Happy New Year! I hope 2026 is good to you and your loved ones. It’s good to be back at it after some great family time over the break.
You may have seen some media reporting in the last week about revelations coming out of my use of a powerful parliamentary motion to release documents related to child safety breaches in Canberra’s early childhood education and care centres. While you can find a summary of how this all came about here, I thought I’d provide a more detailed explanation of how we got here and what we’ve learnt so far.
Content warning: this newsletter includes accounts of child abuse and other distressing material. Please call 1800RESPECT if you need support.
How did we get here?
You’ve probably heard about the harrowing Four Corners investigation that uncovered physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and unsafe practices in early childhood centres across the border. This investigation came after NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd ordered the release of documents relating to serious incidents in NSW early childhood centres, and has led to a raft of reforms to improve children’s safety across the border.
Last year, families and educators raised similar concerns with me about the ACT’s early childhood sector. Hearing that children’s safety might be at risk, I felt an obligation to try to get the same information released here in the ACT.
So, in June 2025, I passed a motion calling for the release of documents relating to child safety breaches and serious allegations in early childhood settings over the last five years using the Legislative Assembly’s powerful standing order 213A. My aim with this document release was to:
- gauge the effectiveness of our regulatory system;
- help differentiate the many great centres and educators in the ACT from the dodgy operators who are prioritising profit over children’s safety; and
- understand where sector reforms are needed to ensure children’s safety and wellbeing is put first in all our early childhood education and care centres.
ACT Labor didn’t support the motion, suggesting it was a waste of resources. I disagree completely. Releasing documents in the public interest is – or at least should be – core government business, and I strongly believe transparency around the safety of our children is not where we should be cutting costs.
In September 2025, days before the documents were due to be released, ACT Labor teamed up with the Canberra Liberals to retrospectively amend the scope of the order, significantly reducing the number of documents to be released from over 20,000 to less than 2,500, and delaying the release date to Christmas Eve. This means that key evidence like witness statements, police reports, and internal investigation documents have been kept from being made public.
I objected to this move, and sought to negotiate a constructive middle path. While Labor argued that pushing to release these documents was ‘ridiculous’, ‘perverse’ and ‘breathtaking’, my argument was that these documents were needed to assess whether how providers, ACT Policing and the regulator have responded to serious incidents meets our community’s expectations, which would provide families with the transparency they deserve and help make clear where reform is needed. Unfortunately, the major parties wouldn’t budge and teamed up to push through the scope change.
What’s been released?
Almost 2,500 documents have now been released relating to over 360 centres across the ACT. The documents include ministerial briefings about serious incidents, incident reports and complaints made to the regulator – Children’s Education and Care Assurance or CECA – about potential criminal conduct or serious harm, and compliance documents issued by the regulator like warnings, prohibition notices, show cause notices and suspension notices.
What’s missing?
My original motion called for personal identifying information to be redacted in order to protect the privacy of children, their families, and educators who have been named in the documents.
The Government’s redactions in over 200 documents have gone beyond what was permitted by the motion. Some documents have had entire allegations specifically redacted, or full excerpts from witness statements redacted, despite that information being in-scope. I will be disputing many of these redactions, which will most likely lead to an independent legal arbiter being appointed to make a final determination about whether or not the information should be released.
Because of the scope variation pushed through by the Government and the Opposition, some incident reports included among the released documents defer all the detail of the allegation to attachments that haven’t been included, so we have no idea what occurred other than it relating to ‘physical or sexual abuse of a child’. I really think these matters are not something that the Government should continue shirking transparency on, so will be seeking access to these additional documents where they are clearly relevant to understanding what’s going on in the sector.
What do the documents show?
The documents show some centres that demonstrate best practice after isolated incidents occur, while revealing concerning patterns of repeated breaches at other centres and clear failures of our regulatory framework to keep children safe.
Examples of concerning reports include:
-
In 2023, a child alleged that an educator had touched their genitals. During the regulator’s investigation, it discovered similar allegations had been made against the same educator in 2017 and 2018. The educator was ultimately barred from the sector six years after the first allegation was made.
- Allegations of indecent behaviour toward children by staff at the same time as separate incidents of sexualised behaviour on the part of children are being reported at the same centre, but with no apparent holistic response to consider whether the children’s behaviour might be connected to potential abuse by staff.
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Reports of children:
- being thrown to the floor,
- being dragged,
- being slapped
- being locked in a shed,
- being kept in a car with an educator who was smoking a cigarette,
- having their hair pulled by an educator resulting in them falling and hitting their head,
-
going missing.
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One educator who was investigated for verbally and physically aggressive behaviour toward and around children had been allowed to work in the sector despite previously being convicted of assaulting a 10-year-old child in NSW.
- One centre that’s currently rated as ‘exceeding’ the National Quality Standard has had four enforcement actions listed in the last two years, including where a nominated supervisor was banned from working after their conduct was found to be ‘grossly negligent’ and ‘likely to cause injury.’ An employee of the same provider complained to the regulator that staff were being refused lunch breaks and the centre was operating below the required educator-to-child ratio ‘almost every day’. None of this has led to the centre losing its ‘exceeding’ rating, including in the staffing arrangements category.
Where can I find the documents?
The Assembly Clerk’s office has provided the documents to all MLAs and is working to upload them online here. I’ve been told this could take weeks. The webpage is a bit tricky to navigate but there’s a full schedule of the documents that have been released here with the ministerial briefs listed here. If you’ve got any questions about specific cases or documents, please reach out to my office at [email protected].
To make things easier, I’ve published all the ministerial briefs and notices issued by the regulator over the last five years, categorised by centre, in a document library we’ve put together on my website here.
Some national reforms have already occurred on the back of what we saw interstate last year, one of which is that the national regulator now lists the compliance actions taken against each centre over the last two years on its Starting Blocks website. But the website doesn’t provide access to the actual documents, instead requiring families to contact the relevant centre for further information. That’s partly why I’ve taken the step of providing the relevant documents that have been released directly on my website – to improve ease of access for families.
News coverage of the document release
You can learn more about some of what the documents show in these articles:
Thousands of ACT childcare documents show behind the scenes of embattled industry - ABC News
Documents reveal dangerous staffing failures inside Canberra's childcare centres - ABC News
Thousands of documents about incidents in ACT childcare centres to be released - Canberra Times
Child lights toy shop on fire, boy shut in bathroom: ACT childcare uncovered - Canberra Times
'Ratios need to change': changes coming after childcare document drop - Canberra Times
What’s next?
This document release shows clearly that real change is needed, beyond platitudes about putting children first. Families, the many fantastic educators and providers in the ACT, and, above all, our vulnerable little ones deserve an early childhood system that always delivers when it comes to children’s safety and wellbeing.
You’ll see in some of the media reporting above that having labelled my push to hasten the release of these documents last year as ‘grubby’, the Education and Early Childhood Minister has changed her tune since the documents have actually been released, and is now acknowledging there are areas where ACT-specific reform may be needed. That’s encouraging to see.
For my part, I’ll continue working through the documents and consulting with families, educators, centres, experts and sector representatives to firm up my views on potential reforms, which I’ll have more to say about soon.
2025 roundtable with not-for-profit early childhood sector representatives
My office is back in full swing, so please reach out any time on [email protected] or (02) 6205 1475 during office hours.
Thank you for your support.
Tom