Transcript - ABC Afternoon Briefing with Patricia Karvelas

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: I spoke to the Early Childhood Education Minister, Jess Walsh, a short time ago. Minister, welcome to the program. When will the national register be up and running?

SENATOR DR JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND MINISTER FOR YOUTH: Well, thanks for having me, PK. Yes, these are really big reforms. This is a really strong and significant package of reforms to keep children safe in early childhood education. And parents wanted us to come together and make some big decisions today, and that’s exactly what the Commonwealth and State and Territory Ministers have done. One of the pieces of reform, as you’ve said, is the first ever nationwide register for early childhood educators. Work on that will start immediately now that we have approved that register. And it will start in December and become mandatory in February.

KARVELAS: And how will workers keep that registration? How will that register be different, for instance, to a Working with Children’s Check? 

WALSH: So this is the first nationwide register that will allow regulators to know who’s working in early childhood education and where they’re working. At the moment, state regulators can't see that information, even for their own state. And we're going to allow regulators to see that information and share it. And what we want is for regulators to be able to track patterns of behaviour of early childhood educators and raise red flags. It’s also going to be really useful in the event that terrible circumstances like this ever happen again in early childhood education. We’ve had a situation in Victoria where police have had to use search and seize powers to go in and find pieces of paper to tell us where the alleged Victorian offender worked. That’s not good enough. That information should be available at the touch of a button, and it will be with this register. 

KARVELAS: So what sort of issues can lead to people losing their registration? 

WALSH: This is really a register, PK, the first nationwide register of early childhood educators. It’s about who they are, where they work, and it will allow regulators to track their behaviours and also share information about concerns about those regulators. Down the track, as we build up this system, professional registration of the kind that you’re talking about can be added on. Right now, our priority is to stand up this register so that we know where our early childhood educators are working and regulators can direct their action based on that information. 

KARVELAS: Teachers can lose their registration. So when can child care workers lose their registration in the same way? 

WALSH: So, we’re talking about a couple of different things, I think, here, PK. This is the first nationwide register that allows us to know where early educators are, where they’re working. And it will allow regulators to have information and to be able to share it and to raise red flags. Some of the issues that you’re talking about there, I think, go to when someone is prohibited from working in early childhood education. And those prohibitions do occur, and those prohibitions will also be included in this first ever nationwide register. 

KARVELAS: Right. So, the prohibitions will lead to someone being deregistered officially? 

WALSH: That’s right. If someone is prohibited – and that can happen today – they won’t be able to work in early childhood education. And I think it’s worth noting, PK, a lot of the discussion around the table today with Ministers from across the country was focused on really reinforcing just how dedicated and committed and professional the vast majority of our early childhood educators are. And this package of reforms is about supporting them to do a good job while we’re making sure that we close the door on that small minority of people who might seek to do harm. And one of the really big investments that we want to make together is in training for that workforce. We will make mandatory child safety training. Of course, there is already training for educators about how to keep children safe. But this training is targeted to deal with some of the really horrific issues that we’ve been seeing in early childhood education. It’s about seeing signs of abuse in children, also seeing signs of grooming of children amongst colleagues. It’s really important. It’s going to help educators identify those signs, support them to speak up. And, again, we know that the vast majority of educators are there to do the right thing every day. 

KARVELAS: CCTV is a trial. Why is it just a trial? What are you looking for in terms of success? 

WALSH: So we want to make an assessment of the role of CCTV in early childhood education. And that assessment will start later this year with up to 300 services participating. We know that CCTV can be a really important tool in helping to keep children safe, in preventing behaviour and also in prosecuting behaviour as well. But there are also questions about the role of CCTV in early education as well and what the guardrails might be that we need to have it in place to use it safely as part of the tool kit for keeping children safe. So we will appoint an independent expert to oversee that assessment and they’ll come back to this Education Ministers Meeting with advice about the best way to use CCTV with guardrails to help keep children safe. 

KARVELAS: The provision of more information for parents so they know the conditions of the centres that their children are attending, what sort of information are they going to be able to obtain? 

WALSH: Yeah, that’s right. We think parents have a right to know clearly whether their service is meeting standards, whether any conditions might have been imposed on the centre that their children go to by regulators, whether there are any compliance breaches and what the nature of these breaches are. We think that that information should just be freely available to parents. In many cases it will just give them confidence about the service that their children are in. In other cases, it might generate a conversation with the centre director, with the centre manager about what’s going on. In other cases where there really are concerns it helps to hold providers accountable that they will know that parents get this information. Initially we will host that information on the national quality authority’s website – it’s called Starting Blocks – and people will be able to see that information within the next few weeks. Over time we want to move to a system where that information is actually posted in a way that parents can see when they’re doing pickups and drop-offs. Again, we think that, you know, sunlight is important here. Parents have a right to know, and we know that it will drive providers to do better when that information is public to parents. 

KARVELAS: The Victorian rapid review that was released yesterday says for-profit centres are an issue that need to be investigated. Is the Federal Government prepared to look at this issue? 

WALSH: So, the Victorian review did make those comments, PK. And it also called for the rights of children and the interests of children to be paramount in earlier childhood education and paramount in the decision-making of everyone who has responsibility in the sector. And today we adopted that change and we committed to amend the national law. We think that’s a really important reform to make it abundantly clear that providers have to put children ahead of profits. And the measures that we’re talking about today, of course, follow on from our legislation to give us the ability to cut funding from those providers who do the wrong thing and who do put profit ahead of child safety. And, of course, we’ve just issued, our department has issued, the first set of around 30 compliance notices to providers who are doing the wrong thing. So this package of reforms is really about keeping children safe wherever they are, putting children’s interests paramount, including ahead of profits, in the sector and putting those for profits on notice that if they don’t put child safety first. We have the capacity to cut their Commonwealth funding, and we’ll use it. 

KARVELAS: Minister, thank you so much for joining us. 

WALSH: Thanks, PK.