4 days ago
'Urgent' bans on abusive childcare workers to take up to 12 months, says attorney-general
Loopholes allowing child abusers to "shop around" childcare centres may not be closed for another year, the attorney-general has conceded, ahead of a meeting of ministers on Friday.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said child abusers were "clearly shopping around" to exploit gaps in Australia's patchwork police check system for the sector.
She said creating a system to make sure workers "banned in one" state were "banned in all" would be the immediate and urgent concern of Friday's meeting of ministers.
But she conceded it may not be in place for another 12 months.
"It's a long time when you consider the fact of the fragmentation we have here, the complex IT systems that need to be done, but also different states have different laws and regulations here," Ms Rowland told the ABC.
The nation's attorneys-general will meet on Friday, a month after revelations of another case of alleged widespread child abuse by a Melbourne childcare worker.
Joshua Dale Brown faces more than 70 offences linked to a childcare centre in Point Cook, in Melbourne's south-west.
Ms Rowland said Australians would be startled to learn that Australia's police check systems, which operate at a state level, do not have measures to ensure that if a childcare worker is banned in one state the ban automatically extends to every state.
She said establishing information sharing to fix that would be today's "urgent" priority".
"I would like to think this is something that is certainly capable of being done within certainly the next 12 months," Ms Rowland said.
"If we can have a better sense of that following today's meeting, that would be a good thing.
A National Working With Children Check system was one of the key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, made a decade ago.
Ms Rowland acknowledged that change had not happened "quickly enough" due to a patchwork federal system where responsibilities sat with different ministers, IT systems were not compatible, funding sources differed and states each had different information standards.
But she said Labor had begun work on changes last term in the wake of charges against Australia's worst paedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, in 2022.
Ms Rowland said a dedicated unit had been established within her department to ensure outcomes were met.
Attorneys-general will also consider near-term changes to establish continuous monitoring and sharing capabilities at Friday's meeting, as well as longer term measures to lift the bar for workers to be excluded.
