Doorstop - Canberra

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: We’ve just passed the first bill through this new Parliament and as promised, it cuts student debt by 20%. We promised it and we’ve passed it. We promised it and we've delivered. This will cut the debt of millions of Aussies by thousands of dollars. The average HECS debt today is about $27,000. This will cut that debt by about $5,500 dollars. That's a lot of money and that's a lot of help for a lot of Australians. It will help take a weight off their back. In particular a lot of young Australians.

Young Australians don't always see something for them on the ballot paper, but they did this year, and they voted for it in their millions. And we're repaying now, the trust that these young Australians have placed in us. The next step is for the Tax Office to do the work they need to do. Now that the bill has passed, they've got the certainty they need to make the changes to their systems to pass this on to 3 million Australians. That will take a bit of time, they've got to write about 50,000 lines of code to implement this and make sure that they get it right. But this is now going to happen, it's guaranteed, and it will be backdated to the first of June this year, before indexation happened. We're doing that for a reason; to make sure that we honour the promise we made to the Australian people in full that we would cut their student by 20 per cent. And today the Parliament has acted and I'm glad to see that they have. 

Before I take some questions, we're also very hopeful that today in the Senate before question time there will be a vote to pass legislation to give the Department of Education the power to cut funding to child care centres that aren't up to scratch, that aren't meeting the sort of safety standards and quality standards that parents expect and that our children deserve. As I've said a number of times, this is the biggest weapon that the Commonwealth Government has to wield here. We provide something like $16 billion dollars a year to child care centres through the child care subsidy. Centres can't operate without it. It represents about 70 per cent of the funding they use to run their centres. And I think most people watching would agree that if centres aren't up to scratch, if they're not meeting the sort of safety standards that we expect as a nation, then we should have the power to cut that funding off. And I've directed my Department to be ready to act swiftly when that legislation passes and receives royal assent. 

Is it the only thing we need to do? No. Not by a long shot. This is the start, not the finish. The truth is there is no end to the work that we need to do, the Commonwealth Government and State Governments, to help to make sure that our children are safe in early education and care. There is a mountain of work to do to rebuild the trust and the confidence in the system that parents need to have confidence in. The Attorney‑General spoke about this earlier this week, talked about the hotchpotch of different working with children check systems in different States and Territories, and said this will be the first item on the agenda when Attorney‑Generals meet in just over two weeks' time. 

I've also spoken about the need for a system to track workers from centre to centre and from State to State, a national educator register. That's something that Ministers have already agreed to and that our departments are working on right now. But not just that, also having mandatory child safety training so that the fantastic people who work in our centres - who are just as gutted and angry and upset by the revelations out of Victoria and other parts of the country, as everybody else is - have the sort of skills and information they need to be able to identify somebody who might be up to no good in clear sight working in their centres. They're the best asset that we've got here, and Queensland is doing some work on what that training might look like. They'll be in a position to take that to the meeting of Education Ministers when we meet next month. It's just an example of the fact that this legislation, whilst it's important, is not everything. It's the start, not the end. 

Happy to take some questions. 

JOURNALIST: Do you have an idea of how long do you expect that child care centres would close as a result of cutting funding through this legislation? 

CLARE: The intention here is not for centres to close but for centres to raise their standards, to meet the quality and safety standards that we expect them to have. But it's not an idle threat. If centres don't act, then they will close. And I think parents will want to know if their centres are not up to scratch, and that's why as part of this legislation we're saying that if my Department imposes a condition on a centre and says, "you've got this time to get up to scratch", they have to tell the parents at that centre what's happening as well so they've got the information they need to make the decisions they need to make to make sure their children are getting the best quality care and education they can. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, to follow that, you've said that your Department is working with the State and Territory regulators on a priority list of providers that you might take action against. Can you expand on that a little bit? What sort of breaches, for want of a better word, what sort of centres are on that priority list and what sort of shortfalls might they be experiencing? 

CLARE: Josh, I won't expand on it today, I'll have to more to say about that when the Department publishes that list. First the bill needs to pass the Parliament, then it needs to receive royal assent. But I have directed my Department to be ready to act swiftly. They'll have to more to say next week. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, the Treasurer this morning said recognition of Palestinian statehood was a matter of when, not if. What is the Government waiting for? 

CLARE: I'll refer you to the comments the Prime Minister made yesterday. I don't have anything to add to that today. 

JOURNALIST: Why is Australia not moving as fast though as the UK and France and Canada which, you know, we have done joint statements with them? 

CLARE: Same answer to a similar question. Have a look at the comments I made when I was interviewed by Andrew Clennell I think on Tuesday afternoon. I think I was pretty blunt and pretty clear here, as I have been now for the best part of two years. We need to stop the killing of innocent people in Gaza, and we need to stop the starvation of innocent people, in particular the starvation of little children. And anyone saying that kids aren't being starved to death isn't living in the real world. 

JOURNALIST: Has there been pressure from the ‑‑ 

JOURNALIST: In relation to the child care issue, you mentioned the Education Ministers meeting next month. [Indistinct] priority areas, one of those is CCTV. Would you imagine, and not to bring up the meeting too much and all these sort of things, but would you imagine [indistinct] Federal Government brings to the [indistinct] for child care centres who rolled out CCTV? 

CLARE: Thanks, mate. Again, I don't want to pre‑empt the decisions that will be made by Ministers there, but I did make some comments about this in the Parliament on Tuesday in wrapping up debate on this legislation in the House. And I made the point there's already CCTV in some centres. Some of the big providers like Goodstart have announced their intention to roll it out. They've made the point that it will operate in some parts of the centres but not others, and I think there's probably some good reasons for that. 

But parents have also made the point to me, and I'm sure they've made the point to other Ministers because they've made the point to me as well, is that there is no system or regulation about where the data is kept and how it is held at the moment. It’s already happening at the moment. One of the questions for the Ministers to look at is the regulation for the protection of this data. The last thing you want to do here is create a honey‑pot for bad people. So where does the data get stored? How does it get used? I'm on the record saying that I think it has real value in potentially deterring bad people from doing bad things. I think it also has real value for police in being able to use that in their investigations. That's after the fact though. If it can deter, that's good. 

So, then the question is where's the data held? How's it used? And maybe if I can point you also to the New South Wales Government's independent review after the Four Corners' investigation that talked about the sort of centres you might want to trial that in. So, they're the sorts of things that we're looking at ahead of that meeting next month. 

JOURNALIST: Just on the HECS relief, what do you make of the Greens describing this as a one‑off debt cut and there are calls for it to be wiped completely? 

CLARE: You know, it's not just a one‑off for people who have a HECS debt today. This makes the system fairer for people that will go to uni and TAFE tomorrow as well. This is, you know, there's a lot of attention and rightly so on a 20 per cent cut. I suspect a lot of people at this press conference are going to get that 20 per cent cut as well. There's 3 million Aussies right around the country that will know exactly what their debt is today, and they'll know exactly what a 20 per cent cut means for them. 

But the bill does other things as well which make real structural changes to the system to make it fairer. And one of those things is a new marginal repayment system, which means that people on low incomes when they might be just out of uni and they might be on a salary of first off maybe 70 grand, will pay a lot less back each year than they do at the moment. Instead of paying back around about $1,900 once they hit 70 grand, it's about $450. So that's $1,300 or so in their pocket rather than in the Government's. And when you're on 70 grand and you might be renting, that money matters, that money counts. That helps you to pay the rent and pay for food and pay for public transport, put petrol in the car. 

This was a recommendation of the Accord, it was the recommendation of a bloke named Bruce Chapman, who for those who don't know, was the architect of HECS back in the 80s, back last century. And he says that this is perhaps the most important change to the HECS system in 35 years. 

So, a big cut today, but a big change to the structure and operation of the system that will help people that are at uni today and that will go to uni tomorrow. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, it's been a big week for you really with this legislation. How would you describe the Coalition's cooperation? 

CLARE: Yeah, I want to thank the Coalition, and I want to thank Sussan Ley. You know, this is a different Parliament and a different Opposition Leader. Australians I think want us to work together on the big things that matter to help Australians, and particularly on the child care matter where it could have been very different. The decision of Sussan and Jonno, the Shadow Minister, to work constructively with us, I take my hat off to them. You know, this is what Australians want of us. This is what they expect of us. To be honest, it's what they should demand of us. And the fact that we can work together on these big and important things is a good thing. We're here to represent our community and to make Australia a better and a fairer place and to make our child care centres safer and that's what we're doing this week.

JOURNALIST: Is it a good sign then for the rest of the term or ‑‑ 

CLARE: Look, I hope so. You can't make any guarantees about what happens tomorrow. But, you know, I come here to try and make the education system better and fairer and we're doing that this week. 

Good on you, thanks guys. 

JOURNALIST: Thank you.