sectors would deliver billions in savings annually. This could be reinvested into:
- More educators, nurses, and aged care workers.
- Faster emergency response and better WHS compliance.
- Child protection and early intervention programs.
- National trauma and recovery services for victims.
The cost of fragmentation is not just financial it’s human.
A National Call to Action: Protect. Reform. Unify.
This case is the canary in the coal mine. If we cannot protect our children from harm within state-regulated childcare, how can we be trusted to protect anyone?
Let this be the moment we say: enough.
We demand that the Prime Minister and National Cabinet commit to a National Accountability and Safety Reform Act, starting with:
- Immediate development of a National Childcare Workforce Register;
- A national investigation into systemic WHS failures across services;
- A roadmap for unifying regulatory bodies under a single, accountable structure.
Australia does not need eight separate systems to manage one nation.
It needs leadership, clarity, and courage. The children harmed in this tragedy cannot be saved. But thousands more can be if we act now.
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