One childcare worker passed through 62 centres undetected over 16 years — a gap in Australia's credential system

Hamish Tait moved across 62 childcare facilities over 16 years, including a remote Indigenous preschool in South Australia, before his arrest in July 2025. He now faces 329 charges involving 136 identified victims and 22 yet to be named. The scale of his movement across jurisdictions exposes how thinly working-with-children checks stretch for mobile workers, particularly in regional and remote settings where contact tracing later becomes immensely difficult.