Doorstop - Canberra

ALICIA PAYNE, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good morning, everyone. I'm Alicia Payne, the Member for Canberra, and it's my great pleasure this morning to have Education Minister Jason Clare visiting Goodstart Braddon, here in the electorate. And I want to thank Crystal and the team for welcoming us this morning, and the children for sharing some colouring in with us. Lovely to meet them. 

As a parent, I really know the value of early childhood education. When you drop your children off at early learning, you want to know that they are getting a great experience, that they are having fun, that they are learning and being cared for. But above all, you want to know that they are safe. And today, we are making some announcements that will strengthen the regulations around keeping our children as safe as possible and supporting our wonderful early childhood educators to maintain the best standards in early childhood education and care. 

And as always, when I visit the centre, as I visit many centres around Canberra, I just want to say, take the opportunity to say a big thank you to all of the educators who do such an incredible job with our youngest Canberrans. Taking the time and with the skill and dedication that they show each and every day to give people the best start in life. And it's my great pleasure to hand over to Jason now.

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks very much, Alicia. And thanks to the team here at Goodstart Braddon for letting us come to visit today. The sign on the door says it all. Early education and care helps to make sure that young people get a good start in life. Early education and care helps mums and dads to return to work, but it also helps to make sure that young Australians are better prepared to start school. And the early development census data that's out today is more evidence of that. That data shows the real long-term impact of the pandemic on our youngest Australians. 

These are kids who were born in 2018 and 2019. They're kids of the pandemic. And the data out today shows the impact of the pandemic on them. Early education and care isn't babysitting. This really is about helping to prepare young people for school. And the data out today shows that. It shows that children who went to preschool were one and a half times more prepared, better prepared to start school. And that's why the 3 Day Guarantee that comes into effect from January next year is so important. That's all about making sure that every child in Australia, regardless of the income of their parents or where you live, gets access to a 3 Day Guarantee early education and care subsidised by the Australian Government. Because we know the data tells us that if you get access to early education and care, then you're better developed, better prepared to start school.

We're making big changes in early education and care. Number one, we've cut the cost of early education care for more than a million Australian families. Number two, we're providing a 15 per cent pay rise for our early educators, 10 per cent rolling out now and another 5 per cent starts in December. And we're making sure that more young people can get access to early education and care first with that 3 Day Guarantee that starts in January next year. But in addition to that, a $1 billion dollar fund that we took to the last election and that was endorsed by the Australian people, to build more early education and care centres where they're needed. In our outer suburbs and in our regions, in areas that are sometimes called child care deserts, including on the grounds of local schools. 

But in addition to that, we need to do more to make sure that our centres are safe, that they're of the highest quality possible and that they've got the integrity that's needed so that Australian parents have got faith in the services that they rely upon, looking after and educating their children. And so, you will remember that in July last year, we took steps to ban the use of personal mobile phones in child care centres. And that was in response to the evidence that emerged out of NSW and Queensland about an offender working in child care centres. We took that action as a nation, and that was implemented last year. 

In response to some of the evidence that emerged out of the 4 Corners report earlier this year, we announced a series of other measures to improve safety and the quality of our services. And that includes where a provider is not up to scratch, stopping them from expanding other services, but also where a provider is dodgy, not letting them move from child care to another part of the care economy from, for example, stopping them from opening a NDIS service. And legislation to implement the reforms that we announced earlier this year will come into the Parliament later this year.

But in addition to that, based on the advice from ACECQA, Education Ministers have now agreed that the mandatory reporting of sexual abuse and physical abuse in child care centres will need to be reported to regulators within 24 hours, instead of the seven-day rule that exists at the moment, and that will come into effect from the first of September this year. 

All of these reforms are about making our early education system better and safer, improving quality and improving the integrity of the system. And when Education Ministers meet on Friday in Adelaide next week, one of the things that we will talk about are the next steps that we need to take to improve the quality and the safety and the integrity of our early education and care system. Thanks very much.