Wednesday, 1 November 2023

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (10:46): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023 on behalf of the Liberals and Nationals today. This bill seeks to improve early childhood education and child care in this state – two critical areas that are important to Victorian families, teachers and educators, especially in the context of a growing population. As our population grows, we must ensure that access to early childhood education keeps pace with demand, and this bill today goes some way to make it easier to develop new childcare centres across Victoria. But from the outset it must be said there is still much more to do. The bill today is particularly focused on the safety of children, particularly very young children and infants, in childcare settings, which I am certain we can all agree is of paramount importance to us as policymakers.

In terms of my contribution today, I will speak to the background of this bill and how it has come about, looking at the quality framework that is set around early childhood education and childcare centres, the purpose of the bill, some of the key provisions and outcomes of the bill, the stakeholder feedback that we have received as the opposition and also throughout the consultation process in the lead-up to this amendment coming before the Parliament, and briefly the accessibility of childcare services in Victoria. I know my colleagues, particularly my regional colleagues, will speak in detail about some of the examples they have in their own electorates when it comes to a childcare desert and the need for greater services right across Victoria but particularly in regional Victoria and in the growing suburbs in outer Melbourne.

From the outset can I place on record my thanks to the Minister for Children’s office, led by Liam in her office, for their assistance with the bill briefing and also with timely advice on a number of questions we put to their office. They were very forthcoming with the information. It always helps us on this side of the house – being able to dive into some of the detail that is not apparent upon reading the bill and some of that background.

This is not a controversial piece of legislation. I think we can all agree on that. It seeks to improve child safety and provide greater certainty for those who are actually looking to invest in the development of childcare centres, and for this reason it is a good example of working cooperatively with the government and with others in this place to achieve greater child safety outcomes for children across Victoria.

I might look at the background to this bill initially. The purpose of this bill is to implement a recommendation of the 2019 national quality framework review. The national quality framework review, or the NQF, was introduced in 2012 as a national system of regulation for the early childhood education and care sector, covering long day care, kindergartens and preschools, family day care and outside school care, and it followed the endorsement of the early childhood development strategy by the Council of Australian Governments in 2009. Prior to the introduction of the NQF, the regulatory responsibility was shared between the Commonwealth and state governments. State regulators had responsibility for the operational regulation, including the licensing and compliance, while the Commonwealth funded the National Childcare Accreditation Council to oversee quality assurance. Standards and processes varied across jurisdictions, and the purpose of the strategy at the time was to ensure that we had much greater consistency across jurisdictions to ensure primarily that regulations around childcare centres and kindergartens met those higher standards, particularly when it came to safety. The legislation that established the NQF passed in the Commonwealth and in each state and territory and included a requirement for five-yearly reviews of the NQF to ensure it is meeting its objectives. The first of these five-yearly reviews was conducted in 2019 and made a number of recommendations for reform to be passed by governments to improve the regulatory framework governing early childhood education care across the country. Those recommendations were endorsed in May 2022 by state and federal education ministers, which led to the introduction of legislation in each parliament to give effect to those recommendations. At the time in this place the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 was introduced, in August last year. The bill’s main purpose then was to amend the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, the Children’s Services Act 1996 and the Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2021 to provide for matters relating to the regulatory authority as the integrated sector regulator for education and care services in Victoria. I note that at the time the Liberals and Nationals coalition sought to make a number of amendments to that piece of legislation, but we did not seek to oppose its passage through the Legislative Assembly or the Legislative Council.

While most of the recommendations in the NQF review were given effect last year in the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, there remained one outstanding recommendation in relation to a particular challenge that is unique to both Victoria and the ACT. The bill before us today, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023, seeks to implement that outstanding recommendation. Before I go into the detail of that, I do note that the advice provided by the government last week as to why this matter was not dealt with in last year’s bill and the amendments that came through at that time was that the government required essentially additional time to design the scheme in question, which is put before us today in this bill, and consult widely on the implementation of this recommendation. The consultation with the early childhood sector and of course the property sector in the building of multistorey childcare centres is essential to the design of the scheme that we are talking about today.

This recommendation in question is in response to issue 3.4 of the NQF review, which was primarily focused on improving children’s safety during emergency evacuations from multistorey buildings. For the purposes of this bill a multistorey building is defined as:

a building that has 3 or more storeys (including the ground level …

My understanding from speaking to the regulator and the department last week is that we do not see that many of the multistorey buildings here in Victoria – of three storeys or more – but there is a growing appetite to look at their placement around Victoria, particularly as we see the demand for childcare services grow.

Of course when you look at multistorey buildings there are unique evacuation risks for children who attend a service housed in a multistorey building, particularly when the premises are located above ground level. Infants and very young children who cannot yet walk independently require longer to evacuate from a building, so it is important then to look at the direct egress outside that building in terms of an evacuation. As a result of this, very specific site planning needs to occur to ensure safety of children during evacuations from childcare centres that are located in these multistorey buildings.

For that reason, the main purposes of the bill today are to amend various pieces of legislation to establish an approval in principle process in participating jurisdictions for certain proposed education and care service premises located in multistorey buildings and other buildings and to make an approval in principle a precondition of service approval for certain education and care services in Victoria and potentially the ACT. It also seeks to amend the Education and Care Services National Law Act to declare that the approval in principle process will apply in Victoria and to enable the minister to declare by order that an approval in principle is a precondition of service in certain cases. Finally, it will amend the Children’s Services Act 1996 to establish an approval in principle process for proposed children’s services located in multistorey buildings and other buildings and to make certain offences infringement offences.

Turning to the main provisions of the bill, the approval in principle scheme in question is something that the NQF looked at in detail. The description of the problem from the NQF review states:

In Victoria and the ACT, there is a particular problem with new service premises being developed and built that may comply with local planning requirements but may not comply with regulatory requirements under the National Law for the evacuation of young children, non-ambulatory children and infants, when the approved provider applies for service approval.

The review goes on to recommend that in Victoria and the ACT governments:

Amend service approval processes to require approved providers wishing to operate a centre-based service from premises in a multi-storey building … to apply to the regulatory authority for pre-approval of development and building plans for the proposed premises prior to development and construction.

This bill largely gives effect to this recommendation. Although I note the scheme that is being proposed here today is voluntary rather than compulsory as per the recommendation – and I will come back to that in more detail – it does provide that opportunity for builders, developers and childcare centre proponents to look at the design requirements pre build; ensure that they meet the requirements if it is a multistorey building around evacuation, child safety requirements and regulatory requirements; and ensure that those designs are approved pre build. Then down the track, when the service provider is looking for the regulatory approval to run the childcare service, the development of the building and the design of the building is not going to be a barrier to that.

In establishing a scheme that allows developers, builders or education and care service providers to obtain an approval in principle from the regulatory authority for a centre-based service proposed to be built or renovated in a multistorey building, this bill establishes a process by which the regulatory authority – which is the quality and regulation division, the QARD, at the Department of Education – can participate early enough in the development process to ensure relevant safety standards are taken into account during the design phase of a new multistorey building or planned renovation where a childcare centre will be housed.

New section 109 outlines the matters the regulatory authority must consider in determining an application for approval in principle, including the suitability of the proposed education service premises once the construction, alteration or repair works are completed and the site and location of those premises for the operation of an education service; whether the proposed education and care service premises would meet the approval in principle criteria once the construction, alteration or repair works are completed; and whether the proposed education and care service premises, once constructed, altered or repaired, will have direct egress to an assembly area to allow for the safe evacuation of all children. This is reflective of the recommendations of the 2019 national quality framework review and looks to address those risks posed by the need to safely evacuate children from premises in multistorey buildings. More broadly the authority can consider any other matter it considers relevant to the design of the building.

Importantly, new section 110 provides that on receiving an application for an approval in principle, the regulatory authority may grant or refuse to grant an approval in principle, but it is required to make a decision on an application within 60 days after the application is received. The bill providing that time frame – the 60-day time frame – will ensure that developers and builders have certainty of time around their application going into the regulatory authority, ensuring that time is not lost. We know that across the board in our planning system every day lost waiting for planning approval to come through for a build is costly, and ultimately that cost flows through to investment decisions either being withheld or being pulled back or it flows through to the consumer in higher costs at the end of the day. That 60-day time frame will ensure that the developer, the builder and the childcare centre proponent have some sense of certainty that they will get an answer within a designated time period – a short time period – when it comes to the planning system more broadly and will be able to determine whether they can commence their build quickly after that application is received and whether it is granted or refused or varied dependent on the design factors.

Also, the bill ensures that an approval in principle provides the approval in principle holder with the assurance that an application for service after the build at the premises cannot be then declined on the basis that it does not meet those physical requirements. This goes to some of the issues at the heart of this bill, in that those service providers that were going to look to get the service approval at the end of the day from the regulator were then having the design issues come up. This looks to ensure that once approval in principle is obtained, that then cannot be a barrier down the track. Of course the bill ensures that any adverse decisions by the regulatory authority are reviewable, and that is a review in terms of both internal and external.

The creation of this scheme is undoubtedly a good thing, because it means safety considerations for children are understood and accounted for from the very beginning of the construction. It also acts as an important consultation service for builders and developers or providers who wish to provide a service from a multistorey premises, who will be able to rely more heavily on the regulatory authority for preapproval of development and building plans for the proposed premises prior to development and construction.

I know from speaking to the regulatory authority in the department last week that often questions are asked of them. They can provide advice at the moment, but this will provide a greater certainty around the approval in principle scheme to ensure that once approved the builder can get on with the job with the build and design knowing that it cannot be a barrier to service approval down the track. It will essentially provide proponents with clarity and confidence that the physical design and construction of the premises will meet the regulatory criteria when that service for approval is sought post construction. This improved clarity for the industry will surely improve investor confidence when deciding to build and operate an early childhood centre or care centre, which will be critical to ensuring we can meet the growing demand for childcare services in Victoria in the coming years and decades.

I do note, as I said earlier, that the scheme is voluntary and that the government is not intending to make it a requirement for regulatory approval at this stage. The government has advised that there is no plan or intention to make this scheme mandatory and it will assess the extent to which the voluntary process addresses the suitability of future multistorey premises for early childhood premises. The understanding at this stage is the scheme will potentially be accessed by 10 to 15 providers each year – working through the detail of the scheme and working out, as more and more builders and developers and childcare centre providers come to look at the scheme and try to access the scheme, how that can be improved and look at that down the track if there is any need to make it a requirement beforehand.

We on this side of the house support a voluntary scheme that builders can opt to enter to make sure that the industry is working through the detail and that it is not being mandated by government. Certainly strengthening that administrative support and guidance from the regulator will be of assistance in seeking to establish new childcare services in multistorey premises that are compliant with relevant childcare safety regulations.

The bill does give the minister the option of making this a mandatory process via ministerial order. This is a responsibility of the Minister for Children in consultation with the minister responsible for administering the Building Act 1993, and if the government does intend to shift this scheme from voluntary to mandatory, the coalition would certainly expect it to consult widely with the early childhood sector as well as the construction and property industries before taking that step.

We on this side of the house sought feedback on this bill from the early childhood sector and from the property sector and industry representatives, and no significant concerns have been raised about the concept of an approval in principle scheme for centres housed in multistorey buildings. I note that the national quality framework review, which actually prompted this piece of legislation, has broad stakeholder support and reflects the consentient position of all states and territories and the Commonwealth. In recognition of this, we on this side of the house – the coalition – will be supporting this legislation, because we do believe it will improve the safety of children in early childhood education and childcare centres across Victoria while also providing that certainty for builders, developers and childcare centre proponents to be able to build new multistorey childcare centres knowing that if approved prior to construction, if the design is approved and the approval is given in principle, when they seek service approval after the construction is completed, that will be granted based on their pre-build and that design requirements will not be an issue in that process.

With the time I have left, I thought I would touch briefly on accessibility of childcare services in Victoria. I know my colleagues on this side of the house will speak to this in more detail through their contributions today, and particularly some examples from their own electorates where families are struggling to access child care. We know that lack of access to child care takes almost 27,000 women entirely out of the workforce in Victoria and costs our economy about $1.5 billion a year in lost earnings alone. In previous roles I have had looking at the economic participation impact of a lack of childcare services, this is something that I have been very passionate about – how we can make sure that more and more women in particular are able to access the workforce by being able to access childcare support. Not being to access child care is a significant cost to these women, who are essentially going to be forgoing wages that could help them get ahead and help their family get ahead, and of course it is a hit to our economy, which misses out on the productivity and skills that these women have to offer.

It is worth noting that over 50 per cent of women who say they want to do more paid work say lack of access to affordable child care is the main barrier preventing them from taking on more hours. I think it is very concerning that a 2022 study found that having a baby opens up a 55 per cent pay gap for Australian women in the workplace compared to their male colleagues in the first five years after childbirth. As the member for Euroa just said, this is very true and it is something you hear consistently – starting a family, having young children and then wanting to get back into the workforce but it simply not stacking up financially to do so. With around 94 per cent of primary carers being women, this issue does make it harder and harder for women to get back into the workforce compared to their male colleagues and counterparts.

Lack of access to childcare services reinforces traditional gender roles, as women who may want to work are more often obliged to stay at home, work part-time or take lower paid jobs closer to home in order to look after their children. They may also look at taking other lower paid jobs or taking less opportunities to increase their hours because of the way the childcare system and particularly the subsidies at a federal level work, acting as that disincentive to take on extra hours, tipping you over a certain threshold and therefore it becoming financially unviable to actually do more work or look at moving up the ranks in your workplace.

Not only are there the issues around women’s participation in the workforce, but the benefits of early childhood education for children are essential to making sure we have greater access to early childhood education and child care right around the state. We know that children in grade 3 who went to kinder were 15 to 20 weeks ahead of those who did not, and by age 16, students who attended two or more years of kindergarten will have better cognitive and social skills, higher exam scores, better social and emotional outcomes and are more likely to go on to higher academic study. We know that there is a benefit when it comes to increasing economic participation, particularly for women. We know there are benefits for children when it comes to ensuring they have access to early childhood education and child care. So it is absolutely essential that we actually increase the access to early childhood and childcare education. But unfortunately, as we on this side of the house often highlight, we have serious accessibility and availability issues in Victoria.

The Mitchell Institute at Victoria University published a report last year that refers to ‘childcare deserts’ across Australia, and I know my colleagues on this side of the house regularly speak to this issue in their own electorates, particularly in regional Victoria. Their findings were very, very alarming. Around 9 million Australians, or 35 per cent of the population, live in a neighbourhood they classify as a childcare desert, with the definition of a desert being an area where there are more than three children per one available childcare place. I was just speaking to the member for South-West Coast before this, where that exact issue was highlighted. A family in Warrnambool was looking to make sure that the mother could increase her ability to get to work, with the father also in a job that required significant travel, and they were looking to find access to childcare services in Warrnambool, which would make it much easier for the family to be able to ensure that they can get to work on time and they can work longer hours. But childcare services do not always meet the needs of families, particularly those working on shift work or in emergency services, and they simply do not have the available places. The child in question is on every waitlist in Warrnambool, and they simply cannot find access to a childcare centre, let alone find a childcare centre that would actually meet their needs as a family – the need for outside hours care – to ensure that the family itself can continue working and can increase their opportunity to work. But they simply cannot find access to that child care.

What the Mitchell Institute report highlighted – and it is something we on this side know very clearly is unfortunately not being addressed – is that child care is far scarcer in regional areas than in metropolitan Melbourne but also in the growth areas of the metropolitan area where infrastructure is simply not keeping up with the growing population. It is incredibly important that we look to increase access to childcare services. Unfortunately what we have seen from this government is the announcement of 50 new childcare centres to be up and running by 2028 but only identified target areas for 30 of them and specific sites for only four of them. 2028 is not that far away. In fact we need the places now for child care, but with the sites not even identified, there is a long way to go to actually rolling out this program and delivering it.

When the government announced their Best Start, Best Life policy with much fanfare, it was very apparent very quickly that it is frustratingly light on the detail as to when it will actually be implemented. When we have families in regional Victoria not being able to access childcare services now, we have a serious problem with what that means for the benefits to those children and the ability of those families to get back into the workforce and increase their financial security.

Throughout the fanfare and the big announcement of the Best Start, Best Life policy we have seen issues around the announcement of free kinder. Now, the government does not like to acknowledge that their so-called free kinder funding does not actually meet the needs of those kindergartens to cover their costs. But back when they introduced that policy the department itself actually acknowledged that many dozens of standalone kindergartens across Victoria would be financially worse off as a result of the scheme, with the department telling many kindergartens – around 10 per cent – that they would be worse off under the new funding arrangement. We on this side of the house regularly hear from local kindergartens that they are going to struggle to keep their doors open as a result of this policy, and we have yet to see how the government will help manage the rollout and the funding requirements of this policy to ensure that we do not see the closure of these kindergarten centres.

Just before I finish, one of the other key issues in this space is ensuring that we have the workforce to actually meet the growth of the number of childcare centres we need. We know that we have a workforce that is struggling, and we know that we have a lack of early educators available and a lack of staff available for these childcare centres. That goes to many of the issues in regional Victoria, where it is all right to announce the funding and the construction of new childcare centres, but if we do not have the staff to actually fill them and to provide the services, that is going to be a big problem.

The coalition will support the bill before us today. It is a bill that seeks to ensure that child safety is paramount in our childcare centres. It is a bill that ensures that there is greater certainty for those seeking to invest in more childcare centres – something that we need desperately in Victoria to see the growth of childcare centres. They will have greater certainty when it comes to the construction, knowing that if they receive that approval in principle prior to build and it is approved, then when it comes to the service approval, that will not be a barrier to receiving that approval. So we commend this bill to the house. I look forward to my colleagues in their contributions highlighting many of the access issues. While we support this bill, there is still much more to do to actually increase access to child care in Victoria.

 Melissa HORNE (Williamstown – Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Local Government, Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (11:16): It gives me enormous pleasure to rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023, and I would really like to commend and congratulate the Minister for Children in the other place and the former Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, who have done a power of work to be able to bring such a comprehensive bill that will be such a game changer in the way that we deliver early childhood services across the state.

This really builds on the Best Start, Best Life program, and we know that those first 1000 days of a child’s life are absolutely critical to setting them up for the best start in life and into the future. We are following through on the recommendations that were agreed to in the education ministers meeting regarding the 2019 national quality framework review to establish a premises approval in principle scheme for kinders in multistorey buildings, ensuring completed premises and buildings meet the regulatory requirement to protect the safety of our children.

This bill not only reduces the risk to our kids in the event of an emergency and ensures kinders in multistorey buildings are still high-quality educational environments but also reduces the red tape for builders by granting approval in principle to designs. Acting Speaker Hamer, as you would know, Victoria leads the nation in early childhood education, and as a government we have committed $14 billion to expanding kinder programs across the state. We are delivering the $270 million free kinder for all three- and four-year-olds. We are also taking steps to establish pre-prep over the next decade. We know how integral early learning is to our kids’ development, which is why we are giving our kids the best start in life.

We have also got 50 government-owned kinders that are government owned and operated early learning centres. This is an initiative that is an ambitious plan to address childcare shortages in the areas of greatest need. Certainly I know that struggle is real. As I travel around regional Victoria in particular I see there are those childcare desserts, so being able to put those early learning centres into areas where there has not been that provision is so fundamentally vital.

Where possible those early learning centres will be co-located with schools to avoid that double drop-off. In some places they may be co-located with services like maternal and child health services and playgroups. I can speak firsthand about just how important those sorts of services are, because they exist in Newport, in my electorate of Williamstown. We have got the Newport Gardens Early Years Centre, which was built adjacent to the primary school there. That gives incredible transitional services to those kids that are at the kinder. They can look out the window and see the kids in the primary school playing in the yards. It is fantastic actually for parents to be able to do that single drop-off and pick-up and really helps the transition as those kids move out of four-year-old kinder and straight into prep. It is a terrific centre, and it is something that this government is proud to continue to support. With this ambitious reform we recently passed a bill to enable the minister to acquire land to deliver kindergartens and the 50 government owned and operated early learning centres, and the first four centres will open in 2025, with a further 26 locations announced. I know how excited the Minister for Children in the other place is to be able to deliver that.

Free kinder: under our government we have made kinder free. This year is a significant year in delivering on this reform, with the government’s $270 million free kinder initiative. It is available to all three- and four-year-olds enrolled in participating funded kinder programs, and it will save families a significant amount – up to $2500 in fees per child – each year. And with a cost-of-living crisis, that is certainly money well kept in families’ pockets.

In the last few minutes that are left in this contribution I would like to actually give a bit of a shout-out to some of the investments that this government is delivering into kindergartens in and around the electorate of Williamstown. We have got a brand new kindergarten being built at Sutton Avenue in Altona North. This is part of a Building Blocks grant, part of that $10 million investment, and it will build a new two-room modular kinder for 66 kids in the local area. Certainly Altona North is a growing suburb, with many young families moving into the area, and that will be a much-needed resource.

The iconic Robina Scott, which has a three-year-old kinder and another four-year-old kinder right in the heart of Williamstown, has had $180,000 invested in it. This has been able to provide flexible learning spaces for additional places and upgraded playgrounds for all abilities. I was down there not long ago, and it certainly looks fantastic.

The Range Children’s Centre is another kinder in Williamstown, out on Kororoit Creek Road, and that has the most marvellous upgraded outdoor area, which is about safer play and a restored garden. It is a kindergarten, and their outdoor play areas are all with natural rather than plastic furniture. It is timber, it is rocks, it is beautifully landscaped, and the kids just absolutely love it. The Newport Gardens Early Years Centre has had a Building Blocks capacity grant for $600,000, which has expanded that centre in preparation for free kinder.

Home Road kinder in the heart of Newport has had investment after investment after investment. Their playgroup activities have also been expanded for all-abilities kids, and it looks simply fantastic. South Kingsville Pre School, which is part of South Kingsville Community Centre, has had a Building Blocks improvement grant of $170,000. It has got this gorgeous multisensory inclusive play space and has also expanded the occasional care rooms and bathrooms. And of course there is One Tree in Altona North, which has had $600,000 as part of a Building Blocks capacity grant, and that has allowed it to expand to provide an additional 40 places. Finally, there is Seaholme kindy, which is being delivered by Hobsons Bay City Council, and that is building a new two-room modular building which will allow for an additional 66 kinder places.

Finally, we know that free kinder is a transformative experience and that providing this early childhood learning is absolutely vital to our children, so I would like to give a shout-out to the local government sector, who continue to invest and who continue to be able to support childcare services, because those councils that are stepping away from this are denying many families in their area that vital service. I will leave my contribution there.

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (11:25): I rise today to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023. As we just heard from the Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation at the table, there are many challenges but great opportunities as well when it comes to addressing some of the issues in child care. We know, and I have mentioned in this place many, many times, that in my electorate of Lowan we are in a childcare desert. There simply are insufficient childcare facilities. There are insufficient childcare staff, our early educators, to meet the demand for childcare support services for our young children and our families, who rely so heavily on them. I know of so many people in my local area who have been forced to quit their jobs or return to work in a reduced capacity or they are choosing or having to work night shift, so they never see their partner, just to keep their jobs, to keep food on the table and to ensure that there is care for their children. In one childcare centre in Horsham alone there are 200 families on the waitlist. Only five new families have been offered places for this coming year, and this is the largest childcare centre in Horsham. We are at critical breaking point when it comes to offering childcare support.

I note the previous government speaker referenced the free TAFE program, but unfortunately it is not delivering the number of childcare workers that we need. It sounds good and it looks good in media releases, but at the end of the day we need increased capacity to make sure that we are training more early educators, to make sure that we have got more people in the system and also to make sure that there are sufficient supports in place to keep people in the sector. One of the biggest issues in my electorate is that the pressures that are on early educators are just so great that people are taking those skills and working in alternative areas. They are dropping out of those supports for child care and for kindergarten, supporting our youngest people get the best possible start to life, simply because they are in a work environment where they are not well supported. Until the government has something beyond the slogan of free TAFE, until we see a policy from the government that actually results in a significant increase in the net number of childcare workers in the state of Victoria and until we see from this government a policy which works to attract and retain childcare workers to rural and regional areas of the state, then we are simply not going to see a reversal of this. The consequence of the government failing to take action, to take on and seriously consider the implications of the critical early educator workforce shortages across the state, is very, very disappointing, and it is having an impact on so many Victorian families.

Earlier this week I met with the Financial Counselling Victoria group. There is an increasing number of young families who are unable to keep up with their childcare fees. They are just not able to pay them. This is something occurring across all the cost pressures that young families have. As the cost of living escalates across the state, it is not just increases in mortgage payments, it is not just increases in energy bills, it is not just grocery prices going up, it is not just rego and licensing going up – it is the school fees going up, everything. Everywhere people turn the cost of living is going up under Labor. They are getting behind on their childcare payments. For young families who rely on two incomes – and generally what I am hearing from financial counsellors is that it is these young families who are coming for help – they are people who have got mortgages and both parents work. These are people who otherwise would probably be seen as people who are not financially vulnerable, but they are coming for support at that critical point where they are at financial breaking point.

For parents, and usually it is the mum, when you cannot afford childcare payments and you fall behind on your payments and the childcare operator says ‘I’m sorry, we can’t have your child stay at our centre any longer’, then there is a position forced upon those families that one of the parents has to stop work, and generally it is a burden that falls on the mum. We know that we have so many workforces, particularly in the health sector, that are female-dominated industries. If mothers are more often forced to stay home to look after children because they cannot afford child care, then it is going to put additional pressure on other workforces that are critically short across our state. It also of course just puts that spiral in there again. If a family who cannot afford, with two incomes, child care is then put in a position where they lose one of those incomes, it is only going to put even more pressure on that family who are trying to give a young one the best possible start to life – to keep a roof over their head and keep food on the table – and we need to address that urgently.

There is a critical shortage of financial counsellors across the state. Calls to the debt helpline in Victoria have increased by 47 per cent in the past year. This is well above the Australian average of a 23 per cent increase. In Victoria people are really, really hurting with the cost of living absolutely skyrocketing. In my local region of Horsham Carly Baker does an exceptional job. She covers an enormous region, from Geelong right through to Mildura. The demand for her services just continues to increase. She has about 40 to 50 families on her waitlist; many of those are struggling to keep up with childcare costs. She is at the point where people are waiting for nine weeks, and the service have actually had to close their books to new families getting financial support. This will have critical consequences for people if they cannot get financial support when they need it.

There is a solution that has been put forward – that is, that the government provides funding for more financial counsellors across the state. It is not a big ask. Ten financial counsellors is what Financial Counselling Victoria are asking for. They want 10 financial counsellors across the state, which is a cost of about $1.5 million a year. They want it for three years over this peak time because they know that the cost of living is only going to get harder under Labor. I urge the government to consider supporting these families who are trying desperately to keep their children in child care, because the alternative would be disastrous, not just for the parents but also for their children. They will not be given the opportunity to get the best possible start to life. Further to that, it will just exacerbate the critical workforce shortages that are existing particularly in rural and regional Victoria. It is of course a very, very difficult decision for childcare operators to say ‘You haven’t paid for three to six months. We simply can’t afford to have you in our centre any longer’.

Our childcare operators are doing an incredible job under very difficult circumstances. I have not mentioned them all before, but Mel, Jodie and the team provide fabulous childcare support for my little girl, and many of the same people offered support and childcare education to my young boy. I very much appreciate everything that they do. They are working so hard. They have created a food bank within their childcare centre, where you can drop in food for parents that maybe cannot go to the Christian Emergency Food Centre or have not got friends or relatives that they can rely on just to grab some food, nappies, formula or whatever it might be. I really commend the way that they are trying their best to support as many families as possible, but it should not just be up to them. It should be a responsibility of government as well to ensure that families are never having to choose between putting food on the table and keeping their job or sending their children to child care. They should never, ever be in that position.

In summary, I urge the government to address child care in three ways. One I realise is extraneous, but it is still very important. We need to ensure that the government has a policy which looks to train more childcare workers not just by offering a free course but by expanding courses. We need to see programs in place that will better attract childcare workers to rural and regional Victoria but also provide a positive workplace where they are able to be retained in rural and regional Victoria. I also ask the government to consider the impacts of their financial decisions, their mismanagement of the state’s finances, the pressure burden and cost-of-living expenses, which are going through the roof for so many families, and to fund 10 additional financial counsellors to support families who are most at need, particularly those families who cannot afford to pay their childcare bills and who are being forced to remove their children from child care and resign from their jobs. There are opportunities. There is an opportunity to support Victorians better, and I urge the government to consider these options, because that would make a world of difference for families who are very much struggling with cost-of-living pressures under this Labor government.

 Martha HAYLETT (Ripon) (11:35): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023. I could talk about the topic of early childhood education all day. I am so proud of the work our Labor government is doing to make sure every young Victorian has the best start in life. As the Minister for Local Government noted earlier, the key purpose of the bill is to put into practice a recommendation agreed to by the education ministers meeting for the 2019 national quality framework review. As part of the review, Commonwealth, state and territory education ministers agreed to a number of outcomes aimed at improving children’s health, safety and wellbeing. Importantly, each of those outcomes were informed by those who know the issue best: parents, families and workers within the education and care sector themselves. This bill gives effect to one of the review’s recommendations – establishing a premises approval in principle scheme for new early childhood services in multistorey buildings. By providing approval in principle, these changes ensure that applicants will have confidence that designs of their proposed premises meet the necessary standards defined under the national quality framework, including those aimed squarely at protecting the safety of young children in emergency evacuations.

Importantly, the proposed changes in this bill will also improve the early childhood services approval process for services in new or altered multistorey buildings, saving applicants time and money. It also reflects the changing nature of early childhood education and care in our nation. Whilst less than 1 per cent of early childhood services are currently located in multistorey buildings, and 0 per cent in my own electorate of Ripon, we know that as our population grows and as the needs of families change, our approach needs to change too. That is certainly the belief and record of our government. Under our watch Victoria is leading the nation on early childhood education and care. At the heart of that effort is our $14 billion commitment to transforming kinder across our state. Already we have made kinder free for three- and four-year-old Victorian children. This means a saving of up to $2500 per child each year, providing massive relief for family budgets – 2500 bucks; that is incredible. It will also enable more than 28,000 Victorians to return to work, with more than 26,000 of them being women.

Our rollout of three-year-old kinder is also continuing, with every child in Victoria now able to access at least 5 hours a week of early childhood education. This will only get better, with all Victorian families progressively able to benefit from 30 hours of free pre-prep each week over the next 10 years. Many families in my electorate will be the first to enjoy this nation-leading reform, with kinder transitioning to pre-prep and being delivered in the Northern Grampians shire and the Ararat Rural City Council areas first in 2025 before other council areas progressively join the rollout in the following years. I know that the communities of Ararat and St Arnaud are so excited about pre-prep coming to them first. We know how important early learning is to a child’s development, so vulnerable children living outside these initial areas will also be eligible from 2026. It will have a profound impact on kids’ lives forever, giving them the best building blocks to succeed into the future. It will also be a game changer for so many young families across my electorate who raise the issue of early learning with me constantly. It comes up everywhere I go.

Thankfully our plan to establish 50 government-owned and operated early learning centres will also make a big difference. Focused firmly on addressing childcare shortages in communities that need it most, these new centres will mean the local families can have confidence that there will be an available place for their little ones. In Ripon it means a brand new childcare facility in the Creswick–Clunes area, in Maryborough and in the Loddon shire. Wherever possible, these new centres will be co-located with schools, enabling parents to ditch the dreaded double drop-off. In other instances they will be co-located with services like maternal and child health care and playgroups, providing a central and joined-up spot for local families.

Currently there are absolutely no childcare options in Clunes and absolutely no childcare centres in the whole of the Loddon shire, and there is a 12-month waiting list for child care in Maryborough. Mums and dads cannot go back to work as a result, and it is being felt at our local hospitals, schools, councils, supermarkets and other workplaces. It is also impacting our rural and regional kids’ development as they are not around other kids their age and learning all together. Our action as a government will change this. We had to step in as we were sick of waiting for the federal Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments to do anything about early childhood education. For families it means doubling the number of funded kinder hours from 15 to 30 a week, and for our kids it means even more opportunity to learn and play and grow. It is a hugely ambitious reform, but as with so many of our government’s big ideas, we are not wasting a moment in delivering it.

We are also expanding kinders in the growing outer areas of Ballarat in my electorate. In Haddon we are delivering a massive $2.7 million upgrade of the Haddon Kindergarten. It will mean 50 more kids can join free kinder locally and have the very best start in life. We are also building a brand new kindergarten at Napoleons Primary School with two classrooms and an outdoor learning area. The kinder will mean 66 more local kids can benefit from the service, and having the kinder and school all together will avoid that double drop-off and help kids have a smoother transition into primary school.

We are doing so much to improve early childhood education in this state. I am so proud to be on this side of the chamber delivering results for our rural and regional communities. I know how much of a difference this is going to have. Mums in Wedderburn and Inglewood in the Loddon shire regularly talk to me about how they have got to lock up the kids in the car while they are working on the farm to make sure that they do not walk around the machinery or they have got to have the kids in a playpen in the butchers shop because there is absolutely no child care right now, and that is not okay. That is what the government is addressing to ensure that we build more government-run childcare centres for those childcare deserts in our rural and regional areas where they are needed most. I know that this comes up in St Arnaud, and they are so excited about getting their pre-prep modular buildings. In Ararat they are so excited about pre-prep as well. In Maryborough one of my staff is pregnant herself, and some of her friends said ‘You’d better get them on the waiting list already for child care’. We know that is absolutely not okay and we want to fix that issue, and we on this side of the chamber are.

I would also like to take the opportunity to give a shout-out to all our early childhood educators, who do a phenomenal job. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of them over the past year, including the incredible staff at the Clunes and District Preschool, Creswick and District Preschool, Ararat Early Learning Centre and Journey Early Learning Centre in Lucas. I am looking forward to travelling around and meeting all of the staff and the kids at all of our learning centres across Ripon. They go above and beyond for our little Victorians, and I could not be more grateful for all that they do. We are also supporting their work with $5000 for every single early centre across Victoria to purchase more toys – which is very, very happy days – and free kinder kits for every little one as well.

This bill is just a part of that reform, supporting the delivery of the infrastructure required for our landmark Best Start, Best Life program and ensuring that all early childhood services in Victoria operate under the same regulatory requirements. We are not wasting a moment in getting this done and making a change to reform our early learning sector in Victoria – because as I said, we were sick of waiting for the federal government to do anything about it when the Liberals and Nationals were in control. I commend the bill to the house.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (11:44): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023, a bill that sets up a voluntary approval scheme so that childcare centres in multistorey buildings can get approval, according to the government, to make childcare centres more accessible and to improve safety. We support this bill because of course we want to make sure that safety is paramount for children in childcare settings and we want to improve accessibility, and that is a very big issue in South-West Coast. While this bill is I think very Melbourne-centric – because it is multistorey focused and talks to, as we heard in the bill briefing, around 10 buildings a year that will be affected by this bill – in the meantime I see in South-West Coast a significant crisis in child care. We are a childcare desert declared area, and there is not a day that goes by that I do not have parents calling me, asking for a solution to be put forward.

I have been listening to the members on the other side of the chamber talk about all the work the government is doing to address the childcare issues. Well, they need to address the issue now, not in four, five or six years time. Three-year-old kinder is a terrific concept – and one we backed before the election – but it is one that has been brought in by this government with no planning and no ability to carry it out in a responsible way. In fact what it has done is add to the childcare crisis in south-west Victoria. We all understand the importance of early education, and there is a lot of evidence saying that from nought to three the more education a child gets the better the outcomes are for them, both socially and academically. But the reality of the situation is that when we have got children on waiting lists for child care and day care and all the services that help parents when they need to go to work, three-year-old kinder has just put children whose parents had them at home into that system. That has led to less supply and more demand. It is fantastic to have it, but we did not have the planning in place, nor staff trained or extra staff available, nor the infrastructure for that take place in. In the regions it has caused a lot more pressure and problems.

I am experienced in the area of childcare as a parent. I have four children, and each one of them was in child care. I have used in-venue care and I have used family day care. As a shiftworker it was very difficult to use a childcare centre that had fixed hours. My shifts would start at 7 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon and go to 11 at night. They are difficult times for childcare centres that operate from 8 to 5 or 6. This is what the parents are saying to me: the childcare centres are full, waiting lists go for at least two years, and for shift workers the systems and the rules around family day care are not flexible enough.

In a recent sitting I put forward a motion to the chamber asking the government to look at having an inquiry to bring the federal government and the state government together so we can look at ways to make child care flexible and available. At the moment, for example, a family day care mum, as I always call them, can start a centre in their own home, but they cannot be registered in anyone else’s home. Now, if a home is safe and child safety is not compromised, that system is probably not flexible enough to work in different situations. There are regulations that are monitored by the state that could be looked at, and the federal government subsidies, for example, could be looked at to be made more portable. If you have got a family who is in an area that is out of town and they have got a lady up the road who is prepared to come into their home, which they know is safe, she should fit the criteria for being paid under the subsidy scheme, or if you have not got enough people, which we see in the regions, and someone from overseas is encouraged to come over and work as an au pair, then that au pair should be able to be eligible. There are all sorts of ideas that have come to my office from parents who are in dire situations. The cost of living is increasing, and many of these families have mortgages that they are trying to meet the repayments on with interest rates going up. They were expecting to be out of the workforce for some months to a year, not three, four or five years, which is what they are finding with the long waiting lists. We need to assist these families now. I get emails regularly. I will quote from some of the emails that I have been given. This is one that says:

I have had our daughter on the waiting list since I was three months pregnant, down at every childcare centre within a 56km radius of our home, which is up to an hour travel time one way. During this time, for example, at one centre we have only moved from 69th to 65th on the waiting list. Our choices are:

Delay my return to work causing us financial strain …

Hire a private nanny …

that cannot be subsidised, so it will not work, and it is possibly too much for her husband and her to continue to work. These are really difficult situations for families. This one says:

With interest rates rising it is fairly challenging trying to keep up with the home loan when only one of us is working full-time and the other is unable to work more than one day a week.

A detective recently contacted me. She lives out of town. She is having to pay someone to go and pick up her child, because detectives work shiftwork and the childcare centre that she has her child in can only take the child three days a week. This particular detective said to me that their shifts are down, because they are understaffed in the regions in the police force, so she is letting her colleagues down. It is no longer as it was perhaps in my era, where it was my problem to find the solution. I think it is now a community problem. In the forum I held recently we had police officers, ambulance officers, teachers and nurses all saying they could not go back to work because they could not get anyone to care for their children.

I had a doctor recently who has a practice – she and three nurses all have children – who wanted to set up a family day care in her practice, but as I said earlier, the regulations around that do not allow someone to set up in somebody else’s home – and it was not a home; it was a clinical practice. But in those areas, as long as they are safe, surely we can find a way to have a bespoke model that makes sure there is someone that comes along and looks at them and approves them so they can fit within the model. That is what I think an inquiry would be able to look at – putting forward a way that these regulations and the subsidy can be re-looked at so we can find solutions for families today. As many of these emails say, they cannot wait two to three years, and the waitlist just grows. We see the impact on our economy with the recent study that shows that 26,000 people are out of the workforce due to lack of childcare availability, which is costing our economy $1.5 billion per annum.

In South-West Coast we have a workforce shortage, so we are desperate for more people. We are also struggling with a housing crisis. If you put a childcare crisis on top of that, there is no way we can find a solution without the government coming in, sitting down and doing this inquiry, as I suggested in the Parliament, which the government shut down before we even were allowed to begin debate – because there are solutions. If we can solve the childcare crisis, we can encourage people to come to the region. I had a teacher that came to the region who could not access child care, and they said ‘Well, we were encouraged to come to the region and assisted to do so, but if we can’t have support for our family, we’re going to have to leave’. This is quite dire. One email said:

… childcare centres in Portland and the surrounding areas have informed me that they do not have any available positions and are not looking at vacancies until 2024. This is unacceptable and places me in an untenable position of having to end my career and rely on Government support … an option I cannot and will not fathom.

This is from a single mother with a chronic health issue who actually works in the area of housing. She is a town planner, from memory when I read this – and I may have that wrong, because I cannot find it right here. But that is the sort of person we actually need right now in the regions to help us with our housing crisis. We cannot fix this problem if we do not start with child care. An inquiry was a suggestion I made. I asked the government to revisit that suggestion. There are solutions. The families know them. We cannot continue with this childcare desert, but we can fix it today.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (11:54): I also rise to support the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023. As the member for Kew noted at the top of today’s debate, this bill has its origins in the national framework that we have to regulate early childhood education and care for the vast majority of our service providers. For various kinds of interesting constitutional and operational reasons, the legislative parts of that national framework are of course implemented by the states and territories separately. There is a national law, which everyone agrees to, but then it forms a schedule to the Victorian act, and the act turns on various bits.

This bill that we have here in front of us today, as we know, mainly amends that national law in part 2 but then also has a shorter bit in part 3 that amends our own act. I think the member for Kew also noted that that national framework came into place in 2012. I will just note that it was the Rudd–Gillard Labor government that introduced the national quality framework, a fine government, led at the time by then minister Kate Ellis, a fine minister who I note is the same age as me and has managed to have a very impressive career, implement all these reforms and happily retire before some of us even got into Parliament. As other speakers have noted, there is a five-yearly process for reviewing the national quality framework, and it was the 2019 review that set in train the various decisions that led to the bill we have in front of us today.

Other speakers have noted that the government last year – those of us elected last year were not here, but those who were in the previous government were – passed the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which implemented most of the recommendations from the 2019 review, but this piece of legislation today deals with the last outstanding recommendation. I understand that it is a little bit more complex and there was some further stakeholder consultation to be done, so not wanting to hold up the earlier reforms, many of which have now come into effect, we held it over to this bill that we have today.

It is probably fair to say that in this place we talk about some very general things sometimes and then we talk about some fairly specific ones. Today’s legislation is fairly specific – I understand we are not expecting hundreds of childcare providers or early childhood providers to make use of the mechanisms we are putting in place – but it is important. It is certainly important from a safety point of view, and it is important for some other things we will pick up on in the regulations. I think the member for South-West Coast, who has now left the chamber, did call it Melbourne-centric, which I thought was a little unfair. I would point out that there are multistorey buildings in regional Victoria. I do not know if any of them have early childhood services in them, but at some point I am sure they will.

To go right to the heart of the bill we have in front of us, it implements that recommendation and specifically establishes an approval in principle scheme for new early childhood services in buildings that are three or more storeys high. As I said, and as previous speakers have noted, that is particularly relevant with respect to emergency evacuations. I think any of us who have had the experience of trying to get a toddler to put their shoes on would appreciate the potentially – I do not want to make light of it – quite serious situation of having to evacuate 30 or 40 toddlers or indeed infants, who obviously cannot walk. The member for Narre Warren South actually mentioned to me that he, I believe in his time as the very successful secretary of what was then the National Union of Workers, observed a childcare facility they had above their headquarters and watched sometimes in drills all of the kids being led down the staircase and so forth.

Gary Maas: In nappies.

Nathan LAMBERT: In nappies, as the member says.

Paul Edbrooke: A bit like a division in Parliament.

Nathan LAMBERT: There are some similarities. Anyway, as I said, not to make light of that, you can imagine it is a very serious situation and one which this bill helps address.

I do just want to also pick up that those of us who are familiar with the regulations will know that there is some very important stuff in there about outdoor space. There are outdoor space requirements per child and natural light requirements. There are requirements relating to sleep for children, which is of course important. We note as always that a lot of the regulations are there because they particularly support children with a disability or other inclusion needs, so it is important that services meet all of them. Our Department of Education has that key role as a regulator and will be applying and running the approval in principle process that we will hopefully support today. I certainly know locally in Preston and Reservoir our centres are very attuned to the requirements of those regulations, and in fact we are talking to the fine people at Nara Community Early Learning Centre about expanding some open space for them at their Melbourne Polytechnic site. I know the member from Ripon said that she did not have any multistorey facilities in her electorate. I do not think we do either. But as we know, the government has recently released its landmark housing statement. We do expect Melbourne to become more dense over time. We will see more European-height buildings. No doubt, as is the case in Europe, some of those buildings will have early childhood facilities in them and these regulations will apply.

In essence the great attraction to developers and to service providers is that they will have certainty. They will go to get their building permit. Before they do so they will get their approval in principle. They will have a piece of paper that legally says that they have met the requirements, and they will not have to go back and do expensive rectification works and the like. In essence therefore I suppose the bill is supporting the smoother and faster development of multistorey early childhood education and care services.

Of course it is part of our broader $14 billion Best Start, Best Life reform package, and we know that as part of that package the state government itself will become a provider of long day care and integrated kinder services. I know that new centres will be coming to a whole range of wonderful locations around the state. I see the member for Frankston is here; I think there is a new centre due in Frankston North – plus Glenroy and Heidelberg West. The member for Ripon has left, but Maryborough is getting one.

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Nathan LAMBERT: I have got the member for Frankston’s attention. Importantly for me, Reservoir will get a new centre out of that work. You will note when you look through the list that we are supporting a lot of areas in that list that historically have had high levels of economic disadvantage, and that is a factor and an important part of the work that we are doing. Certainly the new centre will be very welcome in Reservoir, whether it is multistorey or not.

I should in the time I have got left just note that we do have some challenges in the Darebin area with council. Council are anticipating that they might lower the level of financial support for community childhood centres. I note that the member for Northcote, who is here, has spoken about this on previous occasions and is I suppose leading our efforts to convince council to ensure that they provide centres first and foremost with more certainty than they are at the moment. Centres only have two years certainty; we are asking them to provide more.

Kat Theophanous interjected.

Nathan LAMBERT: Exactly – that is important, as the member for Northcote says, for retaining staff, for doing planning, for applying for grants and for all those sorts of things. But then more fundamentally we would like them not to impose additional costs on the centres. It is unfortunately a thing that happens sometimes in public policy – when one level of government increases its funding, another level of government looks to take that chance to pull some money away. It is always a bit of a risk, and we certainly hope that that will not be the case in Darebin.

Turning then just to the final parts of the bill we have in front of us that deal with the Children’s Services Act 1996, as we have seen, firstly they just mirror the approval in principle process that we have just discussed at length, inserting it into that act, which covers some of our other services. I know locally in our part of the world – as the member for Northcote knows – Chris Lombardo at Bridge Darebin often speaks to us about the importance of aligning the way we do policy between the two acts. She will be pleased to see we are doing so here.

Finally, part 5 of the bill introduces the infringeable offence scheme that the member for Kew mentioned at the top of her remarks. I understand that is not likely to be used with any frequency, but it is there, again, to ensure consistency.

I am pleased to see the opposition support this particular bill. I would like to wrap up by thanking Minister Blandthorn and of course the former minister, Minister Stitt, and their teams for their work. I would like to thank Kim Little, Bronwen FitzGerald, Lisa Gandolfo, Greg Norton, Amanda Powell and other members of the department, who have put a great deal of work into it.

Of course our early childhood centres are putting a great deal of work into rolling out these reforms. We know they are not trivial, and we appreciate the efforts they are putting in. Their stakeholders and peak bodies have contributed to the development of today’s bill. I understand it comes here with their support. The Best Start, Best Life reform is about making sure that kids have the best start to have the best life, and I commend this bill to the house.

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (12:04): I rise to make some comments on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023 and say at the outset, as you have heard the member for Kew mention, we are supporting this bill. Quality childhood education is one of the key foundations for any young person, and it is so important to get those early years right and provide the quality care that families and children deserve. In this house there are a number of things that we could be doing for that: ensuring that we have got enough staff to work in these childcare facilities, that we have got the facilities and that we are providing the support for the families and making sure that these childcare facilities are affordable.

This particular bill talks about multilevel facilities and new facilities, which are important as part of the growth. But I wanted to focus my attention today on what we are doing to support our existing centres, particularly the community centres that are so important in terms of providing choice. Those community-run centres really keep the market running right, because when they are community run, when they are run largely with boards and families that are supporting them, then they really sharpen up, provide that quality care and keep private providers in check in the overall system.

I wanted to draw attention particularly to centres in my area – Caulfield, Murrumbeena and Carnegie. These early learning centres are in jeopardy of being closed; the City of Glen Eira notified many parents on 4 October that it intends to potentially close these centres by the end of the year. As you can imagine, many of the parents are quite distraught about this, rightfully so, because these centres have been so valuable. In fact on measure they rate exceptionally well in terms of the quality of child care that they provide. They have a long history of great results and really, really good feedback in terms of the educators that are at these childcare centres, and there is such a groundswell of support to keep these centres open. I understand there are pressures on the council in terms of being able to manage their budget to keep the centres open, and I would urge the state to work with the council to do whatever they possibly can to ensure centres like Caulfield, Murrumbeena and Carnegie stay open.

There is consultation. There are a number of activities. I know the member for Oakleigh has agreed to attend a rally, which I also will be attending. I know certainly the member for McNamara is also attending that rally. So there is a lot of goodwill in terms of trying to do this, but it needs more than goodwill. It needs money, it needs resources and it needs commitments to those parents that the centres can remain open – at the very least until they have choices and other options, because to tell parents in October that their centres are going to close literally by the end of the year gives them no choice, no options. We already know that in a pretty tight market those choices are limited for many of those parents. Many of those parents want community centres. They have deliberately chosen centres like Caulfield, Murrumbeena and Carnegie as their centres because of the quality care that they provide, the choice, the grounding and the level of support. That is the kind of child care that they want. I want to particularly recognise the great work of Ashlea Diamond, Jeremy Koadlow, Emiko Hunt and many others that have really driven this campaign to raise awareness around keeping the centres open.

I also mention that we had a similar situation in the City of Port Phillip just before the last election, and in that particular instance we had The Avenue Children’s Centre and Kindergarten in Balaclava, in my electorate; the Eildon Road Childcare and Kindergarten in St Kilda, in the member for Albert Park’s electorate; and the Elwood Children’s Centre in Elwood, which is in the member for Brighton’s electorate. I know certainly the member for Brighton and I worked with a number of those parents. We raised those issues. A number of other members of Parliament got involved with this as well. Ultimately, with a lot of pressure from parents, those centres were able to remain open.

So if we are able to do it in Port Phillip, then I would ask that we do whatever we can to ensure that the centres in Glen Eira also remain open. A lot of these centres in Glen Eira require upgrades in terms of their facilities – their old buildings – so maybe that might be an option, and even an additional model going forward. It might not be a situation where the council can operate these centres forever, but let us look at other models that allow, potentially, the sustainability of these childcare centres going forward. We need to explore that. We need to ensure that costs are sustainable for parents and also to be able to run them and we need to ensure that we are not just building new centres but investing in the ones that we have got. That is why I think this is really important in making this contribution today.

It is all well and good to be able to change the legislation for multistorey childcare centres, and certainly there will be a requirement for that, and there will be some that will suit really well, particularly with the cost of land. I know in my area there will be areas where that will work well. At the same time, I would like to see equal effort put into our existing centres. You cannot just keep opening new ones and closing others that have had such a great reputation, already have a lot of goodwill in the community, have had an investment in the community and have a great parent community that put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into ensuring that those kids get the best opportunities they can in those centres. So I would ask the government to do what they can in working with the City of Glen Eira to keep the Carnegie, Caulfield and Murrumbeena early childcare centres open. I think it is really, really important going forward.

I will conclude my comments there, but I just say, particularly to many of those parents that I know are really struggling at the moment – coming up to Christmas, with all of the other cost-of-living pressures that many families are currently experiencing at the moment, the last thing they want on top of increased costs of child care is a decrease in options for child care. That is what we are seeing, because you cannot just keep closing these childcare centres. Community centres are the lifeblood, they are the heart, and they are the things that keep the market going in terms of being able to provide those options and opportunities for younger people. As we say, there is nothing better than quality child care. If we get it right early, we provide those huge options and opportunities for kids into the future. I absolutely support the best we can do to ensure we keep childcare centres open and provide funding and resources for them, and we support them going forward.

 Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (12:11): I rise to speak in support of the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023. As we all know, the new Premier Jacinta Allan has very clearly identified and raised the issue of children as very, very high on the Allan Labor government’s agenda going forward in this term of government. A lot of work has already been done to support families and children, and the amendments that this piece of legislation provides really have to be seen in a much larger context, because it is very rare that a piece of legislation or an amendment is just a small piece that stands alone by itself without any other context. In this case, when we are talking about child care, children’s services and early years education, we are actually talking about a much bigger context and a much bigger reform – a huge reform in fact from the Allan Labor government – when we talk about our most important thing, which is our children and future generations. It has been identified that early years education is so, so important to the development of people and the contribution they can make in society, and we want to make sure that we can provide the very best to our children so they can be their very best as they go through their lives.

Of course we have done a lot of work – which I will talk a bit further about in terms of the huge investments – but before going through what this legislation is about I just want make a point that seems to be missing from the other side here: there are three levels of government in Australia and they all have responsibilities when it comes to education of different levels. For example, the federal government is responsible for child care, and in that area, after a dismal 10 years or more of a Liberal federal government that really tried as in many other ways to pull apart and dismantle and break up services such as child care, the federal Labor government in the last budget provided an additional $4.5 billion to families so that they could get further subsidisation through the childcare subsidy, and also further supports for First Nations children.

Then we have local government. Local government is responsible for kindergartens – the building of kindergartens and the running of kindergartens – although the state does provide for the educators in those kindergartens. Again, when we are talking about responsibilities, it cannot all be left to the state government. I think we are pulling our weight well above what is required through legislation and government responsibilities. It always has to be said that the state government is well and truly doing the heavy lifting, but other levels of government have a lot of responsibility and need to come to the party and start doing a bit more too.

In terms of this legislation, we are talking about a couple of amendments to different acts. There is the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, and there is the Children’s Services Act 1996. In terms of these two pieces of legislation the amendments are really around, first of all, harmonising law so that Victorian law is consistent with that in the other states and territories. This came about as a result of discussions and meetings with ministers from across the country, including the federal minister, to ensure that we have a system that is consistent across the states and territories when it comes to legislation around approval. Childcare centres and early education centres often operate in many states, so it is really important to ensure that legislation is consistent across the country. That makes it more certain, it makes it more safe and it ensures that everybody is working in the same direction.

This harmonisation of course is around the approval in principle process for the building of early education centres. It means that the developers, the builders and the agencies can have a little bit more certainty in terms of getting approval in principle for what they are building. This is in particular related to multistorey centres. This is a relatively new thing; I can think of just one centre in the whole of the Thomastown electorate that is multistorey. I have visited that centre; it is a great centre. The kids are really happy. You can see it as soon as you walk in; they are laughing and concentrating and working on whatever projects or activities they are doing. But I do know that that centre did have quite a lot of trouble. There was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of time-consuming toing and froing before they were able to set up that childcare centre in a multistorey building.

The ability to get prior approval and get the certainty to allow for childcare services in multistorey buildings is getting really critical. In particular I look at, again, the Thomastown electorate. There is a dire lack of land, and it is very expensive. We do have growing suburbs. There are the outer suburbs of Wollert and North Epping. More and more new families with young children are coming to live in those lovely parts of this great state. We also have the Epping activity centre, which has been nominated as one of I think 10 centres in the housing statement where we will be building lots of new homes for families. Hopefully – it is expected – there will be affordable homes and a lot of homes so that people can own their own home. But of course they will need services around them, and early education and childcare services will be most important.

As I was saying, this legislation builds on a whole lot of other work that has been done by the Allan Labor government – for example, our $14 billion Best Start, Best Life program, which talks about free kinder, which has already started, for four-year-old children as well as three-year-old children. There are also our many, many grants and infrastructure programs to help support either existing kindergartens to redevelop and extend or the building of new kindergartens. I am just thinking of the most recent ties we have with the co-located kindergarten that has just been built next to Lalor Primary School. That is a fantastic kinder; it has got incredible facilities. When you go in there it just looks amazing. We are still building on those sorts of centres.

There is also, as previous speakers have mentioned, the fantastic program of state built and run early learning centres. The suburb of Lalor in the electorate of Thomastown has been nominated to have such a centre. There are commitments that the centres will open by 2028. I know residents in that area are really excited about this. They are always asking me when it is starting and what is happening, and I can assure them that the commitment is for all of the centres to be open by 2028.

Probably the most important part of early childhood learning is the teachers and the staff that look after the children and provide that education and that support. We are also increasing investment in this area to upskill and retain early childhood teachers and educators. There are scholarships, there are incentives, there are traineeships and there are programs to provide career incentives in order to support the existing people that are working in this area as well as to attract new people, because we are going to need a lot more of them in order to fulfil our very optimistic and exciting program in the area of early childhood learning.

This legislation, I believe, is supported by all sides of the house. It is just one part in a much larger program of reform around early childhood learning. This continues the steps that we need to take in order to make sure that we expand services and provide the best quality services that we can.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (12:21): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023, a bill that I am happy to support. Ensuring the safety of children in early education and childcare settings is of paramount importance to me and the entire coalition. With rapidly increasing demand for early childhood education and childcare services across the state, ensuring the children in these facilities have safe evacuation routes in the event of an emergency is integral. It is also important to provide regulatory certainty to organisations seeking to offer childcare and early education services in multistorey buildings so that there are enough childcare and kinder places to meet growing demand over coming years. The coalition supports this bill because it will improve the safety of children in early education and childcare centres that are housed within multistorey buildings as well as improve the regulatory approval process for organisations seeking to establish new early education and childcare centres. This bill implements recommendations from the 2019 national quality framework review, which aim to improve the regulatory framework governing early childhood education and care across the country. The NQF review framework has broad stakeholder support and reflects the consensus position of all state and territory governments.

Sadly, there are still several areas where this Labor government lags behind when it comes to improving the wellbeing of young children. A survey I organised has highlighted the dire state of child care in my electorate of Euroa, with responses from all over the electorate sharing similar concerns. The survey, which was launched in June and remains open to responses, asks members of the community several questions about their experiences in accessing child care. Responses have been received from parents in Avenel, Benalla, Broadford and Rushworth, as well as many small towns. I wanted to hear directly from the community and bring their stories to Parliament to create meaningful change in the region because, simply put, there are far too many families in our community who are struggling to access childcare options. Our major towns are not inaccessible backwaters, but they are placed at a disadvantage when it comes to child care. The lack of childcare facilities is preventing parents from returning to the workforce at a time when the cost of living is rapidly rising. This is a real handbrake on our community and places a hurdle in front of young people who want to raise their family in the country.

Some of the issues raised in the responses include multiyear waitlists, a lack of childcare providers in their town and families relocating to other areas to access better childcare options. The responses share overwhelmingly negative experiences, with 100 per cent of parents who shared their experience saying they have been adversely impacted by the lack of available child care under this government. Some of the responses from this survey have been truly disheartening.

Jodie from Benalla said:

The centre that my son has been at this year … has just announce that on Friday 22nd December, they are permanently closing their doors. They can not find staff and therefore can not have the number of children to make the centre financially viable. The lack of staff has meant that I have had to pick my son up early on certain days, find care when the centre has had to close unexpectedly. I am a single mother who works full time. The pressure on me is huge and I have had to lean heavily on my mother and sister to help me through this past 12 months.

Another parent said:

There is no spots and the waitlists are 12-18 months long. I’ve had my 2 on the waiting lists for 8+ months and no sign of a spot anytime soon. We are struggling financially whilst not being able to access childcare for our kids.

Another local mum, Isabel, said:

No access as there are no spots available.

Maddison from Avenel told me that:

Was on the waitlist for months (nearly a year) for 4 different childcares (government and family daycares). Couldn’t go back to work. Nearly lost my job due to not being able to go back enough days. Finally have care but not in our home town which nearly an hour each morning and afternoon for drop offs/pick ups which adds a financial strain.

Beth from Euroa told me that:

When I had my first I popped her name down at the only childcare centre in euroa at 4months. I was told there was a waiting list. She’s now 2 and still no places have come up. The family daycare options are all booked up also. I’ve heard at playgroups that a lot of families have moved out of the district as there was no childcare available.

We have women waiting in foyers of childcare facilities seeing if a sick kid has opened up a space for their own children.

I had a constituent from Broadford call my office last week and explain some of her concerns with childcare in the region. Broadford has a 1½-year-long waitlist for their childcare facility, meaning that this teacher was unable to return to work anytime soon. Due to the waitlist, facilities in neighbouring towns were looked into as possible options, but sadly, these towns are suffering with similar problems. Broadford is on the verge of a massive expansion, yet infrastructure in the town is not matching this pace. On top of issues with child care, this local mother pointed out there are still issues with a number of doctors and dentists, meaning that kids were being left behind.

While the government has made ambitious promises to increase the number of childcare facilities in our state, we are failing to see a coherent plan or any real progress. The early childcare centre promised for Seymour will not be built any time soon. The Labor government choosing to not include it in the first round of centres being established is heartbreaking and reflective of how out of touch it is with the childcare crisis.

Juliana Addison: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I am just wondering about the relevance of this discussion, considering that is the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill. It is very wideranging.

Emma Kealy: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, as the member just stated, it has been a wideranging debate, and I ask you to rule in that way.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I concur that it has been a wideranging debate. The member to continue in silence, please.

Annabelle CLEELAND: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. The Labor government choosing not to include Seymour in its first round of centres being established is heartbreaking and reflective of how out of touch it is with the childcare crisis that is plaguing our state. The recent promise to establish a new early education centre in Seymour is a clear example of the empty commitments that align with election season. The misleading deadline of 2028 for the Seymour childcare centre’s delivery shows a lack of genuine concern for the immediate needs of the community. Despite the region being regarded as a childcare desert under this government, there has been a disregard for regional families who need reliable and affordable child care now. A 2022 report from the Mitchell Institute showed the Euroa electorate had a number of childcare deserts, meaning areas that have childcare places available for less than 33 per cent of children in the local community.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Annabelle CLEELAND: I might repeat that figure for those that are not listening. There are childcare places available for less than 33 per cent of children in our local community. The report showed that Seymour, Benalla, Kilmore and Broadford were some of the areas struggling the most, while smaller towns such as Murchison, Rushworth, Tooborac and Redesdale have no child care at all. So far there have been no commitments to fund a childcare centre in an electorate other than Seymour, which remains without a set time line. There are many women angry about this false and misleading promise, and I am one of them. Towns like Avenel and Nagambie are still in desperate need of more child care options, whereas smaller towns like Murchison, Rushworth, Tooborac and Redesdale have no child care at all. While the safety and wellbeing of children will be improved by this bill, the Labor government remains happy to seemingly disregard this in other areas such as school –

Vicki Ward: Deputy Speaker, I have a point of order. There is one important word missing from the member’s contribution, which is ‘federal’ government. I would ask the member to be relevant to a state government bill rather than addressing federal government responsibility.

Jess Wilson: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, the member was being entirely relevant. In fact she had just referred to the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will comment that the member for Kew was very tight to the bill in opening the debate. However, since then it has been a very wideranging debate.

Annabelle CLEELAND: I was going to talk about school crossings, but I guess that might be stretching it. But that is another issue where the government disregards the safety and wellbeing of our children. I just wanted to do a quick shout-out regarding a report that was –

Members interjecting.

Annabelle CLEELAND: Okay. Thank you to all the childcare providers, school crossing supervisors, parents, babysitters and teachers for doing an amazing job caring for our children. The safety of our children is and always will be the priority, and it was about time the government realised this and stepped up to the plate.

 Juliana ADDISON (Wendouree) (12:31): I am so delighted to make a contribution today about the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023 – and that is principle with an L-E, so I will not be talking about schools. This is all about ensuring continued quality and safety of multistorey early education services. We are talking about the infrastructure and the premises approval for this infrastructure by making an approval in principle process available during the planning and design stages. That is what I am going to talk about. But I am also going to use the wideranging nature, the width and the breadth, of the debate to have a bit of a chat about some of my favourite childcare services and kindergartens, because I think there is precedent to allow me to have a bit of a chat.

Members interjecting.

Juliana ADDISON: They are in regional Victoria. I really do want to thank the member for Ripon, our Minister for Local Government, the member for Preston and the member for Thomastown, who preceded me, for their outstanding contributions. Importantly, I would really like to congratulate Minister Blandthorn in the other place on her appointment as Victoria’s new Minister for Children. I welcome the Premier’s commitment to the wellbeing of our state’s children and families and creating the children portfolio.

The Allan Labor government’s focus on child development and wellbeing, as well as improvements to child protection and our pioneering Best Start, Best Life early education reforms, will deliver better outcomes for all young Victorians, as will this bill, which is about premises approvals in principle, which I am looking forward to talking about too. But before I talk about the importance of this bill, I would like to acknowledge and thank everyone who works in early education in Victoria. I truly believe that being an educator, and an early educator particularly, is more than a job. It is an opportunity to shape the lives of our littlest learners, to introduce them to ideas and experiences that are unknown, to develop their curiosity and love of learning and to allow them to discover their creativity, to take risks and to make mistakes in a safe space.

As a former schoolteacher I know that accessible and high-quality early education services are essential to ensuring positive outcomes for children. Research shows that play-based learning is a powerful way to support children’s development. Our daughters had such positive experiences with their early educators at Lake Gardens Children’s Centre in my electorate, as well as the most beautiful kindergarten, Fidelity kindergarten, in central Ballarat. Mike and I are forever grateful for the care and support that our children were given by early educators every day, the interest they had in their progress and the commitment to ensuring that they were school ready. So to Vicky, Brooke, Renee, Karen, Nikki, Heather, Mary, Kate, Mandy and so many others: thank you for being amazing early educators. I would also like to acknowledge the great work of ECKA, the Eureka Community Kindergarten Association, across Ballarat for their approach to enriching children’s lives in learning environments that are safe, welcome and inclusive.

Emma Kealy: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance, and this is a similar point of order that was raised by the member for Wendouree with the previous speaker, whilst there is absolutely an opportunity to recognise and thank our childcare workers, I ask you to bring her back to the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think I understand your point. It has been a very wideranging debate, and I was here 5 minutes ago.

Juliana ADDISON: I have said it before, and I will say it again. My dad’s saying is ‘Double standards are better than none’, so thank you very, very much.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member would not be reflecting on the Chair with that remark, I would hope.

Juliana ADDISON: The Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 regulates most early childhood education and care sectors is in Australia. The national law – we can talk about the national law – in conjunction with the national regulations forms the national quality framework, which applies to a variety of services, including kinders, long day cares, family day care centres and outside school hours care. The framework is central to ensuring safe, quality care across 4740 such services in Victoria. The national law is hosted by Victoria, meaning that the agreement of other states and territories and the Commonwealth changes to the Education and Care Services National Law Act here are applied around the nation. So while the national law applies to most children’s services in our state, it does not extend to the 210 occasional care and limited hours care services. These types of services are regulated instead in Victoria by the Children’s Services Act 1996 and regulation.

The bill before us today, for those who have not read it or are yet to read it, seeks to make regulatory improvements to both key acts. Amendments are proposed to the national law within the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 in response to the 2019 national quality framework review and subsequent education ministers meeting. These will establish an approval in-principle process for certain multistorey premises so that official guidance can be made available prior to the construction commencing. Amendments to the Children’s Services Act 1996 will extend this approval in-principle process with services not covered by the national law still able to benefit. Separate amendments which designate certain offences and infringement offences will also align the Children’s Services Act with the national law.

As an overview of the bill, what we are doing is improving the processes involved in regulating early childhood services – that is the primary purpose of this bill. In particular it seeks to adjust the approval process for multistorey three-plus level services by making approval in principle available during the preconstruction stage. It is worth noting that less than 1 per cent of early childhood services are located within multistorey buildings, but this number is expected to grow. Multistorey childcare centres can face unique challenges concerning outdoor space, natural light, ventilation and more – importantly, including emergency evacuation. I note the member for Kew talked about that in her contribution as well. As such, there are relevant requirements that these centres must comply with under the national quality framework in order to receive service approval and begin operating. The 2019 review identified, however, that multistorey premises in some cases may inadvertently be built in compliance with local planning laws but not in compliance with the national quality framework. If such discrepancies are not discovered until the end of construction, when providers seek regulatory approval as an early childhood service, then the necessary rectification works can be costly in terms of both time and money. The amendments that are being put forward in this bill will address this by facilitating planning stage in-principle approvals under national law for buildings of three storeys or more.

In Victoria this is proposed as a voluntary process which will encourage builders, designers and providers to seek regulatory guidance and assurance before starting construction on a new build or a renovated multistorey childcare centre. The new approval in principle process will promote awareness of early childhood services, safe practices and quality standards. This will further ensure that new childcare centres are designed as high-quality environments for our youngest Victorians. Whilst we may have some disagreements in this place, that would not be one of them, I am sure. These amendments to the Education and Care Services National Law Act relate specifically to regular services which cover most children’s services in Victoria. However, amendments are also proposed to the Children’s Services Act to make an approval in principle process available for properties that are intended for occasional or limited hours care.

On another matter – and I will be brief – additional elements of the act concerning infringement notices will better align with the regulatory framework across early childhood services. Infringements are an enforcement tool currently available under the national law in response to certain substantive conduct as a part of a broader array of regulatory powers that includes compliance notices, conditions and suspension. I could talk a lot more about the wonderful technicalities of this very significant bill and about the approvals process, but I will just say that we know that kinder and play-based learning are incredibly important parts of a child’s lifelong education. Our reforms are about giving Victorian kids the best start in life, with two years of early learning shown to provide extra academic and social benefits – benefits that continue throughout the school years. I welcome the introduction of the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (12:41): I am happy to rise today to contribute to the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023 – the positive bill-making changes that we need in order to deliver more centres and spaces across Victoria. It will amend legislation to help builders, developers and education, care and service providers to obtain approval in principle from regulatory authorities for centres based in multistorey buildings, which is actually a very complex circumstance to arrange. Multilevel buildings do present very unique challenges when housing childcare centres, but I am pleased to see we are taking a proactive approach here in an effort to get more centres into more locations where we desperately need them.

The purpose of this bill is – coming from my previous profession – to give preapproval to builders, developers et cetera so that they can get the regulations right at the start. I am happy the government has put this forward, but what we have in this state at the moment is a planning system that is quite broken. We have heard the former Premier on previous occasions really berate councils because of hold-ups in planning. It happens across the state. I am not going to single out any LGA, but it does happen across the state, and we have heard the former Premier on quite a few occasions berate councils for holding up the planning process. Now, the problem is that our councils across this state are trying to adhere to government regulations when it comes to planning approvals. So I am just wondering: is this bill coming forward now to – rather than fix the planning process – short-cut this area so we can get these childcare centres up and going quicker, which we all know we desperately need?

Victoria is a state that is growing in population; we realise that. I do appreciate, as does everyone in this chamber, that early learning is very important. We do have quite a waiting list across the state for people wanting to get their children into early learning. We need these spaces available because we need more people in the workforce. We need that and we need it desperately, because there are a lot of businesses out there struggling at the moment to get staff. The more childcare places we have, the better off our economy will be because we will have more people working. I just wonder if part of this is actually short-cutting the process where the government should really be looking at planning as an overall picture – not just one specific part. The government has to look at planning and at the regulations of planning, because that is holding up numerous things across Victoria, and it is not just childcare centres. In this chamber we talk about a lack of housing. Again, if government looked at the planning schemes and reformed planning so developers could get more land released so we could bring down the price of housing, it would go a long way to easing the cost of living, especially when it comes to purchasing a house.

In regional Victoria our access to childcare centres is very, very low. In my electorate I know many, many people that are waiting to get into childcare centres or early learning centres. The other challenge we have in this space is the lack of staff. We have a lack of facilities, lack of staff and lack of places. They are the three main contributing factors as to why there is so much pressure on child care. The government really has to have a plan going forward. I know the government has the 50 centres it is trying to bring out. I think four are going to be completed by 2025, as the Minister for Local Government said earlier. The government needs to accelerate that. I do not think four in the space of the next 18 months is quite enough. In regional Victoria and in my electorate in the first round of releases we did not get any. Not one of the government-owned centres is in the seat of Narracan. I bring this up because the Minister for Local Government brought it up earlier. It astounds me. I hear the government say quite often ‘We’re here for all Victorians’, but I have got one of the fastest growing regions – my electorate covers the shire of Cardinia and the shire of Baw Baw, two of the fastest growing LGAs in the state – and not one of these government-owned centres is in my electorate. That is concerning for me. I know the West Gippsland Hospital, for example –

Juliana Addison interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: There are 1000 babies a year born at the West Gippsland Hospital. That is just West Gippsland, not Cardinia. The only reason it is 1000 babies a year at the West Gippsland Hospital is because that is all they can cope with. Anyone else in my electorate has to go elsewhere to have babies. That is all they can handle at West Gippsland; it is capped.

Vicki Ward: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, while I appreciate the passion with which the member is advocating for his community and his deep care on this issue, I would ask that you direct the member to talk not so much about health care, which I understand is also an area of passion for him –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your point of order is?

Vicki Ward: but to go back to child care and planning, as opposed to health care.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Relevance. Thank you, Minister. It has been a wideranging debate. I encourage the member to come back to the bill. Let us proceed.

Wayne FARNHAM: Well, babies do grow up eventually, hence I went to the babies. But that is okay. I did hear the Minister for Local Government talk earlier about the childcare desert and areas that need it. Well, if we are going to talk about childcare deserts, then Narracan would be the Sahara, because we have been really, really let down by the government in child care and having funding for child care. The government’s lack of interest in Narracan and lack of interest in early learning or childcare centres is putting pressure on our mums and dads. They cannot get back to work. They need to wait for positions.

We support this bill. There is not a problem with the bill; we support it. But I encourage the government to invest in regional Victoria a little bit more than what they are doing – and not just invest in regional Victoria in Labor seats, invest in regional Victoria in seats that are held by this side of the chamber, because we suffer the same pressures as everyone else around the state. I would like to see in the next round of offers for the government centres that are going to be built – I think there are another 20 to be released very soon – some of them in my electorate. I represent an electorate that has two of the fastest growing LGAs in the state, and I do not think that it is fair that they miss out on these government centres. This is extremely important for my electorate so people can get back to work. We in regional Victoria struggle to get workers, we struggle to get staff and we struggle to get doctors, nurses and everything else. So anything the government can do to help my electorate get these childcare centres up and going, so we can have more people working and taking pressure off businesses and everything else, I would really appreciate.

It was pleasing that in seeking advice from parties who might be impacted by these changes, this was largely positive. They want to see more clarity from the government on issues like clearer regulation around planning and certainty for the preapproval of centres. It appears too that the government has taken on board criticism that was raised last year and engaged more stakeholders to ensure their views and concerns are being addressed in these amendments. We need to see more of this from this government. Get out of Spring Street, listen and you will get better results.

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (12:51): It is a great pleasure to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Premises Approval in Principle) Bill 2023. Being a new member in this place means I might not have the whole background to some of these bills, but I do know that this is a government that is absolutely committed to ensuring that we have quality childhood education and care in this state. It plays a vital role in supporting our youngest children. Also, being a former primary school teacher, I absolutely understand that early education is laying the foundations for our youngest learners. It lays foundations for better health care, education and employment opportunities later in life. This is a government that also has not stopped investing in education centres. Whether it be our centres, our schools, our TAFEs or our educators, we make significant investment in education because it is part of our government and what we do – it is in our DNA. We have seen a big investment here in this state in early childhood with Best Start, Best Life – free three-year-old and four-year-old kinder – a nation-leading reform, and now we are working towards pre-prep.

With a bit of indulgence, here is a small history lesson. In 2012, just over a decade ago, there were reforms at a national level. We had landmark reforms from the Gillard government, a Labor government. They introduced the national quality framework and national quality standards. These were major reforms that set the standard for early childhood education. I think there might be a bit of a pattern here – education is in Labor’s DNA. We are a party that is committed to education.

Speaking of history in this debate, we always look to reform. We look to do better and we look to improve, and that is what this bill is about. It is ensuring that we are futureproofing our legislation and also modernising it for the growth that we are seeing in our state. The national quality framework and national quality standards aim to raise that bar, and they certainly have done that. Since then we have seen remarkable outcomes for our youngest children, and there is still more to be done. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard is now a royal commissioner in South Australia. They are holding a Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care in the state of South Australia. She recently said:

Each child has the right to grow, learn and thrive.

That is exactly what this reform is about and what we do here in Victoria.

I have two children myself, and both have loved going to kindergarten. I will take this opportunity to thank all of our early childhood educators. They do an incredible job supporting our families. They are integral to family life. They get to see the ups and downs. They probably get to hear about a lot of things in show-and-tell when children come to kinder. I would like to give a shout-out to Nicole and Jocelyn, who were very much integral to our children’s kindergarten experience and took wonderful care of them.

In the last term this government enacted the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Act 2022 to implement most of the findings and recommendations of the 2019 national quality framework review, and that was approved by all states and territories and the Commonwealth through the education ministers meeting. This bill seeks to enhance that act and the regulatory system for early childhood education in Victoria and nationally in the following ways. The bill amends the Education and Care Services National Law to establish a scheme that allows developers, builders or education and care service providers to obtain approval in principle from the regulatory authority in relation to a premises for a centre-based service proposed to be built or renovated in a multistorey building, which in this case is three storeys or more. It will also amend the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 to declare that the premises approval in principle scheme applies in Victoria as a voluntary application process. This is about giving some certainty.

The bill amends the Children’s Services Act 1996 to mirror the infringeable offences in the national law to ensure that all early childhood services in Victoria are subject to the same regulatory enforcement mechanisms. Making this amendment to provide approval in principle ensures that applicants have assurance that their proposed premises designs meet the physical requirements in the regulatory scheme. Importantly, any changes needed can happen before the commencement of construction work, avoiding the time and cost of rectification works once the premises are completed. With the changes and what we are seeing with the growth in Victoria and modern facilities, which may mean multistorey complexes will be built, this amendment will ensure that we keep pace as we evolve and grow.

The science is pretty clear. We know that the first five years of a child’s development see rapid growth. We know that 85 to 90 per cent of brain development happens in that time. They learn from birth – the science is there to say they learn before birth. Having that quality early education setting really does influence a child’s trajectory for the rest of their life. Providing that rich environment, which can happen in a home but also in an educational setting, where you have that nurturing environment, language opportunities, learning with positive interactions and giving children that social and emotional wellbeing structure, that eagerness to learn – all the things we want to see our youngest develop – can give them those lasting benefits. Formal education – child care, kindergarten settings –is part of a child’s journey and part of a family’s journey. A quality education system is one that supports families, but when families may be at risk or there may be factors of disadvantage, research shows that children can be developmentally vulnerable.

I mentioned that I used to be a primary school teacher. I never taught prep, or foundation as it is known – those teachers do a wonderful job – but prep teachers would say to me that you could tell the children who had had some formal kindergarten or day care experience. They could sit on the floor and focus on tasks. They had social and emotional wellbeing and got along with others. You could tell the kids who had had that experience; that is the difference that it makes. You can see it. And they adjust so much better to school.

Obviously, having been a teacher this is a topic that is of interest to me, and I am passionate about this. Recently I was able to take part in the Victorian parliamentary internship program, where an MP can have an intern hosted by their electorate office. I was able to have a report prepared on socio-economic and geographic inequality. It is a great report that we can view online.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.