Paedophiles exploit staff shortages and lax regulation to abuse children, inquiry told

He said there had been an increase in child abuse material being filmed in child care centers in Australia.

“We have huge communities of sex offenders developing strategies on how to exploit children on encrypted services on the dark web. This is the early infiltration of the childcare sector by organized crime groups. This is as worrying as it sounds.”

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Greens MLC Abigail Boyd, who chaired an inquiry into NSW child care centres, said the majority of abuse cases occurred in for-profit centres, which may have rotating staff. He said predators will engage in “hub shopping,” moving from hub to hub until they find “the right conditions that will facilitate their exploitation.”

“The number one thing they look for is understaffing to avoid getting caught,” Boyd said.

“The most egregious examples of abuse cannot occur in a situation where other educators are around… Abuse can be prevented by co-workers having the opportunity to identify concerning behaviors and red flags by engaging with other educators, rather than having temporary workers on a daily basis.”

In a statement, G8 Education said the “safety, welfare and development of children in our care is our number one priority” and that it was making progress in attracting and retaining quality staff. He said team retention rates are up and vacancies are better than the industry average.

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Community Early Learning Australia chief executive Michele Carnegie told a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday that better quality staff was needed to keep children safe.

“We know that it is the people around children who keep them safe. A stable, skilled and valued workforce is the most important safeguard against harm to children,” Carnegie said.

“We cannot organize our way out of this… We must have enough good, strong, competent staff working around children, and we must have enough staff working around children, so that the perpetrators of these terrible crimes do not have the opportunity to take action in early education and care settings.”

Tanya Barton, director of Enmore Early Learning Centre, said: “I know in my heart that proportions are the essence of quality.

“We are setting children, educators, families and society up for failure.”

NSW Department of Education secretary Murat Dizdar agreed that “we need to get staffing right across all services”.

“Services need to have the right kind of staff and the right number of staff to give parents confidence that their children will be safe,” he said. It has committed to establishing an independent regulator by the end of the year.

The investigation will present its findings in a report next year.

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