Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning
Federal Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT – 4BC Brisbane Drive with Gary Hardgrave
Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Topics: Four Corners report into childcare abuse
GARY HARDGRAVE: Joining us now to discuss the crisis, what should be done, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning, Zoe McKenzie, the Member for Flinders. Good to talk to you, Zoe. It’s shocking. It’s shocking to think that we trust these childcare centres to provide the care and this sort of rubbish is going on. What are you going to do about it?
ZOE MCKENZIE: It is truly shocking, Gary. I’ve actually just come to the phone straight from the House of Representatives chamber where I was having a long conversation with the Education Minister, Jason Clare. It’s quite a devastating and, may I say, appearing to be, organised, effort by paedophiles. They sort of know where the loopholes are, they know where the weak links are, and they find their way into these settings with devastating effect, as revealed, as you said, by Four Corners last night. We must have a zero-tolerance approach. We must have a zero-tolerance approach across the board. Part of the problem is that it’s hard to get workers in this area or sufficient workers in this area. Because what was revealed last night is that even though there’s an expectation that there’s always more than one adult in the presence of children, that’s not always the case. Staff are light on the ground and, therefore, sometimes the laws aren’t being observed. The laws are there and we strengthened the laws in a bipartisan way earlier this year. Traditionally, as you well know, these laws do fall into the state remit primarily, but we did what we could at the federal level to basically say, if you’re not up to scratch, if you’re not meeting the requirements, if you’re not providing a safe and secure environment for these kids, then you can lose access to funding from the federal government. And now the federal government officers have an ability to go in and look at what’s happening on the ground. But they’re really looking for signs that something’s going wrong. And, frankly, some of these criminals, they’re really good at hiding their tracks. They go from place to place. If an allegation’s made, they disappear. They pop up somewhere else. It’s a hell of a task for the operators to identify them and to prosecute. It’s a hell of a task for police to do the same. As you would know, a one-year-old, a two-year-old can’t give evidence. They can barely explain what’s happening to them to a police officer. So it is a horrendous situation. But the allegations that were aired last night are truly shocking. It’s shattering. And we just have to double down on our efforts and our expectations of providers across the board.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Zoe, my kids are adults. They’ve got children of their own. This childcare stuff is very pertinent to me as somebody who cares about grandchildren. And to think that organised childcare is there, but we’re not 100% sure we can actually trust childcare centres. No reflection on any particular centre. We’re just not sure because of these sorts of stories. And I think we’ve got reason to be doubtful about the quality of some of the care.
ZOE MCKENZIE: So, indeed, the Four Corners program identified, what they said were 150 cases. But then in a significant number of them, no prosecution was reached. There was a testimony of one woman that was just heart-wrenching. If you saw it, you would recall she was describing the day when she handed her child over to the carer and the child didn’t want to go and was just clinging on. We’ve all seen it, right? When the child clings, they don’t want to go, Mummy, stay with me. And she realised in hindsight that that was a perpetrator to whom she was handing her child. And the horror of guilt that she lives with as a result of that. Parents, these are very isolated events, but the problem is you can’t tell the difference between a perpetrator and a non-perpetrator. They are very good at being liked by the kids, being liked by the family, being liked by the parents. And, again, it’s very hard. They don’t look any different from you and me, Gary, and therein lies the problem, which means we must have a much stronger system, particularly the Working with Children system. That, I think, comes out as the absolute failure in last night’s show, that there are still people, hundreds of people, who’ve got question marks over their integrity, over their safety with children, who still hold Working with Children checks. That system must be strengthened and with haste. It was quite some time before the Education Ministers got together and even longer before the Attorneys-General across our states and territories got together to talk about what could be done to tighten the system. We must be able to have a system where when a question is raised, the contact with children is either only under supervision or no contact at all while the allegations are being investigated.
GARY HARDGRAVE: I mean, Zoe McKenzie, I get it. Parents are busy. And with two parents working, children are in these sort of professional settings. A lot of trust there, isn’t there. But parents are busy. Do they not notice the sort of things you’re talking about, the kids’ reluctance to go into the childcare centre, other things that might pop up from time to time. “Oh, look, it’ll be okay…” I mean, parents have got to be a lot more vigilant, I would have thought.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I think parents do trust their early childhood settings and they’re right to do so in the absolute vast majority of cases. I did meet with an amazing woman a few weeks ago who used to be a police officer working in child sexual abuse. She does an amazing job. I referred to her on my socials. If people are there, have a look. I do talk about her and her channels that she runs on things like Instagram so that parents can follow and go, okay, I need to look out for this or look out for that or here are questions I can ask. Because you can’t ask a one-year-old, “are you being abused in your childcare setting?” There have got to be other signs that you look for. Again, there were signs last night, they were talking about where a kid didn’t want to go or stopped eating well or started acting strangely and the mother said, “well, where on earth is this coming from?” And so you’ve got to be focused on those signs. But again, as I said, there are professionals who are there to inform parents and actually I’ll put something up on my Facebook page just so people can know where to find it because it’s really important that parents know what to look out for. But it’s much, much, much more important that we do our jobs and that we make sure these settings are safe. And again, that’s what the Opposition will do in partnership with the Government, everything we can do within the sphere of the Commonwealth.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Okay, but surely longer term or medium term policy development, giving the money to the parents and the parents making the decisions about that trusted person – could be the next door neighbour, could be a family member, could be grandparents. Surely there should be broader than just these formal settings of companies wanting to get the government subsidies. Rather, the parents should have the power through the purse, surely.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Well, Gary, you and I have worked in education policy together and I hear you loud and clear. Choice is essential, clearly in the regions, right? We have childcare deserts in significant parts of the Australian population. Therefore, choice and flexibility in terms of the model is absolutely critical. And trust being so pivotal, we have to make sure that there’s a setting that is right for each family, right for each kid, and one in which the parent feels that they can be present, be engaged in that setting and know what’s going on. That’s the one setting where we know parents really are willing to turn up, to meet everyone, to know what’s going on. And that needs to be facilitated. A one-size-fits-all system that almost is running like preschool but at the two-year-old or the one-year-old level, that’s not going to work for most people. And frankly, it’s not going to make the most of the fact that parents want to be engaged in those early years of learning.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Especially when you now find people are preying on that whole system as it stands, finding cracks through, as white ants do, find cracks through into the structure of society.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, indeed.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Alright, Zoe McKenzie, I know you’re flat out and frantic, obviously. But it’s good to talk to you. And when you come to Brisbane, come in, let’s have a bigger, longer chat here in the 4BC Drive studio. Good to see you. Good to talk to you.
ZOE MCKENZIE: I look forward to doing that. Thanks, Gary.
ENDS.
