Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this legislation with a heavy heart. It's a heavy heart because I represent a corner of the world where distressing things have occurred in recent time. I represent some of the families that have been directly impacted by the events in Victoria that we've all followed so closely. I think it's incumbent upon me today to reach out to those families impacted and offer my support once again, as I have done from home, but also my thanks to the way they have responded to an incredibly challenging situation in their personal lives, in their family lives, made more acutely distressing because it's about our children.

I rise to support this bill and the early action of this government to ensure that our early education and care sector ensures that centres are not putting profit before the safety of our children; working with the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and appropriate people across our states, ensure that we find ways to make this sector as safe as possible so that families can feel assured; ensure safety is the cornerstone of our early education and child care sector; and ensure that, working with states and territories and ECEC regulatory agencies, we have sharpened our focus to ensure our priorities around safety, quality, access and affordability—those four pillars—are being met.

As a member of a government which did a lot of work in the last parliament around the affordability space, supporting families to access quality early childhood education, and a lot of work around valuing our early childhood educators—something that was long, long overdue—to ensure that they are getting a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, I know the vast majority of our workers in this space are great Australians doing incredibly important work in the earliest days of a child's life. So, we are making sure that, around the country, all governments have a sharp focus to ensure that we get the pieces right to make sure that the safety and the quality—things I don't think can be separated—are working together.

I want to thank our local community; I want to thank Victoria Police for the way they've managed what has been occurring; and I want to thank the Victorian health department for the way they've worked with local families. I've sat with some of the local families impacted. It has given me an insight into the catastrophic impact that this has had. I come here to talk about this piece of legislation with their goodwill, because they now understand that action will be taken to ensure that profit is never put before safety. When those centres fail to meet standards and provide a safe environment, we think those centres shouldn't operate, and we know, as the Minister for Education has said on several occasions at the dispatch box this week, that as the funder in this space we can make a direct impact by cutting off funding and by creating more power to allow for spot checks around fraud, noncompliance and safety and as a federal government we can act to create deterrents around noncompliance and incentive around quality. This is the beginning of the work, and it will continue.

The legislation before us, the provisions of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025, is a critical piece of the architecture, if you like, but the work going forward is around meeting with our state and territory bodies so they can work together with the Commonwealth to find better ways to ensure that safety is what this bill sets up and allows. This bill will ensure quality and safety is a paramount consideration for maintaining CCS provider and service approval. So, in other words, if you're coming into this sector without an eye on safety and quality, don't bother. The funding will not be there to support you. The approvals will not come. The bill means providers or services which do not meet this consideration can be subject to compliance action, including having their funding cut, and it will ensure quality and safety is a paramount consideration when assessing CCS provider approval applications. This means that providers or services which do not meet this consideration can be prevented from expanding. So, in other words, if you're a bad actor in this space, in terms of ensuring that safety and quality, then you can be stopped from opening another centre and from expanding your involvement.

This legislation expands the secretary's power to publicise actions taken against providers, because sunlight is, of course, the best medicine in terms of exposure. It's going to strengthen powers of entry for authorised persons to enable them to conduct unannounced service visits and spot checks, including family day care and out-of-school-hours care. These are really important provisions. The bill also supports the implementation of the CCS reform and the strong and sustainable foundations measure announced in the 2024-25 budget, which includes streamlining the process for seeking entry to an early education and care service under a monitoring warrant and appointment of an appropriately qualified and experienced expert to conduct an independent audit of a large childcare provider. It requires from 1 January 2026 that all family day care and in-home care providers collect the CCS gap fee, the out-of-pocket component of fees paid by parents, directly from families.

I want to thank the Minister for Education and the new Minister for Early Education and Care, Senator Walsh from Victoria, for their work and availability, when this news broke in Victoria, to talk with me and to allow me the scope to meet with families, have important conversations with them and ensure that they felt supported in this process by their federal government. I thank their Victorian counterparts for the work that they've done in this space as well.

Keeping our children safe is of paramount importance to this government, but what is critically important in that space is that marriage between safety and quality. We know it matters. I'm in childcare centres and early education centres a lot in my electorate. Representing one of the youngest communities in the country means there are many centres operating in my community, and visiting them gives me a sense of being on the ground as a pair of eyes as well in those centres, and I welcome any families that want to talk to me about the things that they might be very happy with or very unhappy with in the centres in my electorate, because there is nothing more important than this.

I know that you know, Deputy Speaker Freelander, how important those first thousand days in a child's life are. We know how important early education is. We know how important the foundations of learning are, and the statistics tell us that those children who engage in early education are better prepared for school and meet their milestones more quickly. We know that these things are real. We know there is quality in having these centres. It's up to government to ensure the quality inside the centres is up to scratch.

I want to thank all of those people who make a commitment every day to be an early educator for their work. I know many who live in my community who are early educators, and I want to thank them for their work. I want to thank the families for the way they have dealt with this crisis in Victoria, and I want to thank the ministers for taking action so quickly.

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