Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present a copy of my ministerial statement. The Albanese government recognises the transformative benefits of early childhood education and care for children and families and for our nation. That's why we are working to build a universal early childhood education and care system that is accessible for families no matter what your circumstances or background.

I'm very proud of our record in early childhood education and care, of our work to build a quality universal system that is accessible, affordable and simple. Our Cheaper Child Care reforms made early learning affordable for more than one million Australian families by cutting out-of-pocket costs. Cheaper Child Care cut the cost of early learning by more than 17 per cent when it was first introduced, with the average family using childcare around $4,400 better off.

We know that we can't reach our vision for universal early childhood education and care without a strong and sustainable workforce. That's why we are delivering a historic 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood workers to retain and attract our early childhood education workforce. We're also boosting this vital and dedicated workforce through our successful fee-free TAFE program. As a result of Labor's reforms, there are over 1,100 new services since we came to government, 30 per cent of which are outside of major cities. There are 42,000 more educators and, most importantly, there are additional 97,000 more children in early childhood education and care.

But we want even more children to access and have access to high-quality early childhood education and care. Because we believe that every child has the right to get the best possible start in life, we've abolished the Liberals' prohibitive-activity test and replaced it with a three-day guarantee so children don't start school behind. The three-day guarantee will replace the current activity test from January 2026 with guaranteed eligibility for three days a week of subsidised early education for children who need it. We are also establishing a $1 billion building early childhood education fund and, through the fund, around 160 centres will be built and expanded in areas of need, including in the regions and outer suburbs. The fund will increase the availability of early childhood education and care for Australian families across the country delivered by quality not-for-profit providers.

As we continue to build the universal early childhood education and care system, we continue to ensure that children receive high-quality care with child safety and wellbeing at the core. As we build the universal system that our children deserve and that meets the needs of families, nothing is more important than making sure children are receiving high-quality early childhood education and care. Overwhelmingly, this is the case, with our children well looked after by dedicated professionals who care deeply about safety, child development and early education.

However, there are a small number of providers who are consistently and persistently failing to provide quality care and a safe environment. There is no room for this kind of behaviour in the early childhood education sector, and if you are persistently failing to meet minimum quality standards in delivering safe early childhood education and care, you should not have access to government funding and you should not be providing care. Now, while there are only a very small number of providers in the sector not behaving in line with our expectations, when it comes to child's safety, even one dodgy provider is too many. So today we are acting swiftly and decisively and we are sending a clear message to that small number of unscrupulous providers that, if you fail to provide quality care and a safe environment for children, you do not belong in early childhood education and care.

While state and territory governments remain responsible for ensuring services in their jurisdictions are operating within the National Quality Framework, the Albanese Labor government will continue to use our significant investment in the early childhood education sector as a lever to strengthen quality and integrity. Today I can announce that we can look to better leverage Commonwealth funding to drive quality and integrity in the early childhood education and care sector. We will work with the sector on the development of changes and how they could be implemented so that if a service provider persistently isn't meeting quality standards or has gross and egregious breaches under the education and care services national law, they will be prevented from opening new childcare subsidy approved services. Also, compliance action can be taken against providers that persistently fail to meet quality standards or repetitively breach the education and care services national law, including the possibility of cutting off access to government subsidies in serious cases.

We are putting a stop to providers that put profit ahead of the children they care for. We also want to ensure our wonderful early childhood educators and teachers are not being taken advantage of by the small number of providers who are doing the wrong thing, and we will look to strengthen our powers to crack down on dodgy providers that pose an integrity risk. We expect staff to be fairly compensated for the valuable work they do and we will take action against any provider that is not fairly paying their staff. We will make paying staff correctly and on time a condition of services to access childcare subsidy funding. We will also look to strengthen our powers to crack down on dodgy providers that pose an integrity risk to the childcare subsidy system. This includes conducting checks at childcare subsidy approved early childhood education and care services to confirm that children they are claiming funding for are actually attending the service. We'll give authorised officers more powers to be able to do their job by allowing them to perform spot checks and unannounced visits to detect fraud and non-compliance.

Unfortunately, we know that when a dodgy operator is detected and removed from one part of the national care economy they sometimes pop up as an operator in another care sector. To stamp this out, we'll investigate stronger cross-sector banning order arrangements to stop people who have breached safety and quality standards in one part of the care economy from opening a new service in any of the other care sectors. We will commence consultation immediately with state and territory governments, regulatory authorities and the sector to work through the policy detail to ensure that these measures are appropriately designed and targeted to meet the objective of removing the small number of bad providers while we continue to support growth in the sector and support families.

The early childhood education sector is important for children, it's an essential service for families and it's vital to our economy. The Albanese government will do everything in our power to protect children, to improve quality in the sector and to ensure that the workforce is supported. The Commonwealth is committed to do our bit with the levers that are available to us, and I expect state and territory governments to uphold their regulatory responsibilities in ensuring that providers and services in their jurisdictions comply with the National Quality Framework.

Last week, I wrote to the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority, ACECQA, and requested that they provide urgent advice to all education ministers on what can be done to strengthen the National Quality Framework. This advice will build on ACECQA's comprehensive child safety review, commissioned by the Minister for Education Jason Clare and myself in 2023. In February last year, education ministers agreed in principle to all recommendations under that review, acknowledging that some fall outside of the remit of education. All actions are on track, including the National Model Code and guidelines which were released last year to embed child-safe practices around the use of electronic devices.

From September this year, important regulatory changes will come into effect, including a reduction in notification timeframes for reporting incidences or allegations of physical or sexual abuse from seven days to 24 hours and a new requirement for services to have policies and procedures relating to the safe use of digital technologies including the use of CCTV. We'll continue to work with states and territories, the early childhood education sector and families as we undertake our significant reforms in this vital sector. This work will be informed by expert advice and the recent and comprehensive reviews that we have commissioned, including from the ACCC, the Productivity Commission and ACECQA.

Finally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the wonderful, talented and dedicated professionals who educate and care for children right across Australia. Thank you for the important work that you do; you are changing lives. You are changing the lives of children every day, and nothing could be more important.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nothing is more important than the safety of our children, and early childhood education plays an incredibly important role. It provides our littlest Australians with a good start in life, a chance to learn and a chance to make friends. Early childhood education is also crucial for parents who are studying, training and working. Our early educators are so very important in shaping these young lives. They deserve all of our respect and gratitude for the work that they do because it's not an easy job; that's for sure. I know from the hundreds of educators and service providers that I've met over the last three years that they do it out of love and out of care. But there's no doubt that both families and the sector have faced many challenges over the last three years. Affordability, access, quality, choice, flexibility—all these things are key to thriving in early childhood education and care and for the sector to grow.

Unfortunately, this government's policies have failed to address these issues in a meaningful way. Regional, rural and remote communities in particular are struggling the most. In fact, according to the Mitchell Institute, around sic million Australians—close to a quarter of the population—live in a childcare desert. That means they live in an area where three or more children compete for each childcare place. This has a devastating impact on these communities, as young families struggle to work and raise their children because of the lack of support available. It's meant that these communities struggle to attract new families and critical workers. We know the sector has faced workforce challenges, and we know that many families, no matter where they live in Australia, are languishing on very long waiting lists.

Despite all these challenges, the overwhelming majority of educators and service providers do an amazing job. They provide a safe environment for children, educate them and nourish them. However, as the minister said, a small number of providers and educators are doing the wrong thing. They are those who are letting their staff down, those who are failing the parents who have entrusted them with their precious children and those who have betrayed the innocence of children. I echo the minister's sentiment that there is absolutely no room for this. And I stress again: there is nothing that is more important than the personal safety of our children.

The coalition have always shown our commitment to keeping all children safe, whether at home, at school, in child care or online. Of course, it was the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, who created the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, which played a critical role in tracking down one of the worst child sex offenders—a predator who had been hiding in plain sight as a childcare worker. The coalition, as Peter Dutton outlined in his 2023 budget-in-reply, has committed to doubling the size of that centre to further strengthen that very effective child safety mechanism. We must do everything we can to make sure that something like this never ever happens again.

That's why the coalition supports in principle the minister's move to crack down on bad providers and educators. As the shadow minister for early childhood education, I welcome her move to working closely with the sector as well as state and territory counterparts to make this a reality. There is no doubt we need the entire sector to be able to work better together and weed out the unscrupulous actors. But the devil is always in the detail. While the coalition welcomes the minister's sentiments, we urge her to make sure this is not just empty words or platitudes. Sadly, families and educators have come to expect not much more from this government, and one must ask why it has taken three years, on the eve of an election and in the wake of a damning news report, for the government to finally take this action. There have been countless reviews into the sector by the ACCC and the Productivity Commission. There was a review into in-home care and inclusion support, and there was theChild safety review by ACECQA. We are yet to see formal responses to any of these.

The truth is that this government has made things much harder for the sector. Think about the worker retention payment and the difficulty services and educators have faced. Just last night, on A Current Affair, an early learning provider revealed they are nearly $200,000 out of pocket because of the complexities of this government's grant scheme. A trusted early childhood education service is now seriously concerned about the impact this will have on their viability and, most importantly, the quality of education they can provide to their families. This isn't the only service who find themselves in this situation. Countless small and medium providers—family owned services which have been operating in communities for years and even decades—are facing similar problems. These hardworking services, providers and educators have been completely let down by this government. I welcome the news that the education minister has agreed in principle to all recommendations under ACECQA's child safety review, and it's pleasing to hear that all actions are on track. I encourage the minister to provide more detail on this.

The minister made note of the national model code and guidelines which were released last year to embed child-safety practices around the use of electronic devices, and, while this is an important step, we know that it is, in fact, voluntary. In fact, governments do not maintain records of providers who have chosen to adopt it. The safety of our children is far too important for such superficial measures. The headlines might be good, but child safety should be about more than that. What's the point of any sort of code if no-one is even keeping record of who has voluntarily agreed to it? Again, I urge the minister and this government to make sure they get the detail right when it comes to all of the regulatory changes they are planning, including those the minister says are set to take effect from September.

The government must work hand in hand with the sector to make sure the rollout of such changes is seamless and effective. While it's crucial to stamp out bad behaviour in the sector, we need to make sure any regulatory changes do not punish the educators who do the right thing—those who go above and beyond to provide safe and quality education for our children. We need to make sure this doesn't just become another layer of bureaucracy that makes life harder for families and our hardworking educators.

The government must be sure this doesn't become another broken promise, like the worker retention payment or cheaper child care—because we know that, over the last three years, the cost of child care has risen by over 22 per cent. Since the rollout of the government's changes to the childcare subsidy, out-of-pocket fees have risen by nearly 13 per cent. So I rebut what the Prime Minister says and what the minister says about cheaper child care. Early childhood educators are too important to be treated this way. As the shadow minister for early childhood education and care, I look forward to engaging with the minister on these safety matters to make sure that we get this right. There's much work to do to safeguard children's safety, and more must be done for Australian families and children.

Finally, just as the minister said, I would like to take a moment to say thank you to the incredible early educators across Australia. To those who take such pride in the important work they do supporting children and supporting families, and to those who care for, educate and protect our children: thank you.