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Every child deserves to grow up in a community that puts what’s best for them first. Every parent has the right to expect that, when they drop their child off at an early learning centre in the morning, their safety and wellbeing will be prioritised above all else. And every educator should be empowered and supported to uphold that expectation.

There are many diligent and professional early childhood educators and providers in the ACT, but a nationwide child safety crisis has tarred the entire sector with the same brush and left families reeling.

We can address this crisis with improved transparency, scrutiny and safeguarding measures that combine to support good providers, weed out bad actors and elevate the standard across the sector.

HOW WE GOT HERE

In June 2025, after documents were released revealing deeply concerning incidents and practices in NSW early childhood education and care centres, I passed an Assembly motion to release similar documents here in the ACT. By making these documents public, we can gauge the effectiveness of our regulatory system, differentiate the exemplary centres from the providers who are prioritising profit over children’s safety, and determine what reforms are needed to ensure the safety of our children is being put first.

ACT Labor did not support my motion, suggesting it was a waste of public resources. Days before the documents were due to be released in September 2025, they teamed up with the Canberra Liberals to significantly reduce the number of documents captured by the motion and delay the release date to Christmas Eve. This resulted in key pieces of evidence being like witness statements, police reports, and internal investigation documents – which are essential to understanding how centres, ACT Policing, and the regulator have responded to incidents – being withheld from release. 

The almost 2,500 documents that have been released include ministerial briefings about serious incidents, incident reports and complaints made to the regulator (Children’s Education and Care Assurance or CECA), and CECA’s compliance action notices from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2025.

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

In February 2026, I brought a motion to the Assembly calling on the ACT Government to implement a significant package of reforms to improve children’s safety in Canberra’s early childhood education and care centres. These reforms were shaped by what we learned through the document release; nine months of consultation with local families, educators, providers and sector experts; and a community survey I circulated seeking input from across the ACT.

The motion listed 13 proposed measures, including establishing a public register of regulatory enforcement actions related to child safety breaches, exploring options to cap centres’ surplus revenue to ensure sufficient investment back into the workforce, establishing an online portal for verifying Working With Vulnerable People cards, and updating the ACT's early childhood strategy with a renewed focus on child safety. The motion passed with minor amendments.

The Government is required to provide an update on their progress in implementing these reforms by September 2026, with a final report and updated early childhood strategy to be tabled in February 2027.

ACCESSING THE DOCUMENTS

Each tabled document has been published individually on the ACT Legislative Assembly’s website here. I've reproduced all the compliance notices that have been released, categorised by centre, here on my website.

The documents released interstate have already led to nationwide reforms, including that compliance actions taken against each centre over the last two years are now listed on the federal government’s Starting Blocks website. The website does not provide access, however, to the actual documents, instead encouraging families to contact the relevant centre for further information. For ease of access, you can find compliance action notices from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2025 below.

Centres without any compliance notices are not listed. Please contact my office on [email protected] with any queries.

Content warning: some documents contain accounts of child abuse and other distressing material. Call 1800RESPECT if you need support.