By Nick Newling and Nicole Precel
Childcare centres that egregiously fail to meet minimum standards will still have a month’s grace period to resolve their problems before the government steps in to strip them of taxpayer funding, under proposed new laws.
The rules were introduced to federal parliament on Wednesday following a spate of sexual abuse allegations levelled against Victorian childcare worker Joshua Brown, claims of children being mistreated in NSW, and earlier incidents in Queensland.
Education Minister Jason Clare said the bill to tackle abuse in childcare centres would not leave parents stranded if a location closed.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has admitted the government failed to act fast enough on the issue, and introduced the bill to let the government shut down centres, put conditions on their operations, or strip their funding, as one of Labor’s first actions in parliament after its re-election.
“I want centres to get to those standards,” Clare said. “We don’t want to have to shut centres down.”
But he said parents deserved to know if conditions had been imposed on a centre so they could decide where to send their children. Without government approval, centres will be denied access to the federal childcare subsidy, which covers about 70 per cent of their costs on average.
Labor expanded access to childcare subsidies before the election and has committed to building more childcare centres, driving the sector to expand rapidly, which has created an opportunity for for-profit operators to expand and put pressure on staff recruitment.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denied there was a trade-off between the rapid expansion of childcare and safety. “It’s not either or,” Albanese said on the ABC. “Every parent wants their child to be safe and should expect their child to be safe in childcare.”
Education authorities already have the power to shut down a centre immediately if it poses an imminent risk to safety.
Mohamed, who asked to be identified only by his first name, has a three-year-old daughter who attends a childcare centre where Brown worked, but did not overlap with him.
He said the proposed legislation was “better than nothing”. “I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Mohamed said. “They should be losing funding if they don’t get their act together. That’s the first step. There’s always more.”
Figures released by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority last year show about 10 per cent of childcare centres are not meeting minimum national standards, with 11 nationwide deemed to have “significant improvement required”.
The bill, which is yet to pass parliament, would allow compliance officers to enter childcare centres during operating hours without a warrant, let authorities appoint an expert to investigate large providers, and permit the publication of issues with providers.
Authorities would look at a range of factors before shutting down a centre or stripping it of funding, such as whether it had repeatedly had issues, and their severity.
Clare said the new legislation would not leave parents stranded without care for their children because of minor shortcomings at their service.
“We all know that no party, no government, state or federal, has done everything we need to do here,” Clare said. “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.”
Further changes have been flagged in advance of next month’s meeting of Australia’s attorneys-general, including bolstering of the nation’s Working with Children Checks, and the use of CCTV in childcare centres.
Children’s charity Royal Far West chief executive Jacqui Emery said the bill was a first step but cautioned the measure alone would not address the broader, systemic challenges facing Australia’s early childhood education and care system.
“To ensure consistent enforcement of our world-leading safety standards and better co-ordination between state, territory and federal governments, we need a National Early Childhood Commission,” Emery said. The Parenthood chief executive Georgie Dent agreed.
“We need national co-ordination on everything from processes for hiring new staff, educator training and background checks, to body safety protocol and government funding arrangements. All levels of government need to work together and provide adequate resourcing to the regulatory bodies in the system.
“At the absolute baseline, parents deserve to know that their child is safe in care.”
Early Childhood Australia president Samantha Page said she believed everyone would support the Commonwealth having the power to withdraw providers’ approval if a service wasn’t addressing breaches, or consistently not meeting requirements, but how they use that power would be important.
She said the details of who would be liaising with regulatory authorities and ensuring families aren’t without childcare centres and had time to transition was important.
“We need stewardship [of the sector], whether that is a commission or a different model. I think there are various models we can use.”
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