Transcript - ABC RN Breakfast with Sally Sara

SALLY SARA, HOST: The nation's Education Ministers are meeting today to discuss how to improve safety in the child care sector – mandatory child safety training, establishing a national educator register so that workers can be tracked from one centre to another, and a national trial of CCTV in child care centres are on the agenda. Jess Walsh is the Federal Minister for Early Childhood Education and Labor Senator for Victoria. I spoke to her earlier. Minister, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast. 

SENATOR DR JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND MINISTER FOR YOUTH: Thanks for having me, Sally. 

SARA: Let's have a look at this issue of CCTV cameras in child care centres. Do you think that you can get an agreement across the States and Territories today on how CCTV could and should be used?

WALSH: Well, we're confident that we will get agreement with the States and Territories today, Sally. We've got a really big meeting ahead of us. We want to come out of it with a really strong and significant package of reforms to help keep children safe in early learning because that's what parents expect. It's what they deserve. CCTV is part of that. We also want to come out of today with the first ever register of early childhood educators and mandatory child safety training as well. 

SARA: If I'm just sticking with the issue of CCTV for a moment more, do you see CCTV as a tool to prevent offending or to help investigators after an incident has occurred? 

WALSH: We see that there's potential for both, Sally, with CCTV, and we do want to assess the benefits of CCTV and also the guardrails that need to be put around the use of CCTV. That's why we'll be putting to the meeting today a nationwide assessment involving 300 services participating, overseen by an independent expert, to make sure that we can get the benefits of keeping children safe with CCTV, but also make sure that there are guardrails around its use as well. 

SARA: And who would bear the cost of installing the cameras and storing the data safely? 

WALSH: So this is a mixed trial that we're proposing today. In some cases, the State regulators impose conditions on services where they actually have to pay for and install CCTV themselves, and we'll be drawing those examples into this assessment. We also want services to volunteer to be part of this assessment as well, and we'll provide some funding support for those services who want to volunteer. 

SARA: Establishing a national register of early education and care workers, as you're saying, is also on the agenda. Does the Government have a timeline for when this will be implemented? 

WALSH: We do, Sally. As soon as the Education Ministers agree to this first ever nationwide register of early childhood educators, the work will start immediately. Providers will start uploading information in December, and it will be mandatory for them to participate in it around the country from February. And this is a really important part of this child safety package. It is about prevention. It's also about response. We've seen in Victoria, with the really horrific allegations against the alleged offender in Victoria, that police were having to go into services and use search and seize powers to find paper‑based rosters to know where this individual had worked. That is just not good enough. We need our regulators to have eyes on educators, where they're working and what the patterns of behaviour are that they can see. We need regulators to be able to see those red flags, and we need them to be able to direct their action accordingly. 

SARA: The Productivity Commission has recommended the Government have a national screening process for workers in all care sectors. Is this something that will be considered at the meeting today? 

WALSH: Yes, it will, Sally. That is a goal that we want to work towards. First and foremost, our priority is to stand up a nationwide register that shows where every childhood educator works and gives that information to regulators to help guide and direct their work. The next phase and priority is employer screening, and we're very aware that workers do move around different parts of the care economy. And so, as more information becomes available to us, we will be able to build out this register and potentially have a nationwide register that encompasses all workers in the care economy, and that will be an extra step to help keep people safe. 

SARA: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast and my guest is the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Senator for Victoria, Jess Walsh. This week, Minister, the Health and Disability Minister, Mark Butler announced a new program called Thriving Kids as part of efforts to divert young children with mild to moderate developmental delays and autism from the NDIS, but State and Territory Ministers say they weren't consulted before this was announced. Why not? 

WALSH: Well, I think this is a really important program, the Thriving Kids program, for my portfolio of Early Childhood Education and Care, because what we want to see is children with moderate additional needs getting that support that they need in contexts like early childhood education rather than needing to go into the NDIS. This has been a really big issue that's been put forward to me by the sector, including just this week, where I visited a really high‑quality service that wants to see services that children need integrated into early childhood education rather than being provided –

SARA: But this is an important issue. Why weren't the States and Territories consulted before this announcement? 

WALSH: Well, I'm a bit outside my portfolio there, Sally, in terms of Minister Butler's announcements. It's not something that's –

SARA: Do you think they should have been consulted, in your view? 

WALSH: I think that the consultation begins now, from what I've read from Minister Butler's comments, and particularly with those families who have children in the NDIS. We want to make sure that they're supported. We know that changes to the NDIS have been coming for a while, in particular to provide foundational supports in more mainstream settings. I'm really keen to work with Minister Butler and with the early childhood education sector on this, because I think it will really improve the experience that children have in early learning. We're really interested, Sally, in models where we can integrate early learning with the additional supports that children with those moderate needs might have, and indeed, we have a billion dollar Building Early Education Fund to explore just how we can do that, in hub environments, for example, where we co‑locate early learning with additional supports that kids with moderate needs might have. 

SARA: There are parents with kids in the NDIS system, and those who are trying to get into the system, who are worried about these changes, especially in regional areas where services are often limited. Can you offer any assurances about how the situation will be after the changes have been brought in, because a lot of the parents are worried? 

WALSH: Yeah, and I understand that concern, because the NDIS is so important for providing support to people. My own nephew is a participant in the NDIS, he's a young man with autism, and change is difficult because people rely on the NDIS; it's become so important to people. The Minister has said that people who are on the NDIS will continue to be on the NDIS. But this is a real opportunity to actually do better, to do better for those children who have mild and moderate additional needs and to make sure that the help that they need is integrated into mainstream contexts, including in early childhood education. So I see real potential for this. It's something that advocates in the sector have been putting to me will help them do their job better, and I'm keen to work with the Minister on it. 

SARA: Minister, thank you very much for your time this morning. 

WALSH: Thanks, Sally.