Opinion: Blaming Casual Educators Won’t Fix Childcare’s Systemic Failures

The devastating revelations of child sexual abuse in Australia’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector have rightly horrified families and the wider community. In Victoria, former childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences against babies and toddlers at multiple centres between 2017 and 2025. In Queensland, Ashley Paul Griffith has been convicted of over 300 child sex offences committed while working in childcare services. These shocking failures demand immediate reform – but what disappoints me deeply, is that some media and political figures have pointed to the “casualised workforce” as a contributing factor to such abuses. This narrative – that casual educators themselves are part of the problem – is simplistic, unfair and distracts us from the real systemic failures that enabled predators to offend undetected.  

Who is making this claim?

In a Radio National Breakfast interview on 2 July, Federal Education Minister Jason Clare linked the sector’s “large and highly casualised” workforce to recruitment weaknesses exposed by the recent allegations. The Queensland Child Death Review Board’s interim report also noted that a highly casualised workforce can weaken reference checking when processes aren’t applied thoroughly. Major media outlets, including The Guardian, ABC News and The Courier-Mail, have repeated these points in coverage this week, implying casual employment structures themselves are a flaw.

But this misses the point entirely.

Casual educators are a crucial part of the workforce that keeps centres open and safe

The ECEC sector relies on strict staff-to-child ratios to protect children’s wellbeing and provide early childhood education. It’s a sector where illness and leave are common. Without fully vetted, flexible casual educators, many centres simply would not comply with regulations – or would have to close rooms or turn families away at short notice.

Many casuals are highly experienced professionals – room leaders, assistant educators, even centre directors. Many are parents or carers who choose casual work to balance family life. New educators – exactly the fresh talent this sector needs – gain vital experience through casual work, learning different educational approaches and testing out workplaces before committing long-term. Just like a locum doctor or nurse fills relief shifts in a hospital, casual educators deserve the same professional respect and rigorous standards.

Casual educators undergo the same Working With Children Checks, hold the same qualifications, and follow the same regulations as permanent employees. When casual recruitment is done properly, the type of contract makes no difference to a person’s fitness to work with children.

So what really failed?

It wasn’t the use of casuals – it was the lack of national consistency and safeguards:

• Australia still does not have a single, nationally consistent Working With Children Check. A national system was a clear recommendation of the 2015 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – yet nearly a decade later, we are no closer to achieving it.
  
• And while strict ratios exist, they still allow situations where a single adult may be left alone with children. Clear minimums – requiring at least two adults to always be present – must become standard practice.
  
• Too many Registered Training Organisations are poorly monitored, with weak oversight of how qualifications are delivered and assessed. In particular, the misuse of Recognition of Prior Learning is allowing some to effectively ‘sell’ qualifications with minimal genuine training or checks.
  
• The Queensland Child Death Review Board highlighted that fears of defamation or reputational damage can deter organisations from formally raising or sharing concerns about staff conduct – allowing individuals to move between employers unchecked.
  

These are the failures that let offenders slip through the cracks. They must be fixed – urgently. On top of this, it has taken far too long to fairly recognise and pay the ECEC workforce for the skilled, responsible work they do. Although the Fair Work Commission’s gender based undervaluation decision handed down in April is a positive step, years of low wages have already driven too many great educators out of the sector.

The bottom line

Blaming casual educators is convenient – but it won’t prevent the next tragedy. If we truly want children to be safe, we need:

• A single national Working With Children Check
• A genuine review of educator to child ratios to ensure more active supervision
  and engagement within the environment.
• Stronger systems for recording, reporting and sharing concerns.
• Stricter oversight of RTOs to ensure qualifications include real training and fair
  assessment.
• Fair pay and conditions that keep good educators in the sector.

This is how we protect children – not by scapegoating the people who step in, often at short notice, to keep centres compliant and safe every day