‘Childcare in crisis’: Damning NSW inquiry finds predators exploited systemic failures across sector

A damning New South Wales parliamentary inquiry has found systemic failures, weak regulation and the rapid corporatisation of childcare created conditions that allowed predators to access and abuse children, while warning Australia’s broader early learning system requires sweeping national reform.

The explosive findings argue governments were too slow to respond to mounting safety concerns across the childcare sector and that fragmented regulation and inconsistent screening systems have undermined child safety and public trust.

In its final report, the NSW upper house inquiry into the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector found “systemic weaknesses” had allowed predators to enter childcare settings and abuse children, while regulators failed to adequately respond to persistent safety breaches and non-compliance.

“Early childhood education and care in New South Wales is in crisis,” said inquiry chair Abigail Boyd.

“While the sector is entrusted with the safety, wellbeing and development of our youngest children, the evidence before this committee revealed a system under profound strain — one that is failing too many children, families and educators.”

The inquiry was established in March 2025 and held public hearings between August and October as public confidence in childcare safety collapsed following a series of horrific abuse scandals.

Former childcare worker, Ashley Paul Griffith, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2024 after pleading guilty to 309 offences against 73 victims in Queensland and Italy over almost two decades.

The Griffith case exposed how determined offenders could exploit childcare settings for years while avoiding detection, with investigators ultimately uncovering his crimes through painstaking analysis of child abuse material shared online.

Former childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown is facing more than 150 charges relating to alleged offending against children across 20 Melbourne childcare centres.

“For far too long, the regulation of the sector has been secretive and ineffective,” Ms Boyd said.

“The inquiry demonstrated clearly that current regulatory settings are not fit for purpose in a sector increasingly dominated by large, for-profit providers, whose business models prioritise growth and revenue over quality and care.

“This report makes clear that systemic reform is required.”

Ms Boyd said the inquiry had uncovered “systemic problems that demand urgent action”.

Throughout the inquiry, educators and providers described a sector stretched beyond capacity.

“Chronic staff shortages, excessive workloads, low pay, casualised workforce and high turnover are now entrenched features of early childhood education and care,” she said.

“These conditions compromise not only the wellbeing of workers, but the quality and continuity of care available to children.

“The committee was particularly concerned by the evidence demonstrating gaps in oversight and enforcement.”

It called for the creation of a National Early Childhood Education and Care Commission to oversee national reforms, improve data sharing and strengthen regulatory safeguards.

The inquiry also recommended nationally consistent educator screening, centralised pre-employment vetting and a National Educator Register to prevent safety concerns falling through gaps between states and territories.

“State and Federal governments have been wilfully ignorant to the entirely predictable results of a market driven, corporatised expansion of the early childhood sector,” Ms Boyd said.

“As long as the sector was expanding, they were happy.”

It found large for-profit providers were generally lower quality and less safe than not-for-profit operators and concluded private equity-backed childcare services “have no place” in the sector.

The committee found real estate developers and investors were influencing where childcare centres were established, contributing to shortages in lower socioeconomic and regional areas while maximising profits in more affluent locations.

“Quality and safety are fundamentally linked,” Ms Boyd wrote.

“And every dollar that is taken in profit by a corporate early childcare company, or real estate mogul, or labour hire provider, is a dollar not being invested in quality and safety.”

The committee found many educators were leaving the sector because of excessive workloads, low pay and burnout, undermining continuity of care and supervision.

“While chasing profits and dividends, large providers pay lower wages, have more vacancies, higher turnover, and more part-time staff,” Ms Boyd said.

The inquiry heard evidence that some childcare centres were being designed primarily to maximise occupancy and investor returns, rather than child wellbeing or safe supervision.

Cheyanne Carter, chief executive and founder of Divergent Education, told the committee “astronomical” classroom sizes and profit-driven centre design were creating chaotic environments for children and educators.

“We’re creating zoos, farms for children, because no-one is regulating the design of these services, and the property is so profitable,” she said.

“A child is worth $5000 annually to a developer.

“They don’t care about design. They don’t care about supervision blind spots. They want as many children in that block of land as possible, without any consideration of how that actually impacts the children and the staff.”

It also found the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority had failed to appropriately respond to services with “extensive histories of non-compliance, breaches, safety incidents and persistently poor ratings”.

The report makes 35 recommendations including stronger screening systems, tougher staffing enforcement and greater transparency around profits and rents within the childcare sector.

Among the most significant recommendations are calls for nationally consistent educator vetting, mandatory annual child safety training and a requirement that at least two staff members remain within line of sight of each other “at all times” while interacting with children.

The committee also called for a database tracking problematic behaviour involving childcare staff and stronger intelligence sharing between regulators, police and screening bodies.

A recent Senate inquiry into Australia’s childcare sector similarly called for stronger intelligence sharing between regulators, police and screening systems, including mechanisms allowing “sub-threshold matters” to be communicated more effectively between agencies.

The report comes just days after The Nightly revealed a private investigations firm was offering enhanced digital vetting of childcare workers using social media analysis, behavioural risk profiling, compromised data searches and dark web intelligence.

Hunterwhite Recoveries and Investigations director Darren Whiteman argued existing childcare recruitment safeguards remained too focused on past convictions rather than identifying emerging behavioural risk before harm occurred.

But while the inquiry supports stronger screening, intelligence sharing and national reforms, it ultimately concludes the sector’s failures extend far beyond recruitment checks alone.

Instead, the report argues dangerous offenders were able to exploit broader weaknesses across Australia’s childcare system, including fragmented oversight, workforce shortages, weak enforcement and commercial pressures prioritising growth over child safety.

The committee rejected simplistic technological fixes, finding CCTV may be useful for investigations but “should not be relied upon” for keeping children safe and was “no substitute for adequate staffing and supervision”.

In a statement, Deputy Premier and Early Learning Minister Prue Car said the government would “consider the committee’s recommendations and respond in due course”.

A spokesperson for the NSW Early Learning Commission, which replaced the NSW ECEC Regulatory Authority in December 2025, said the findings reflected “many of the issues already being addressed through reforms introduced by the NSW Government and the Commission”.

Ms Boyd said the sector — buoyed for years by a steady stream of government subsidy, spinning off ancillary industries, serving speculators and investors — has faced a “reckoning”.

“The race to the bottom, where everybody can get rich — except the people actually educating, caring for and nurturing children — has hopefully reached the limits of its predatory expansion,” she said.