‘Off the charts:' Roadside cameras capture driver offending 81 times since January
The Road Safety Commission released a new batch of images taken by roadside cameras across Perth and regional Western Australia over the past six months.
The new cameras have been trialled in WA to test their efficiency before authorities begin issuing fines using the technology from October.
Drivers were snapped smoking drugs from a meth pipe, drinking beer and using their phone, resting their leg across the dash, not wearing seatbelts, using iPads and nursing children while they were driving on some of the state's busiest roads.
One driver was caught offending 81 times, another driver 74 times, another 52 times and 10 people were picked up offending more than 40 times each since January.
The cameras recorded 129,000 mobile phone and seatbelt offences, resulting in 44,530 caution notices.
Road Safety Minister Reece Whitby said fixed and mobile safety cameras monitored 25 million vehicles since January and the images captured by the roadside technology were 'mind-boggling.'
'We are seeing people doing the wrong thing again and again,' he said.
'I cannot believe that one driver has been caught offending 81 times. That is extreme serial offending; it is off the charts.'
Mr Whitby said people continued to blatantly ignore the law and the same people were repeatedly caught speeding.
He said extreme cases had been referred to police to pursue in the interest of public safety.
'We are seeing such an extreme and astounding rate of offending by some – not all – in the community that I believe when we start issuing fines from these safety cameras, a huge number of people will lose their licence if they do not change their way,' he said.
Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner said the technology was implemented to try to change behaviour.
'Just looking at mobile phones, which are the major source of distraction and a major source of crashes, particularly on high-speed country roads, Queensland saw nearly a 75 per cent drop-off in the first months after it introduced similar cameras,' he said.
'We are hopeful that, once we get the message out, particularly in regional areas, that we want people to change behaviour, there will be a significant shift in behaviour once people realise that this is the type of thing that is happening and the risk involved is great.'
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
The childcare subsidy gives parents 'choice', but the government must ensure good choices are available
This week's horrifying allegations against a Melbourne childcare worker have provoked shock, grief and reckoning. For those who spend their lives thinking about how to improve the systems and policies our society relies on, moments like this can also provoke change. We expect our governments to be improving our institutions all the time, not just when there is a horror story — and they often do, in ways that do not make headlines — but policy advocates understand the power of a "burning platform" to make reforms stick. This week, childcare advocate Georgie Dent of The Parenthood said leaders needed to go beyond steps already underway to improve screening and surveillance of staff and redesign the sector entirely. Dent's two priorities are an independent national regulator with the power to effectively force the closure of centres that do not meet minimum standards, and a new funding model where child care is provided directly like public schools, rather than subsidised. It is obvious how a national regulator relates to the failures exposed by this week's allegations — in fact, it may surprise many to learn that shutting down substandard childcare centres isn't already standard practice, and the federal government has work underway to change that. The relevance of funding may not be so obvious. But the financial model of Australian child care — where the federal government gives money to parents rather than operating centres itself — has long put it at arm's length from ensuring quality and safety. That is a challenge for the Albanese government, which has long aspired to make those subsidies universal but has limited oversight of what exactly it is subsidising. Our childcare system is built with "choice" at its centre. Rather than the government providing childcare services directly, it pays a subsidy to eligible parents, who choose from a range of providers, including for-profit and not-for-profit organisations. The logic is that high-quality services will naturally follow if parents are "empowered" to give their money to a good provider instead of a bad one. It's a hybrid system: demand is public, with the government paying for at least a portion of the cost of care, but supply is private, with providers competing with one another in a market for customers, and regulations often light-touch. Similar systems are today used for a range of services that were once directly provided by government, including aged care and vocational education, and for disability care through the NDIS. In-home aged care recipients have "packages", NDIS participants have "budgets" and trainees have "fee-free TAFE", all different names for subsidies allowing them to choose their preferred providers. But this choice "revolution", which has taken place in the last few decades, has its critics. Mark Considine, a politics professor at the University of Melbourne, calls it evidence of a "careless state". Though motivated by a desire to improve on often stale government service providers, Considine argues it became an excuse for governments to outsource quality assurance to those who use the services, who may lack the information to make informed choices. Sometimes there may not be much choice at all, like in Australia's childcare "deserts" where only a smattering of providers are available. But even where options are plenty, it is an open question whether those who rely on these services, who are often vulnerable and confronting complicated systems, are really equipped to sort good from bad. That is why Dent advocates the school model — schools being one of a few remaining services directly provided by (state and territory) governments, with hospitals another. "The way schools are funded is directly. Parents are not subsidised to send their children to schools," she said on Wednesday. "There is no accountability for the childcare subsidy … where taxpayers and the [federal] government are able to say that receiving this money is dependent on you meeting these minimum standards … "When we've got services that have almost got a business model around employing the fewest number of staff with the lowest number of qualifications, that creates extraordinary risk." The federal government has not indicated it intends to abolish the subsidy system, but it is considering how to improve regulatory oversight, with Education Minister Jason Clare vowing to deny subsidies to substandard providers in forthcoming legislation, something in train before the events of this week. The government is also considering how to improve training, pay and retention in the childcare workforce, and address childcare deserts. That trio of reforms was suggested by the Productivity Commission, which recommended retaining the subsidy system but also called for a national commission to better regulate quality, similar to Dent's other recommendation. It would be a similar approach to what has unfolded over the last few years in aged care, another sector where stories of neglect and abuse kickstarted a process of change. An Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission was set up in 2019 and has been accompanied by a star rating system to inform choices. A new "rights-based" framework for the system was also legislated last year but recently had its implementation delayed. The jury is out on these changes, and the ABC reported last year that five-star ratings were being handed out to aged care homes found not to be compliant with government standards. Direct provision of government services is no perfect guarantee of quality either, as we often see with schools and hospitals. But there is growing recognition, including from the government itself, that giving people "choice" in the services they access cannot come at the expense of strong oversight to give parents the confidence, no doubt shaken this week, that those choices are safe. If the government does press ahead with universal child care, which will require more providers and more workers, safeguarding quality will be essential.
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Why there's no ‘silver bullet' to make childcare safe
Sydney Pead: Parents send their young children to childcare, trusting they'll return home each day safely. But thousands of families are in shock after a Victorian childcare worker was charged with 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material. The alleged victims were as young as five months old. Today, Caroline Croser-Barlow from The Front Project, which works to improve early childhood education on whether the system is safe and how governments can fix it. I'm Sydney Pead, on Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Sydney Pead: Caroline, in Victoria, a man has been charged with sexual assault offences against eight children who were under his care at a facility in Melbourne's South West. News report: Police have charged 26-year-old man Joshua Brown with more than 70 offences. The charges relate to eight victims in Melbourne's West between April 2022 and January 2023. Janet Stevenson, Victoria Police Acting Commander: As soon as we identified his alleged offending, he was removed from the community. He had a valid Working With Children check, which has since been cancelled. News report: In the past eight years, Brown worked at 20 other childcare centres around Melbourne. Health authorities are urging 1,200 children to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Dr Christian McGrath, Victorian Chief Health Officer: We do understand that this is another distressing element to the situation and we're taking this approach as a precaution. Sydney Pead: They're just shocking allegations. What was your reaction? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. Many of us have left our children in early childhood settings and I just feel enormously for the families involved, for the families who don't know if they're involved, that uncertainty is really hard. For the educators who are working at that service, I can't imagine the level of guilt and horror you must feel. And to educators more generally who I know are waking up today and just feeling really, really, really sad about this terrible thing that has happened. Sydney Pead: And Victorian health authorities, they're recommending that 1,200 children linked to the case be tested for infectious diseases. The impact of these allegations, it's just huge, isn't it? Caroline Croser-Barlow: It really is. And I think it's obviously really important and really good that the government is being so forthcoming and kind of identifying and contacting families to let them know that there's a chance that their child might have been exposed. The balance of that obviously is that it creates a lot of anxiety and concern amongst families and there's just no good way forward in this. It's just a really difficult situation. Sydney Pead: Well, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, has spoken about this. She said the allegations were sickening. Jacinta Allan, Victorian Premier: As we know, every Victorian was just so completely horrified by those sickening allegations that were made public. And I know right across the state, so many Victorians, so many parents turned to each other and asked that question, like we all did. How could this sort of offending be possible within a child care centre? Sydney Pead: She's now ordered an urgent review into child care safety, a ban on personal devices in centres to come in later this year. Jacinta Allan, Victorian Premier: To avoid delay, we'll be putting all Victorian child care centres on notice that they will be required to adopt this ban on personal devices effective from the 26th of September. Sydney Pead: And the state will now strengthen its rules around the Working with Children check. Now we understand this man had a valid Working with Children check. Can you just explain how that system works? Because parents might think that that's a pretty good guide that their children would be safe with someone who has that accreditation. Caroline Croser-Barlow: Look, a Working with Children check is a background check conducted by the government that screens for criminal history and professional conduct findings. And so it is obviously a really important step, but it is only backwards looking. So it can only catch people after they've been caught the first time. And so a Working with Children check is important, but definitely not a silver bullet. Sydney Pead: So the Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, said that the Federal Government will ban the use of personal mobile phones within centres after the arrest and the conviction of a paedophile in Queensland. And that's because of concerns raised by the National Safety Regulator about the creation of child abuse material. Is the government taking this seriously enough? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Absolutely, the government is taking this seriously, I think. So I've been around the sector a little while, and what I'm hearing in the background is that there is more movement among ministers and among public servants than there has ever been before. But I understand from the community's perspective that they're sort of saying, well, why can't government stop this? Like we are always hearing these kind of new announcements. The ban on mobile phones has been something that's been discussed a little over the last six months. The New South Wales government has announced that it's going to do a pilot of CCTV and high risk services. And I really understand that the community is like, there's all these individual measures. Why isn't it working or what will work? And so I guess when I look at it, I think we need to be careful to not think there is a single thing that will fix all of these problems. To use a kind of health analogy, I'd say we need to strengthen our immune system and not just vaccinate against one individual. So we need to think about both some of these really specific questions around tightening screening or an educator register so we can track where people are. But we also need to think about how do we ensure that we have services that have child safe cultures? And that's a bit of a bigger conversation. Sydney Pead: Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. There have been allegations of sexual abuse in centres across the country. A Four Corners report by the ABC's Adele Ferguson documented instances of poor food quality, rough handling and abuse and neglect. Is it fair to say that the government's response to the incident is not to be taken as a positive? Is it fair to say that the entire industry is in crisis? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think that isn't fair to say. So it's the vast majority of services where parents are taking their children every day are safe and indeed high quality. And what we're seeing, I think, is the way that over the last decade or so, the carrots and sticks have gotten out of balance. By which I mean that the sector has grown much faster in response to Commonwealth funding on the table through childcare subsidies than the states have been able to keep up with in terms of investing in quality and regulation. So as we embark on kind of this next phase of Prime Minister Albanese has talked about a commitment to universal early childhood education and care and expanding access. Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: This is the single biggest investment by an Australian government ever in new childcare services that will bring the opportunity of early education to regions and suburbs that have been forgotten for too long. Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think this is a moment where we need to think, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. Let's make sure that we don't just focus on growth, that we think about how we make sure that we're growing safely and with high quality. And that's going to require the Commonwealth, which does most of the funding and the states and territories which do most of the regulatory and quality building to work closely together. Sydney Pead: If there are these huge vulnerabilities in the system that put children at risk, should we really be encouraging the expansion of a sector before these issues are addressed? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I agree that there is a challenge that if the Commonwealth incentivises more supply coming online without thinking about how to ensure quality, that we might end up with lower quality services that don't actually help and maybe harm kids. So I think the first thing that would be very helpful is for a national settlement where the Commonwealth and the states come together and say, oh, yeah, actually, between us, someone needs to be responsible for quality. Someone needs to be responsible for making sure there's enough supply everywhere so that families can have access to high quality education and care. And it is someone's job to make sure the whole system is high quality and safe. Sydney Pead: So the federal education minister, Jason Clare, says he plans to bring legislation to Parliament in the next few months to cut off funding to childcare centres that fail to meet the national quality standards. The question is, how would he or authorities know if centres are falling short? Shouldn't they? I mean, they shouldn't be operating in the first place, should they? Caroline Croser-Barlow: So Australia has a world leading national quality framework. We really are the envy of the world, although it's hard to imagine it on a day like today. We aren't delivering quality to every child in every service. What Minister Clare is saying is that where services are consistently not meeting the national quality standard, things aren't getting better. Or where a provider who has a lot of services that aren't meeting the service, he's saying those people should not be eligible for childcare subsidy. And that's he's talking about bringing legislation to the Parliament, which would obviously essentially render the business unviable because childcare subsidy is such an important part of the funding of ECEC. This is really pleasing because it shows that the Commonwealth has stopped just thinking its responsibility is to make early childhood education and care affordable. And it started thinking, actually, we also need to make sure that the system is quality. There will be some problems associated with this. It's going to be a bit tricky. So the phenomenon of phoenixing, which we see in other industries, is not uncommon in early childhood education and care. So that's where a service might shut down and then the same directors of that company might reopen a service somewhere else, even though the first one was shut down because things weren't working well. But in general, they have pretty good ability to go and assess and look at what's happening in individual services. So I don't think it's it's beyond the government's to be able to do it if they if they really put their minds to it. Sydney Pead: What about if there are concerns about an individual working at a centre, but it doesn't become a police investigation, what is stopping that person from jumping between centres? Do we have a problem with information sharing and do we need mechanisms to stop people from moving on before police can get involved, for example? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the conversations that is happening right now is about an educator register. And that would allow there to be a body to which complaints could be made. Those sorts of registers are obviously time consuming and kind of tricky to set up, but would add a lot of value. And again, I get the sense that there's a bit of momentum coming in behind that idea. Sydney Pead: What about the quality, the pay, the training of staff? Does that all play a role here as well? Do you think we get better care and safer kids if there's a boost to pay and training in these kinds of things within the centres? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Absolutely. So the most important predictor of quality is the relationship between the educator and the child. So services that prioritise that kind of quality, that are really intentionally creating those kinds of experiences are also services that I would argue are thinking a lot about safety. They're thinking a lot about how are we with the children? You know, what are the individuals interacting with children? How are we operating? Those are questions that are much harder to tackle if you've got really inexperienced workforce who might find it hard to know that something looks a bit odd or that might find it hard to say out loud that something's a bit odd. For example, we know that there's a really high use of casual workforce in some service types and provider types. And that's really problematic because if you're a casual, both you're not kind of part of a really high quality ongoing program, but also you're kind of at the whims of the of the employer. So it's harder to raise concerns and say, well, hang on a second, I've got a worry here. And I think what we're seeing now is that actually you need to have an active effort from state and territory and Commonwealth governments to improve quality, not just regulate for safety, but actually to invest in improving quality. And we can start to see some really good things happening. Sydney Pead: There will be a lot of parents out there right now who are sending their kids to childcare today with serious concerns for their well-being. What sort of advice do you have to reassure parents? Can they ever really be 100 percent sure? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think the first and most important thing is to talk with your educator and the room leader and your centre director about how they think about child safety. So I would be asking them things like, how do you ensure that children are supervised at all times? You know, how long have staff been here? What's your turnover like? These are not in an interrogative way, but these are really good questions for services to think about in terms of how they are keeping their child safety culture alive. And so it's really hard, I know, as a parent to live with a little bit of uncertainty about horrible things. And I don't have any any magic answer to fix that. But I think always when you're in a service, think about how do I feel? Do I feel like this service knows my child? Do I feel like the educators know my child and care about my child? Does it feel like it's purposeful? Those are the markers of services that are doing the right things and I think are less likely to have these kinds of issues. Sydney Pead: Caroline Croser-Barlow is the chief executive of early learning advocacy body The Front Project. And if you have experienced childhood trauma or abuse, you can call the Blue Knot helpline on 1300 657 380. Today's show was produced by Kara Jensen Mackinnon. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks so much.
News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
Police charge second man with child sex abuse offences following Joshua Brown allegations
Police have revealed fresh details about the allegations surrounding a second man charged with child sexual offences, following Tuesday's revelation of the alleged large-scale sexual abuse of children at Victorian childcare centres. The allegations against the second man, Michael Simon Wilson, stem from the probe into childcare worker Joshua Brown. Yesterday, Victorian Police revealed they had charged Mr Brown, 26, with 70 offences after he allegedly abused eight children at a Point Cook childcare centre in Melbourne. It is alleged some children were as young as five months. A widespread investigation has now been launched, with Victoria's chief health officer saying 1200 children have been recommended to undergo infectious diseases testing. Mr Wilson and Mr Brown are reportedly known to each other, though the nature of the relationship is unclear. On Wednesday afternoon, Victorian Police revealed Mr Wilson was a 36-year-old man from Hoppers Crossing. 'Detectives from the Sexual Crimes Squad have charged a man in relation to an alleged sexual assault in Coburg in April,' a police spokeswoman said. 'A 36-year-old Hoppers Crossing man has been charged with a range of sexual offences including rape. 'The charges relate to an investigation into an incident in Coburg on April 16 where a teenage boy was allegedly sexually assaulted.' Mr Wilson's alleged offences are not believed to involve childcare centres or any of Mr Brown's alleged victims. Mr Brown was arrested on May 12 and is due to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on September 15. Mr Wilson will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on the same day. Police allege Mr Brown worked at 20 centres across the state between January 2017 and May 2025. On Wednesday, Education Minister Jason Clare revealed he knew a family impacted by the allegations. 'I know that they're angry because (I know) one of those parents and her two little girls are directly affected by this,' Mr Clare said on Wednesday. 'And I won't tell you what she told me last night because you can't repeat it on television, but she's right to be mad. 'I'm mad. I think anyone who works in the early education system and there's hundreds of thousands of fantastic people who do, would be angry today as well. 'And my friend is mad because of all of the stress and the trauma and the crap that she and her girls are going to have to go through in the weeks ahead.' Christian McGrath, Victoria's chief health officer, said 2600 families had been contacted in the fallout from the arrest of Mr Brown. The Department of Health has recommended 1200 children undergo screening and testing as a 'precautionary measure'. 'The risk is low, but there's not no risk, which is why we're making this recommendation,' he said in an update from Wednesday. He said the department had assisted 1300 families across Tuesday. Mr Clare said the problem of predators in childcare settings was 'serious' and required 'serious action'. 'It's one of the reasons why I put this on the top of the agenda when education ministers met last week,' he said. 'Let me be clear – when education ministers met to discuss child safety last week, we didn't discuss this case, but we discussed – what are the next steps that we need to take as a nation to make sure that our kids are safe in early education and care?' The federal government has already banned personal mobile phones in centres and changed rules around mandatory reporting from seven days to 24 hours following complaints about sexual or physical abuse. Mr Clare promised further reforms, including cutting off funding for centres that fail to meet minimum standards. He also flagged changes to background checks for workers. 'It's taken too long to do the work necessary to make sure that our Working with Children Check system is up to scratch,' he said. 'I've spoken a number of times with the Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, the new Attorney-General, and I think I can safely speak on her behalf – she agrees, and is determined to take the action necessary here to make sure that our working with children checks across the nation are up to scratch. 'That'll be something that will be discussed by Attorneys-General when they meet next month.' He cautioned that a working with children check was not a 'silver bullet'. 'In too many examples, a perpetrator is eventually caught and arrested and sentenced, there's somebody that got a Working with Children Check because they had no prior criminal record,' he said. 'And so it's only one of the things that we need to focus on here if we're serious about making sure that we keep our kids safe.' Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said urgent changes were also incoming for the state. 'There is a substantial amount of work that is already underway across the Commonwealth and state and territory governments to strengthen the safety in the sector,' she said in a fresh update on Wednesday. 'Here in Victoria, though, I won't wait. Families cannot wait. More needs to happen now.' The state government will immediately begin building a register for childcare workers, she said, and will bring forward a policy to ban personal devices in centres. 'To avoid delay, we'll be putting all Victorian childcare centres on notice,' she said. 'They will be required to adopt this ban on personal devices, effective from September 26. 'Childcare centres who don't comply with this ban will have this placed on them as a condition of licence and may face fines of up to $50,000. The premier will also commission an 'urgent review' into childcare safety, with more details expected at the end of the week. The review will examine the possibility of installing CCTV cameras in centres and the deploying a 'four eyes' principle, meaning children should not be left alone with a single adult. It will also review whether the five-year working with children check time frame should be shortened. The premier said she had 'not been briefed' on Mr Wilson's arrest. Some families will be eligible for a $5000 support payment, the government has confirmed, to help cover alternative care arrangements, loss of earnings and other practical needs in the fallout from Tuesday.
