Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Grievance debate

Early childhood education and care

Jess WILSON (Kew) (16:01): I rise to grieve for the children of Victoria because the Labor government has failed to keep them safe in child care. We are here today because the children of Victoria have been failed – failed by a system that is meant to protect them, failed by a toothless regulator which is meant to act before more harm occurs and failed by a government that was warned repeatedly but chose to do nothing.

When we are elected to this place our foremost duty is clear: protect the vulnerable, and there is no-one more vulnerable than a child in the care of an adult. Every parent in Victoria should feel confident that when they drop their child at child care they will be safe. Their confidence has been shattered. The system is broken. These failures are not hypothetical; they are real. They have names and they have consequences. Joshua Brown is now facing more than 70 charges relating to the sexual abuse of eight babies and toddlers aged between five months and two years at a centre in Point Cook. Brown worked at up to 24 childcare centres over eight years. Two complaints were substantiated before his arrest, one for aggressive handling of children and another for physically grabbing them. Yet he still held an active working with children check and moved between centres unchecked. The scale of the fallout is almost impossible to comprehend. Authorities have identified 2000 children for STI testing. That is 2000 homes living with fear and anxiety, having experienced their worst nightmare. Parents trusted the system. The system gave Brown clearance after clearance, and because of that failure children have suffered unimaginably.

Ronald Marks was arrested in 2021 for possessing almost 1000 child abuse images. Last month he was convicted, but he retained an active working with children check for four years after his arrest. That meant that in those years following his arrest Marks was permitted to go into childcare centres and kinders. This is a catastrophic breakdown of the very checks that are meant to keep predators away from children. The ABC has reported today that a childcare educator maintained a valid working with children check despite being dismissed from a childcare centre in 2020 for sexual misconduct after an internal investigation found he was grooming and kissing toddlers. Again, the system allowed this individual to continue to work in childcare centres, with the government regulator not stepping in to issue a prohibition notice to blacklist that individual until last year. Yet despite this prohibition, until a few hours ago the individual had not even had his active working with children check tested or checked. Now we learn it is still active, meaning as of this afternoon this individual, who was dismissed from a childcare centre for sexual misconduct, can still work with children in this state. What is the government doing to fix the very system that is meant to keep children safe in this state? It should not take a media report to shame the government into taking action to keep children safe.

And then we have the regulator, QARD, the quality and regulatory division of the Department of Education, a secretive, opaque and ineffective unit that sits in the department and is failing to keep children safe. There have been too many failures of this toothless regulator to do its job – centres left open for months despite serious safety breaches being known to the regulator and centres remaining open despite being ordered to close by the regulator because the regulator’s enforcement process is as slow as it is meaningless in these urgent and dangerous cases when it comes to child safety. Since 2018 complaints to the regulator about childcare providers have increased by 45 per cent, yet over the same period enforcement action has declined by 67 per cent. In 2018 there was one enforcement action for every 20 complaints. By 2023 that figure was one for every 88. That is the regulator stepping back when it should be stepping in to keep children safe. These case studies show exactly why the system is broken, but they also show something else – sadly, the unwillingness of the Allan Labor government to put politics aside and constructively work to fix the system, to work with this Parliament to ensure that children’s safety is the absolute priority of any elected representative.

The Victorian Ombudsman told the government in 2022 that the working with children check system was among the weakest in the nation. The Ombudsman recommended very clear, sensible reforms: give the regulator the power to act on credible risk information even without a conviction or a charge, allow the secretary to obtain and consider any relevant information to determine suitability and keep suspensions in force until appeals are resolved. The Ombudsman was clear: these changes would have brought Victoria in line with other states and would help protect children. But what did the government do? Nothing. They did not even have the courtesy to reply. Three years on, and still nothing. Even the regulations that have been put in force in the last month do not go as far as what the Ombudsman recommended to the government three years ago, meaning that those dangerous loopholes that we know are being exploited by dangerous people working with children in this state have not been fixed, because this government is more interested in managing the politics than putting children’s safety first.

Faced with the consequences of their inaction and warned repeatedly, the government has launched a so-called rapid review. That rapid review is a review of reviews that have already been put in place and made recommendations that the government has ignored. Of course as part of their rapid review they appointed a former Labor Premier to help manage that political fallout – a former Premier who oversaw the worst child abuse issues in South Australia’s history. Not only have they said that this review is simply a review to look at other reviews, but what did the government do? They explicitly excluded the regulator from being part of the review. The supposed watchdog that is meant to be keeping children safe in childcare centres is not even part of the review. The terms of reference explicitly state that the performance and the governance of the regulator is out of scope. What is this review going to achieve if it cannot even look at the very body that is meant to be enforcing the child safety standards to ensure children are safe in child care here in Victoria?

Behind every one of these cases is a family, and behind every one of these statistics is a child who expects that the adult looking after them will keep them safe and protect them. Imagine being the parent of a six-month-old and being told you must take them for an STI test because a childcare worker, who passed all the tests and checks, is alleged to have abused them. Imagine being the Horsham parent who kissed their child goodbye one morning, none the wiser that a man who despite having been arrested for possessing child abuse material still had an active working with children check and was visiting that childcare centre that day to spend time with your child. These are not isolated mistakes. They are the result of a government that refuses to treat child safety as its highest priority, that refuses to heed the advice from the experts to make the changes that will ensure that children are safe in this state.

We cannot wait for another review. That is why the Liberal and Nationals coalition sought to introduce the Worker Screening Amendment (Safety of Children) Bill 2025 just last sitting week in the Parliament. Our bill does exactly what the Ombudsman recommended. It gives the secretary the power to act immediately on credible information without waiting for charge or conviction. It links the working with children check system to the Victoria Police database so that any risk triggers immediate action. It keeps suspensions in place until appeals are resolved so that children are not exposed in the meantime. It reduces the validity of checks from five years to three, and it requires mandatory training in child safety and reporting obligations and child abuse awareness – commonsense, practical reforms informed by the experts and the Ombudsman. Yet those opposite decided that politics were more important than child safety and voted down those reforms that would have strengthened child protection laws in this state.

But legislation alone is not enough. That is why we have put forward six urgent reforms. Number one, as I said, is to fix the working with children check system; two, give parents the right to know centre-by-centre safety data, star ratings and full incident transparency; raise the bar on workplace standards and mandatory training and introduce a central register of all qualified workers so that should the worst happen, we do not see the same result of the police scrambling to work out where an alleged offender worked and then having to track down families to tell them that their worst nightmare has just come true; create an independent childcare safety watchdog – a new authority to investigate and enforce compliance across the childcare sector; ban phones immediately and install CCTV; and work with the government to link federal funding to safety standards. These measures are practical, they are achievable and they are supported by child safety experts and survivor advocates, and they could be in place right now, today, if the government were willing to work constructively with the opposition, put children’s safety first and ensure they are doing their job to protect the most vulnerable in our community.

The safety of our children should never be a partisan issue, yet the Allan Labor government refuses to engage constructively. We have seen day after day now the Premier refuse to answer basic questions about how the system is operating and where the gaps are so that we can fix them. If there is more to do after the so-called rapid review, we will stand with them. We will pass additional legislation as a matter of urgency. But right now, today, the government could work with us to close loopholes and strengthen the system to protect children. Every day that they delay is another day that children are at risk in child care. Every week they stall is another week where parents are wondering if their children are safe when they drop them off. The unwillingness of this government to put politics aside is not just incredibly disappointing, it is dangerous because it puts children’s safety at risk. We grieve for the children of Victoria, but it must be more than words. It must drive action.

We have done the work. We have the urgent solutions. What we do not have is the political will from those opposite. Premier, put politics aside. Stand with us, pass these reforms and show parents across Victoria that when it comes to protecting children this Parliament speaks with one voice – we know what our duty is, our sacred duty when we are elected here, and we will come together and we will put children’s safety first. Our children deserve nothing less. History will not be kind to those who failed to act or – worse – stood in the way of action. This is a moment for action, and we on this side of the house are ready to lead.