Every Wednesday about 5,000 pages of documents are sent to the clerk\u2019s office in New South Wales Parliament House and members of Abigail Boyd\u2019s staff scan each one.<\/p>\n
The documents are being released in tranches by various state government bodies after a legal fight by Boyd, a Greens upper house member and the chair of the NSW education committee.<\/p>\n
They detail breaches, enforcement actions, suspected criminal conduct and other serious problems afflicting the state\u2019s childcare system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I looked through them, it was just horrific,\u201d Boyd says. \u201cThere were letters from constituents to various ministers saying, \u2018These terrible things happened to my child, what are you going to do about it?\u2019 \u2026 every third document was an educator or a teacher abusing a child \u2026 but then a regulatory response that was clearly inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far Boyd has read about 120,000 pages.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The first batch was released to her in December last year under privilege, meaning she could not share what she had seen with anyone, including her staff or a lawyer.<\/p>\n Boyd was convinced the documents should be made public.<\/p>\n So, working alone, she filed motions over several months to get them released.<\/p>\n Most are from the Department of Education, which oversees the early childhood education and care regulator. The department argued against their release on grounds of legal and commercial privilege, that they contained personal details, and that the work involved in redacting and releasing them was overly burdensome.<\/p>\n The dispute eventually went to arbitration and in March Keith Mason KC decided that the release of the documents<\/a> \u2013 with names of children and educators redacted \u2013 was in the public interest.<\/p>\n Reading them takes \u201ca big chunk\u201d of Boyd\u2019s time and isn\u2019t without a cost.<\/p>\n \u201cI tend to do it on weekends because that\u2019s when I can sit, and also I find it quite emotionally taxing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u2018Where there are regulatory gaps, it\u2019s easy for people to exploit them.\u2019 Photograph: Carly Earl\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At times she has found herself sitting on the couch crying as she reads.<\/p>\n Her staff now field calls from parents, whistleblowers and childcare workers who know Boyd cares about the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe put it all into spreadsheets and we try and map it across the documents,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got and try and pick out where the issues are. But yeah, it\u2019s massive. It\u2019s been a massive part of our work. It\u2019s very stressful because it matters \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019ve only got two years of stuff [the scope of the inquiry gives her papers from 2022 to October 2024] \u2026 This is a two-year period for New South Wales. And it\u2019s shocking.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is absolutely systemic. And the idea that it\u2019s just a few bad apples \u2026 I wish it was just a few bad apples. But the more I look, the more horrified I am \u2013 there\u2019s no end to the things that keep coming through.\u201d<\/p>\n What Boyd has learned has fuelled her to fight for a radical rethink of the childcare system. Last week she chaired the parliamentary inquiry into the NSW early childhood eduction and care sector, questioning department officials, a police boss, and current and former early childhood workers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first moved that call for papers, I thought maybe we\u2019ll find something,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe there\u2019ll be a little something here and I can look at it. But all hell let loose.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018An essential public service\u2019<\/p>\n Flaws in the childcare system have crashed into public awareness over the past year, after reporting by the ABC\u2019s Four Corners about abuse and neglect, and the horrifying allegations of sexual abuse against multiple children by a childcare worker in Melbourne.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Boyd sees these as two sides of the one coin. \u201cWhere there are regulatory gaps, it\u2019s easy for people to exploit them,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd whether you\u2019re a bad company doing the wrong thing or you\u2019re a perpetrator of sexual violence wanting to come in and do the wrong thing, there are loopholes to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n These are compounded by the \u201csystemic impact on the sector as a whole from the behaviour of these profit-taking institutions that have cut corners for so long and treated workers so poorly for so long that we now have a really precarious workforce. It\u2019s very casualised.\u201d<\/p>\n A workforce shortage has made centre directors more likely to \u201clook the other way\u201d and \u201cignore red flags\u201d, she says, and she has witnessed \u201ca fear from workers who are trying to do the right thing that they can\u2019t report and \u2026 they can\u2019t say anything that\u2019s going to bring their centre into disrepute, particularly when it\u2019s one of these big for-profit centres.\u201d<\/p>\n The understaffing that besets the sector leads to ratio breaches, which in turn means \u201cyou\u2019re not having workers keeping a check on other workers. So there\u2019s a whole bunch of issues around the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government announced on Friday it would fund a national educator register, mandate child safety training for staff, carry out additional spot checks on centres and facilitate information-sharing around working with children checks.<\/p>\n Boyd says this won\u2019t be enough. \u201cIt tinkers around the edges,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s woefully insufficient to address the systemic and structural issues in the sector that have been allowed to fester for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n High on Boyd\u2019s agenda of reform are private providers, which now operate almost 70% of centre-based daycare services.<\/p>\n