Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Probably nothing before the parliament today will be more important than this particular bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025, and I commend the member for Lalor. She is absolutely 100 per cent correct when she talks about the necessity of having the building blocks in place for children to ensure their safety is paramount. The foundation of our society is our kids, and to preserve and protect them and give them every opportunity has to be first and foremost in all our considerations. Anyone who is a parent or a grandparent, any sane thinking person—anyone at all—would be horrified in recent weeks by what has allegedly happened in Victorian childcare centres.

I heard the member for Fisher talk about this yesterday in the Federation Chamber. I saw the interview Senator Duniam did on Insiders just recently in relation to this. Senator Duniam from Tasmania served on the committee on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He has made some very good, sound, sensible, sane comments in relation to this. I've heard the opposition leader, the member for Farrer, also express her outrage as a mum, as a grandparent and as a good person in relation to what has been reported out of Victoria. The Prime Minister spoke about it too. I was doing a television interview when the story first broke—and I know the Victorian Greens tried to make some mileage out of this—and I said this was, in the early stages, very unfair to Premier Jacinta Allan and her initial reaction and what she has put in place in that state to respond to these dreadful allegations.

The Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025 amends the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999 to prioritise quality and safety considerations when assessing whether providers can receive the Commonwealth's childcare subsidy. It also expands powers to publicise actions taken against providers, and it enables authorised officers to conduct unannounced service visits and spot checks. In the main, that's what this bill will do.

As Leader of the Opposition Ley has said, when there is good legislation or sound policy being brought forward, the coalition will support it. The coalition will certainly support any measure, any provision, to protect children; it absolutely will.

The bill also includes additional administrative matters. If we go through the particular points I just mentioned, whether providers can receive the very generous subsidies provided federally to continue their operations is of paramount importance, because if they're not doing the right thing—in any way, shape or form—then they shouldn't be providing child care. In a cost-of-living crisis—in a modern, functioning society—there are often two-parent families going out and needing to work to bring home the money to be able to afford to live, to be able to afford to provide the best lifestyles for their children. Single-parent families—whatever the case may be, families need to have child care.

In rural, regional and, particularly, remote Australia it's not so much affordability of child care; it's availability of child care. There's a childcare desert, but that is another matter entirely. Parents need to be absolutely certain that the childcare centres that we have are going to look after their children and that their children are going to be happy and healthy in those carers' care. When they drop them off in the morning, or whatever the case may be, and they pick them up in the afternoon they need to know that that child has been looked after. As a parent and as a grandparent I know how important this is. I know how much my daughter and son are going to need child care in the future for their children, and I know that, certainly, when they do drop their children off they expect to be able to have that child looked after 100 per cent, every bit as well and as good as they would look after that child.

In the main, our childcare providers, our childcare carers, do an amazing and remarkable job. They love children. They do the right thing by those kids. When you have incidents such as this one out of Victoria recently it is absolutely beyond words. Unfortunately, it's not an isolated case. As bad as it is and as widespread as it seems to be according to the police reports, there have been other allegations of dreadful activities taking place in childcare settings. We know about Operation Tenterfield in August 2023, where a Queensland man was charged and later convicted of 1,623 child abuse offences against 91 children in Brisbane, in Sydney and overseas over a five-year period up to 2022. Words absolutely fail me sometimes—when you think about what sort of mind, what sort of man, what sort of evil monster this person is. They should never, ever see the light of day again. I'm sorry, but they just shouldn't be let out of any prison facility. That's where they belong, and that's where they should spend the rest of their natural lives. I'm not a judge, I'm not a magistrate, but I think people expect that there's no coming back from where that person's mind is despite whatever rehabilitation they might receive in the king's pleasure, as it was once called. They do not deserve to be let out.

Elsewhere, we've had reports and investigations. We've had all these sorts of things, but the time for talk is over. The Commonwealth will do whatever it can, in the provisions that it has at its disposal, to work with state and local authorities to make sure that our children's safety is first and foremost and to make sure that kids are well looked after. As the Leader of the Opposition said, child safety is above politics. She's absolutely right. I know the Prime Minister, a person of good heart, understands that as well. I was just speaking to him in the corridor then about any number of topics and he, too—like any parent, any politician and any normal person—is appalled about what has transpired in Victoria. We are unwavering in our support for the changes, which better protect children in care settings.

We have to give confidence to the one million families who rely on child care. You could imagine the angst, the anguish, the heartache and the not knowing of those parents whose children are now having to undergo checks and medical procedures. What effect does that have on those children? Maybe some of them will be too young to know. But others will have recurring flashbacks to what should have been a happy childhood.

I think that kids in our society are growing up too quickly. I believe that the measures being put in place by this government to ban social media for under-16s is a good thing. People can bleat until the cows come home about whatever they think about that, but I think we are expecting our children to grow up much too quickly. I heard the member for Fisher in the Federation Chamber talking about the proliferation of pornography, which is just a few clicks away for kids as young as eight who are then able to access dreadful images online. This bill allows three things. They are to financially penalise providers, allow name-and-shame provisions and enable authorised officers to conduct unannounced visits. That is a good thing.

Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to make a brief contribution to the debate regarding this issue. I wish it to be known that I support this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. The alleged crimes that have been committed against vulnerable children, as well as the ongoing investigations, have shocked communities around our country. The perpetrators of these horrific crimes must be brought to justice. I'm supporting this bill because it strengthens the Commonwealth's regulatory and enforcement powers to impose safety and quality outcomes in early education. I think it's important that we support any measure that can improve child safety. We must be doing it in this House. So I commend the bill to the House.

As a sidenote to my comments, I note that votes have already taken place on the last two pieces of legislation I have spoken on; my speeches have occurred after the votes. I know the government has a very strong majority in this House, but we need to be respecting the processes of the parliament. That means that we should be having debates where all members get an opportunity to have their say, and then we vote. That is what the public expect. They don't want to see votes taking place and then members merely making statements after the fact. I think it is important to note that there is a community expectation that those processes be adhered to and respected in accordance with the traditions of this parliament. Having said that, I believe that this bill does make an important contribution to child safety and should be supported by all members. So, for those reasons, I commend the bill to the House.