Australia rebuilt childcare regulation in a year, but cannot yet measure whether it worked

The Rapid Child Safety Review handed to the Victorian Government on 15 August 2025 turns one year old this week. It was commissioned on 2 July 2025, after allegations of sexual assault against children at long day care services in Melbourne, and written in six weeks by Jay Weatherill AO and Pam White PSM. It ran to 108 pages and made 22 recommendations. The Victorian Government accepted all of them on 20 August 2025 and attached $42 million.

A year later, the machinery exists. Victoria promised an independent early childhood regulator "by the end of this year", meaning 2025. The Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, headed by former Victoria Police deputy commissioner Wendy Steendam, took the role from 1 July 2026, roughly six months later than the response document implied. In New South Wales, the separately created Early Learning Commission had inspected more than 550 of the state's 6,100 services by 11 January 2026, when it forced its first closure: a Rosehill centre with 41 recorded breaches since 2023, including staff without working with children checks, padlocked fire escapes and fire extinguishers unchecked since 2011. Thirty seven children were enrolled.

What does not yet exist is a way to tell whether any of it has made children safer. The Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services is the only national scorecard. Part B, Section 3 was released on 10 February 2026 and last updated on 3 June 2026, and its serious incident series still stops at 2024-25. That series records 159.8 serious incidents per 100 approved services under the National Quality Framework, up from 148.1, with 77.7 per cent involving serious injury, trauma or illness of a child. Those are pre-reform numbers. The first post-reform reading is not due until the 2027 edition.

The review's own diagnosis was structural rather than episodic. It found the number of Victorian long day care services grew from 1,280 in 2015 to 2,049, an increase of 60 per cent, and that 726 of the 769 new services, or 94 per cent, were run by for-profit providers. It found 66.8 per cent of long day care and standalone kindergarten staff had been at their service for three years or fewer, including 22.7 per cent for under a year. It cited Australian Competition and Consumer Commission analysis, from an inquiry whose final report was released on 29 January 2024, showing turnover of 27 per cent at not-for-profit long day care services against 41 per cent at for-profit ones. Its conclusion was blunt: while the current market-driven model remains, the risks to quality and safety will persist.

The other official numbers cut the opposite way. At 30 June 2025, 92.8 per cent of approved services had a quality rating and 91.0 per cent of those rated met or beat the National Quality Standard, split 70.4 per cent meeting, 20.4 per cent exceeding and 0.2 per cent excellent. New South Wales put its own compliance figure at 93 per cent in January 2026. Asked in May 2026 whether children in care are safe, Steendam answered "absolutely", describing the failures uncovered as aberrations. The review panel had described them as gaps that predators exploited in a system that grew without a plan.

Workforce is where the two accounts collide hardest. The Report on Government Services shows 75.0 per cent of 209,433 paid primary contact staff held a Certificate III or higher, or three or more years of relevant experience, and 65.5 per cent of the 27,406 teachers delivering preschool programs were at least three-year university trained. The $3.6 billion Commonwealth package that funded the 2024 wage rise expires in November 2026 and was not extended in the current budget. Goodstart Early Learning reported vacancies at a five-year low in June 2026, while the United Workers Union said members had voted to walk off in July. Family day care in Ballarat has fallen from about 60 educators a decade ago to eight, covering 82 families.

Cost has not moved much either. Median weekly fees for 50 hours of centre-based day care were $711 in 2025, and 35.0 per cent of children aged 0 to 12 attended subsidised care in the March quarter of 2025.

What is not known: whether serious incident rates fell after the two new regulators began work, whether the national early childhood worker register the review demanded will be delivered, and what happens to wages, and therefore turnover, when the Commonwealth package lapses in November.