STATEMENTS

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (18:34): Most of us in this place are parents. Like our friends, like our colleagues and like our constituents, we have been deeply horrified by the horrible revelations that we have heard in recent weeks regarding criminal, tragic, evil acts of sexual abuse, including rape, of children in more than 24 childcare centres in Victoria over the last eight years.

Those crimes were inflicted by individuals working legally in those centres with valid working-with-children checks. Unthinkably, more than 2,000 children have had to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases because of those crimes. The revelations have triggered a crisis of confidence in the childcare sector.

They are a devastating indictment of the inadequacy of regulation and oversight of our childcare system. They've triggered the legislation we're seeing and talking about today. It is appropriate we act with bipartisan urgency in response to this tragedy.

But the fact is that these legislative changes are very small pieces of much more significant reform required in this sector—reform which should have happened years ago. The failure of serial governments to act on this issue, to protect our children, means we have to accept some responsibility for this horrifying situation. In recent years Australia has seen far too many cases of child sexual abuse in childcare centres.

In the worst of these, a former childcare worker from New South Wales was charged in 2023 with 1,623 child abuse offences against 91 children, including 136 cases of rape and 110 counts of sexual intercourse with a child aged under 10. There is no centralised national reporting system for these offences. We know underreporting is rife both because of a fear of regulatory consequences and because people don't understand what they're seeing.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended standardised training across all childcare and education sectors, embedding child safety into organisational culture and ensuring that staff understand both the physical and behavioural indicators of abuse. That was in 2017, and it has not happened. Early childhood education and care transforms lives.

It supports vulnerable children. It enables women's workforce participation. The sector is absolutely vital for our economic growth.

But Australian parents have to be able to trust the system. They have to know their children will be safe when they leave them in other people's care. The horrible revelations from Victoria and other states are violations of the faith that families place in our childcare system.

In the wake of these safety concerns, male childcare workers have faced widespread gender discrimination. They've been turned away from centres, had shifts cancelled and been banned from duties like nappy changing. Those actions are driven by understandable fear, but they risk violating antidiscrimination laws and they undermine the contributions of dedicated male educators.

We have to resist reactionary measures that will stigmatise individuals based on their gender and instead focus on systemic reforms that will ensure the adequate training and supervision of all workers in the sector. In response to recent events, the Victorian government launched a rapid review into childcare safety. It introduced immediate measures such as a ban on personal devices in childcare centres, a public register of early childhood educators, and commitments to strengthening background checks, CCTV monitoring and cross-provider information-sharing.

Further recent revelations regarding security flaws in the Victorian Working with Children Check system underline the urgent need for technological integrity and more robust identity systems in safeguarding our children—but these should be national, not state based. The need for these steps highlights the limitations of the current regulatory framework and the urgent need for national consistency, transparency and accountability.

The fact is that we have persistent gaps in our child safety laws and enforcement. They have been highlighted by years of government inaction despite repeated recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse. This underscores the need for a more comprehensive overhaul.

We've allowed unsafe centres to continue to operate, to receive government funding and to put kids at risk. Those centres have also allowed individuals who pose a risk to children to exploit gaps between state systems and to continue to work with children when they should be nowhere near them. The bill before us proposes amendments to the family assistance administration act which are aimed at improving safety for every child in care.

The reforms are necessary, but they are not sufficient. The Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill does not address the fragmentation of responsibilities across jurisdictions. It does not resolve the lack of a single body responsible for ensuring that policies, funding models and system settings work together to deliver a cohesive high-quality experience for children and for their parents.

Advocates and experts, including the Productivity Commission and the National Children's Commissioner, have long and repeatedly called for the establishment of an independent national commission to oversee early childhood education. Such a body would provide national leadership, enforce consistent standards and ensure accountability across jurisdictions. The Productivity Commission made the need for such a commission clear in its 2024 inquiry, noting that many government entities were operating in the ECEC space across a number of jurisdictions but that there is no dedicated body tasked with monitoring the system's performance against its objectives and with taking a comprehensive national view of early childhood education and care, including availability, quality and outcomes.

A national commission could articulate shared national goals for the sector and oversee the entire system. It could ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly assigned across quality, workforce, access, affordability, safety and inclusion. It would ensure that public money is used effectively and that services are held accountable for the care that they provide.

To truly protect our children, we need a national educator register which is publicly accessible and updated in real time. We need stronger background checks and real-time data sharing across jurisdictions. We need a national safety commission to coordinate and lead and to hold all levels of government accountable for delivering on those responsibilities.

It's not about adding bureaucracy; it's about cutting through the duplication and the fragmentation which are present in so many parts of our child care and in other parts of our care sector. Without a commission, we will keep chasing cracks and crises with narrow fixes, like banning phones or installing CCTV, while the real and underlying issues remain. Those issues are the consequences of chronic workforce instability and the weak oversight of a system without a steward.

Without national stewardship, we risk continued fragmentation, reactive regulation and repeated safety failures. A unified approach is essential to protect our youngest and our most vulnerable and to restore public trust in the early childhood education sector. This bill is a step forward, but it is not the final step.

Our children will still be at risk after we pass this bill. We owe it to every child, to every family and to every educator to build a system that is not only strong but safe—a system that learns from its failures and acts decisively to prevent them. We need national stewardship, coherent policy and a system that prioritises safety, quality and equity.

So I reiterate my call for the establishment of a national early childhood education and care commission. Let us in this place rise to this moment, not in fear but with resolve. We owe it our children; they deserve nothing less.