Education Minister Erica Stanford says the case of a sex offender who was able to teach despite multiple warning signs shows there is a rotten culture inside the Teaching Council.
On Tuesday, barrister Katherine Anderson, KC, released a scathing report into the Teaching Council's handling of teacher Timothy Fisher.
She found the council should have struck him off a decade before he was convicted of a litany of indecency and sex offences against children - most of them aged under 12.
It outlined how Fisher managed to go from school to school without a practising certificate - a criminal offence - and kept teaching despite a police "red stamp" warning that he should not have unsupervised access to children.
The Chief Victim's Advisor said the council's failings were so atrocious that heads needed to roll.
Fisher was jailed for four years and five months having pleaded guilty to charges including indecently assaulting nine students and making over 200 objectionable recordings
In a harrowing 127-page report, Anderson slammed the Teaching Council for failing to take action against Fisher and said there were grounds to strike him off as early as 2015.
Stanford said she long had grave concerns about the Teaching Council.
"It was very clear in this report that the Teaching Council had completely lost their way and saw themselves as a friend of the profession, to uphold the mana of the profession and to be liked rather than to uphold teacher standards and to protect children, which is what everybody expects of them."
She said the Teaching Council's failures meant she couldn't be sure this hadn't happened before.
"They don't have proper processes around making sure that people are teaching with a current practising certificate. This is not an isolated incident.
"There is a rotten culture inside the teaching council that needs changing, otherwise this will keep happening."
Fisher worked at 12 public and private schools since becoming a teacher in 2011. He was able to hide previous indecency convictions from 2002 because of clean slate legislation. However, he voluntarily disclosed this information to the council in 2015 when police issued their "red stamp warning".
Anderson wrote in her report that her impression was this issue was put into the "too hard basket" - the opposite of how a regulator focused on student safety should respond.
Chief Victims Advisor Ruth Money found the situation hard to comprehend.
"Even when the offender disclosed crimes and even when police told you not to do it, you didn't act. I mean, that's just, it's negligent. It really is. It's grossly negligent."
The report makes clear we can't be sure there aren't more Timothy Fishers out there, she said.
"We cannot guarantee that the children are being taught with teachers who have the appropriate registration and the appropriate vetting."
There must be consequences for those who failed to act, she said.
"If there are people who are linked to this example of just the most atrocious safeguarding - or in fact lack of safeguarding - you have put thousands, I suspect, given his history, of children at risk.
"Of course your heads should roll."
Money's office would work with the Teaching Council on implementing safeguarding reforms.
Stanford said the Teaching Council has a long way to go.
"They don't have good processes to make sure they're expediting claims that are of a serious nature. They're undertaking that work at the moment.
"They're making sure that there are teachers who are out there practising without a practising certificate. They're on top of that. There is a long way to go, but I have full confidence in the board members that I put in place to make sure that we turn this around."
Teaching Council chair Patrick Walsh took up the role this year - long after the Fisher saga. He unreservedly apologised to the victims, parents and members of the teaching profession.
