Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

In the last few weeks Australians right across the country have been shocked and sickened by the news in Victoria.

A person arrested and charged with multiple heinous offences against children.

Offences allegedly committed in child care centres.

The mums and dads of thousands of children are now dealing with the fear that their children could be hurt or sick, and the trauma of getting them tested.

This matter remains before the courts.

But I have been pretty blunt in the last few weeks.

People have been arrested and convicted for offences like those alleged before.

And governments of different colours, State and Federal have taken action.

But not enough.

And not fast enough.

That's the truth.

We have to do everything we can to ensure the safety of our children when they walk—or are carried—through the doors of an early childhood education and care service.

At centres big and small. But not just there. In family day care, and in-home care and at outside school hours care.

And this Bill is part of that.

In short, it will give us the power to cut off funding to child care centres that aren't up to scratch when it comes to safety and quality.

Services that don't meet the standard when it comes to safety and quality, or where they are in breach of the law or are acting in a way that puts the safety of children at risk.

This power will apply to all forms of early education and care that are eligible for the Child Care Subsidy.

Centre-based day care.

Family Day Care.

In Home Care.

And Outside School Hours care too.

Funding is the big weapon that the Australian Government has to wield here.

Australian taxpayers are the biggest funders of child care centres.

We do that through the Child Care Subsidy.

$16 Billion a year.

Centres can't operate without it.

It covers about 70 per cent of the cost of running the average centre.

It pays for things like wages and rent and electricity.

This legislation gives us the power to suspend or cancel that funding if a centre is not meeting the quality, safety and other compliance requirements that are put in place by our national system of early childhood regulation.

This is how that system works.

The Education and Care Services National Law sets the standards we expect child care centres to meet.

State Government Regulators are responsible for rating centres and enforcing the standards.

Most centres meet the standards now, but not all.

If State Regulators think there is a real and imminent threat to safety they can shut a centre on the spot.

And they do.

Sometimes though they will identify problems in centres that can and need to be fixed.

And sometimes those problems remain unfixed.

That's where this legislation comes in.

The real purpose of this legislation isn't to shut centres down but to raise standards up.

To make sure that the safety and quality in child care centres is what parents expect and children deserve.

This is how it will work.

It will give the Secretary of my Department the power to take into account a provider's quality, safety and compliance history when considering whether a provider should be approved to administer the Child Care Subsidy, whether they should continue to be approved, or if they should be approved to operate a new service.

That has never been part of the Child Care Subsidy system since it commenced in 2018. It will be now.

This change will tie a centre's eligibility to administer the Child Care Subsidy directly to their record on quality, safety and compliance.

And it will allow the Secretary of my Department to cut off access to the Child Care Subsidy where standards are not being met.

That might mean cutting funding to an existing provider or service, or denying a provider the ability to expand until they have met the required standards.

Under these changes, the Secretary will be able to impose conditions on a provider's approval, or to move immediately to a process to suspend or cancel that approval on the basis of safety and quality concerns.

Where conditions are imposed, a provider must meet those conditions within a specified timeframe if they want to maintain their approval.

This could include a condition that the provider comply with directions from their state regulator. It might require them to follow a quality improvement plan or hire a quality and safety expert to help them lift their standards.

As I said a moment, the Secretary of my Department cab also move immediately to a process to suspend or cancel a provider on the basis of quality and safety concerns. That involves issuing a formal notice to the provider requiring a response within 28 days.

If the provider doesn't give a good explanation in that period, the Secretary can cancel or suspend their approval.

It's a process that permits providers an opportunity to engage with my Department where they have a genuine commitment to improve.

These powers will be used in close collaboration with states and territories, backing in their core role regulating quality and safety.

It means the Commonwealth can use the power of the Child Care Subsidy funding to lift the standards of providers not doing the right thing—and ensure those that aren't up to scratch don't get access to Commonwealth funding.

This Bill also expands the Commonwealth's powers to publish information about providers that are sanctioned for non-compliance.

The Secretary of my Department already has the power to publicise actions such as suspending or cancelling a provider's approval for the Child Care Subsidy.

The information is available in the Enforcement Action Register on the Department of Education website, along with other information such as how the department issues infringement notices and imposes conditions on approvals.

This Bill expands that power to include the power to publicise when a provider is refused approval for a new service.

The Bill also gives the Secretary of my Department the power to publish other compliance action taken against providers, such as when conditions are applied—including the details of those conditions.

Or where an infringement notice has been issued, including the details of the notice, such as the alleged contravention and the fine amount.

Conditions and infringements are very important, because they point to specific things a provider must do or fix to stay eligible for the Child Care Subsidy.

Parents should know when a centre their child attends, or one they are thinking of using, is subject to a condition or has received an infringement.

When this legislation is passed, the Secretary of my Department will expand the breadth of the Enforcement Action Register to include those things I have just outlined.

I have asked the Secretary of my Department to ensure the Enforcement Action Register provides parents and other organisations with as much information as possible, given the circumstances of each matter.

Providing more detailed information on compliance actions and refusals of new services is important to ensure parents have the information they need to make one of the most important decisions in their child's early years.

About who they want to put their trust in to care for their child.

It will also ensure transparency for company directors and board members, who may not be directly responsible for the daily management of the provider, but who play an important role in ensuring their organisations are taking the steps needed to keep children safe in early education and care.

The Bill also gives the Commonwealth's authorised officers more powers to do their job. It allows them to perform spot-checks and enter premises without consent during operating hours to detect non-compliance across the sector.

It means that the Commonwealth's officers don't need to get a warrant or other pre-authorisation to inspect a centre, an outside schools hours care service, or family day care service.

These Commonwealth powers largely mirror arrangements in place for state and territory regulators of early child and education care under the National Law and Regulations.

The primary purpose of these compliance officers is to monitor compliance with the family assistance law. This is a serious issue in early education and care.

Over the last three years, this Government has allocated $221 million to detect and prevent Child Care Subsidy fraud, and this has helped claw back around $318 million for the taxpayer.

These new powers are an important part of this.

If while the compliance officers are there, they identify safety and quality concerns, they will also be able to share that information with State Government regulators to take action.

A person who does not co-operate with an authorised person seeking access commits a criminal offence—and is liable to a civil penalty.

The Bill also includes a number of other integrity measures.

It will allow the Secretary of my Department to delegate the power to apply for a monitoring warrant to an appropriately qualified Executive Level officer.

Monitoring warrants are an effective tool in conducting Child Care Subsidy fraud and compliance investigations. These changes will streamline processes allowing warrants to be requested and issued more quickly.

The Bill also makes amendments to allow the Secretary of my Department to delegate their existing power to appoint an appropriately qualified and experienced expert to conduct audits of large child care providers.

This power is expanded to allow delegation to a Senior Executive Service employee. This will further streamline the process for appointing auditors, an important tool in ensuring integrity and compliance in the sector.

The Bill also makes important changes to how gap fees are collected from families who use Family Day Care and In Home Care.

The Bill makes an amendment to require all Family Day Care and In Home Care Providers to collect Child Care Subsidy gap fees directly from families. This will reduce the administrative burden on individual educators so they can focus on providing education and care to children. It will also improve transparency and integrity of Child Care Subsidy funding.

Mr Speaker, the purpose of this Bill is not to shut child care centres down.

It's to raise standards up.

This is not about leaving parents stranded without care for their children because of fixable or minor short-comings at their service.

But this legislation is also not an idle threat.

Services, whether they are centre-based day care, or family day care, or in-home care, or outside school hours care, know what they have to do to consistently meet national quality standards.

Providers that can improve their services to meet the standard will get the chance to do that.

Services that don't, can't, or won't will lose their access to funding.

I think that's fair. And I think most Australian parents will too.

Mr Speaker, this Bill isn't the only thing we have to do to improve safety in child care centres.

There is a lot more.

After Ashley Paul Griffith was arrested and charged in Queensland with multiple child sex offences, Education Ministers across the country commissioned the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority—ACECQA—to conduct a Child Safety Review.

Education Ministers have agreed in principle to the key recommendations of that review.

Some have been implemented. But there is more work that needs to be done.

That includes establishing a National Educator Register to help track workers from centre to centre. And from state to state.

It also means mandatory child safety training to support the 99.9 per cent of educators who care for our children every single day and do a fantastic job, to help them to recognise people who are up to no good.

After 4 Corners exposed appalling examples of abuse and neglect on 17 March this year, the New South Wales Government commissioned Chris Wheeler, a former Deputy New South Wales Ombudsman, to undertake an independent review of the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority.

The Wheeler Review recommends increasing penalties on services for offences that are largely factual or procedural, and for which prosecution is currently the only avenue available.

It also recommends services be required to display their compliance history alongside their quality ratings to help families make informed choices about child care.

The Wheeler Review also recommends allowing the regulator to require that a provider install CCTV when they identify a potential risk to the health and safety of children at a service, or when the service has failed to meet quality standards for an unreasonable period of time.

These recommendations and more will be considered by Education Ministers when we meet next month.

The other area where serious work is needed is to improve the operation of Working with Children Checks.

Problems here were identified a long time ago.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended the Commonwealth Government facilitate a national model for Working with Children Checks.

At the moment the systems in different states work differently.

In some States the Working with Children Check is valid for five years. In others it's two or three years.

In some States only people over eighteen working with children require a Check. In others this is required from the age of fourteen or fifteen.

Jurisdictions also differ in how they assess both criminal and non-conviction information, as well as patterns of behaviour.

There are also issues with getting real time updates to Working with Children Checks and information sharing between jurisdictions.

This system isn't run by Education Ministers. In some States it is run by the Attorney General. In others it is Ministers with responsibility for Child Protection, Human Services, or Families and Communities.

Next month the Commonwealth Attorney General will also bring her state and territory counterparts together to address these serious issues.

Mr Speaker, there is no more serious work than this.

I want to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Jess Walsh, the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Youth, for her leadership on quality and safety in early learning and her work in bringing this Bill to the Parliament.

And I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Minister for Education and their teams for the serious and professional and bipartisan way they have engaged with us on this legislation.

To make sure we get it right.

It's what mums and dads across the country want of us. And expect of us.

They are not interested in excuses.

They expect action.

They expect all levels of Government to work together and the people that run child care services to join in as well.

We all know, no party, no government, State or Federal, has done everything we need to do here.

That's obvious.

But I think everyone here is determined to do what needs to be done to rebuild confidence in a system that parents need to have confidence in.

A system that more than a million mums and dads rely on to care for and educate the most important people in their world—their children.

This legislation is an important part of that.

It's not everything.

The truth is this work will never end.

But this is an important step.

And I commend this Bill to the House.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to 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.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. This is an important piece of legislation. Every parent should feel confident that, when they drop their child off at an early learning centre, they are leaving them in a place that is safe, high quality and well run. I know that, when my children went to early learning centres, that's what I assumed I was dropping them off to—a place that was safe, high quality and well run.

Sadly, recent events—horrendous acts—have shaken that confidence. In Victoria, families have been left traumatised after the arrest of an individual facing serious charges involving children at multiple early learning centres. Thousands of parents are now dealing with the fear that their child may be harmed in a place that was meant to protect them.

This bill is part of our government's response. It strengthens the Commonwealth's role in ensuring safety and quality in early childhood education and care. Most early learning providers across Australia, as we've heard the shadow minister say in his contribution, do the right thing. They work hard every day to give children the best start in life. But we've seen what happens when a small number of services repeatedly fail to meet the standard. This bill gives the Commonwealth power to act when services fall short—not just after harm is done, but before it happens. It's about using the biggest lever we have, the childcare subsidy, to lift standards, not just respond to problems.

At its core, the bill does four key things. First, it puts quality and safety at the centre of provider approvals. If a provider has a poor track record, they can be refused approval or stopped from expanding. Second, it strengthens the department's compliance powers, including the power to suspend or cancel approvals where standards aren't met. Third, it increases transparency, allowing the department to publish more information about enforcement actions. And, finally, it gives Commonwealth officers the power to carry out unannounced spot checks, just like state regulators already do.

These are commonsense reforms, and they are needed. The Commonwealth does not license or regulate childcare centres—that's a job for the states and territories—but we do fund the system. The Commonwealth provides around $16 billion a year in childcare subsidy payments. That funding covers about 70 per cent of the cost of running a typical service. That gives us a powerful responsibility to ensure public funding is tied to high standards.

This legislation gives the secretary of the department the ability to consider a provider's full record—including serious incidents, complaints and prior compliance breaches—when deciding whether they should receive public funding. It also allows for notices to be issued, for conditions placed on approvals and, in serious cases, for approval to be withdrawn altogether. Providers will still have the chance to respond. This is not about unfairly penalising services; it is about setting a clear expectation. If you don't provide safe, high-quality care, you can't expect public support.

The bill also expands the enforcement register. This means parents will be able to see if a provider has been refused a new service, issued an infringement notice or had conditions placed on their operations. That transparency matters. Choosing a childcare service is one of the most important decisions a family makes. Parents deserve access to clear, timely information. These reforms also extend to family daycare centres and in-home care, where oversight can be more difficult. From January, providers in these settings will be required to collect gap fees directly from families. This will reduce fraud and simplify administration.

The bill also streamlines how compliance officers operate, especially in regional and remote areas, and allows quicker auditing of large providers when concerns arise. We are also working on a stronger national oversight, including better tracking of educators' histories across the services. We are supporting improvements to working-with-children checks and continuing to invest in educator training and professional development. There is no single solution to keeping children safe in early learning, but this bill is a major step forward, and doing nothing is not an option. For the good providers already doing the right thing, this bill creates a more level playing field. For families, it helps to restore trust that early learning is safe and properly monitored.

This reform has been developed in consultation with the sector. The government has worked closely with state and territory regulators and with key stakeholders, including Family Day Care Australia and the Australian Home Childcare Association. Their feedback helped shape the bill and ensure the measures are practical and supported. This work continues Labor's longstanding commitment to early childhood education. Every child deserves the best start, and every parent deserves confidence in the system. We are also working with state and territory governments on a strong and significant package of reforms. As was acknowledged by Senator Duniam in his contribution, the Commonwealth has limited powers. State and territory governments also need to deal with the issues that we are being confronted with. We need to work together.

As the education minister has said, the goal is to give every educator and provider the tools to help keep children safe and to give parents peace of mind. These are the next steps in building a stronger, safer early education system, and this bill is the foundation.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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".

Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to echo the sentiments of my colleague Senator Duniam. The coalition will be supporting the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. And I think it's fair to say that this chamber is united in wanting to make sure that we are protecting the rights of children within our country. The horrifying reports of the alleged widespread abuse in the Australian childcare centres have rightly shocked the nation. As a mother, my heart absolutely goes out to all of the families that have been impacted. We are unwavering in our support for changes which better protect children in care settings and give confidence to the millions of families that rely on child care. For any parent, the safety and wellbeing of their children are paramount. When that trust is broken, the consequences are devastating for families and corrosive to society's confidence in institutions that are meant to protect and care for our most vulnerable.

In the wake of such revelations, it is natural to hear calls for more government action, more regulation, more oversight and more checks, but too often government responses are designed to demonstrate activity rather than deliver genuine solutions. When government solves one problem, it often creates two more in its place. Proposals such as mandating child welfare officers in every centre or expanding already burdensome background checks may sound reassuring, but they risk piling more bureaucracy on an already strained system, driving up the cost of child care and making it even harder for families to access affordable services, though I understand in this case there is a need for action.

The main levers to improve the safety of early learning centres for children are actually outside of the Commonwealth's legislative powers. They fall predominantly to the states and territories, who are responsible for the regulation of these services, and, as identified in the New South Wales Wheeler report, there is much more that state and territory regulators can and should do.

I would like to see measures to ensure centres aren't bogged down with paperwork and paralysed by compliance. I think it's important to note that, in this, we need to ensure that good people—passionate people dedicated to the care of our children—are still attracted to work in this vital industry. They are the very people we need, to keep our children safe.

We shouldn't be complacent and pretend that more federal, state or territory regulation somehow makes criminal behaviour less likely. We already have laws; every state and territory government has the legislative power to pursue and prosecute criminal conduct in early childhood settings. There is no one simple solution to keeping children safe, but I think it is fair to note that no amount of red tape can stop someone who is determined to do harm. We saw that in Queensland, in New South Wales and, most recently, in Victoria.

In December 2023, the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority published a review of child safety arrangements under the National Quality Framework. The government has had the regulator's review of child safety arrangements for more than 18 months. The Albanese government has been slow to act on the 16 recommendations. It has taken almost two years for the government to enact the simple change to the reporting requirements for physical and sexual abuse, from seven days to 24 hours, and it will come into force on 1 September this year. As Jason Clare said, those changes should have been implemented yesterday.

But you can't regulate morality, you can't legislate decency, and you certainly can't bureaucrat your way out of evil. The priority here is, absolutely, foremost, keeping our children safe. But I think it is time to think beyond the immediate fix. It's time to empower families. We should be supporting parents in making the choice that works best for them, whether that means returning to work and using a childcare centre or staying at home to care for their own children. It might even be using a relative or loved one to care for their children.

We should stop forcing families into rigid, one-size-fits-all systems and recognise the value of informal care, particularly that of grandparents, aunties, uncles, neighbours and members of the community—the people who already love and know these children. It is incumbent on all of us here to build a system that gives parents the financial freedom and the flexibility to choose what is right for their children and their families. For many families, especially in culturally diverse communities, informal family based care isn't a fallback; it's the norm. And our system should support, not penalise, that choice. If we truly want to keep our children safe—and I believe that everyone in this place does—then let's focus on strengthening families, not just growing government. Let's give families the tools, the trust and the freedom to raise their children in a way that suits them best.

This bill is well intentioned, but intention is not the same as impact. The coalition supports this bill, but real safety, real reform and real support for Australian families will not come from this bill alone. It will come when we stop reaching for more regulation and start reaching for common sense and policies that empower and give families the freedom to choose what works best for them.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Next month, like thousands of Australian families, I will take my young son to child care for the first time. I do so with a mix of excitement, for the wonderful child development opportunities that await my young son, and of deep sadness, over the horrific child abuse allegations that we have seen uncovered across Australia. I know in my heart that these perpetrators of abuse are not representative of the thousands of incredible educators who commit their lives to loving and guiding our littlest people through their most important years.

I also want to acknowledge that our educators are hurting too. My heart goes out to the early education sector, which is filled with good, decent and loving educators. They are upset and they are angry, just like us. But tonight we take action. On behalf of more than one million Australians with children in child care, I say thank you to the Prime Minister for his swift action. I also say thank you to the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Senator Jess Walsh. Ministers Clare and Walsh have stepped up to this moment without hesitation. They have confronted this moment without excuses and sought to fast-track these amendments as urgently as Australian parents would expect them to.

This bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025, provides levers to drive real and meaningful change. Seventy per cent of the running costs for early education centres are provided for from the Commonwealth childcare subsidy. This bill gives the Commonwealth the power to immediately cut off the childcare subsidy for centres falling below the standard, or even for one single safety breach. The states and territories remain the regulators for centres, responsible for regulating safety and quality across centres in their jurisdiction.

This bill also expands powers for on-the-spot inspections without warrants or police accompaniment to investigate fraud, misconduct and noncompliance. A national register for childcare workers will be established to track the employment history of workers, to prevent them moving between centres undetected, looking for red flags and taking swift action.

I wish to acknowledge that there is further policy work underway, including mandatory child safety training for all workers to identify potential grooming behaviour and the abuse of children. I also acknowledge that there are trials underway on the use of CCTV, to carefully consider the use of this technology to deter offenders but, most importantly, to protect privacy.

I support this bill, and I call on all states and territories to continue to work with the Commonwealth to take strong action to enhance safety and quality in our early education centres.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will support the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. As the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Sussan Ley, has said, child safety is above politics. We are unwavering in our support for changes which better protect children in childcare settings and that give confidence to the one million families that rely on child care. The early learning workforce is a critical and valued workforce, and we acknowledge the work that they do. This bill only goes so far, and we are calling on the Albanese government to exercise leadership with states and territories to progress other measures swiftly. They need to engage the states and territories to do the things that they need to do to ensure that changes are made.

The bill amends the family assistance law to do three things. Firstly, it allows the secretary to financially penalise providers through suspension or cancellation of the childcare subsidy. Secondly, it effectively allows stronger name-and-shame powers, especially on the Starting Blocks website, by expanding the secretary's powers to publicise details about providers. Thirdly, it enables authorised officers to conduct unannounced visits to services, noting this duplicates existing powers of state and territory regulators.

But this bill goes only so far to shifting the dial when it comes to making childcare centres safer. The main levers to improve the safety of early learning centres for children are outside of the Commonwealth's legislative powers; they sit with the states and territories, who are responsible for the regulation of these services. As identified in the New South Wales Wheeler report, there is much more that state and territory regulators can and should do. This is their remit. It is their responsibility to do this, and the Commonwealth should compel them to do so, but that doesn't absolve the Commonwealth of its responsibilities.

This is why we call on the government to work with the states and territories to do three things urgently: firstly, implement a national approach to working-with-children checks; secondly, implement a national register of workers; and, thirdly, implement a mobile phone ban. The National Model Code for Taking Images or Videos of Children while Providing Early Childhood Education and Care developed by the national regulator is currently voluntary. We also support stronger targets for regulator activity and joint efforts to implement appropriate use of CCTV, which the Wheeler report recommended should be mandatory for new childcare services in the first instance.

Devastatingly, the recent allegations in Victoria are not the first of their kind in childcare settings. In August 2023, as a result of Operation Tenterfield, a Queensland man was charged and later convicted of 1,623 child abuse offences against 91 children in Brisbane, Sydney and overseas between 2007 and 2022. We have failed our children. The fact that this has happened and continues to happen clearly states that we have failed our children.

In December 2023, the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority published their Review of Child Safety Arrangements under the National Quality Framework. The government has had the regulator's review of child safety arrangements for more than 18 months. The Albanese government has been slow to act on the 16 recommendations. It has taken almost two years for the government to simply enact the change in reporting physical and sexual abuse from seven days to 24 hours. That shouldn't take that long. It really shouldn't take that long. But that change will only come into effect on 1 September 2025. As Jason Clare said, those changes should have been implemented yesterday. We shouldn't have been so slow to act.

After accepting in principle the key recommendations from the review of child safety arrangements in February 2022, education ministers did not meet for a year between June 2024 and June 2025. For an entire year from when recommendations were provided, there was no meeting of education ministers. It begs the question of why that was the case. That is far too long, given the gravity of the problem at hand and the risk to our children. We acknowledge that governments of all stripes have not fully enacted all recommendations from reports, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, fast enough.

That includes the harmonisation of the working-with-children check system. This has long been something that governments have pursued but never achieved, and this is long overdue. The current system is deficient and does not meet the standards that Australians expect. It does not meet the standards that parents expect, and it does not meet the standards that our children deserve. There is no standardisation. Each state and territory has its own scheme. The check should be set at the most stringent in our country—absolutely the most stringent. Some inherent risk remains. This is because it only relies on an individual's criminal history as a check to see if a worker may be a risk to children. This is obviously not good enough, as people that do pose risks may not yet have been convicted.

Debate interrupted.