Wednesday, 12 November 2025

 Ben CARROLL (Niddrie – Minister for Education, Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC) (13:41): I move:

That this house authorises and requires the Speaker to permit the second-reading and subsequent stages of the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025 and the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 to be moved and debated concurrently.

Motion agreed to.

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (13:42): I rise to speak on the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025, the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025, which amends the national law. At the outset can I note how frustrating it is to stand here today to speak on bills that less than 24 hours ago we did not have any visibility over. The integrity of the Parliament depends on the ability of its members to properly scrutinise the bills and the laws that are put in front of us to govern our state. These three bills that we will debate together today will bring profound change for hundreds of thousands of childcare workers, childcare operators, families and, most importantly, children right across our state, and rushing this legislation through this chamber without providing the adequate time for members to read, review and understand it undermines the principles of transparency and accountability that our democracy is built upon. Just look at the size of the two bills that were tabled in the Parliament today: hundreds of pages that less than 24 hours ago the opposition and the crossbench did not have any visibility over. Transparency is not optional to the Parliament; it is essential for public trust, and trust in our political institutions is at an all-time low. When parliamentary debate is truncated on something as fundamental as the best regulatory framework to keep our children safe, it is no wonder voters are feeling increasingly disengaged from our political institutions.

The bills before us today are not the consequence of new information. We have known about the problems within our child safety system for years in many cases. The fact that the Allan Labor government has delayed action time and time again should not be the reason why these bills were introduced into the Parliament today and second read on the same day without adequate time for the ability for the opposition, stakeholders, parents, childcare operators and early childhood educators to look at the detail of this legislation to ensure it actually meets the requirements to keep children safe in this state.

Over the last few months we have seen absolutely devastating issues within our childcare system and our child safety standards come to light in this state, and the bills before us today are a consequence of the fact that children in Victoria have been failed. They have been failed by the very system that is meant to keep them safe; failed by a system as a result of the fact we have had a toothless regulator, which is meant to act before harm occurs; and failed as a consequence of a government that has repeatedly chosen to do nothing and to not actually fix the problems that were so, so clear and were raised time and time again in this state. When we are elected to this place our foremost duty is clear: to protect the vulnerable. And there is no-one more vulnerable than a child in the care of an adult. Every parent in Victoria should have the confidence that when they drop their child off at child care, they will be safe – that the system that we as legislators have put in place, that this government oversees, will keep them safe. But unfortunately that confidence has been shattered, because the system is broken.

Unfortunately today we see once again this arrogant government bringing forward legislation without the opportunity for the Parliament to have the time to do its job – the importance of that fundamental requirement of a responsible and democratic government. The hundreds of pages presented to the Parliament today should be gone through in detail. They should be able to be scrutinised, but unfortunately here we are in a cognate debate and putting through legislation that we have not had the time to properly scrutinise. The details within the bills today include significant changes to the child safety standards and the process of keeping children safe in this state. They include the establishment of an entirely new regulatory regime consisting of two new regulators, the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority and the new Social Services Regulator; the creation of an early childhood worker register; and significant changes to the national law that regulates early childhood education and care services, including new offences and higher penalties for compliance breaches. Obviously there is a lot to digest here. While we on this side of the house are incredibly frustrated and disappointed by the truncated timeframe we have been given to consider these laws, I do thank the minister’s office for how they engaged over the past less than 24 hours to provide as much information to the opposition as possible.

I will start by addressing the first bill in this package, and that is the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill. This bill establishes an independent regulator for the early childhood education and care sector. We on this side of the chamber have been calling for an independent regulator for months. We have been calling on the government to set up an independent regulator, an independent watchdog, for months now. As we know, the horrific allegations against Joshua Brown, who is facing more than 70 charges of sexual abuse of eight babies and toddlers aged between five months and two years, brought this state to a standstill. The horrific allegations highlighted how the system that is meant to keep children safe has not been doing its job, and how the regulator in particular, a unit that sat inside the Department of Education, was not capable of keeping children safe in this state.

On 24 July, almost four months ago now, the coalition announced its six-point plan to keep kids safe from the start.

We called on the government to replace the current regulator, which is the quality assessment and regulation division of the Department of Education, with a fully independent statutory authority. As we said at the time, not only does QARD lack transparency and teeth; it was a conflict of interest, sitting within the Department of Education, to be a regulator as well as an owner and an operator of childcare centres in this state. The government outlined in their briefing a $45 million price tag on these reforms, including 100 new staff and 60 new compliance officers for the new Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority. This just shows how hopelessly understaffed and under-resourced QARD was until now. As we know, since 2018, complaints have risen by 45 per cent with the regulator but enforcement actions have dropped by 67 per cent. Every one of those complaints was a child that was potentially being put at risk in a childcare centre here in Victoria. There are children behind these statistics, and at the time, when it was put to the minister, ‘Is the regulator QARD doing its job?’ the minister time and time again stood by QARD and said it was effectively doing its job. How could the government say that that body was doing its job when it can look to these statistics and see those enforcement actions falling, when we can see the real-time case studies of children being put at risk?

When those allegations were made against Joshua Brown, the fact that we saw 2000 families having to take their children to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, children as young as five months old, just shows how the regulator was missing in action. Yet the minister continued to stand with the regulator. ‘It was effectively doing its job,’ I quote the minister. We see here today the government once again dragged to a position of admitting it was wrong. It was wrong, and it was failing to keep children safe by standing by that regulator. These are not statistics of a regulator that is coping with its case load. This bill at long last is a belated move from a government that has finally recognised its child safety framework is broken and has left Victorian children vulnerable to the most sickening of abuse. I remind the chamber that the Victorian Ombudsman made recommendations back in 2022, three years ago, that clearly laid out how the working with children check system was failing and how it needed to be urgently fixed. What followed that was one of the most deeply disappointing displays of politics that I have witnessed in my short time in this place. We have seen this government ignore the advice of experts, ignore independent advice time and time again, because they would rather play politics with these absolutely important issues than actually take action.

The next major reform that the bills today look at is the key responsibilities of the regulator and the establishment and overseeing of the Victorian early childhood worker register. Again this is something we called for back in July, as part of our six-point plan, as one of the most important ways we can safeguard children against abuse in the early childhood and care setting. As I said back in July, a central register of all childcare workers who have completed a certificate III or diploma in early childhood education and care and are being employed in an ECEC setting is a vital transparency measure, because what we saw following the allegations and the charging of Joshua Brown was the ability of early childhood workers to move around centres to abuse the system. What we saw were families having to find out that their child might have been put at risk, through seeing this alleged offender in Facebook photos, and that centres were being continuously added to the police list because there was no transparency around where this alleged offender had worked.

The police were scrambling to find this information, and that is why we immediately said that a register was desperately needed – so that we could actually ensure there was transparency around who was working with children in these centres and where they were moving to and so that the system could not be abused. Yet once again the government delayed action. The government delayed action in preference for a so-called rapid review. But what that rapid review was very clear about when it was finally handed down six weeks later – it was a rapid review of reviews that had already been undertaken in previous years and had already outlined the reforms desperately needed in this sector to ensure that children were safe – was that this legislation would be tabled in the Parliament in October. Well, here we are today with it being tabled in November and rushed through the Parliament – delay upon delay by this government. What is the consequence of that? Children being put at risk in childcare settings. Now, it is very important that the information contained in the register is shared appropriately across the two regulators and that they are empowered in this bill to oversee child safety – I will come back to this in more detail shortly – but I am pleased to see this reform finally making its way into the pages of legislation, even if it is belated once again from the government.

Let me now turn to the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025. This bill transfers significant oversight and authority for child safety measures to the existing independent authority, called the Social Services Regulator. The bill establishes the Social Services Regulator as the single body responsible for overseeing the key early child safety functions: firstly, the working with children check system; secondly, the reportable conduct scheme; and thirdly, the Child Safe Standards. Again, this is a belated reform which we on this side of the chamber suggested back in July in our plan:

Review the governance arrangements of Working with Children Check Victoria – currently a business unit with the Department of Government Services – with a view to establishing an independent statutory authority …

The current patchwork of department business units and agencies with overlapping mandates, overlapping responsibilities and unclear responsibilities with limited visibility of risk has created a confused, inefficient and too often dangerous system in which child safety has fallen through the cracks and led to unacceptable outcomes. We have seen this through the real-life stories of children being put at risk that have come to light as part of the shocking revelations earlier this year. We have seen the fact that for those who have had prohibition orders issued against them, that has not been communicated through to the working with children check system or the commissioner for children. This is a system that has had too many cracks for too long, and the government has failed to take action.

I also note that the bill merges disability oversight bodies, including the incredibly important disability worker registration and regulation, into the Social Services Regulator as well. Again this is overdue reform. Families have been calling for a consistent approach to worker regulation across disability and social services for many years. One of the most significant elements of the bills before us today is that the two regulators, the SSR and the Victorian early childhood regulatory authority, will be able to act on unsubstantiated intelligence and cumulative risk information instead of waiting for something to be proven or for harm to occur. This builds on reform in the worker screening amendment bill which, as I said previously, was another belated move by the government to enact the Ombudsman’s recommendations of 2022, which for fullness I will quote here. Back in 2022 the Victorian Ombudsman outlined a series of reforms to the government because the system was identified as not keeping children safe; in fact the Ombudsman at the time said that Victoria had one of the weakest working with children systems in the country.

Business interrupted under standing orders.