Jacinta Allan refuses to apologise for missing childcare safety document release deadline
Jacinta Allan has defended the government’s inability to produce thousands of documents relating to childcare safety despite the state government in NSW meeting the deadline.
Victoria
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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has defended the state government’s “failure” to produce thousands of documents relating to childcare safety, saying she will “not apologise” for missing deadline.
Last month, the Victorian upper house backed a Greens motion ordering the government to table documents including risk assessments, enforcement records and warnings issued to childcare providers from the past three years.
The government was given to last Friday to produce the documents.
The motion was in response to damning child safety allegations made against childcare providers, and was put forward not long before Victoria Police revealed early childhood educator Joshua Brown had been charged with over 70 offences relating to child sexual abuse.
The move followed a request for similar documents to the NSW state government by NSW Greens MP Abigail Boyd, which the Minns government successfully complied with by producing more than 2000 pages of confidential departmental documents relating to the sector.
But unlike its NSW counterpart, the Victorian government has failed to produce these documents by the July 18 deadline with no indication of when they’re expected to be released.
Rather Ms Allan said on Tuesday the request for “tens of thousands of documents” was still being processed.
“(The request for documents) requests a huge realm of material, some of which contains personal, private details about families and children, and I won’t apologise for taking the time to ensure that any release of documents does not inadvertently reveal personal details, simply to satisfy the requirements of the Greens political party in the legislature,” she said.
“The Greens (are) choosing to make a political issue of the time we are taking to appropriately ensure that no personal details of children are released.”
Despite the delay, Ms Allan reassured the government was taking “rapid action” to ensure children were safe in the state’s childcare sector.
“We’ve already taken action, (we’re) not waiting for a national approach,” she said.
“We’ve already taken action to have that registration of childcare workers in place here in Victoria by the end of August, to ban the use of personal devices in childcare centres by the end of September.
“It’s why too the rapid review that Jay Weatherill and Pam White are undertaking - that will be provided to the government in just a few weeks’ time - is going to provide further advice on further action we will take.”
Ms Allan also acknowledged work was already underway to strengthen the state’s Working with Children Check system and said from next month, anyone banned from working in a childcare setting will have their check revoked.
“I absolutely acknowledge that there will be more to do which is why in a few weeks time you’ll be receiving the advice from Jay Weatherill and Pam White on what the next steps should be,” she said.
Victorian Greens spokesperson for early childhood Anasina Gray-Barberio slammed Ms Allan’s comments as “shameful”, saying parents in Victoria were “going through hell right now”.
“The Greens motion was carefully worded with sensitivity to children’s privacy and limited in scope to only capture the documents that would be needed to see the full picture of what’s happening in our childcare sector,” she said.
“The exact same documents were released in New South Wales, so there is absolutely no reason that Labor can’t do the same here.”
Ms Gray-Barberio said the Premier was “lashing at the Greens” to take the “heat off herself”.
“The truth is that Labor never provides documents and routinely breaks the rules of the Parliament and for the most part, the rest of us have just had to cope with that but we really thought this time, given the scale of what’s happening in our childcare system, that Labor would put politics aside and choose transparency for every family that’s living their worst nightmare right now,” she said.
“If Labor won’t be honest with Victorian families about what’s going on, how are we meant to fix it? Of all the moments to follow the rules and do the right thing - this should be it.”
Originally published as Jacinta Allan refuses to apologise for missing childcare safety document release deadline
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