Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. Every child deserves a safe, high-quality early education. Wherever public money is spent, we must have strong, transparent mechanisms to ensure accountability. This bill introduces measures the Greens support, but, let's be clear, it will not fix a system where too many children and families are being let down.

We have all seen the tragic reports in recent months of stories that are hard to read and harder to forget—allegations of abuse, neglect and malpractice in early learning settings, including horrifying reports just this week in Queensland and last month in my home state of Victoria. We have seen the bravery of whistleblowers and journalists, the tireless work of educators and the grief and anger of families who trusted a system that failed them. The truth, as we all know, is that these are not isolated incidents. They expose deeper, systemic failures. They confirm what many in the sector and many parents already know, that our current model is ill equipped to ensure consistently high-quality, safe early education for our children. That's an indictment on all of us. It should never take tragedy to trigger reform.

So, yes, we do support this bill, but let's be honest: it is not a silver bullet. It's a small step in the right direction, but it is far from sufficient. Tinkering with the subsidy system won't keep children safe. Right now, around 11 per cent of long day care centres are rated as working towards national quality standards, so they haven't met them. That's over 1,000 services operating and receiving taxpayer subsidies despite not meeting basic benchmarks in education, health, safety and wellbeing. That's not good enough. Australia has world-class national quality standards on paper, but standards alone mean little without enforcement. They need to be backed properly by funded regulators, clear accountability and real consequences when things go wrong. Instead, we rely on underresourced state and territory regulators to do the heavy lifting. These agencies are stretched thin. One in 10 services still don't even have a quality rating. Complaints go unresolved. Children's safety is repeatedly put at risk.

Independent analysis of this bill's measures highlights that underfunded regulators, combined with long delays in quality assessments, may limit the bill's effectiveness. While this bill strengthens enforcement powers, it doesn't guarantee improved safety or quality. It does not lift standards across the board. That's because the deeper issues lie in the funding model itself, a model that treats early education as an industry to profiteer off, not a human right. We have a system where the childcare subsidy actively incentivises putting profit over quality care, while failing to guarantee safety or high standards, failing to guarantee access, failing to guarantee inclusion and failing to guarantee fair conditions for educators. Just last week, we drove past a for-profit centre called Little Assets. Can you get more blatant than that?

The childcare subsidy funnels billions in public money—$16 billion this year—into a sector dominated by for-profit providers, including multinational ASX listed corporations. In the past decade, 95 per cent of new providers entering the system have been for profit, and this is our children's early education we're speaking about. As a result, money meant for children's education and care is leaking out of the system into shareholder profits, including offshore. To quote Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC, the national voice for First Nations children:

… we can't ensure that safety until the underlying systemic issues impacting Australia's early learning and care sector are properly addressed.

Australia's current Child Care Subsidy funding model has contributed to a profit-driven environment, where some providers are able to put financial gain ahead of the wellbeing of children.

Unless we fundamentally shift the way early education is funded and supported, we will continue to see safety and quality issues arise.

The data backs her up. For-profit providers consistently underperform on quality. Just 13 per cent exceed the national quality standards, compared to 28 per cent of not-for-profit services.

As the Greens spokesperson for early childhood education and care and as a mum of a two-year-old, I hear time and time again from families about the deep trust they place in their local community or not-for-profit centres. I'm fortunate to send my daughter to a fabulous council run service. But access to high-quality, safe, not-for-profit early education shouldn't be a privilege; it's a right. One constituent was brought to tears by the mere possibility that their beloved community centre would be taken over by a private provider. These centres become part of the village to help raise our children. They are trusted, they are embedded and they are irreplaceable. Yet we're seeing these services frozen out and pushed aside by a system that favours profit over people.

That's why I've proudly stood with families in Victoria to defend community run centres: in Windsor, to save the incredible Windsor Community Children's Centre, and in Footscray, to celebrate the Bulldogs Community Children's Centre remaining in community hands, where it belongs. These services show what's possible when care comes first, when there's no incentive to cut corners and no shareholders—only educators, family and children.

But quality and safety aren't the only challenges we face. To build a world-class early learning system, we must address the workforce crisis, fix access and make genuinely affordable care a priority. Educators, the absolute backbone of the system, are being pushed to breaking point. Research shows that they work on average an additional nine hours of unpaid labour every single week, on top of already low wages, high turnover and chronic understaffing. We ask these professionals to perform the most important work possible, yet we don't pay them properly, we don't value them and we don't resource them, and it's no wonder that they are leaving this sector in droves and, of course, that quality is slipping. Families are also under pressure. Over 35 per cent of Australians live in childcare deserts, areas where fewer than one place is available for every three children requiring care. These disproportionately affect rural and regional areas, First Nations communities and lower income families. For many families, costs remain a huge barrier, and families are spending on average $140 a week out of pocket on early childhood education and care, and this is often much higher. For single parents, families with multiple children or those grappling with housing, these costs can be prohibitive to their children having those crucial early-years education. Parents are forced to make impossible choices about whether they return to work, take up training opportunities or put their careers on hold. For those who want to make the decision to stay home with their kids, that's great. But some women, parents and families don't want that; they would like the choice and they deserve the choice.

This isn't just a family issue; it's an economic one. The Australia Institute estimates that fixing early education could deliver a whopping $168 billion back to our economy. Most importantly, this is about our children. Missing out on early learning means missing out on vital social, emotional and cognitive development that lays the foundation for everything that follows. Ninety per cent of the brain develops before a child turns five years old. We guarantee access to primary school; why not guarantee access to those crucial early-years education, especially now when experts warn that NAPLAN results show one-third of students aren't meeting expectations in literacy or numeracy? Labor's three-day guarantee act was a step forward in recognising early learning as more than child minding. It's education. It's a human right. But let's be clear; we do not yet have a functioning early learning system, and tinkering at the edges simply won't fix it.

The Greens believe it's time to rethink early education and care from the ground up. At the last election, we proposed a bold plan for universal, high-quality education and care just like primary and secondary school. Our plan would replace the broken CCS with direct public funding. It would give government more control over quality and access. It would guarantee funding for Aboriginal community controlled organisations, better support for children with additional needs and fair pay for our educators. Crucially, it would establish a new early childhood education and care commission. This commission would act as a national watchdog. It would have real powers to oversee quality, safety, access, workforce conditions and funding. It would ensure that public money is well spent and that services are accountable, not just punished after the fact, as this bill proposes. It would provide the leadership that this sector so desperately needs, because right now that leadership does not exist in this place. State regulators are under strain, and peak bodies and advocates are filling the gaps, but there is no central independent steward for one of our most essential public services. Passing the buck between the states and feds is failing our children. This commission would be the brain and backbone of the early learning system. It would coordinate reform, enhance standards and hold providers accountable for public money.

The Parenthood, a powerful voice for families, has endorsed this proposal. So too has Royal Far West and national charities supporting rural and remote children's health and wellbeing. Now, the ball is in the government's court. Are they willing to work with us on real reform and oversight of our federal early education system, or will they keep papering over the cracks of a broken system? How we treat our youngest generation says everything about who we are. If we can't prioritise their safety or guarantee their right to learn in these formative years, then what are we here for? Early learning can be the great equaliser, but only if it's truly accessible, high quality and truly universal, only if we stop treating it like a commodity and start treating it as a public good, and only if we put children and educators ahead of profit.

So, yes, we support this bill. No service that consistently fails quality standards should continue to receive public funds, but that should be the absolute baseline. This bill is a bandaid. It's not a plan, and it's not a vision. We need more than reactive tools to act after harm occurs. We need leadership to prevent harm from occurring in the first place. The Prime Minister has said—and we welcome this—that he wants the universal provision of affordable child care to be the political achievement that he's most remembered for. Well, is he ready to deliver that legacy?

The Greens are ready to work constructively with the government. Between us, we have the numbers to get stuff done. There's nothing standing in the way other than political will. And we don't underestimate the task at hand. We know it's a big job, but we're up to it. We have to be for our children's sake. It's because of this that I'll be moving the Greens second reading amendment standing in my name to note the need for broader reform to make early childhood education and care universal and high quality. And we will call on the government to establish an independent early childhood education and care commission that has regulatory powers to monitor and enforce compliance with the national quality standards. It's tasked with leading national coordination and driving sector-wide reform, and it's responsible for overseeing the long-term transition to a free, universal and high-quality early learning system.

Our children deserve better than patchwork solutions. They deserve a system built around their needs, not for corporate profits. Let's build something better, something lasting, because our kids and the communities that are raising them are depending on us to act. As Georgie Dent from the Parenthood so powerfully said, 'This is a moment to act, not just to react.' Let this be the moment we choose action, the moment we commit to building a system that puts children first, values educators and restores trust for every family in every community across this country.

I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes the need for broader reform to make early childhood education and care universal and high-quality; and

(b) calls on the Government to establish an independent national Early Childhood Education and Care Commission, which should:

(i) have regulatory powers to monitor and enforce compliance with the National Quality Standards,

(ii) be tasked with leading national coordination and sector-wide reform, and

(iii) drive the long-term transition to a free, universal, and high-quality early education system".