this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 29 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Disgusting, and a difficult read.

For the nearly ten years they were operating, none of the centres ever met minimum quality ratings.

Are these ratings public? Not that it would make it okay, but at least gives people half a chance of avoiding scum like this.

Anyway, once again the issue with relying on private companies that only care about money to manage something so important reveals itself.

[–] Salvo@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago

And don’t forget the Spud wants to lower supervision ratios to 1:50.

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yes all early learning centres are rated by ACEQUA and you can search their database online:

https://www.acecqa.gov.au/resources/national-registers/services

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 6 points 2 days ago

We are well-past this stage, but at least the place that our kids attended is "Meeting NQS". Which stands to reason, it was a council-run centre.

[–] philpo@feddit.org 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All of the people who ever worked there deserve judicial punishment AND a court mandated ban to ever work with vulnerable people.

AND: Everyone who's job it was to make sure these facilities were up to standards and are adequately controlled needs to be helped responsible. That does intentionally not only mean the actual people doing the on-scene-audits, but also the people responsible for them. You can have the most upright and non corruptible people doing these audits - if they only have enough financing to have two for 2000 facilities they are useless.

[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

This is the issue I have with privatisation. I actually think the private sector can and does do many things very well. However, when it comes time to tender bids, the contracts are so often lacking in monitoring and damages. Without a heavy penalty for this stuff, and knowing that quality controls are loose, bids are lowballed and quality is poor. This makes it appear that privatisation is cost effective, but users suffer. Any privatisation needs to occur via a third party tender and monitoring arm of government, else I think it safer for the state to directly administer childcare (and healthcare).

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Corporate documents show Thomas and Sally Fanous have now moved into a new industry: NDIS.

Just in case anyone was wondering, there are great, passionate, dedicated carers in the NDIS, but it's just the next unregulated industry awash with money.

Edit: also, there's plenty of great day cares in our area. Ours doesn't have restrictive chairs or anything like that. You just roll in whenever to pick them up, they're always doing cool activities.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Doesn’t Dutton own a chain of childcare centres or something similar?

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Yes and others in his party have suggested increasing educator ratios from 1 educator to every 11 children to 1 to 50.

Only a greedy moron that doesn't actually care about anyone else would suggest such a thing.

My wife is a kinder teacher and has said how tragic this will be for some children. Children will die if this is allowed.

1 to 50 isn't even really appropriate for fifteen year olds, let alone three year olds.

[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 days ago

What a fucking nightmare that would be

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 2 days ago

I'm not Australian, but I'll ready the pitchforks.

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It really upsets me to see this, and points to the lack of funding for regulatory inspections. This should have been more heavily inspected, especially as they’ll provider kept failing centres.

In my nursery room I set out to outright ban high chairs and other restrictive devices from the space late last year, to know children were going hours in them when I wasn’t even comfortable with seeing them for a minute or two once they want out is horrific.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah.

The age old catch cry of conservative governments. Reduce red tape and regulations and let private industry sort themselves out.

[–] terraborra@lemmy.nz 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

JFC. How did they not get jailed for child abuse?

[–] MooseyMoose@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

And now they're working with disabled people? Someone put a fucking bullet in these monsters.

While I understand the rage, can we not stoop to the level of back-ass-wards countries like the US and mandate capital punishment? The people involved absolutely deserve gaol time though, rather than just being fined.

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All they got was a $40k fine.

[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 days ago

This was heartbreaking. The doubt it puts in your mind even after seeing videos and photos of my kid being so happy at childcare...