The charges of alleged child abuse against Melbourne childcare educator Joshua Dale Brown have sent shockwaves around the country, searing fear in the hearts of parents who have or have had their children in care. How was it possible for an employee to have allegedly committed so many serious offences against children in his workplace in such a short time, undetected? It is expected he will face more charges with the courts granting police an extension of time to investigate.

This is not the first case and seemingly won’t be the last. In November 2024, Ashley Paul Griffith received a life sentence after being convicted of child sex abuse across multiple centres in Brisbane, while earlier this month, another man was charged with nine counts of child sex abuse in New South Wales and just last week another childcare director in Queensland was charged with knowingly hiring a convicted child sex offender. And these cases are just the tip of the iceberg, with the Guardian reporting yesterday that thousands of reports of abuse have been made in Australian childcare centres.

As governments scramble to appear to be doing something after ignoring the 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommendations for nearly a decade, there is now a national conversation about how to increase safeguards for children in institutionalised care. Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, has proposed reforms that will give regulators more powers to suspend or cancel non-compliant child-care centres. There is also support for a national database of childcare workers and updates to the working with children’s check which has been backed by the Opposition in Victoria, along with creating an independent childcare safety watchdog and increased CCTV surveillance.

The response has also understandably been emotional, with calls to ban men from working in childcare altogether.

But as the ABC uncovered in March this year, the issues within the $20 billion childcare sector are not limited to sexual abuse by male educators, but also physical assault and neglect, and by female employees too. The lack of oversight, reporting failures, and cover-up reporting indicate that profit is being prioritised over children.

Some of these alleged and convicted abusers held a working with children check, had no prior offences and, therefore, no red flags on paper. Measures to improve safeguards for children in the workplace will only go so far.

I’m not convinced parents can ever rest assured their kids are safe in institutionalised childcare, but a more important question is, is it even good for children?

This is a controversial question, but I raise it as a part-time working mother who intentionally opted out of institutional childcare primarily after answering this question with secondary frustrations over the politicisation of the early learning framework, including a refusal to celebrate Australia Day and the presence of gender ideology.

According to clinical social worker and psychoanalyst, Erica Kominsar, institutionalised childcare, particularly for children under three, is detrimental to the healthy mental and emotional development of children, leading to behavioural and attachment disorders as well as anxiety, depression, and increased aggression.

She also believes there is a correlation between the chronic stress on children from being removed too young from a secure environment with their parent to ADHD, noting increased distractibility, inattentiveness, emotional dysregulation, and aggression as behavioural responses to this stress.

In her view, it is essential for the emotional security and wellbeing of young children to have quantity and quality time with their ‘primary attachment figure’, usually the mother, and she advocates for increased societal support to keep children at home with a parent rather than putting them into childcare.

With economic pressure and a culture that promotes career progression over motherhood, women often find themselves in a state of burnout trying to juggle work with family life. Compounding this is Australia’s inflexible government childcare support, suitable only for office hours during the week.

Australia needs to rethink childcare with a focus on what’s best for children and families, not government revenue raising.

We need to overhaul our tax system so families can opt in to provide for and raise their children on a single income. Income splitting is the most obvious solution and would reduce the need for government childcare subsidies.

When it comes to childcare, the government needs to provide more choice and flexibility to parents on how they can use childcare subsidies. A group of parents have started a campaign petitioning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to expand the use of the CCS to nannies, au pairs, and family undertaking care for their children. This would particularly benefit women, who often work irregular hours, especially in female-dominated careers such as nursing and hospitality. Given the government is already pouring $15 billion of taxpayer funds into the current flawed system that is overrun by abuse and rorting, it makes sense to give parents funding this system with their taxes more power over the subsidies and how they are used rather than one option that is currently lining the pockets of big corporations.

Finally, no government is serious about safeguarding children unless it is willing to address the role pornography is playing in the destruction of our culture. Banning childcare workers from having their phones on them during work hours only deals with a symptom of a much greater sickness in our culture, which is the market for child sex abuse material.

Evidence shows that pornography negatively impacts the human brain, rewiring it to the point where users need increasingly extreme, depraved content to feel satisfied. For years, experts have warned that pornography is increasingly becoming a gateway to child sex abuse.

Today, children as young as five are also being exposed to pornography, with some copying what they have seen. The accessibility of porn sites is grooming children into sexual predators before their young, immature minds understand what they are doing.

Instead of pandering to adult industry lobbyists, the federal government needs to urgently bring in proof of age verification on all pornography websites. More also needs to be done to educate our communities and young people on the harms of pornography.

In Victoria, around 2,000 children are being tested for sexually transmitted diseases, a hellish nightmare no child nor parent should have to face. Child exploitation is on the rise. This is not a problem that will simply be solved by a box-ticking review and the introduction of new regulations. Parents, not the government, need to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to care for their children, and we need a serious conversation about the cultural rot contributing to the increase of sexual crimes against children.