The Great Signing: Key to Reforming Australia’s Failing Childcare Sector

A global campaign offers a bold new solution to restore trust, accountability, and community in childcare

Australia’s childcare crisis exposes a deeper civilizational failure: designing society around markets instead of human values

Australia’s childcare crisis is not an isolated policy failure — it is a symptom of something much larger: the collapse of the Industrial Age order and the erosion of moral trust in our social institutions.

For decades, we’ve been told that markets and regulations could replace the human bonds that once held communities together. But as shocking reports of neglect, abuse, and exploitation emerge from childcare centres across the country, that illusion has been shattered.

The childcare sector — once the most trusted environment outside the family home — has become a mirror reflecting a deeper sickness. Profit has replaced purpose. Regulation has replaced responsibility. And trust, the invisible glue of all social life, has been lost.

Yet the problem runs deeper than corporate greed or poor regulation. The real issue is the misguided experiment of building society on market principles rather than human values — the belief that competition and the “invisible hand” of the market can deliver moral outcomes.

The Failure of the Market — and the Mirage of Regulation

Competition may work in consumer goods, but in human care it has failed disastrously. When applied to childcare, it commodifies relationships, children, and educators alike. Parents become customers. Children become “units.” Educators become cost centres.

While the for-profit sector bears much of the criticism — chasing growth and shareholder returns at the expense of quality — the nonprofit sector is not immune. The same market logic, detached from a shared moral foundation, drives both. Without a common vision to build character and uphold shared values, even good intentions can decay into bureaucracy and neglect.

The problem, then, is not profit itself but the displacement of purpose by market thinking — a shift that has corroded every level of social life.

A Crisis of Character, Not Just Policy

This failure extends far beyond childcare. The neglect of moral development — of building character through shared social values — has produced a generation of socially immature individuals in positions of power across politics, business, and even the family.

The abuse exposed in childcare centres is just the visible tip of a much deeper moral breakdown. The silent abuse of people by socially immature individuals in leadership, workplaces, and homes continues unabated — reflected in the rise of domestic violence, toxic management cultures, and the erosion of empathy in public life.

Laying blame solely on the for-profit sector or calling for ever more regulation misses the point. No amount of surveillance can replace moral responsibility. More red tape will only increase costs, making childcare unaffordable for many families while leaving the root cause untouched.

Disempowered Parents, Overburdened Educators

Parents, too, have been disempowered under this socio-economic experiment. The postmodern belief that “no common values exist” has stripped parenting of moral authority. Many parents now outsource not only care but also moral formation to institutions — laying impossible burdens on educators, social workers, and childcare staff to act as both service providers and de facto parents.

The resulting burnout and labour shortages in the sector are not merely about low pay. They reflect the crushing pressure of trying to fill the moral vacuum left by a society that has forgotten its shared purpose.

Three Steps to Secure Our Children’s Future

If we are to safeguard the next generation, three things must happen:

Expose the failure of the socio-economic experiment — recognize that modelling society on market principles rather than moral ones is the root cause of social decay.
End reliance on regulation and surveillance — replace these costly and failing systems with trusted, transparent feedback mechanisms accessible to all.
Trigger change through The Great Signing — a single, peaceful action that anyone can take to help re-anchor society in human values through the Freedom Declaration for Peace.

The Great Signing: A Global Declaration for Renewal

That is where The Great Signing comes in.

The Great Signing is a global campaign to gather one million signatures by July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence — declaring independence from the crumbling Industrial Age order and its failing institutions.

It is a call to move beyond a model of society built on profit and bureaucracy, toward one rooted in trust, transparency, and shared moral purpose.

At its heart lies the Freedom Declaration for Peace — a new social covenant for the 21st century that restores balance between markets, morality, and community. It recognizes that systems alone cannot raise a child, protect the vulnerable, or sustain peace. Only people working together in trust can.

If ever there were a reason to join The Great Signing, it is to protect and secure the future of the next generation. And that begins with reforming how we care for children.

From Regulation to Real Accountability

The Great Signing offers a mechanism for systemic reform, starting with a trusted feedback and reputation platform — a digital infrastructure that returns power to parents, educators, and communities.

Rather than piling on more regulation, it uses verified, transparent feedback loops to rebuild accountability from the ground up.

Imagine a national feedback network where parents can safely share verified experiences, educators can assess workplace culture, and data can reveal early signs of neglect or mismanagement.

This isn’t another app or survey — it’s the foundation of a new trust architecture, restoring confidence without bureaucratic cost.

Funding Through the Global Social Capital Fund

The initiative also proposes a Global Social Capital Fund (GSCF) — a cooperative funding model that channels investment into social goods such as education, housing, health, and childcare.

Crucially, the proposed solution draws on the best of both worlds — the efficiency and innovation of the for-profit sector and the social purpose and moral goals of the non-profit sector. Combined, these forces can create a coherent and sustainable model that rewards trust, transparency, and community benefit.

By treating childcare as a public social investment rather than a private service, the GSCF would direct funds to centres that demonstrate trust-based performance, lowering fees for families and rewarding community accountability.

Restoring the Village

Beyond policy and funding, The Great Signing revives a truth modern society has forgotten: it takes a village to raise a child.

The neoliberal and postmodern eras taught us to see parenting as a private burden and morality as subjective. The result: parents as consumers, children as clients, educators as workers — all disconnected from a shared moral purpose.

The Freedom Declaration for Peace seeks to restore that purpose. It calls on families, educators, and citizens to unite around universal values — compassion, accountability, and mutual respect — and to embed them in the systems that shape daily life.

A trusted feedback network becomes the digital expression of the village, reconnecting society through participation, truth, and trust.

Healing Society From the Ground Up

By replacing failing regulatory regimes with open feedback and moral accountability, the childcare sector — including both for-profit and non-profit operators — can finally achieve what decades of reform have not: lower costs, higher quality, and restored trust.

But the ripple effects go further. A society re-anchored in shared values will see falling violence, fairer workplaces, and a restoration of dignity across public life. When the moral fabric is repaired at the level of childhood, the entire social order begins to heal.

Take Action: Help Reform the Childcare Sector

Real change begins with understanding — and understanding begins with your voice.

Help reform the childcare sector by sharing your experience.

Your verified feedback will help map what’s really happening — not just in Australia, but globally. It will guide reform, rebuild accountability, and restore confidence from the ground up.

Feedback that is verifiable, analyzable, and trusted is how we return power to where it belongs — to parents, educators, and communities.

Join us, have your say, and help build a clearer picture — one based on truth, not headlines; on lived experience, not ideology.

Together, this feedback becomes more than data. It becomes the voice of the village, guiding reform and restoring trust — in childcare and in society itself.

→ Share Your Feedback and help reform the childcare sector.

A New Declaration for Our Time

Two and a half centuries ago, the American Declaration of Independence marked humanity’s first great break from tyranny. Today, The Great Signing marks the next — a declaration of independence from institutional decay and moral drift.

Its vision is not one of revolt, but of renewal — a peaceful re-foundation of society on trust, accountability, and shared moral purpose.

If we want to fix childcare — indeed, if we want to preserve civilization itself — we must begin by declaring that the Industrial Age experiment has run its course.

It is time to build something better: an open, trust-based society where feedback, transparency, and morality guide how we raise our children and govern ourselves.