Source: Murray Darling Basin Authority
Mr Speaker, 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 are sick, and the trauma of getting them tested.
This is a live investigation and the 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 that we can to ensure the safety of our children when they walk – or when they are carried – through the doors of an early childhood education and care service.
At centres across the country 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 dollars a year.
Centres can’t operate without it.
It covers about 70 per cent of the average cost of running a 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 what our 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, or 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 started 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 of my Department 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 ago, the Secretary of my Department can 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 of my Department 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 and responsibility 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’s 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.
It 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 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 that 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 day-to-day 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 childhood 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 to 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 that are already 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 dollars in additional funding to detect and prevent Child Care Subsidy fraud, and this has helped claw back around $318 million dollars for the taxpayer.
These new powers add to 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, be 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 also 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 the people in their centres 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.
That 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, Jonno Duniam, and the Assistant Minister, Zoe Mckenzie, 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 us in this work 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 to 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.