Transcript - Whitlam, ACT

JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: It’s great to be here in Whitlam, with Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry who's the Minister for Education and Early Childhood here in the ACT. We've got a great announcement today. We are partnering to build a brand new early learning centre here at the Whitlam School. The Whitlam School will open in 2027, and our brand new early learning centre will open the year after that. It's a $10 million commitment from the Albanese Labor Government, and we are building early education services across the country as part of our $1 billion Fund. This will be great for children in the area. As I've driven in today, I can see that this is a growing suburb with lots of young families. This service will be great for children. It will help them get ready for school, it will help them go straight into school and be ready for that, and help them get ready for life as well. It will be great for young families to have a quality, not‑for‑profit service here at the school and help them deal with the double drop‑off as well. So we're really proud to be partnering with the Barr Labor Government here in ACT to deliver this wonderful early learning centre – 130 places in 2028 as part of our Building Early Education Fund. And I'll now hand over to Minister Berry. 

YVETTE BERRY, ACT DEPUTY CHIEF MINISTER: Thanks, Senator Jess Walsh, the Minister for Early Childhood Education in the Federal Government, and we're very excited to partner with the Federal Government on this project. As I've said before, we're building more early learning services attached to our primary schools as we build them in new and growing areas. It's an important part of the ACT Government's policy to build the community not‑for‑profit services that are growing in our city, but also like having these amazing partnerships with a really strong focus on early learning with the Federal Government on a project like this one is something that we're absolutely keen to work with the Federal Government on going forward. But excited to see this as the first project, hopefully not the last in the ACT – $10 million is a significant contribution to the early learning centre here in the ACT. That project will also have $3.7 million from the ACT Government along with $4 million in kind. So a really great partnership. We're looking forward to continuing to work with the Federal Government, as I said, around these kinds of projects, but also all of the other reforms within the early learning space. I'll leave it there. Happy to take questions. 

JOURNALIST: Will the centres be zoned for just Molonglo Valley students or will it be open, education centre but also the primary school, are they zoned differently? 

BERRY: So there'll be a priority enrolment area for this school. It will likely be Whitlam, obviously, to start with, and then we'll work with understanding the demographics of this area and where the growth is. Those priority enrolment areas might be adjusted over time, but certainly in the start it's for Whitlam families. And as Senator Walsh said, this is a growing area, lots of new families moving in here, a lot of young children growing up in this suburb, so this will certainly be the focus in the first instance and then depending on the demographics of the area around it. 

JOURNALIST: How are the other education – Molonglo obviously is growing very fast – are they keeping up with, you know, are facilities keeping up with Molonglo and the residents that are living here and are going to grow here?  

BERRY: Yes, obviously all growth areas, lots of new families around all of these suburbs. We've built schools to manage that growth, and we have strategies in place if we need to add more space to different schools. At this stage, we're in a good space, and this school here at Whitlam will take some of the pressure off Evelyn Scott in Denman Prospect, so those are the kinds of things we do, planning for making sure that we have spaces for existing students but then planning for that growth in new suburbs like Whitlam. 

JOURNALIST: The $3 million from the ACT Government, is that part of the existing budget commitment?  

BERRY: $3.7 million. No, that's okay – you'll catch me up if I get it wrong – $3.7 million and also $4 million in kind, yes. 

JOURNALIST: What kind of stuff is that, in kind? 

BERRY: I'll have to get somebody else to talk about, it's the planning and construction work to start with, it makes up the full commitment, but I can get you some more detail. 

JOURNALIST: There's some Productivity Commission data out today. It's from 2024, but it shows increasing trend towards more serious incidents in child care settings and the quality of staff declining with fewer carers having formal qualifications. How much of that is a worry for this sector, and is a model like this the way forward? 

WALSH: Thank you. Every child deserves to be safe in early learning and parents need to know that their children are safe, and so the data that's come out today will be concerning for parents. And we want parents to know that safety is the number one issue when it comes to early learning for Education Ministers around the country. We are really excited to be building more quality not‑for‑profit early learning – that is why we're here today in Whitlam. We have our $1 billion Building Early Education Fund to deliver more quality not‑for‑profit early education in the places where families need it. We're doing that around the country and obviously we're partnering with ACT to do that as well. More broadly, we're strengthening the sector. We have a $200 million plan to strengthen the sector including, as you mentioned, the workforce as well, because we know a quality workforce is the key to keeping children safe and delivering quality early learning. 

JOURNALIST: But is the way forward more not‑for‑profit centres rather than for-profit, and is the for profit system failing?  

WALSH: As a government, we definitely want to see more quality not‑for‑profit early learning, and again that's why we have our $1 billion fund. In relation to the corporate sector, we've been really clear that there is no place for providers who put profit ahead of child safety. We want to make sure that children are safe across the different types of early learning services. The majority of services are for-profit, and that means that we need to make sure our measures work there to keep children safe as well. One of the strongest measures that we've taken at a Commonwealth level is to give ourselves the ability to withdraw funding from those providers who we think are putting profit ahead of child safety. And we are using those powers. More broadly, our $200 million package of reforms applies across the whole sector. That's to keep children safe whatever setting they're in, whether it is corporate, or whether it is not‑for‑profit. Again, that's really important because the majority of services are for-profit, whether they're corporate or whether they're small mum and dad providers. And just in a couple of weeks' time, a couple of the big measures that we brought forward last year as part of the biggest changes that have ever been made in early learning will be kicking off. So we're starting mandatory child safe training for every educator in the system in just a couple of weeks' time. That's going to be really important for keeping children safe. And we’re also standing up the first ever nationwide register of early childhood educators too. So we certainly want to build more not‑for‑profit early learning in places like this, growing suburbs like this. We know this will be a high-quality service partnering with the ACT Government and also ensuring quality not‑for‑profit providers. But we also want to make sure that all our centres in the system keep children safe wherever they are. 

JOURNALIST: Are you confident that the Federal Government will be able to use those powers, including child care funding? Because we’ve seen in other instances powers exist but they don’t get used.

WALSH: So we passed this legislation last year to be able to withdraw funding, and we are already using that legislation. So we've put over 60 services on notice. These services have failed to reach the national quality standards for a considerable period of time. So we've put them on notice that they need to improve or their funding is at risk. Obviously, what we want to see is for them to improve and we're working with those services now. We developed these powers to use them. We developed these powers to hold providers who we think are putting profit ahead of child safety to account. And we are using those powers right now. 

JOURNALIST: Why Whitlam? Obviously, you know, for a Federal Government to invest in big money here, what was sort of attractive to this child care centre? 

WALSH: Well, it's been great for me to see Whitlam with my own eyes today. I have driven in from Parliament House, and what I see is a growing suburb, lots of townhouses, lots of beautiful homes just over there for growing families. We want to make sure that young families have the opportunity to send their children to a quality early learning service. Where we can, in our $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, we are prioritising co‑location with schools. So we're really pleased to be able to partner with Minister Berry, with the Barr Government, to deliver this service – 130 places for children of young families in this area will be great for them. Early childhood education is great for kids, it gets them ready for school and for life. That's even more the case when it's co‑located with schools, and they can see the school there and they can see themselves getting ready for school as well, and obviously great for families to avoid the chaos of driving around to an early learning service to drop one child off and then to go to school. 

JOURNALIST: Are you hoping that the aim will be to have every student before kindergarten to go to an early learning centre? Are you seeing benefits from that, not staying at home, and specifically in early education, you know, curriculum, I suppose, I know it’s not curriculum?

WALSH: The evidence is there. The evidence is clear that children who participate in early childhood education in the year before school are better ready for school than children who don't. We have the data to say that. So we know that quality early childhood education is really good for children. And, you know, it helps them develop, it helps them grow, it helps their cognitive skills, it helps their self-regulation, it helps everything that needs to get them ready for school and for life. And so, as a Government, we are certainly very proudly investing in early childhood education. It's a big investment for the Government and one that we think pays dividends for children and families. 

JOURNALIST: Minister Berry, if I can ask you, just in regards to we're obviously seeing the Molonglo Bridge hasn't been completed yet, the emergency services is not either. Do you find that the town centre is growing residential at a faster pace than the infrastructure around here? 

BERRY: Look, I think that the infrastructure in the Canberra region, particularly in this area is quite an extraordinary amount for the ACT. We've had to overcome, with the construction industry as our partners, a range of different challenges. Weather, often unpredictable and does cause some challenges, supply of the items that you need to build this infrastructure, supply of the construction workforce. And we're starting to see that start to settle out, but there's still a recovery effort going on here from COVID, and we're seeing that in some of our infrastructure projects. The cost of these projects is extraordinary, much more than they were five years ago. So all of those challenges we're overcoming together. It does place some pressure on the sector here in the ACT, so making sure that we have those projects spread over time so that we have the workforce to be able to deliver, noting that there's infrastructure projects all around the capital region and in New South Wales that also use some of the same businesses and staff, construction workers, that we might be using here in the ACT. So there's very careful planning to make sure that we can actually deliver on the projects that we've been promising in the ACT. I know people will be feeling that pressure, particularly in these growing areas with the traffic flow. But there's a lot of work happening. So I think it's that sort of dealing with the chaos at the moment in time, knowing that once these projects are completed it will be a much better place for all of us. 

JOURNALIST: Do we know Molonglo town centre, is there any sort of word on that, or environmental concerns about that? 

BERRY: Look, we're still working through that.  That is quite a complex project and there are a number of environmental and cultural concerns that we need to overcome. These are the kinds of things that the ACT Government needs to work through because we don't – once you build something, all of those cultural and environment spaces live on. So we have to make sure we can work ways to integrate those into our future projects like the Molonglo town centre. Suburban Land Agency and ICVR are working very closely with the Molonglo community, and again, whilst these projects do take time, it's important to take the time to get them right. 

JOURNALIST: The Whitlam School [indistinct], but then there's the whole planned construction for new schools. What's next for these growing areas?  

BERRY: There will be a new primary school in Denman Prospect and a high school and college as part of the Molonglo development. They are in future years as part of those developments for this area.  We'll continue to look at the demographics to make sure we have spaces for children to go to their local school in their local area. I know that that's frustrating. People often want these things done at the moment that they move into a new suburb. I get that. I've lived in a new suburb, I know the pressure and how complicated that can make your life. But I just, I guess, I ask the community to bear with us, and with that really good development and planning. At the end of the project it will be a great outcome for the community. 

JOURNALIST: Just briefly, what ages does the centre cater for? 

BERRY: So we haven't nailed the ages yet. So you might recall that in Strathnairn it's from pre‑school to Year 2. We'll be announcing the ages of enrolment at this school later in this year. 

JOURNALIST: And for the early learning though, what ages? 

BERRY: Early learning would be, look, usually it's from six weeks to five, but we'll firm that up once the building's done and we've procured the work. 

SPEAKER: Thanks guys.