Interview - ABC Radio National with David Lipson

DAVID LIPSON: David Lipson with you here on Radio National Breakfast, and a warning that the following story does contain distressing content about child abuse.

Australia's approach to child safety is once again in the national spotlight after that case of a Melbourne childcare worker who's been charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material.

In the wake of the allegations levelled against 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown, around 1,200 children in Victoria have now been urged to undergo health screening. Meanwhile, police have confirmed that the alleged offender had a valid working with children check, it's sparked calls for greater national oversight and regulation of child care centres.

Joining me now to discuss all of this is Jason Clare. He's the Federal Minister for Education. Welcome to Radio National Breakfast.

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Good morning, Dave.

LIPSON: Jason Clare, a lot of parents who would be very nervous about dropping their kids off this morning.  What's your message to them?

CLARE: Any Australian who heard the news yesterday would be sickened by what they heard. For parents of the children that are affected by this that got a notification from authorities yesterday, they'd be terrified, and rightly so. But worse than that, angry. I know that because one of the families that got notification yesterday is a friend of mine, and I can't repeat what she told me because this is morning radio, but they're furious, and now they've got to go through all the crap to make sure that their children are safe.

What I would say more broadly to the general community is that we do have a good early education and care system. Some of the angriest people this morning are the people turning up for work, working in our child care centres around the country, who overwhelmingly do a great job, who love our kids, care for our kids, educate our kids; they're furious as well.

There's been important steps taken over the last few years to make our centres safe, but not enough. More needs to be done. I was informed about this just over a week ago by the Victorian Government. It's the reason I put this on the agenda for Education Ministers when we met last Friday.

LIPSON: Okay. So, it was on the agenda last Friday, and you talked about it then; you say you were informed more than a week ago. Should parents have been told earlier than yesterday?

CLARE: I'm certain that the Victorian Government took the steps that they needed to take with police and with the relevant authorities to make sure that when they advised parents and did so as soon as they possibly could, they were in a position to provide the necessary advice and support for parents.

LIPSON: Okay. Well, let's talk about what can be done to prevent this, because you've already banned phones and devices in child care centres, but this man is still accused of producing child abuse material. You have said you'll bring in legislation to Parliament to cut off funding to child care centres that aren't up to scratch, but how will these changes help stop sexual offenders?

CLARE: There's no one silver bullet here. One of the things that we needed to do was ban phones in centres, the use of personal mobile phones. We did that for a reason. We did that on advice from the national safety regulator after the paedophile was caught and convicted in Queensland.

LIPSON: Are you concerned, though, that, you know, that it seems that phones and devices at least are allegedly at the centre of this case in Victoria as well?

CLARE: Yes, I am. Yes, I am, and that's why we've got to get phones out of centres. We've made it clear now in law that phones, personal phones or personal devices cannot be used in these centres. The key recommendation from the national safety regulator, and as I said, it comes out of the review that I commissioned after a paedophile was arrested and convicted in Queensland, but it's only one of the things that we need to do here.  

One of the real powers that we have as a Commonwealth Government is funding. If a centre's not up to scratch, if they're not meeting safety standards and quality standards, there's got to be consequences. The Federal Government provides something like 70 per cent of the funding that operates centres, and if they're not meeting standards, if they're not cutting the mustard, then we've got to have the power to cut their funding, to pull funding from centres. That's what we announced that we would do in March; that's what the legislation that we're preparing now is all about.

LIPSON: And when will that legislation be in place? You've said a couple of months. Can it be fast-tracked?

CLARE: I've asked my Department to get the legislation drafted as quickly as we possibly can, but it's just one of the things that we're doing, David. The meeting of Education Ministers that happened on Friday looked at the Wheeler Report, you'll remember Adele Ferguson's expose on Four Corners from a couple of months ago that revealed some shocking abuse and mistreatment of children in child care centres in New South Wales, that led to an independent report by Chris Wheeler, the former Deputy Ombudsman in New South Wales. His report was handed down last Thursday. The Government in New South Wales is committed to implement those recommendations. Chris briefed us on Friday. Now we're looking at how we can potentially implement Chris' recommendations right across the country, as well as the recommendations of the national safety regulator, and Early Education Ministers are going to meet again next month and the month after that as we try to pull together all of the things that we need to do to make our children safe. This is serious, and it requires serious action.

LIPSON: It certainly does. I mean, you've talked about the legislation that should come to Federal Parliament about cutting funding from child care centres that aren't up to scratch. That presumably would be after the fact. You've also talked about standardising police checks, but police checks only show up when the person's already been convicted of a crime. So, you know, this is really difficult stuff.

CLARE: That's right.

LIPSON: This alleged offender in Victoria we're told worked at 20 odd sites. Do you think at some point, a person's employment history could be a red flag or prompt some sort of mandatory check?

CLARE: Yeah. And that's one of the things that we've got to look at here. You're right, Working with Children Checks aren't a silver bullet. This alleged perpetrator had no criminal record; it's why they had a Working with Children Check. That doesn't mean, though, that Working with Children Checks can't be improved right across the country.

I spoke to the Attorney General about this last week, and she informed me that this will be on the agenda when Attorney Generals meet next month. There's work underway that needs to be done there to improve information sharing between states as well as near real-time monitoring when there's changes to people's criminal history, but there's other things that need to be done too, where there are potential red flags where people are moving.  

There's also work that needs to be done to develop a national register of educators. There's a register for teachers; there's not a register for educators in centres. That's one of the other potential tools here to help keep children safe.

LIPSON: The nationalised harmonised or national harmonised Working with Children Check system was actually recommended 10 years ago by a Royal Commission into institutional abuse. Why hasn't it been done?

CLARE: It's too slow. I accept that, and this is work that is led by, in most states, Attorneys General, but in other states it might be Community Services Ministers. That's why it's on the agenda next month when AGs meet, and they'll look at a number of things that need to be done to fix that, to improve that.

But let's not assume that that is the silver bullet here because there's other things that need to be done too.

LIPSON: There are a lot of for profit centres that are now in this sector, and this is something that Adele Ferguson's work really looked into. Should they be in the sector? Is this a factor, do you think, in these horrific cases?

CLARE: Whether you're a for profit centre or a not for profit centre, your number one priority has got to be the safety of the children who you're looking after and caring for. So, in that sense, I don't care if it's for profit or not for profit, what I care about are the children in the centre, and overwhelmingly most of the people who run and work these centres are good, honest, hard working people who dedicate their lives to looking after our children. Whether it's for profit or not for profit the key is that they've got to meet that standard when it comes to safety and quality, and if they don't, then there's got to be consequences, and that's what the legislation's about.

Can I double back to one point you made a moment ago made around Working with Children Checks? One of the other things that we're looking at here is around the right sort of training that early educators get when they're at TAFE or at university around child safety. This is already part of the qualifications, part of the course, but there's more potentially that can be done here to help people who work in centres to identify people who are grooming or identify people who are up to no good.

LIPSON: Thanks for making that point. I guess the question about for profit centres that I wanted to get to is around the enormous subsidies that the Federal Government provides. There's a lot of money sloshing around in the system, and if you've got, you know, companies that are listed on the stock exchange that are, you know, the recipient of a lot of that government money, is that part of the problem here, and especially at a time when the Federal Government is looking at universal child care. Is there a fear or a concern that that could exacerbate the problem by kind of bringing in or encouraging profit-driven cowboys into the system?

CLARE: This is now fundamentally an essential service for more than a million families across the country. It helps parents return to work, but more than that, this is a service that helps our children get ready for school.

Ask any principal at a local primary school, and they will tell you they can tell the children that have been in child care and pre school and the ones that haven't. They help to make sure that young people are ready to start learning when they get to school.

Now at the moment, there are some kids who miss out altogether, kids from really disadvantaged backgrounds. Building a universal system is fundamentally about helping them. We need to make it affordable; that's what cutting the cost of child care over the last few years has been about. We've got to make it more accessible, that's why we're rolling out a 15 per cent pay rise to early educators across the country and a billion-dollar fund to build more, but more important than that, most important of all is making sure that our kids are safe. That's fundamentally what this has to be all about. And you're right. There are billions of dollars of taxpayers' money that are invested in early education centres right across the country, for profit and not for profit, and if they're not up to scratch, if they're not meeting the standards to keep our kids safe, then we've got to have the power to pull the money.

LIPSON: If you pull the money, though, doesn't that just result in those centres closing down, adding more pressure to a system that's already under strain?

CLARE: That's why you've got to make sure that these centres meet those standards, and if the threat of money being pulled out means that they lift their standard, then everyone will benefit.

LIPSON: Do we need a Royal Commission?

CLARE: We've had one. We've had a Royal Commission, we've had a review into child safety, I commissioned that, as I said, after that paedophile was arrested and convicted in Queensland. We've got the recommendations, now we've got to implement them.

In all of the conversations that we've been having in the last 24 hours, Dave, it's not about what do we need to do, it's how we do it, and that's what I've charged Education Ministers with across the country, to pull all of this together and work on a national plan, a nationwide plan to implement the reforms to help keep our children safe.

There are things that the states can do on their own, and there are things that we, as a Commonwealth Government, can do, either by implementing legislation like the legislation we've talked about today or helping to improve nationwide standards right across the country.

LIPSON: Jason Clare, thank you so much for your time this morning.

CLARE: Good on you, thanks mate.