Interview - Sunrise

NATALIE BARR: Well, turning now to an important issue for every young family in this country, our childcare sector. As part of a new safety crackdown, two thirds of workers have now completed new mandatory training recently rolled out by the Federal Government.

MATT SHIRVINGTON: The new update comes after the sector was plunged into crisis following a string of horror allegations that workers had abused children in their care. For more, we are joined by Jason Clare, Minister for Education. Good to have you with us. This mandatory training course takes only about two hours to complete. Is it enough to stop these monsters in the industry?

JASON CLARE: It's just one of the things that we have to do, Shirvo. But the fact that 180,000 childcare workers have already done the training, that two thirds of the workforce have already done the training in the first two months, is a good sign about how how seriously they're taking this. The other things that we're doing and that we have to do is ban mobile phones, the personal mobile phones being used in centres, and this is morning TV, so I'm not going to explain why that's important, but I think mums and dads will get that. We're trialing CCTV in centres and already we're seeing the impact of that. And we're also passing laws, or we've passed laws to cut funding off to centres that fail to meet the safety standards that we expect them to meet, and that's having an impact as well. Centres that haven't met the safety standards for seven years are now suddenly reacting, fixing the problems that have existed for years, because otherwise their funding that they rely upon will get cut off. So, it's all of that plus more.

BARR: How many have you cut off?

CLARE: So far, we've put orders on 83 different centres. The deadline for those centres comes in tranches. Already about 40 of those centres have hit their deadline. I think about 34 of those centres now, Nat, have suddenly fixed the problems that existed. About five centres have shut voluntarily and others, we've sent notices to them telling them that we're intending to cut their funding off.

SHIRVINGTON: The other issue is a centralised base for parents to be able to check in and see if the childcare workers are up to date on their Working with Children Checks, their Police Checks, etc. The National Continuous Checking Capability. How are we going with that? At any point, will parents be able to say, ‘well, this is the name of my carer, I want to make sure that they've got all their checks and they're up to date?’

CLARE: Yeah, well, there's two parts to that. One, there's a national register, like a school teacher register, so that we've got all the details of everybody who is working everywhere in the system, because you know that people move from centre to centre and from state to state, and police shouldn't have to go into a centre to find out the history of somebody. You should be able to do that at the press of a button, and that's why we've set that register up. But there's also improving the Working with Children Checks. That's something that the Attorney Generals across the country are working on, so that if somebody is banned in one part of the country, they're banned in another part of the country as well. There's a lot that we've got to do here and to be honest, this work will never be done. There'll always be bad people trying to penetrate the system here. You know, this is susceptible. A vulnerable system is going to be susceptible to people who are up to no good. That's why we've got to make the system as strong as we possibly can. And training, CCTV, banning phones, cutting off funding, improving Working with Children Checks are all the things that we have to do.

BARR: Ok, so when will parents be able to look at the Working with Children Checks?

CLARE: Well, parents will be able to get that sort of information from their centres. They've got an obligation for centres to publish information.

BARR: And when will that be in place?

CLARE: That's something that Attorney Generals are working on now, because they're responsible for Working with Children Checks.

BARR: Yes. So, when do you reckon? By the end of the year or by the end of the month?

CLARE: I don't have the detail on that, so I'm not going to be able to give you specific information. But we're also making sure that when you drop your child off at the centre, that there's information on the glass on the wall that tells you when the last time the centre was checked by the regulator and whether they're meeting safety standards or not. We want to make sure that parents have got the information they need to choose the best centre for their kids.

SHIRVINGTON: Should we ask the Attorney General if we can get that up and running? Because it feels like that is the layer of security that parents need to know, whether it is an interstate worker or not, that they have the right checks.

CLARE: Yeah, well, every single person who works in a child care centre needs to have a Working with Children Check. What Michelle Rowland, the Attorney General, is doing is two things. One, making sure that the systems in all of the states knit together, and if somebody's banned in one part of the country, they're banned in another. And that the same standard that we set for working with children exists right across the country.

BARR: Yeah. And do you know when the National Register's happening or do we ask her?

CLARE: Well, that's happening right now.

BARR: Okay, so it's up and running.

CLARE: And it started two months ago, so that's up and running.

BARR. Okay so, it's the Working with Children that we'll check with her. Jason, thank you very much for your time, for updating us.

CLARE: No worries. Thanks, guys.