Press Conference, Sydney

JASON CLARE, FEDERAL MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks very much for coming along. I think we all know why we’re here. Australians have been shocked and sickened by the revelations over the last few weeks and months. 

All Australians have been shocked and sickened, and there’s a group of Australians who are just as shocked, just as angry, just as broken as every other Australian, and that’s the incredible people who work in our early education and care system. Hundreds of thousands of them who love our kids, who care for our kids, who educate them, who dedicated their lives to this – one of the most important jobs in the world. 

And front and centre before we talk about the reforms that we’ve agreed to today, I want to talk to them. I want them to know that we see you, that we hear you, that we thank you for the work that you do for us. I’m one of that more than million Aussie mums and dads who rely upon you each and every day. And we know in discussing today all of the things that we need to do to keep our kids safe in early education and care. You’re the most important part of that. You’re the best asset that we’ve got here. And thank you for everything that you do for us and for our kids. 

We also know this – and I’ve been pretty blunt about it over the course of the last few weeks – we’ve made some changes to keep our kids safe, but not enough and not fast enough. And that’s obvious. Now, we’ve all get to step up here if we’re serious about keeping our kids safe. That means the Australian Government stepping up, it means states and territories stepping up, it means regulators stepping up, and it means the people who run our centres stepping up as well. Doing the work that is necessary to rebuild confidence for mums and dads in a system that they need to have confidence in. And that’s what the discussion today, the decisions that we made today, are fundamentally all about. 

We’ve already taken action. We’ve passed legislation through the Federal Parliament a couple of weeks ago to give us the power to cut off funding to centres that aren’t up to scratch, that aren’t meeting the safety standards that parents expect and that our kids deserve. That legislation has passed and we’re now using it. 

Over the course of the last 48 hours we’ve published the names of 37 centres that have been sent notices indicating that unless they meet those standards they risk having their funding cut off. Without that funding, they can’t operate. And I think most parents would accept the argument that if taxpayers’ money is going to be invested to operate an early education and care centre, then we expect them to meet those standards and keep our kids safe. Fundamentally, that is what that legislation is all about – 37 centres on notice already. There’s more to come. 

The decisions that we took today are the next step, the next things that we need to do to help keep our children safe in early education and care. And we’ve agreed today to establish a national educator register, national mandatory child safety training for all workers in our early education and care centres, a national assessment of CCTV in up to 300 centres across the country, a banning of mobile phones in our centres with proactive enforcement of that by states and territories, more information for mums and dads so they know the conditions of the centres that their children are attending, and more enforcement as well – more work by our regulators, more work by my Federal Department of Education going into centres with unannounced visits. 

On the national register, work on that will begin immediately. That will be developed from scratch by ACECQA. It will require changes to the national law. It will require legislation. And we will pilot that, we will trial that, in December of this year with it rolling out from February of next year. 

On the training – I gave a shoutout at the start to the people who work in our centres – this training, the work on it will start immediately. It will be developed by the Australian Centre for Child Protection and will roll out from next year. We are very conscious in everything that we do here that training people who work in our centres to be able to spot a person who might be hiding in plain sight, up to bad things, trying not just to groom our kids but to groom them, could be the most crucial and important thing that we do here to help keep our kids safe. 

The trial of CCTV will roll out from October or November of this year and will involve funding from the Commonwealth as part of the $189 million of extra investment by the Commonwealth to support the installation of that for small and medium operators, in particular not-for-profit operators as well. 

The banning of mobile phones rolling out from September of this year as well with active enforcement by state and territory regulators and an extra 1,600 spot visits by the Federal Department of Education principally to focus on fraud but with the ability to identify where there are safety concerns in different centres and to provide that feedback back to state regulators to keep our kids safe. 

Is it everything that we need to do? No, of course it’s not. But it’s the next thing that we must do and that we’ve agreed to do today. And I really want to thank all of my state and territory colleagues. It’s not just $189 million of extra Australian Government funding; it’s more than $130 million of extra state and territory funding here as well. This is a team effort. Australia expects all of us to work together. They’re not interested in excuses. They expect Labor and Liberal, state, territory, federal all to work together – the private sector, the for-profits, the not-for-profits. They don’t give a damn about the difference or the breakdown or who’s responsible for what – they just want their kids to be safe. And I hope that you see in the decisions that we made today that we’re serious about that as well. 

We’re serious about making sure that the paramount – the most important thing – in our early education and care system is making sure that our kids are safe. This is not the end. But it’s the next thing that we need to do. The awful truth is that this work will never end because there will always be bad people who try to poke holes in the system, find vulnerabilities. They focus not just on vulnerable kids but a vulnerable system, and there are vulnerabilities in the system. The work we have done today is about trying to strengthen that system to keep our kids safe. And I thank again, my state and territory colleagues for the work that we’ve done together today. I think the work that we’ve done is going to make a real meaningful difference. 

I’ll hand over to Jess and then invite my colleagues to make a few remarks. 

JESS WALSH, FEDERAL MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: Thanks very much, Jason. 

Parents across the country expected their education ministers from across the Commonwealth to come together and unite today around a strong plan, and that is exactly what we have done. We have joined together and stood shoulder to shoulder to make sure we can keep our children safe in early childhood education and care. 

We’ve agreed on by working together the strongest and most significant package of child safety reforms in our nation’s history. Some of the big items in that package are the first nation wide register of early childhood educators ever, mandatory child safety training for everyone who works in early childhood education and care. That is going to be really important in driving child safe cultures in early childhood education. And we also think that parents have a right to know what’s going on in their early learning centres, so we’re working together to provide parents with more information immediately about breaches in their services and the standards in their services. 

Again, this has been a really horrific time for Australia’s children and for parents. What they want from us is to work together, and that is exactly what we have done. Together the Commonwealth, the states and the territories are working shoulder to shoulder on a big, strong, significant package of reforms that will help keep our children safe. 

We’ve been hosted today by our New South Wales colleagues, and I’ll turn now to Minister Courtney Houssos for some comments. 

COURTNEY HOUSSOS, NSW ACTING MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND EARLY LEARNING: Thank you, so much, Jason and Jess for bringing us together today, and we are hosting this special meeting of education ministers from around the country. I thank all my colleagues for coming together and addressing such an important issue. It’s true there have been awful and horrific allegations that have been seen across our childcare centres, and it’s so important that we have a national approach and that we work together to solve this problem as we rebuild trust in our early learning and care centres across the country. 

I took the opportunity today to brief ministers as we have previously on the important reforms that we’re doing here in New South Wales as a result of the Wheeler review, and they include changes to give more transparency to parents, more information for parents. As we rebuild that trust, we know that if we can give them specific information about what’s going on in their centres, that will help rebuild that confidence. And that was important to see those changes progress today. 

We welcome the establishment of a national register. We think that’s really important, that this is something that’s done at a national level. And I take this opportunity, again, as my colleagues have, to reiterate that our educators do wonderful work each and every day across centres here in New South Wales and across the country. And we want to support them to lift the standards, and that’s what we’ve agreed to today. So there was a real sense of urgency around the need for reform today. That’s something that’s shared by all of us, and it’s really important as we rebuild that trust that we continue to work together.

I appreciate the opportunity to work closely with our federal colleagues but, in particular, with our Victorian colleagues, and I hand to Lizzie Blandthorn now. 

LIZZIE BLANDTHORN, VICTORIAN MINISTER FOR CHILDREN: Thank you, Minister Houssos, and thank you to Ministers Clare and Walsh for bringing us all together today in the name of improved outcomes for children and children’s safety. 

At the outset I want to acknowledge the circumstances that have led up to this meeting and, in particular, in Victoria I want to acknowledge the circumstances that have led over the last six weeks to our rapid review and, indeed, the responses that the Victorian Premier and I made to that review earlier this week. I want to acknowledge the families who have been involved in those circumstances and, in particular, the children. And I also want to acknowledge the workforce. We know that this has also been a particularly difficult time for the workforce, and we know that the vast majority of people who work in our education and care settings do so with the best interests of children at heart. 

When in Victoria we learned of these sickening and evil circumstances many weeks ago now we took immediate action to ban devices from the end of September in our early education and care settings, and we also took immediate action to set up a register. We’re really pleased here today to be part of a national conversation where we are now talking about the banning of devices across the country and where we’re also talking about the establishment of a national register. 

Where there are vulnerable systems and vulnerable people, there is, indeed, risk. And so the more we can build national systems that will keep children safe both across borders and between sectors that work with children, that is critical. That’s why in Victoria we’re also – earlier announced this week that we would also reform our Working with Children’s Check, that we would reform our Reportable Conduct Scheme and we would reform our Child Safe Standards and we would bring them all together in our Social Services Regulation so that we would have an independent early education regulator and we would have a social services regulator that brings together all those areas in which people work with children and with other vulnerable people and where there is, therefore, risk. 

One of the most important things – and our reviewers Jay Weatherill and Pam White told us this – is that at the core of all decisions when it comes to child safety, the paramount interests of the child must come first. We see this in our child protection legislation around the country – that the best interests of the children are first. But, sadly it has not always been the case in this sector. I was really pleased today to move that we put paramountcy of children into our national law, and I’m really pleased to be able to say that all of our colleagues here today have agreed that the number one consideration has to be the best interests of the child. 

We know that education and care is important, but our gravest responsibility is for the safety of children, and I think the collective work of my colleagues here today will help us deliver that. As Minister Clare said, of course there is always more to do. 

In Victoria we’ve received 22 recommendations this week. But here today there has also been an acknowledgement that there is still a lot more to do and we look forward to continuing that important work in the coming weeks and months and years but, in particular, we look forward to the October meeting where we will also further discuss some of these items. I can say that of the 15 recommendations in Victoria this week, 10 of them are either agreed in full or agreed in part by the action that we’ve taken here today. Thank you. 

BLAIR BOYER, SOUTH AUSTRALIAN MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, TRAINING AND SKILLS: I’ve been coming to these meetings in different capacities for the best part of 12 years, and I can say with my hand on my heart that today the decisions that were taken at this special education ministers meeting were the most significant and the most important. 

We all know that nothing is more important than child safety, and I think we are at a very important time in our history nationally in terms of trying to turn those terrible events that have occurred into real actions to address issues of child safety but also to do more in terms of trying to prevent those people who would seek to have access to vulnerable children for nefarious reasons. 

And in South Australia we have as part of these reforms announced today by Jason and Jess committed $21.8 million across the next five years to make sure we can increase the levels of assessments and ratings and compliance, including unannounced visits of our centres. I think there’s a big list of things that have been achieved today and things that we are doing. Nothing more important than more eyes on children and more eyes on centres, and we are committed to delivering that. 

I know this sector has taken a real hit. We’ve heard from Jason, Jess and Lizzie and Courtney around the effect that this has on the workforce, and that is a very real effect that we need to consider at a time when it is harder to find workers in this area than it has ever been. 

But, of course, today we are also united in appreciating that there has been a really big effect on parents as well. And almost everyone I think here – and certainly myself included – remember what it was like dropping off my own eldest daughter for the first time at a long day care centre and that feeling of vulnerability you have as a parent when you leave and leave them there in the care of early childhood educators. It is a big step for any parent to take. And I know that when we hear stories of terrible things happening in those centres the confidence that parents and grandparents and carers have in the safety of their children in those settings takes a real hit as well. 

But a bit of me today when we were having these conversations and deciding on these important decisions actually wished that some of those parents and those grandparents and carers could have been in the room to see the commitment that was there. It has been led by Jason and Jess. They have pushed us hard, but we have all come to the party here on making sure that we don’t just sign up to these new reforms but we actually put new money in as well, which certainly is what South Australia has done along with being the first out of the blocks with Lizzie in Victoria to put that personal mobile device ban in place as well. 

I just want to acknowledge the leadership that we’ve had from Jason and Jess. I think the decisions that we’ve made today will be looked back upon in years to come and hopefully it will be a real turning point in the sector in terms of rebuilding trust but also, as Jason said, making sure that those people who seek to get access to those kids who are absolute experts at doing it in terms of getting access to not just vulnerable kids but also vulnerable systems will no longer be able to do that because of changes we’re all making in our own states and territories, but work we’re also doing to actually close the gaps that might exist across state and territory borders so those people can’t jump into other jurisdictions and continue those terrible things.

JOHN-PAUL LANGBROEK, QUEENSLAND MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Well, John-Paul Langbroek from Queensland. I’m here on behalf of my 50,000 educators in more than 3,300 services, and I know including this week we’ve had a particularly tragic incident where those childcare workers were absolute heroes. And as Blair Boyer has said from South Australia, I’ve been coming to these meetings since 2012 when I worked with then Ministers Kate Ellis and Sussan Ley, and we would never have imagined that we’d be here 13 years later talking about the things that we’ve had to talk about because of what’s been happening in this sector over a long time. 

But that’s why we’re very happy in the most decentralised state in the country to have the acknowledgement that a national educator register is something we’ve been lobbying for. As part of our fresh start in Queensland we’ve also had a review into the Blue Card or Working with Children system, and we’ve also made sure that we’ve got a commission into the whole child safety system.

We’ve got a statement of shared commitment from all of our members of the sector, which is highlighting the importance of our children and their safety, and that’s why we’re very happy to be here today with mobile phone restrictions, as well as more information for parents so that we want all parents to have the security of knowing that their children are safe when they’re in early child care – early childhood and care education. 

I also want to thank all of the colleagues with whom it’s been my pleasure to have our first in-person meeting, and especially our federal ministers who have been leading this. So great to be here. 

JO HERSEY, NORTHERN TERRITORY MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING: Jo Hersey, Minister for Education and Training, Northern Territory. 

It has been great to be here in Sydney for this Education Ministers Meeting. I absolutely want to acknowledge the work that Jason Clare and Jess have done throughout this reform. In the Northern Territory we are committed to these national safety reforms. We’ve 236 centres and we have complex issues right throughout the territory, but one thing that we are certainly committed to is the safety of our children. And I think we’ve heard collectively here today in the room that that is of paramount importance. And so, I look forward to rolling out these reforms and working together with the national ministers right across the country. 

JO PALMER, TASMANIAN MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Hi everyone, Jo Palmer, joining you from Tasmania as the Minister for Education. I think one of the most frustrating things as a politician, as a minister, is that we don’t have a lever we can pull that will legislate or mandate or put into regulation, human decency. We don’t have that lever available to us. But what we can do is we can put in place whatever barriers we deem necessary to ensure that we are reducing the risk to some of our most vulnerable children who are in care across Australia. 

And one of the greatest tools that we have in the toolbox to develop those barriers and to develop these recommendations is collaboration, and it’s communicating with each other and it’s states and territories coming together with the Commonwealth to share the information and what we’re doing in our own jurisdictions. Because this is not just about children in one particular part of Australia; we are fighting for the safety of a small child in remote western part of Tasmania, to a child living the heart of Sydney, to a child in the Northern Territory. We have come together with an absolute team effort to ensure that right across this country we are putting in place barriers to really reduce that risk for our young people. 

We know the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are absolutely paramount in their development, in their development of their little minds, in development of creativity, about how they feel about themselves. And our early childhood educators play such a pivotal role in being part of that development for our young people. So we thank them for the care that they give. We thank them that they are part of this conversation. They are proud of the work that they do, and we are proud of the work that they do. And so it’s wonderful to see the collaboration right across Australia, across all of our sectors and across all our states and territories. 

We know when it comes to abuse the most – the place where abuse thrives is in dark spaces or in silent spaces. So we are being very loud about this right across this country that we will do everything we can to shine a light into these – into this sector and to be as loud as we can about the barriers we will be putting in place and the recommendations that have come out of today. 

I’m just so proud to be representing my small island state and to be part of a group of political leaders who’ve come together from all different shades of politics with one common thing in mind – we want to reduce the risk to our children. We want parents to feel encouraged and safe in the knowledge that when they take their child to be in the care of an early childhood educator that they are safe. And above all, we want our little ones to thrive, because they are the next generation of leaders for our country. Thank you. 

SABINE WINTON, WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks, everyone, Sabine Winton representing Western Australia. And I have to say, this has been certainly the most important meeting of ministers that I’ve ever attended – very powerful, very inspiring and a shared determination to make sure that we have a system right across Australia that keeps children first as our number one priority. And certainly that is reflected in the key decisions and commitments that we’ve made collectively. 

I want to just briefly acknowledge the Albanese Government and the leadership of Jason and Jess in this important work. That leadership and the significant improvements and initiatives in terms of the system, we need to recognise comes really from a place of valuing and supporting the extraordinary educators right around Australia who do an enormous job each and every day in nurturing and developing our youngest little learners. 

There have been comments made by other ministers, and I concur – it is a difficult time right around Australia not only for parents but, of course, those important educators who get up, show up every single day with passion to develop and nurture young people. And to them I say some of the decisions we’ve made today are about you and supporting you in helping you to continue to keep our children safe. 

And so, in particular, around the mandatory training that we’ve announced today, this is a significant initiative, and the investment that the Federal Government is putting on the table to that end is critically important. When we talk about children’s safety, more eyes, more ears and more bodies in centres make sure that we not only keep children safe but provide that comfort to parents that their children are safe in those centres. 

Western Australia undertook a quick short, sharp review about a month ago in anticipation also of this important meeting so that I might also be advised about some immediate steps that our government in Western Australia could take to ensure that we’ve got the capacity to stand shoulder to shoulder with state partners and also the federal government to make sure that we are fully committed and also resourced to go forward with these important decisions and initiatives we’ve made today. Thank you. 

YVETTE BERRY, ACT MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND EARLY CHILDHOOD: Yvette Berry, Minister for Education and Early Childhood in the ACT. 

I don’t think there’s much more I can add to what has already been said, but acknowledge that this is a momentous day for early childhood education and care services across the country. This is the most that has been invested in early childhood education and care services for over a decade since the National Quality Framework was implemented across our early childhood systems. So it needs to be recognised the level of investment – tens of millions of dollars, legislative change, policy change and a recognition that when we value educators we value children. 

So that investment in professional development of our educators is a really important, part of this whole suite of changes that are being made across the country. It might seem small in the world of things that are going to be happening within the sector and across the country, but in my view it is one of the most important because when we work together as a community, as families, as early childhood educators, that’s when we start shifting the culture in our early childhood system. 

So, recognising the expertise of educators – and you’ve heard that from everyone here today – is an important part of the way forward to resolving some of the challenges that we’ve faced lately. And I acknowledge the sickening events that have happened across the country and how scared parents are feeling for their children, and we should be feeling scared for our children. But we need to work in partnership with the sector and with early childhood educators. 

And I also want to acknowledge Jason and Jess and the Albanese Government. As I said, this is the most funding I have seen invested in a sector since the National Quality Framework over a decade ago. Yes, it’s come about as a result of some fairly significant and challenging circumstances. It is something that the sector and early childhood educators have been calling on for years, so we need to acknowledge that that work has led us to this place as well. And hearing from parents and educators as part of this system of reforms has been an important part of this work. 

As Jason said, it’s only the start of bigger things and more to come. And I look forward to meeting with my colleagues about what that investment might look like into the future, working very closely with the sector and, of course, with parents and ensuring that children have a voice in that process as well. Thank you. 

CLARE: All right. Happy to take some questions. I’m sure all my colleagues are happy to take any questions you might have. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, can you give us some more information about how the national register for workers might work? Is it the plan to just include just the names and employment history of childcare workers, or will there be scope for including red flag behaviour like complaints to police, even if they don’t result in criminal charges? 

CLARE: Yeah, it’s a good question. 

So I explained the timeframe of it, that it will be built by ACECQA, that it will be trialled in December and rolled out for February, but it will roll out in stages. Initially it will have that information that you just described – the name of who’s working in our centres and where they are. 

But over time we want to build all of that information into it so we can see employment history, so we can have the information that’s needed to identify red flags, to tell us that someone’s moving quickly from centre to centre to centre to be able to identify that somebody might be up to no good. That’s an important part of what we want to do here – have information embedded in it about Working with Children Checks as well. 

Let me underline a point that would already be apparent to you – this is not a silver bullet, none of this is. None of it’s a guarantee, but it is an essential component in what we need to do if we’re going to keep our children safe. The experience in Victoria in the last couple of weeks – and I know Lizzie would be as frustrated as anybody about this – is that the police had to get search warrants to go into individual centres to get written material to find out where this alleged offender had been working and when. That sort of information should be available at a click of a button. And that’s the intention behind the decision today. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, just on the mandatory child safety training, some parents I spoke to this morning were just kind of shocked that that wasn’t already happening. It’s been happening in some countries overseas for 10 years. How badly have parents been let down by government regulations? 

CLARE: There’s already training built into the courses that people do at TAFE and at university. This is taking it to the next level. Everything we’ve heard individually and collectively today tells us that perhaps the most important thing we can do is skill up the workforce to be able to identify somebody who is hiding in plain sight, not just grooming kids but grooming them. We’ve seen examples and heard examples of that over the past few weeks. 

So there’s nothing more important in everything we’ve announced today than the sort of training that we can provide to our workforce, not just the educators – everybody, including the boss that may not be working in the centre but is working in a tower like this. The boss of an ASX-listed company needs to do the training, too. Everybody needs to get this and get the skills that they need. 

Part of the conversation that we had today is how we roll that training out. There’ll be about $20 million of Commonwealth funding to support that. But we’re also very conscious that we don’t want to put the burden on workers to do this sort of training afterhours. We want to, just like the teaching profession gets that professional development built into their ordinary day, sometimes at the start of a school year or before kids go back after school holidays, we want to try to build that into the system, too. If we truly recognise this is a profession, this is a serious profession doing some of the most important work in the world, we need to value that properly and build that training into the work that they do. 

JOURNALIST: Would the CCTV trial be accompanied by the four eyes principles, where you have two adults visible to other children all the time? 

CLARE: Two separate things. As part of a decision we made today we’re having a look at that principle and we’re looking at ratios, the way they operate. We’re going to ask ACECQA to do some work for us on that and report back to us before the end of the year. 

The CCTV trial will involve a mixture of centres that have it – a number of centres have either got it in place now or are planning to put it in place. A number of centres, I think particularly in New South Wales out of the Wheeler review, are being told they must have CCTV, and they can be part of the trial as well. But the funding for small operators will enable centres who want to be part of the trial to get some funding to install the equipment in their centres. 

Then that takes us to the big question about where do the cameras go and where shouldn’t they go. Some operators have said they must not be in areas like the change area or the toilets. And then the even bigger question, which is about privacy, which is about the threat that any information that is collected with CCTV could be hacked by paedophiles for all of the nefarious reasons that Blair talked about. 

Now the police tell us that this can be an important aspect in deterring bad behaviour and where bad behaviour does occur it can be important in their investigation to catch the crooks afterwards, not just the sexual assault of children, but have a think about the Four Corners exposé – everybody it exposed about neglect and abuse of children in centres. If a camera is there, it helps to prove it. 

But we’ve got to make sure that this is rolling out in centres either because the centre chooses to do it or we fund it, that we get it right. And that’s why we want to work with the Centre for Child Protection on the rules about this – who holds the data, where is the information stored – to make sure that we keep our kids safe and we don’t do the opposite of what we’re all intending here and create a honey pot for bad people. So that’s what the trial is all about.

JOURNALIST: So what will that look like? Will there be regulatory requirements that go with the implementation of CCTV? 

CLARE: This will be oversighted by the Australian Centre for Child Protection and ACECQA that will provide that advice. We’ll commission an organisation to help us design the trial and to review it. It will kick off, as I said, October or November of this year and report back to ministers on the progress of that trial at each and every meeting that we have over the next year, but we’re expecting to get all of that back by the third quarter of next year. 

JOURNALIST: Sorry, will it apply also to providers that already have CCTV, some of which have it for years and have yet to develop a CCTV policy that mandates how it’s stored and who can access it? 

CLARE: That’s the intention. They may not be part of the trial, but they’ll certainly be part of the outcome of the trial. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, just on the register again, will it be mandatory for childcare operators to notify the registrar when a worker is fired by a provider or resigns? 

CLARE: The short answer to that is yes. In order for the register to work, providers need to put all that information into it. In order to make that mandatory, we need to change the law – not Commonwealth law, but what’s called national law. Complicated, but let me try and explain it briefly – it requires us to make a decision, which we’ve done today, and then the Victorian parliament as the host of the national law, to pass a bill through the Victorian parliament. 

This can sometimes be a slow and clunky process. We got the WD40 out today to oil the wheels and get this done. And I particularly want to thank you, Lizzie, for the leadership that you’re providing and the work that your team are doing to develop that legislation that will be introduced into the Victorian parliament and hopefully passed through the Victorian parliament this year that does that, but also does a bunch of other things that we need to do, including making the child safety training mandatory. We need legislation to do that, and that will get passed by the Victorian parliament. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, just on staffing, a lot of people have mentioned staff, rightly. But ahead of this meeting they’ve been calling for an end to staffing ratio loopholes. And as my colleague mentioned, the four eyes or the two adults principle in terms of always having two people being present. Why weren’t those initiatives [indistinct] today? 

CLARE: They are, and so there was a decision that we made about charging ACECQA, the national quality authority, to do that work for us. 

JOURNALIST: So [indistinct] will give the government more control over the regulation and the safety. But [indistinct] in pursuit of that reform system. What is your response to the argument that measures like bringing in CCTV is a red herring and would the government – should the government instead be focused on deeper structural reform. 

CLARE: I think I described this as the next step. This is not everything. It’s the next things that we need to do. There are a suite of different things that we’re doing. We’ve talked – all of us have talked about workforce. One of the things that we did last year was roll out a 15 per cent pay rise to all early educators across the country. That’s important. That’s making a difference right now because people who left this extraordinarily important profession are coming back to the sector. And we need them back. 

The safest places are the places where people aren’t temps or aren’t labour hire but they’re permanent and they love working there and they’ve worked there for a long time. You know there’s something wrong when you can see someone moving from centre to centre to centre or when people are just moved on rather than stopped by the system that should be stopping them. So that investment counts. That’s one of the examples of the investment that the government is making to build a stronger system, and that’s working because we’re seeing an increase in applications and a drop in vacancies. 

The three-day guarantee changes that come into place from next year are about making sure that every child gets access to early education and care and every child gets access to it at the level that they need. That doesn’t exist at the moment, but it will because of those changes. I’m not saying that what we’ve announced today is everything. It’s not. But it is the next thing that we need to do. 

JOURNALIST: What’s next in the pursuit of universal childcare? 

CLARE: I won’t pre-empt that today. But we asked the Productivity Commission to do a big piece of work for us on that. We’ve now got their report. We’re implementing the pay rise, we’re implementing a billion-dollar fund to build more centres where they don’t exist at the moment, we’re getting rid of that activity test to make sure that more kids get access to early education and care. There’s more to do. I won’t be announcing that today. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, multiple reports have found that the regulators, which are responsible for the inspections and for penalties against childcare providers are underfunded to do their job. It used to be the case that the Commonwealth funded that in partnership with the states, but that agreement stopped in 2018. Is the Commonwealth considering re-investing in funding the states regulators so they can do their job? 

CLARE: I would just make the general point that we’ve all got to step up here. And I hope you see in the announcement we’ve made today that we are stepping up. 

The New South Wales government is investing an extra $55 million into services and into work like that. 

The Victorian government is investing an extra $42 million into regulators and into the work they need to do to make sure that we’ve got inspections happening at the rate that they need to happen. 

The South Australian government has announced an extra $22 million for exactly the same thing. 

As part of the $189 million that we’ve announced, a big chunk about that is about $73 million for my department to do work like that, and about $20 million on a joint compliance and monitoring program with the states as well. 

So it’s an example of us working together. We’re not going to fix this unless we work as a team. And I hope that you see in the announcements that we’ve made today that this isn’t just the Commonwealth doing something or the states doing something; this is all of us working together to get the job done. 

JOURNALIST: There won’t be a similar joint partnership funding of the regulators, as we saw [indistinct]? 

CLARE: Well, I point you to what I’ve just mentioned there around the $20 million for joint compliance and monitoring. That’s an example of the Commonwealth investing more funds to support state and territory regulators. 

JOURNALIST: Will the register also be used to verify workers’ qualifications? 

CLARE: Potentially, yeah. We think that as we develop and build this register over time it’s an opportunity to build that type of skills passport or that qualification index that tells us more information about individuals in our centres. Again, that’s not about sort of pointing people out, it’s about recognising that this is a profession. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, just on the spot checks, you’ve mentioned 1600 that were mostly for fraud. Does there need to be more of that? I mean, there’s 15,000 centres in Australia. Should there be an annual off-the-cuff inspection? 

CLARE: That’s just one part of the puzzle, right? This is an extra 1600 spot checks by the Commonwealth government every year. That’s on top of what we already do. That, in a sense, pays for itself because we know that there is fraud in childcare. A classic example of that is where a centre might say that a child was there for three days and they’re only there for two. You turn up and you find out that the Commonwealth taxpayer is being defrauded because the child isn’t there. So that investment helps to make sure that there’s less fraud in the system. 

But those extra inspectors, while they’re there will also have an eye out to see is a personal phone being used, is there something in the centre which isn’t safe. And they’re not empowered to take action there but in a joined-up system like the one we’re building they can ring the state regulator and say there’s a problem at the centre down the road. 

JOURNALIST: Do you have any figures of how many inspections in total take place? 

CLARE: I’ll come back to you and give you the number, yeah. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, what’s the threshold for parents being notified of any breaches in childcare centres? 

CLARE: I think the big problem at the moment is parents don’t know what’s going on in their centres. It sometimes depends on the relationship you have with your individual centre. I think JP made the point – where are you, mate? – that a bit like politicians, we might like our local politician, but not politicians in general. We might like our local centre, but we’re buggered if we know how the whole system is working. 

And I can tell you, and all of us have talked about how important our educators are – I won’t go on and tell you about Kelly and Kerry and all of wonderful people who look after my little guy at the moment – we entrust the most precious things in our lives with these young people. And it is important that parents know what is going on. 

So today we agreed that on the Starting Blocks website, the national website for the childcare sector, that there’ll be more information available to parents in terms of conditions that have been imposed on centres and also information about when was the last time the regulator was there. That will all go up from September. From November more information will be on that site for parents to be able to tell them where there’s been breaches or where there’s been enforcement action imposed by the regulator on the centre. 

The next step after that is something that came out of the Wheeler Review that was also recommended in the Weatherill Review, which is physical information in the foyer, in the reception area, of the centre so parents when they walk in or carry in their kids into the centre can see what has been imposed on that centre, what conditions, what enforcement actions, where they rate, whether they’re meeting the standard or not. Now, we might need legislation to do that, and so we’re going to make a further decision about what when we meet in October. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, speaking of standards, one of the ideas or proposals that came out of the Victorian review was to establish an administrator for services that are defunded and closed for failing to meet these standards. Did that come up in today’s meeting at all? 

CLARE: We were briefed on that by the team that did that rapid review. Jay Weatherill briefed us on the recommendations. We didn’t go into the detail of that. Each state does this a little bit differently. So, for example, in South Australia where there’s a centre that’s under investigation where we’re concerned that they are not meeting the relevant standards, they’ve got the capacity to put in an expert into that centre to help them reach the standard. If this legislation works the way we want it to work, we’re not talking about centres shutting down, we’re talking about centres getting up to the standards that our parents expect and that our kids deserve. 

I don’t want to shut centres down. I know what that means for parents. That’s why we’re giving centres six months. That’s why we told centres last week you’ve got a week to tell parents before we make it public that you’re a centre where we’ve imposed these conditions. 

And now the work begins working with those centres to make sure they meet those standards. But the fact is, those 37 centres that got put on that list yesterday and the day before, they have been failing to meet the standards that we have set as a country for seven years – seven years. So I’m serious about this. This is not an idle threat. Meet the standard or risk being shut down. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, just to clarify, so what information will the national register show? So it will be work history, whether someone’s been disciplined, someone’s been – 

CLARE: I think I answered in the last question, but I might give Jess an opportunity. Do you want to? 

WALSH: Sure. So the register will include the contact details of early childhood educators who work across the country and details of where they work. It will also include information that regulators have, including who’s prohibited, who’s under investigation and what the status of people’s Working with Children’s Checks are right now. 

It is, as Jason said, really quite extraordinary that we don’t have that kind of register right now today. And as Jason said, the fact that the Victorian Police were having to use search and seize powers to go and find paper rosters to figure out where someone had worked, that is just not good enough, and that stops with this register. 

JOURNALIST: I have a question for Minister Blandthorn, if that’s all right. 

JOURNALIST: Yep. Minister Blandthorn, you said on Wednesday that looking at the system as a whole in terms of the public and – sorry, the not-for-profit and for-profit sections of it, that if you were to set up a childcare system from scratch this is not how you would do it. The market has grown considerably at the for-profit end and that you were looking forward to have a good conversation with your colleagues today about nationalising childcare across the country. Is that something that was discussed, and are you looking at clamping down on the for-profit sector and bringing more of it under government or not-for-profit control? 

LIZZIE BLANDTHORN: What I did say on Wednesday – and I’ve said it a number of times over recent weeks – is our childcare system, our early education and care system, has grown considerably since it was first established, and not in the way that we would choose to set it up if we were to start from scratch. 

That’s not to say that you wouldn’t still have a mix of types of providers within it – of course you probably would, and you need to. But what we do need to make sure that we do is have a national rethink, and I raised this today and certainly our reviewers from the rapid review in Victoria – Jay Weatherill and Pam White – raised this, is that we do need to have a national conversation about what are our expectations of our early education and care system. 

We’ve done that here today, and we’ve plotted out the pathway for some reforms to that, but there is still more work to do, and there is absolutely more to do to make sure that, as we’ve said today, we will put paramountcy of children’s best interests in the national law. And that extends from the service to the boardroom, that we need to make sure that however a service is run, whoever owns it, that the best interests of the children are key. 

CLARE: One last thing I just wanted to say, and that is I want to thank – I’m going to do something you don’t often see politicians do – I want to thank the Federal Opposition. I want to thank Sussan Ley and I want to thank Jono Duniam, the new Shadow Minister for Education, for their support and for the work that they’re doing with us to make sure that we get this right. I had the opportunity to brief the shadow minister last night and will brief him on the details of what we’ve just decided here today this afternoon. I think this is what people expect of us. 

This is Labor and Liberal, this is state and territory, this is all of us working together. They don’t want to see political bun fights. They don’t want excuses; they want us to make decisions that are going to keep their kids safe, and I think we did a good thing today. Thanks very much. 

JOURNALIST: On the other end of your portfolio, on the other spectrum – universities, the tertiary sector, you addressed education summit early in the week. There has been cancellation of certain academics, such as Randa Abdel-Fattah. You also ordered a specific investigation while saying that there was no political interference, or you vowed that when you – in your portfolio. But her ARC grant was cancelled. So many academics are also fearing the censorship in universities. Does your government have a responsibility to actually talk to academics rather than the managerial class that is running these universities? 

CLARE: I’ll just make the general point – and I made it earlier this week at the AFR summit – that if you don’t think there’s a problem with university governance, you’ve been living under a rock. And whether that is sexual assault and harassment that’s been at universities or wage theft or anything else, our universities – we’ve been talking about stepping up today, right, stepping up on child safety – our universities have to step up when it comes to good governance. And one of the things that we as a group of ministers will consider when we meet in Queensland in October will be reforms to improve the governance of our universities. So stay tuned – there’ll be more on that when we meet again next month. 

JOURNALIST: And does that include the freedom of expression of academics who have had their research cancelled? 

CLARE: You will see part of that when we get the expert report. 

ENDS