Earlier this month, news broke of a Melbourne childcare worker charged with over 70 child sex offences, allegations police say stem from his time at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook. For many Australians, the details were unthinkable. For parents, they were terrifying.
It was also a moment that couldn’t be ignored.
“When something like this happens, you just know it’s time,” said Kerry Warren, editor of news.com.au, who has now spearheaded the Speak Up For Kids campaign, an urgent call for a national overhaul of Working With Children Checks.
The campaign, launched with a public petition, brings survivor voices like Laura-Jane Singh and Hailey* to the forefront. It calls on the federal government to fix what advocates say are deep, systemic failures in how children are protected in care settings across the country.
The quiet work behind the scenes
Long before the headlines made national news, Warren and her team had been speaking to survivor-advocate Laura-Jane and fellow survivor Hailey. “We actually started talking to these two amazing women about 18 months ago,” Warren said. “These stories take such a long time to build trust and get people comfortable with you.”
As the gravity of the Melbourne case unfolded, the timing became impossible to ignore. “It was a matter of getting everything together editorially and deciding that now is the time,” she said. “It came together quite quickly, three or four days of hustling to get the videos shot and to get all of the words and the photos done.”
The emotional weight of telling hard stories
For Warren, covering stories like this isn’t just professional, it’s deeply personal. “These people trust you with their trauma,” she said. “The worst-case scenario for us is that you put a story out and no one cares.”
That kind of responsibility weighs heavily. “I don’t shy away from the fact that I’ve had to have counselling for vicarious trauma because of the impact of telling these stories,” she shared. “But not many people have a job where they can actually make a tangible difference to the world and I feel as hard as it can be, and there are some really difficult days, I just always have that purpose driving me forward.”
She continued: “Every little change we can make is making Australia safer for women and girls, a little bit better, a little bit safer. And how many people can say that about their job?”
The public response
Since the story was published, five more women have come forward with allegations involving the same man. “Obviously it’s not good that there’s more,” Warren said, “but it’s great that we’re having these conversations.”
The next step, she added, is turning those stories into momentum: “We’re now focusing on collecting more signatures for the petition, the more attention we can get, the more power we have to take to government and say: this matters.”
Learning from past wins
Speak Up For Kids follows news.com.au’s track record of advocacy journalism, including last year’s About Bloody Time campaign on endometriosis, which helped shift government policy after just eight weeks of sustained pressure. Warren sees similar potential here.
“I might be dreaming,” she said, “but I think there’s a 100% chance we’ll get something to change. We’ve got the reach, and when you’ve also got the power of News Corp behind you, I think that becomes something governments can’t ignore.”
Kerry Warren
What the petition is asking for
The campaign lays out a clear, multi-part call to action:
• National reform of Working With Children Checks: Including consistent legislation across states, a centralised database for information-sharing, stricter monitoring of WWCC holders, and mandatory training for anyone working with children.
• A ‘one strike’ policy: Ensuring individuals with substantiated complaints are immediately disqualified from child-related work.
• A federal inquiry into the sexual abuse and maltreatment of children in early childhood services.
• Implementation of existing recommendations from more than a decade of institutional abuse inquiries.
• Seed funding of $2 million to help develop comprehensive national training.
With public trust shaken and families seeking reassurance, the campaign is calling on every Australian, not just parents, to pay attention.
“This isn’t about politics,” Warren said. “It’s about protecting children, all children. And the time to act is now.”
*Surname withheld for privacy reasons