Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to make a contribution to the debate on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. At the outset, I want to indicate that the opposition, of course, will be supporting the legislation that the government has brought forward, because this is an important issue that needs urgent resolution. It's something that, as has been said several times in this debate, is above politics—support for families and their children, the users of the childcare system; ensuring that the system is operating at the best standard; and that protections are available are matters that are everyone's responsibility. To that end, as has been publicly reported, Sussan Ley, the Leader of the Opposition, wrote to the Prime Minister some time ago to offer bipartisan support in ensuring that this legislation is dealt with urgently.

I want to pay tribute to Jason Clare, the Minister for Education, who has been nothing short of professional and forthcoming with information and providing briefings. Every time we've had a request or a question, he has been immediate in his response. It is that sort of professional engagement that, I have to say, restores my faith in our ability as a parliament to do good things for our community. I pay tribute to him for what he did in bringing us to this conclusion.

I also want to say that, while we will canvass difficult issues—we will be dealing with a range of horrendous events that have brought us to the need to legislate to protect Australian children in childcare settings—99.9 per cent of childcare workers in our country are good people motivated by a desire to do the right thing, to care for our children, to educate our young and to ensure that the best outcomes are available for them. They go to work every day with a desire to love and care for those children. I want to thank them for what they do. This is a difficult time for those workers as well, given everything that has been reported, the added pressure and the concerns no doubt being expressed by parents as a result of much media reporting. This should go some way to assisting them in knowing that we have their back too.

The legislation that we have before us, which the government brought in as a matter of urgency—and, as I've indicated, the opposition will support it—achieves three objectives. It prioritises quality and safety considerations when assessing whether providers can receive the Commonwealth's childcare subsidy. It expands the powers for the Secretary of the Department of Education to publicise actions taken against providers who are in breach of those standards. Finally, it enables authorised officers of the department to conduct unannounced service visits and spot checks. All of these measures are important. Perhaps it is odd that, at the moment, quality and safety aren't considerations for the department. I suppose part of the reason for that is that state and territory governments, which have a very important role to play here, are the primary form of regulation, or the regulatory authority, when it comes to the operation of childcare centres and their services across the country.

It is important that we don't end up with a duplicate of the services or the regulation provided by either level of government. That is not what this is about. But adding those two considerations in to the department's consideration is a very important addition when it comes to the suite of tools that should be available to governments—plural—to deal with centres that are not achieving the standards that we, as a country, on behalf of parents, believe should be reached by centres.

If centres are not providing a quality service, a safe service, then we should be able to withdraw from them taxpayer funds that are provided to them to offer the service to the community. I think it will be quite an incentive to ensure that standards are met, to have that withdrawal made if a centre continues to breach standards.

Being able to be transparent about what is happening in a centre is also important—informing parents about conditions or breaches or any sanction that has been put in place in relation to a centre. This new power the secretary will have is, similarly, very important. As a parent of three boys myself, if I were putting them into an institution, a childcare centre, I would want to know if there were certain conditions—or, indeed, any sanctions—being placed on that centre.

The ability for authorised officers to enter a childcare service without warning, without the need for a warrant or the need to be accompanied by the AFP, is also important. We have heard stories where, when an authorised officer pre-organises to go and visit a centre at a set point in time in the future, childcare workers will, at their employer's request, commence a working bee, perhaps over a weekend, to bring things up to standard so that, when the authorised officers turn up on site, all of the problems have miraculously disappeared. I think that has made a mockery of our ability to make sure that standards are being met, and I don't think there's a parent out there that has a child in care that would think this measure is in any way too draconian.

But the reality is that, while these laws and the proposal we have before us are good and things we endorse and support, they go only so far. The reality is that Commonwealth powers, when it comes to the childcare sector, start and end, in effect, with the administration of the National Quality Standard and, of course, of the childcare support payment. That is the limited power we have, as a Commonwealth, to deal with these issues.

The rest of the responsibility lies with state and territory governments. Once these laws do ultimately pass this parliament—and I'm pleased that they will pass without any issue—it will then be for state and territory ministers to deal with some of the issues they are now confronted with. There are issues that cannot be canvassed or covered by federal legislation that we do need to ensure are taken care of. We've heard talk of a range of matters which cover portfolios of education and child protection, but also state and territory attorneys-general. And, while it's difficult to bring all of those things together, I think it is essential. So it is incumbent upon this government, the Commonwealth government, to bring those state and territory ministers, and the various portfolios they exist in, together, to urgently progress the reforms that are needed to address all of the gaps, the cracks and the problems we have remaining in our childcare sector, to ensure that we never again see the proliferation of child exploitation activity—of harm coming to children in our childcare sector. It is, as I say, urgent that they get on with that.

Some of those measures will include addressing matters related to the working-with-children check. The fact that we have a fragmented working-with-children-check system in this country, state by state or territory by territory, where there is no communication between the jurisdictions' databases, is, I think, a major failing. Indeed, it is something that was picked up in the royal commission, many years ago—a decade ago. And that was a time when we were in government. I've made it very clear on the public record a number of times now that this is not a political issue, this is not a blame game and this is not about looking back and seeing who stuffed up when. We have a problem now that needs resolving now, which is why the opposition offered bipartisan support to resolve these matters urgently. Again, that offer of bipartisanship will be extended to ensuring that state and territory ministers are brought together to deal with all of the remaining issues that need to be dealt with.

Additionally, on working with children checks, the fact is that these forms of information really only become valuable or kick into gear when someone commits a crime and is convicted as a result of an investigation. Then that person loses their working with children authorisation. As we know, with some of the events that occurred in Victoria—the allegations that have been aired and the charges that have been laid—the individual concerned in this situation had a working with children check, because the criminal investigation side of things was not enacted. There was not a series of events that would have led to these things being picked up through the system that we currently have deployed in this country.

Similarly—and I acknowledge that the government does intend to ensure that this is progressed through cooperation between Commonwealth and state and territory governments—we need a system of registration for childcare workers across the country. I hope we will see the deployment of real-time information about workers and the history they have in their former places of employment available to future employers. If someone leaves Queensland and goes to take up a position of employment in Tasmania or Victoria or wherever it might be, I think it should be more than possible for that employee to have information available about them so that an employer knows who it is they are employing, what type of employee they are, whether complaints were made, whether complaints were substantiated and what action was taken. Those things are an important part of any available history, especially in an industry which is highly regulated for good reason. Clearly, this information-sharing gap has led to problems.

Similarly, the deployment of CCTV in childcare centres is something that needs addressing. I know there are community concerns out there around privacy both for workers and, importantly, for children. I think there are ways of being able to safeguard systems that provide security and safety for children in childcare settings but that enable the deployment of this important measure around CCTV. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't mandatory. In my own personal experience, more than a decade ago, I saw childcare centres with CCTV systems and just assumed it was mandatory. But to learn that across the country there are different arrangements in place highlights how, sadly, perpetrators of some of these horrendous acts unto our most vulnerable have been able to get away with what they have got away with.

There is a lot of work to do, and we cannot, with the passage of this legislation, say 'job done'. I know the government does not think that. We certainly do not as an opposition. We are now saying that, once these laws pass, it is absolutely essential that the Commonwealth bring together state and territory ministers to finish the job and to do what needs to be done. There have been too many incidents that have caused too much harm to young people and their families—some of the heartbreaking stories I've read in recent days about events in centres. These are events that will change the lives of those young people and their families forever. Collectively, it is a failure on our part—all of us, over time, who have not done what needs to be done to ensure that we stop these bad people from doing what they have done.

I commend the government for acting so quickly to get this done. I again thank the minister for the briefings and the departmental officials who've worked so hard to put in place what we're now seeking to pass through this place. But, again, it is only a small part of the solution required, and I do hope that state and territory ministers, in the various portfolios that will have responsibilities here, get their skates on and do what needs to be done. It is up to the Commonwealth to ensure that these reforms progress, and it's something we will be keeping a close eye on. But we do that, again, in the spirit of bipartisanship, because it is essential that we get this right. If we're talking about these sorts of things happening again—in a year's time or in six months time or whenever it might be—then we have failed, and we cannot afford to do that.

For the young people whose lives have been absolutely devastated by this, and their families—my heart goes out to them. We owe it to them, so I commend this bill to the Senate and thank the government for their work.