Wednesday, 12 November 2025

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (14:50): I continue where I left off, which is around one of the more significant reforms in the bills before us today, and that is in relation to the changes to the working with children check system. You would have heard me speak about the desperately needed reforms to the working with children check system many times in this place, and there is a reason for that, because three years ago the Victorian Ombudsman made very clear recommendations to the Labor government that the working with children check screening system needed to be urgently reformed in Victoria. The reason for that was that the Ombudsman at the time identified the fact that the working with children check system in Victoria was among the weakest in the nation and as a consequence predators could slip through the system and have the ability to work with children in Victoria. That would be concerning enough, the fact that the Ombudsman identified the risk, but unfortunately the reality is that we have now seen that happen in real time. We have seen the fact that Victoria’s working with children check system was so broken that individuals who had been identified as risks, who had been identified as predators, still had the ability in this state to hold a working with children check and work with children day in, day out, under this Labor government. And why? Because the government failed to take action when the Ombudsman recommended very simple reforms three years ago – not even a response from the government at the time, not even the courtesy of a response about why the government was not prepared to implement the Ombudsman’s recommendations.

Let me speak to an absolutely horrific example of where the working with children check system was so broken but, had the government heeded the advice of the Ombudsman, this situation may not have occurred. Ron Marks was arrested in 2021 for possessing almost 1000 child abuse images. Earlier this year he was convicted. But the fact is that he retained an active working with children check for four years after his arrest. That meant that in those years following his arrest, following the fact that his house was raided by police and those thousands of images were found and taken by the police, Marks was permitted to go into childcare centres, to go into kinders, to go into primary schools and to work with children, because he still held an active working with children check despite the fact that he was under active investigation by the police for possession of child abuse images. There could not be a clearer example of the catastrophic breakdown of the working with children check system.

Further to this, the ABC reported earlier this year that a childcare educator maintained a valid working with children check despite being dismissed from a childcare centre in 2020 for sexual misconduct after an internal investigation found that he was grooming and kissing toddlers. Again the system allowed that individual to continue to work in childcare centres, with the government regulator not stepping in to issue a prohibition notice to blacklist that individual until last year. Despite that prohibition, years too late, at the time it took the government weeks to remove that individual’s active working with children check. In fact they had to rush legislation into the Parliament that would allow for that to occur. The Premier and the minister could not answer how long that individual, who had been found to be grooming toddlers in child care, who had had a prohibition notice issued against them, would continue to hold an active working with children check, because of the failure of that government to actually implement the Ombudsman’s reforms.

Let me be very, very clear about what the Ombudsman recommended in 2022:

Amend the Worker Screening Act 2020 … to allow the Secretary to the Department of Justice and Community Safety to:

a.   obtain and consider any information that may be relevant to an applicant’s suitability to work with children

b.   refuse an application for a Working with Children Check if reasonably satisfied that the applicant poses an unjustifiable risk to the safety of children (including where no criminal or disciplinary history exists)

c.   reassess a person’s suitability to hold a Working with Children clearance on the Secretary’s own initiative, and without the need for notification of a criminal charge or disciplinary outcome

d.   pending determination of reassessment, suspend a … Working with Children clearance where the Secretary reasonably suspects the person poses an unjustifiable risk to the safety of children

e.   revoke a person’s Working with Children clearance following reassessment, where reasonably satisfied the person poses an unjustifiable risk to the safety of children (including where no criminal or disciplinary history exists).

These were the recommendations by the Ombudsman at the time. We are finally seeing the government take action, three years later, to implement these reforms. That is despite the fact that when we introduced a private member’s bill into this place that would have implemented the Ombudsman’s recommendations earlier this year, which would have made sure that we were mandating training when it comes to the application for a working with children check and would have connected the working with children check system to the police database, the government voted it down. In a clear decision to play politics over protecting children in this state, the government voted down legislation that is included, months later, in the bill we are debating today.

It is simply unacceptable that this government did not prioritise children’s safety. Three years ago they were warned by the Ombudsman. I just outlined to the house the very simple changes and reforms required to the working with children check system that would have meant that the decision-maker could act on intelligence and make sure that risks to children were stamped out quickly. But what happened? No response – radio silence from the government. Then when the horrific allegations of child sexual abuse, the 70 or more charges, against Joshua Brown came to light and every single family in this state shuddered, what did the government do? Nothing – absolute silence on reforming the working with children check system. For months this government has delayed action, time and time again. So while we finally see these reforms contained in the legislation today, it defies belief that we had to go through the previous months and years of inaction to get to this position. The example of Ron Marks continuing to hold his active working with children check and visit childcare centres – the photos of him sitting with children after his home was raided and thousands of images of child sexual abuse were taken by police – is disgusting. This government could have taken action. If they had taken action and implemented the Ombudsman’s reforms three years ago, Ron Marks would not have been able to hold an active working with children check. It is that simple, and that responsibility lies in the hands of the Premier and this government.

Before I turn to the final bill in this package, I want to briefly address some of the measures around information sharing between regulators. As I have spoken to previously, one of the most glaring failures that has been identified as part of the child safety crisis in this state came to light as a result of the lack of information sharing. A teacher could have a reportable conduct investigation in one department and then another regulator might never know. A childcare worker might fail a safety check in one role and be hired in another because the information was not shared. With the reforms before us today, with the new regulator and the Social Services Regulator to share critical decisions – like worker suspensions and prohibitions and like the fact we are seeing working with children checks needing to be rescinded – we need to ensure that that information is shared swiftly and simply between these agencies. Most importantly, the new regulator will be empowered to provide information directly to prospective employers so that prospective employers know and can understand when there are risks when they are considering employing someone to work with children and to have oversight of children. This basic and fundamental oversight should have been in place long ago. The government knew about the issues when it came to information sharing, and they knew that the regulator was failing to do its job. But once again, what did we see? Delay and inaction and a complete failure to put children’s safety first.

Finally, I will speak on the national law bill. This is a significant bill because it strengthens the existing regulatory framework by which early childhood education and care services are measured and assessed. Of note is the creation of the new offence of inappropriate conduct for workers in these services. I understand the new offence has been created in response to the feedback about gaps in the current framework and will assist the service and the regulator to identify and respond to unacceptable behaviour.

The most basic duty of care of any government is to protect the vulnerable. I will finish where I started. It is our foremost duty in this place to protect the most vulnerable, and there can be no-one more vulnerable than a child under the care and protection of an adult. When we are seeing children harmed in the very places we are meant to keep them safe, that is an absolute failure and one this government should be ashamed of. We presented solutions immediately, a six-point plan, and what we are seeing here today is that plan implemented in full but delayed, after three years of inaction from this government. We will support this bill because we will always stand up for child protection in this state.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (15:02): I rise in support of the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025, the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025 (VECRA) and the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 (SSR bill). I listened very carefully to the lead opposition speaker, and I think I can summarise her contribution in this way. She agreed entirely with the substance of the three bills that we have in front of us and with the comprehensive package that the government and the minister are bringing forward. Whether other opposition MPs agree with it fully remains to be seen, but as a speaker in favour, I can only take it from the lead opposition speaker that the opposition agree entirely with what the government is doing here, and all of the disagreements she set out related to matters of process and timing. I do want to begin by addressing those points of disagreement.

There is a very good reason why these bills come today, under standing order 61(3)(b), and come concurrently, and that goes back of course to the horrific revelations of 1 July, which I have spoken about previously in this place, and the very strong expectation that there will be a comprehensive response. And that is what we have here before us today. I will, for the benefit of opposition speakers, note that it is not uncommon for governments to bring urgent legislative packages in this way in response to events where there is that strong community expectation. Everyone who was around during COVID saw of course that that was done by governments of all persuasions, including the Morrison coalition government. I worked in the federal Parliament during the period in which the Howard government brought, almost every few weeks, another piece of anti-terrorism legislation, including, if I remember correctly, some bills related to Tampa and the Bali bombings that were brought on very short notice. I did look up the Criminal Code Amendment (Offences Against Australians) Bill 2002, for instance, which was introduced to the House of Representatives on 12 ‍November 2002 and received royal assent on 14 November, 48 hours later.

I should note that, as someone who was there, that anti-terrorism legislation was much more complex and difficult for MPs to deal with. Australia was fortunate not to have a long history of political violence. We did not have an established structure for many of those things, and the bills that we have here today are very different. They do not come out of nowhere at all, as some of those anti-terrorism bills did; rather, they come out of a very clear and comprehensive process through the rapid review and through the education ministers meetings that this government has been clear about in its detail for months.

I do want to turn to that detail and firstly deal with the first bill, the one that relates to the national law. I think it is very important to remember that our early childhood education and care sector is very substantially governed by Commonwealth and federal arrangements, and indeed those horrific revelations that I touched on occurred largely, I believe, in long day care centres, which of course operate under both those frameworks, state and federal, and where the staff working under them are the same people.

The government is implementing all 22 recommendations of the rapid review conducted by Jay Weatherill and Pam White, but I do want in addressing this package to begin with recommendation 1, which makes the safety, rights and best interests of children the paramount consideration for staff right across our early childhood sector. We see in part 4, clause 61 of the bill that it makes that important change of principle by changing the national law. I did notice that the opposition’s lead speaker came to this very important principle last, but for those of us in the Labor Party, I think it is something that we would rightfully put first. It is very close to the heart I know of the minister and is very important for the government. I will not repeat all the observations that the review had to make about the evolution of the for-profit part of the sector, particularly under the Howard government, but just say that we very strongly support this recommendation and that we implement it here in exactly the way that the education ministers meeting in August said that we would.

I will not, given the constraints of time, go through all the clauses of that early childhood legislation amendment bill but just point out that they all go back to those communiques of the education ministers meeting, which we have all been able to read for months now on the internet, and indeed the decision regulation impact statement that they put out. A big bulk action of that bill deals with increasing penalties and banning the use of personal devices, which is already in place of course here in Victoria, and then it establishes the national early childhood worker register. Critically, again, that is not something that should come as a surprise to anyone in this place who has been following the debate. Of course it is something that not only is in place in Victoria but is dealt with in the VECRA bill that we have in front of us, which not only implements that exact recommendation as a matter of national law but sets out the details of how it will be implemented here in Victoria.

Dealing with that second bill, it of course also implements recommendation 9 of the review, which relates to establishing the independent early childhood education and care regulator. The government made very clear we would do that through a standalone act, and the second bill we have before us does exactly that.

Finally, the third bill that we have before us, the SSR bill, makes a number of important and concurrent changes to services that come under the disability portfolio. I will leave some other speakers to touch on them. They are of course very important to us as the government. But I do, in terms of making the argument I am making about the substance and the process we have been through here, want to focus on those parts that originated from the rapid review and particularly to highlight recommendations in part 8 of that review, which deal with establishing a new shared intelligence and risk assessment capability. I have had some exposure in my previous life to this sort of work. It is not easy work when we are looking to predict and prevent this sort of behaviour, and it is certainly work where you look to have the widest range of data available to you, but of course you are always conscious of the principles in the Privacy Act 1988 and similar principles in state-based regulation. I think what has been done very well here in the bill in front of us is to ensure that not only are those important data sources integrated, which is very important when you are doing this work, but that, as anyone who has done it knows and as the review makes clear in part 8, that integration of your IT systems and your data goes hand in hand with organisational integration as well. That is why we see of course the worker screening unit, the reportable conduct scheme, the child safe standards and so forth. All of those bits are being moved across in that SSR bill.

I should say a great bulk of the bill deals with those changes to arrangements. Again, coming back to a point I made earlier, those are not things that should surprise anyone who is familiar with the sector. All of those things, whilst they have been brought together under different arrangements, are longstanding processes and organisations here in Victoria. In fact, looking at the list, I think they are all longstanding arrangements that were introduced by Labor governments over a period of many years and indeed decades. The bill also implements those important connections to Victoria Police and the justice system. As I say, nothing in that should be a surprise conceptually to anyone arriving at the debate here today.

I just want to touch on the fact that once you have done that important job of bringing together the information and the intelligence, you have to give agencies and regulators the ability to move quickly, as per part 6 of the review. Without being disrespectful to the Ombudsman’s report or to the bill brought forward by the opposition, they largely just dealt with that component. I really want to stress this. We have here a comprehensive package. We are implementing, yes, parts that were brought forward by the opposition, but there were parts that were not comprehensive and were inadequate in their nature. There are a number of changes that deal with suspensions and the general and important power to act quickly where there is significant risk, but it is probabilistic risk. You do not know something 100 per cent, but you need to act quickly. There are, importantly, provisions that deal with the fact that, in doing that, false allegations are always possible. There are some minor differences with the opposition’s bill from July with respect to section 71 of the Worker Screening Act 2020, but I do believe that the versions that we have here in front of us today are better than the opposition’s bill in that respect and better in the fact that they are part of a comprehensive package that interlocks in the ways I have set out today.

Finally, coming back full circle to the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill, there are then all those measures that seek to prosecute people more comprehensively. Again, something the opposition never touched on, perhaps for good reason, is the need to prosecute those large companies with very complex corporate structures that we do see in this area as a result of the Howard-era reforms. I think the fact that those organisations and those complex structures will face more scrutiny and greater penalties if they do act in ways that are inappropriate is one of the real strengths of this bill and shows the strength of the thought that has gone into it.

I have set out, therefore, the reasons why I think that it was important to have this concurrent debate and why we support both the motion to debate things concurrently and the three bills in front of us here to help keep Victorian children safe. I thank the minister, her team and her department for their great work, and I commend the bills to the house.

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (15:12): I rise today to speak on the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025, which is being debated concurrently with the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025, the national law bill. I will say from the outset that a lot of work has been undertaken in a very short period of time by the Liberals and Nationals and all those on this side of the chamber, because a briefing on the latter two bills was provided to us less than 24 hours ago – in fact at about 4:30 pm yesterday afternoon. This is a substantial amount of legislation to pore over. In fact it is over 1000 pages. It is a lot of information. While I understand that there is an effort to act urgently now – it is on the back of a rapid review, as we heard – it is important that we do have the opportunity to consult broadly with the communities that we represent. This is the whole parliamentary system that we base our democracy upon.

While the Nationals and Liberals will not obstruct this legislation, because we support and want to see improvements in child safety regulation and mechanisms – all of the legislation that provides those aspects that make our children safer in the community – I also understand there will be some additional time to read through this legislation and identify if there are any shortfalls. There may be drafting issues as well. I urge the government to be cooperative if any matters are identified that are flawed or if there is an error or a loophole that would inadvertently allow for somebody to put children at risk – cause harm to children – or that could be exploited by people who are, quite frankly, depraved in their behaviour. As I said, while the Liberals and Nationals have not had a huge opportunity to be briefed appropriately on the other two bills and to consult with our communities, we will be supporting the passage of this legislation through the chamber today.

The matters surrounding child safety, particularly around working with children checks and protection and supports for the good workers and identifying those people who should not ever be allowed to work in childcare, kindergarten or primary school settings, have been a serious issue for my community in Lowan and particularly around the Horsham community. Those in the chamber would be well aware of the serious offending of Ron Marks, somebody who was at the time well respected and trusted in the community. But the failures of the working with children check system and the information-sharing system resulted in Ron being able to access children for a prolonged period of time even after police had seized thousands of depraved images of the sexual abuse of children, including very young children, who appeared that they were dead, who appeared to be covered with mud and even blood. It is something that weighs heavily on my community that somebody who police knew was prone to a sexual appetite of such a depraved nature would still be allowed to provide education sessions within childcare centres, within local kindergartens and within local primary schools.

Police did their utmost, though, to keep our community safe. It is understood that Ron Marks’s offending took place between 2012 and 2021, and the reason it stopped in 2021 was because police seized a large number of electronic devices, including hard drives, which contained these horrific images – and they contained thousands of images. I say that police did their best because when police raided Ron Marks’s property, when they seized these devices, they also made the effort to seize Ron Marks’s physical working with children check card – the card that is I guess the analog way of checking whether somebody is appropriate to work with children. Police also did their job in that they notified the appropriate working with children check unit that somebody had been found with these disgusting images in their possession and that they were known to provide cultural awareness training and education to very young people in our community. That information was never acted upon by the working with children check unit, and his digital working with children check remained approved until he was found guilty only earlier this year. That means for four years, according to Victoria’s working with children check system, Ron Marks was appropriate to be entering childcare facilities, entering kindergartens and entering primary schools to sit with children, to share stories and to have unprecedented and open access to children, even though the working with children check unit knew that he was not a fit and proper person to undertake that work.

I know that it is not only the parents of the children who are captured in photos of those early years education systems, whether it is primary schools, kindergartens or childcare areas, that are still grappling with the risk that surrounded that. The operators of these centres are still grappling with their concern that, while it was known to the working with children check unit, they let their families down because they could not act upon information they could not even access. It is very unfair for those childcare operators, it is unfair for the kindergarten operators and it is unfair for the primary school principal and the educators there as well. They did their best, but it is the government system that let them down.

I would also like to make note of Goolum Goolum, which is an Aboriginal community health organisation, who do an incredible job in the community. Understandably, this sent ripples through their community which are quite unique. They do such a good job around that – they really do an outstanding job in the community – and they were not informed about this serious breach, which would have required revocation of a working with children check in any other reasonable government operating system. They have been let down as well.

This legislation does address some of those matters. There will be the opportunity for information sharing and coordination. One of the most glaring failures identified by the rapid review was the lack of information sharing between agencies. A teacher could have a reportable conduct investigation in one department, and another regulator might never, ever know, which is exactly what we saw in the Marks case. A childcare worker might fail a safety check in one role and then be hired in another because the information was not shared. These reforms will finally allow the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority and the Social Services Regulator to share critical decisions, like worker suspensions or prohibitions, and provide information directly to prospective employers. That is the basic oversight that should have been in place a long, long time ago. I reiterate my concerns about the delays in this process to put this into place.

Another important feature of the reforms is that regulators will now be able to act on unsubstantiated intelligence and cumulative risk data instead of waiting for something to be proven or for harm to occur. This is a major shift towards prevention rather than reaction. If this had been in place years ago, then potentially our children in Horsham would never have been put at risk and exposed to Mr Marks.

The Nationals and the Liberals support these legislative changes that will make children safer. They are changes which should have happened a very, very long time ago. I acknowledge the workers within our early years system who have been fighting for these changes and have not felt protected in the absence of these changes. I certainly put my heart out to the families who found out through the media that their child was with a worker who should not have been there. I commend this bill to the house.

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (15:22): I rise to support this concurrent debate and legislation on child safety. Profit and care, in my view, are like oil and water; by themselves they simply do not mix. High-quality regulation can be the emulsifier that brings them together. That is some of what this bill seeks to do. But I should say at the outset, with consideration of how the large-scale for-profit sector has operated nationally, exposed particularly through the ABC and the reporting of Adele Ferguson, I do question whether they are fit and proper to be providing this education and care. In the meantime we will need to regulate. I do question whether the industry, which should have safety as a priority at its heart – the safety of children, rather than profit – has the social capital at all to continue in this sector. I do question that.

The toll on the community that I represent has been extraordinary. We heard from the previous speaker the toll on the community that she represents. The toll on so many communities across this country has been extraordinary. I have spoken with parents, with educators and with doctors from across the community that I represent, so I know the toll that they are undergoing. Actually, I say I know it, but I do not really know it; only they can really know it. That is why I say some of those in the industry should question their continuation in the industry. They should look at themselves and not look at the profit that they seek to make.

Many of the alleged crimes committed in the community that I represent and across Victoria will have an ongoing and lasting consequence for the people in the community that I represent. They will manifest in the years ahead in many different ways, and they will profoundly affect people’s futures. Crimes against children, our most vulnerable, are the worst of crimes. I think that is something that we agree on entirely in this place. Crimes against children and crimes that strike at the heart of trust in services that people rely on are also the worst of crimes. Services like child care are relied on. For many in the community that I represent, and in communities that many people in this place represent, their economic circumstances mean that child care must be used. It is not actually a service of choice, it is a service of necessity. Even out of necessity, there are many benefits of child care. Of course there are many benefits of child care, even though it is a necessity for many people. I see this in my own children, both of whom are in child care currently. With them being in child care, I remember the drive to child care after hearing of the alleged crime. Like many that morning, in the following days, weeks and months and even today I continue to feel sick at the idea that those who we place our trust in may well misplace and abuse that trust in such a profound way – people who have so little regard for the welfare of others, the welfare of children. For many who work in this system, in particular men who work in the system, the crimes committed cause unfair distrust and unfair suspicion. For many of the early childhood educators who bring their passion, their effort and their care, I know the hurt that they have been in, being in a system where others are causing abuse. I thank those many wonderful childcare workers who turn up each day, particularly in the wake of these events, and who educate and care for our children and improve their wellbeing in such an important way. I thank also the workers at my children’s child care who have cared for and educated, some of them, both of my children. I appreciate the efforts that they go to every day, and I thank them directly.

The system of for-profit, large-scale child care has appropriately been brought into question, and rightly so, and we should continue to question it. We should continue to bring in bills of regulation while that exists. As a government, there is more to do on this legislation, but I will outline some of the immediate action we undertook in the wake of these alleged crimes that came to light in July of this year. We banned the use of personal devices within childcare centres. We set out that failure to comply with this could result in the cancellation of a service and fines of up to $50,000. We established a register of early childhood educators, and the bill before us today of course enhances that register. We commissioned an urgent review into child care and early childhood education, and I thank Jay Weatherill AO and Pamela White PSM for the work that they undertook. This no doubt was extremely difficult work, and they set out that the care settings and the working with children check in Victoria as it relates to early childhood education need to be of course improved. Some of that is in the bill today. In response to the rapid review there were 22 recommendations that were set forward. The government has released a response and an implementation plan to each and every recommendation, as we should. The bills before the house today of course acquit some of those recommendations, and I am expecting that we will see more in front of us. The opposition have indicated their support for these bills, and seemingly their largest critique so far of the bills has been that we did not adopt their media releases in the wake of these horrible allegations. I appreciate that they are supporting these today. I appreciate also that the member for Preston outlined some of the bills in his contribution earlier and how we will continue to engage in this space in improving what has been actually a bit of a failed system. We would not be here discussing these matters if it was not.

I want to just outline a few of the matters related to the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and go through some of those matters relating to working with children checks and how they will come under the Social Services Regulator. That is mainly by consolidating those key child safeguard functions that were in the working with children check, the reportable conduct scheme and the child safe standards. Bringing them together is an appropriate thing. We should have our systems always talking to each other. That they were not was a real miss. It was a real miss, and it has had enormous consequences.

Strengthening the working with children check and broadening the range of information that is available is certainly an important thing in terms of the granting, the refusal, the suspension or the cancellation of working with children clearances. Some of the previous speakers have gone through some of the real-world effects of those systems not talking to each other and those systems not being strong enough. Like the first speaker on this bill, the member for Preston, I will go past the elements related to disability entities and the establishment of complaint functions in that space as well. I know that other speakers will be speaking to those matters, importantly, later in their contributions.

The enhancements of the working with children check mean that a number of workers will be excluded from working in childhood settings, and I understand that that is actually a really challenging thing for workers and for the people who represent workers. But we need some of these protections in place because of course the priority clearly needs to be children’s safety. I do acknowledge that there will be finessing over time of every bill that we bring to this place, and we should keep looking at the regulations that we put in place to make sure that they are fit for purpose. So I expect that we will continue to look at those over time, to look at those elements related to workers and their ability to have some fair processes in relation to this, but erring on the side of the children and erring on the side of a cautious approach to this is certainly something that I agree with. The risks are just too strong otherwise.

This bill requires mandatory child safety training and testing for people applying for a working with children check to support applicants to have a base level of child safety literacy to equip them to recognise, identify and adequately act to protect children from abuse. Certainly for me, my observation of child care is that child care is best delivered with many workers in the same place, because that is the best protection for children in childcare settings; I observe that in the circumstances of my own childcare situation.

I do not have long, so I want to thank the ministers associated with these bills and also the advisers and everybody who has been working thoroughly on them. They are enormous bills for those reasons. I commend this bill to the house.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:32): I rise today to speak on a matter that should be a cornerstone of any government’s priorities: the safety and wellbeing of our children. Yet the Allan Labor government has shown time and again that when it comes to protecting our youngest and most vulnerable, it is slow to act, chaotic in its response and fundamentally lacking in a child-centred approach. The suite of bills before us today includes the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025, the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025. We only received two of these bills a couple of hours ago. The government issued a press release before they even tabled the bills – it just sounds so insincere.

These bills are necessary and they are overdue, and they are a direct response to a crisis that the government was repeatedly warned about and that could have been prevented. Those 2000 babies and their families could have avoided the trauma of the abuse and of having to be sexually transmitted infection tested – absolutely disgraceful. On this side of the chamber, we support these bills. We have called for stronger oversight, we have called for tougher penalties and we have called for the creation of the independent regulator all way before the latest crisis struck. But we do not support the way this government has handled this process with delay, with disregard for proper scrutiny and with a disturbing lack of urgency.

These facts are quite confronting. Earlier this year a childcare worker who had worked across 20 ‍centres in Melbourne was charged with over 70 sickening offences, including sexual assault and the production of child abuse material. There is also the case of Ronald Marks, arrested in 2021 for processing nearly 1000 child abuse images, yet who retained his active working with children check for four years – four years after his arrest. During that time he was allowed to walk into childcare centres and walk into kindergartens. That is not just a bureaucratic error; that is a catastrophic failure of the very system designed to protect our children. It is beyond belief to me that the working with children check was not connected to the police system. That failure meant these individuals were able to move freely between centres even after being arrested.

Rather than act on strong recommendations already presented to the government, the government commissioned a rapid review – a review of a review, a review that unsurprisingly confirmed what many in the sector, including us on this side of the chamber, had been warning of for years: that the Victorian early childhood education and care system is marked by fragmented oversight, weak regulation and uncoordinated workforce tracking. The review on the review made 22 ‍recommendations, and yet, despite the urgency of the findings, the government has dragged its feet.

These bills were meant to be tabled by October – that was the government’s own commitment to its response to the rapid review – but instead they were only passed through the cabinet yesterday and available at 12:20. It is now just after 3:30, and we are looking at these in the Parliament today with barely 2 or 3 hours notice. They are being debated concurrently, giving the opposition and the stakeholders, who need to have the time to understand what is in the bills, little time to consult. There are hundreds of pages to scrutinise to ensure that these reforms are strong and effective. It is not possible to do that level of scrutiny. Already we are hearing from the disability sector, who are quickly clearly looking through this and showing disappointment, but the Shadow Minister for Disability, Ageing, Carers and Volunteers, my colleague, will elaborate further on that. It just shows how ill prepared this government is and how it has not succeeded in protecting our children. It is just disgraceful.

This is not how you govern when children’s safety is at stake. The Premier is always ready to put on a hard hat and pose for cameras, but when it comes to the hard work of building a system to protect our children, she clearly has not prioritised delivering on her promise and having this bill delivered in a timely manner. This government has consistently put politics and publicity ahead of policy and protection.

The Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill seeks to strengthen the regulatory environment around the childcare sector. It aims to provide better oversight, stronger penalties and improved protections for children, and these are very welcome changes. But they are reactive, not proactive, and they are the result of the public outcry and the media scrutiny, not of a government that was listening to the sector, implementing the Ombudsman’s recommendations or putting children first.

The social services regulation amendment bill is similarly important. It aims to strengthen the working with children check system by removing the silos and giving the Social Services Regulator more power. It allows for better information sharing, something that should have been in place long ago and is a no-brainer to many of us. But again, the timing is deeply concerning, and the government has been coy about what these changes mean for the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP), an oversight body that is already under pressure and currently led by an acting commissioner. The Allan Labor government’s failure to appoint a new commissioner to the Commission for Children and Young People during this time of crisis is a dereliction of duty. It is deeply troubling to me that the government has left this critical leadership role vacant while Victoria’s most vulnerable children continue to suffer under a very broken system.

The CCYP has repeatedly exposed horrific failures: children dying under the state’s care, rampant sexual exploitation in out-of-home residential care and the ignoring of recommendations that could save lives. Yet instead of acting decisively, Labor have chosen inaction. This is a pivotal moment for reform. Accountability and safeguarding children’s futures should be paramount. Leaving the Commission for Children and Young People without a commissioner is a signal that this government is unwilling to confront its own failures. Vulnerable children deserve leadership, not silence. This raises serious questions about independence and resourcing and the government’s commitment to transparency.

Perhaps the most significant of the three bills we debate today is the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill. This bill implements recommendation 9 of the rapid review: the creation of an independent early childhood education and care regulator separate from the Department of Education. This is critical reform, because for too long the department has been both the operator and the regulator, a clear conflict of interest that has been undermining trust and accountability. The government has announced a $45 million investment in these reforms, including 100 new staff and 60 ‍new compliance officers. That has got to be a significant commitment that really does indicate just how under-resourced the system was and an admission of failure of the minister, who stood by the regulator despite the fact that they were clearly failing, and now they are recognising that by putting on 60 compliance officers. It is a tacit admission that the previous regulatory framework was not fit for purpose and that this failure directly contributed to the abuse of children in early education settings.

While we welcome the establishment of an independent regulator, we remain concerned that this government is already missing its own deadlines, with two of the bills not being released until today, the process rushed and the sector and educators, providers and families having been left scrambling to understand what these changes mean, with no time to look at them. This is not good enough. The safety of children should never be an afterthought, it should never be delayed and it should never be compromised by political convenience or bureaucratic inertia. What we needed, and what we still need, is a government that puts children and children’s safety at the centre of its decision-making, a government that listens to the sector, a government that acts swiftly and transparently when failures are exposed and recommendations made and a government that understands that child safety is not just a policy issue, it is a moral imperative. Instead we have a government that has failed to meet its own deadlines – a government that has prioritised spin over substance.

Only the Liberal–Nationals are committed to delivering the fresh start for Victorian families that they deserve, and we will continue to fight for a system that is child centred, transparent and accountable. We will continue to hold this government to account for its failures, and we will continue to advocate for the reforms that our children and our community so desperately need, because nothing is more important than keeping our children safe, and nothing is more damning than a government that has failed to do that for our children.

 Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (15:42): Allegations of harm to children shook us to our absolute core. Our worst fears were realised but also in some cases things were worse than our fears had ever been. When you take your children to child care for the first time as a mum – often the first time you have ever had your child in the care of someone that is not your family – that first walk down the hallway away from your child is really, really difficult. The things that are going through your head at that time are not the grotesque things we have heard about; they are things that are much, much simpler, like: will my child be okay? Will someone care for my child if they cry? Will someone care for them at all?

I have been very lucky in my childcare journey; I have had Kylie, Dakota, Kelly, Harpreet, Rachel, Inderpal, Kira, Emma, Jess, Sonia, Amy, Kathy, Brooke, Amanda, the other Amanda, Gurpreet, Louise, Rhonda – so many fabulous people that have cared for my daughters, putting sunscreen on little noses and teaching the alphabet. They care for our kids and they deserve the best, and we have been very pleased to see additional support for our childcare workers from the federal government and increased funding and pay rises. It is very important. They work in that industry because they love kids, they care for kids, and I have had the privilege of seeing some of them become mothers themselves, which has been really special. My family has relied on them, and my broader community relies on them too. They are a really fundamental part of our communities.

I think of Doreen early learning centre, where in talking to the assistant manager there, she spoke about all the supports they were looking for to wrap around a new mum who was having a hard time with motherhood. I think of Guardian Childcare and Education in Laurimar and the way they have the Nanna’s Home Basics crew up there with them. Deb was there leading the strong focus on Remembrance Day and Anzac Day for the children who attend. Rebecca is at the Orchard Road YMCA, and their early intervention work makes sure that kids have wraparound supports before they get to school. We love childcare workers and early learning centre workers, and we rely on them.

From talking to workers and managers in my community, I know that they have been just as gutted as everybody about what has occurred. I think about one of my centres in Donnybrook, where the male worker there offered to step back in the wake of what happened and the families there wrapping around him to demonstrate how much they love and value his work. Other centre managers told me that families had asked for male workers not to care for their children during nappy changes. It has been a really, really difficult time for workers and for parents as well as obviously the children. Everyone is dealing with the shock and grief in different ways.

This government is dealing with it by strengthening and simplifying protections for children, and they have been set out in these three bills which we are discussing concurrently. I want to assure parents that the work that we are doing means that we will have the most rigorous inspection regime in the country, by authorised officers. We will have more unannounced compliance visits – more than double. We will more than double the unannounced compliance visits on centres, and we are doing this work now, we are putting these bills through together now, despite the complaints of those opposite, because we want this system ready and in place for the start of next year. I know in my community families are receiving their second-round offers for kindy places, and we want them to know that when they take their child to kindy for the first time next year, they will have these additional protections there ready for them.

We also reassure parents that we are implementing all 22 recommendations as quickly as possible, and part of that is around the timely tracking and tracing of workers in the sector. That is something I have spoken to childcare centre managers in my community about the need for, and how there had been an assumption that there was automatic updating and following of workers. So I am glad that we are meeting the expectations of the sector by putting this in place. I think anybody who has been looking around for child care or kinder for their child knows that the centres often spruik their standing in the national quality standards around things like how they are integrated with the community, health and safety, the food and different things like that. But what we are doing is making sure that not just those things are clear to parents but also any compliance or enforcement activity at centres is easily found by parents so that when parents are making a choice about where to place their child, about who to place their child in the care of, they have access to information about that centre.

We also have some improvements around complaints for people with disability and disability oversight bodies as part of this work, including the worker regulation functions into the Social Services Regulator. I know that is certainly something that I welcome. In speaking to disability workers, they have also sought to have that combination and streamlined approach, because we know that workers often move between those sectors. So we want to make sure that there is not a gap there, and I look forward – I hope, in the future – to aged care workers also being part of that, because we have seen that people do seek out the most vulnerable, and they do seek out where there are gaps.

You might be shocked to know that following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, Australian Federal Police stopped 20 registered child sex offenders at the airport trying to get to Asia because they knew that people who were vulnerable would be easier victims. It was following instances like that that the then AusAID implemented the child protection policy – that was in 2008 – and Australia’s international development program is the world leader in child protection. There is a lot that domestically we can learn from what has happened internationally, because there are very strict standards in place. These predators seek out weaknesses in systems and they seek out the most vulnerable. So it is our duty to strengthen systems, to look for gaps and to make sure that they are filled. I really welcome the changes that we have before us in these three bills that we are discussing concurrently.

The new Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority means that this is not just a one-off improvement that we are making in the sector and to the safety of children but that there will be continual work, continual strengthening and continual support for the sector to make sure that the children who are placed in care receive the best possible care, because when it comes time for you to place your child in child care for the first time, as I set out explaining at the start of my contribution, when you are walking down the hallway back towards your child after that first day away from them, you want to find your child as happy and as well as you left them. We know that in nearly all instances that is the case, and so I want to acknowledge the great work of our early learning sector workers. I want to reassure parents that we are working so hard to make sure that we can strengthen the system to make sure that we can keep predators far, far away and that we are ready to pounce on any cases that need to be fixed.

 Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (15:52): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025 and the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025. From the outset, I know that across both sides of the aisle, we would agree that in this place, protecting children is one of the most important things that we can do as legislators. It is our duty as legislators – we would all agree to that. That is why on our side it is so mind-boggling to us that the government has allowed less than a day for the opposition to scrutinise the bill. If we were serious about our democracy and its functions and if we were serious about keeping children safe, then the government would have done its due diligence and allowed the opposition to have the time to look at the bill, read its contents, examine it, go out to stakeholders and undertake the typical democratic process that our children deserve in order to be kept safe.

Instead what the government has done is give us less than a day to go through all of these changes. As the opposition, our job is to scrutinise these bills so that we can have the best outcomes for Victorians, the best outcomes for our children and the best outcomes for those that we in this place have a duty to keep safe. A day’s notice to go through all of these details – it is impossible to do. If the government was really serious about working together in a bipartisan way to keep children safe, then there would not have been less than a day to go through all of this. The truth is that we are here debating these three bills today – three bills, all together – two of which, these that I have held up, we have had less than a day to see because the government has failed to act when it mattered. Our priority as legislators must be putting children first and keeping children safe, something that this government has failed to do. Now they are trying to pick up the pieces and introduce measures that should have been implemented years ago.

No-one disputes the importance of these reforms. Everyone remembers the case of Joshua Brown, the childcare worker who, sickeningly, was charged with over 70 offences, including sexual misconduct and producing child abuse material. Indeed parents across my community and in fact from across the state contacted me in grief and dismay. How could this have happened? Why weren’t our children protected? Why weren’t they kept safe? And if the government knew, why didn’t they act all those years ago? If the government knew, why didn’t they do anything to keep our children safe? This is a case of too little too late. The government knew for years that the system was broken, and they did nothing.

In 2022 the Commissioner for Children and Young People warned the government that ‘children will be abused, or continue to be abused’ by people who should have been stopped from working with children if more funding was not given to the very agency that investigated inappropriate behaviour in childcare centres. The Victorian Ombudsman warned the government in 2022, again, that Victoria had the weakest working with children check system in the nation. The Ombudsman called for reforms, and the government ignored every single recommendation. They have known about these weaknesses and they have known about these issues for three years plus. The government were told exactly what would happen and exactly what they needed to do in order to better protect Victorian children, and they did nothing. They did nothing, and now the children of Victoria have had to pay the price.

Steve Dimopoulos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, even the member for Warrandyte, despite her TikTok and Instagram following, has to be factual. And on this, everything she has said in the last 2 minutes – literally, I quote, that we have ‘done nothing’– is an outrageous lie. I wonder if what I say will make it onto her social media.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): I will rule on the point of order. There is no point of order.

Nicole WERNER: To the point of parents across my community that have contacted me in grief and dismay, can I raise a story from a family that contacted my office and have asked me to raise it in the Parliament. I wonder if Minister Dimopoulos at the table would allow for this to be read, because this is actually a truth from a family that has written to my office. It is a truth from a family who asked me to raise this issue, and I would like to read this in the house:

Dear Ms Werner,

We saw your Parliament speech about the childcare scandal, and we need your help. We are another family. We are living proof that the government’s failure to act in 2020 destroyed more children’s lives. If the system had listened to Goodstart’s substantiated findings in 2020, if they had done their job when the perpetrator was caught grooming and kissing toddlers, he would have never been able to have touched our children. This is not our fault. This is theirs.

They spoke of their child who was three years old and their other child who was one year old. They said:

The system made a choice to provide our children to a predator they knew was dangerous. But we did not know. Goodstart knew, the police knew, the department knew, working with children check knew – they all knew in 2020, and they let him keep working with children.

Then they detailed the changes that they saw in their children at the hands of this alleged perpetrator ‍– with a three-year-old becoming terrified of going to the bathroom alone, who then started to make sexual comments about using his mouth, who then tried to kiss with an open mouth, and their one-year-old, barely walking, waking screaming, becoming clingy, needing to be held constantly, with both children withdrawing into themselves. This family has asked me to raise this in our Parliament on their behalf. As of last week, when they wrote to me in August, they said:

When the Premier called this unacceptable, this person still had his working with children check. Five years, Ms Werner, 2020 to 25. How many families …

If they had acted on Goodstart’s report, none of us would be here – not us, not the 2023 family, not whoever else is out there.

They wrote to me and said:

We’ve spent thousands on therapy. We’ll need years more. The government’s response is not good enough. Ms Werner, you’re not our local member, but you’re the only one fighting for families like ours that we have seen. When we saw your speech, we felt seen for the first time.

They said:

Goodstart did their job. They caught him, fired him, reported him. If the system had done its job, our children would be safe. This is not our fault. The Premier says this is unacceptable. That word does not give us back our children’s innocence.

I raise it in this place today because again, in 2022, the government was warned that children will be abused or continue to be abused by people who should have been stopped from working with children if more funding was not given to the agency which investigates inappropriate behaviour in child care. We know that to be true. The Victorian Ombudsman, in a publicly tabled report, warned the government in 2022 that Victoria had the weakest working with children check system in the nation.

While we welcome these reforms on this side of the house, what we do not welcome is the delay. What we do not welcome is the lack of transparency, to read through a bill this size in less than a day. What we do not welcome is the failure to act to keep Victoria’s children safe. This neglect has allowed child sex offenders to go from child care to child care, to continue abusing children, exactly as the Ombudsman told the government would happen years ago. But the government has delayed action time and time again, and the consequences have been sickening and our children have paid the price.

Today, while the government introduce these bills, I think back to July, when they opposed our policy that we took to the floor of Parliament. We called for – and they voted this down – allowing immediate action on credible information, linking the working with children check system to the Victoria Police database, maintaining suspensions during appeals, reducing working with children check validity from five years to three and mandating training in child safety, reporting obligations and abuse awareness. The government voted these changes down. They voted down this suite of reforms that would keep our children safe – not after a rapid review that did not even get followed when it said it was going to be tabled, in October. Here we are in November, acting rapidly to keep our children safe. They voted that down, and now the government is finally taking action after ignoring warnings from the experts and ignoring cries for help from families like I have raised here today. After initiating this not so rapid review, now they finally come to the floor. We will support these reforms, but they are too little too late.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (16:02): As I start, I would just like to recognise the contribution by my neighbour and colleague the member for Point Cook. This issue, and particularly the events that we saw around July, hit quite hard for my community given the majority of the centres involved were across Werribee, Wyndham Vale, Point Cook and Tarneit. Every day hundreds of families across my electorate drop their children off to these early childhood centres and place a huge amount of trust in the workers there to keep their children safe. As someone who has worked with children as a schoolteacher, you always have this responsibility at the front of your mind.

The vast majority of our workers in early childhood settings have the best interests of the children they care for at the heart of what they do. However, we know there is a risk that some people target children in these settings to satisfy their twisted and horrific feelings. In my community we have seen this manifest in the most horrific way through the alleged offending by a creep who I shall not give the satisfaction of naming here in this place. This is why I thought it was important to speak on this package of bills today that go further to protecting our children. While, yes, they are quite lengthy, and yes, there is a lot of detail in them, it does form part of a whole process that we have been following along the way here in this chamber. I stayed up until very late going through these bills, I was there at the briefings and I read through the notes, and I think it is really important that we do spend that time on such an important issue.

There are two particular parts of this collection of bills that I want to reflect on, particularly the one concerning the national law bill, and some of those concerns the member for Point Cook raised around private for-profit operators in these contexts, as well as looking at the early childhood register. We owe it to families in Werribee and Wyndham Vale who faced that horrific offending to get this right.

What families in my electorate did not want to see was the blatant politicking by an increasingly irrelevant opposition. It was irresponsible to bring a bill to this place that was half-baked and not in line with necessary national approaches, only to then have Liberal staffers, probably in a dank office in Exhibition Street, push out graphics plastering the faces of good people on this side, implying that we did not want to look after children. I got a rise out of that.

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member’s opportunity is not to attack the opposition but actually to speak to the contents of this bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): What is your point of order?

Bridget Vallence: I am coming to that. I would ask you to ask the member to come back to the bill package.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): There is no point of order.

John LISTER: I think it is particularly important, because there has been a wideranging discussion on the process behind where we get to with these three bills along the way, and unfortunately the process that we have seen from those opposite is to disparage people on this side for voting against a half-baked bill in this place, rather than wait for the review and work with our colleagues across other jurisdictions in Australia to get this right. It is despicable, that kind of behaviour, because we on this side understand –

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, members are required to be factual, and the fact of the matter is the Ombudsman put out these issues three years ago.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): That is a matter for debate, not a point of order.

Bridget Vallence: It did not require any rapid review three years ago, and I would suggest that he is being disparaging to members within this chamber in his contribution. I would ask you to get him to come back to the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): As I said, there is no point of order, and members are to be seated once they have been told there is no point of order.

John LISTER: It is particularly important every time I look at that little blue card in my pocket that says that I am a registered teacher and that I am held to those high standards of child safety, something that I take seriously not only in my role as a teacher but also in my role as a parliamentarian, because we understand that the work to further strengthen protections and worker screening requires that national approach and methodical approach – an approach that takes into account the complicated regulatory and funding frameworks of this sector, which I will go to. As teachers, we are held to high standards and registration requirements, and it makes sense – and I am getting to the bill here – to ensure other workers who have a child-facing role are also held to a high standard, beyond just the working with children check. What we are looking at with these bills builds on the work we have already done to strengthen our system. We have banned the use of personal devices in childcare centres. Failure to comply with this can result in the cancellation of service approval. We have established a register of early childhood educators, and we are going, with one of these bills, to enhance the provisions in that register. We have commissioned that urgent review into child safety in early childhood education, and we are also, with these bills, responding to the recommendations. These bills acquit a number of those key recommendations.

I want to talk first about the idea of the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025. In discussing this with some people in the department and with my colleagues, it is important to remember the regulatory environment that a lot of these early childhood centres sit in and why, although we have already established an early childhood worker register, it is important to have this legislation to set out some provisions to strengthen how that register can operate. We have these foundations that we have already put in place over this year, but recent events, including the events that happened in my electorate, have made it clear we can do more to keep children safe. We have seen that it is particularly critical now to do this, as we have seen an expansion in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. As the member for Point Cook put it, profit and child safety tend to mix like oil and water, and regulation, particularly when it comes to making sure the people working in these for-profit centres are registered and monitored as well, is really important. We have seen, as a result of an increase in funding in the sector, more of these centres, but we have also had the floodgates opened to private operators by the former Liberal–National government, with very little regulatory environment around it.

At the moment these services are regulated by the quality assessment and regulation division, and as I come to understand it, this really goes towards the programs that are offered there and the space that is there and not necessarily to the workers themselves. It is a little bit like saying that the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, which manages schools, needs to also be responsible for the registration of teachers at those schools. We know that having a registration scheme for those employers means that it can be transferred across, and there is more of that insight to it. This particular bill is going to establish a new independent ECEC regulator called the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority and create the position of the early childhood regulator, which will report directly to the minister, which I think is particularly important when we see these cases where it requires rapid decision-making at that high level. Transferring these functions from a regulator to an independent body led by the early childhood regulator and directly accountable to the minister will ensure effective regulation in this increasingly complex system. It will also make sure that we have that register of workers, we require those private operators to submit information to that register and we create offences and penalties for not doing that.

In the time I have left I want to talk to the idea of a national approach to tackling this issue of registering workers and other issues across the sector. This bill addresses the Australian education ministers’ commitment to introduce legislation to implement the recommendations of that child safety review and other national reforms. Having this national law means that we will enhance the safety, health and wellbeing of children in early childhood centres and improve the quality of education. It will lead to improvements and really fill a lot of those gaps in the regulatory environment that we have seen.

Key areas in the reform agreed to by all those ministers across jurisdictions mean that there will be a national application of a statutory duty for the safety, rights and best interests of children to be the paramount consideration for all persons involved, because we know that for-profit centres are run as businesses and there is not necessarily always that principle that the safety, rights and best interests of children are at the heart.

Something that those opposite have missed in this entire discussion is that, yes, government plays a role in this and, yes, the federal government plays a role in this, but the operators and the workers themselves also play a role when it comes to child safety. We always used to go through modules when I was teaching at school around looking at child safety policies. As you clicked through those modules and you had those discussions in your staff meetings, it was made really clear that child safety is a shared responsibility. It is also on these operators to be making sure that they are doing everything possible, regardless of whether or not it affects their bottom line, to keep children safe. Having that statutory duty across the entire nation makes it very clear, especially as we see increased funding for these services as communities like mine grow and we need to provide more early childhood services. I commend all three lengthy but well-considered bills to the house.

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (16:12): I want to make some comments in relation to the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025, as one of these three bills we are concurrently debating. This bill merges the disability services commissioner, the Victorian Disability Worker Commission and the Disability Worker Registration Board of Victoria into the new Social Services Regulator. The bill has 455 pages, and we received that bill of 455 pages and have to debate it on the same day. That is an absolute disgrace. Shame on the government for lumping it in with two other bills to be debated concurrently, when it knows we are probably going to support the other bills but have issues with this one. This is appalling and not how this place should work. Given we had no time to read the bill in full, we will consider some amendments potentially in the other place.

The Social Services Regulator, as outlined in this bill, is not what the disability sector wants. They want a standalone complaints service and have made that crystal clear in multiple pieces of correspondence to both the minister and the Premier. The Victorian state disability plan states, as one of the principles at its foundation, ‘nothing about us without us’. Well, I ask the Minister for Disability: what happened here? Yes, there were a couple of meetings. The disability sector raised its concerns very clearly but was ignored, and this government has pushed on to put this structure in place without support. How is this possibly listening? How does that align with ‘nothing about us without us’? This proves it is simply a slogan and nothing that this minister and government live by.

Disability Advocacy Victoria and Disabled People’s Organisations Victoria, which represent a very large cohort of disability groups – over 20, I believe – made their wishes very clear. They said they had not been consulted – so much for ‘nothing about us without us’. They made it very clear that they did not want the regulator – the oversight agency – absorbed into the Social Services Regulator.

They wanted a standalone disability complaints service, not something lost in a bigger umbrella group. When the royal commission recommendations were released, this is what the government said:

The Victorian Government welcomes the opportunity to work closely with people with disability throughout the implementation of our response to the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission.

You have not worked with them and you have not listened. They are not my words, they are the words of the sector.

This is the second try we have had at this. First off, we had this incompetent minister last year introduce the Disability and Social Services Regulation Amendment Bill 2024. Embarrassingly, having got it so wrong, the minister had it sitting between houses for over a year and then withdrew it just a few sitting weeks ago. However, while it was sitting between houses I got all the correspondence, the minister got all the correspondence and the Premier got all the correspondence pleading with the government to listen – that they did not want an overarching regulator, they wanted a standalone service. Not only that but none of these disability groups were invited to sit in on the government’s taskforce – not one. The taskforce looking at restructuring the disability sector oversights contained nobody from the disability sector – incredible. Let us consider for a moment the relevant royal commission recommendation. It is recommendation 11.3, and it is to:

… establish or maintain an independent ‘one-stop shop’ complaint reporting, referral and support mechanism to receive reports of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability.

This implies a standalone entity. It does not recommend merging the complaints service into a bigger umbrella entity. The royal commission went on to state, and have a listen to this:

The mechanism should be co-designed with people with disability …

What the hell happened? This did not occur. We asked in the bill briefing the last time around what disability groups were consulted with. I think the answer we got was the Victorian Council of Social Service. No actual groups representing the disability sector or people with a disability were included on the taskforce, and the vast majority of them were not widely consulted. The royal commission also said:

The mechanism should be placed … within an existing independent organisation which has appropriate expertise and relationships with services to perform its functions.

This is not occurring. The disability minister is ignoring the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. Disability Advocacy Victoria and Disabled People’s Organisations Australia have both said in follow-up letters to the minister and the Premier, which I was cc’d into, noting that Disability Advocacy Victoria is the peak body for independent disability advocacy organisations in Victoria:

We restate once again that what the disability community requires is a stand-alone disability focused regulator led by people with disabilities, in line with the relevant recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission.

That correspondence also said:

The disability community/disability advocacy community … is united in their perspective … that the proposal to incorporate disability specific regulators into the Social Services Regulator is both destructive and harmful ‍…

Let us just have a think about that. Two overarching umbrella groups that represent more than 20 ‍disability organisations say to the minister and say to the Premier that this structure they are putting in place is destructive and harmful to the disability sector, and the minister does not respond and forges on with that same program but will stand up when we have a disability function in Queen’s Hall and say, ‘Nothing about us without us.’ What a load of rubbish, speaking with a forked tongue.

If you are going to say, ‘Nothing about us without us,’ consult properly with the disability sector. Twenty groups not spoken to – hopeless. There is no evidence that a super-regulator will be able to effectively protect people with disabilities in Victoria. In the long second-reading speech, which I just read before coming into the chamber, it does not say in any passage that there has been broad consultation with the disability sector. The reason it says there has been no broad consultation with the disability sector is because it did not occur; it is as simple as that. It does not say in the second-reading speech that the structure has the broad support of the disability sector. There is a reason for that: it does not.

The correspondence, co-signed by two organisations that represent more than 20 groups, says they do not want this. They have made it crystal clear over more than 12 months that they do not want this. I met with a number of these groups over the past 12 months, and they said to me that if they could just talk to the minister and get their own specific shopfront, agency or office they could go to that primarily dealt with only complaints to the disability sector, they would be happy. And I said surely the minister would accept that. And they said, ‘Well, we can’t get in the door to have a discussion – will not talk to us.’ Nothing about us without us, but you cannot talk to the minister – go figure how that works.

This bill should not be debated within 24 hours of it coming into this chamber. This bill should not be debated concurrently with two other bills that this government knows we will support because they do make improvements to child protection and childhood safety that all in this chamber, I am sure, would strongly support. But we have being concurrently debated this bill that puts forth a reform the sector does not want and protects a hopeless minister who has not spoken to the disability sector and has not listened to or answered their concerns in relation to this structure that is being put in place. Now, we will be having some discussions with the crossbench between houses to see what avenues are available to us, but the fact that we are having to do this so quickly and in such a rushed situation is just a shame on this government.

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (16:22): That contribution was long on emotion but deeply, deeply short on fact, and to suggest that the Minister for Disability or indeed her office have not been consulting exhaustively with the disability sector in the context of the reforms contained within these bills and particularly the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 is simply untrue and a profound mischaracterisation of the process that has led to this bill coming to this place. One of the reasons I know that is that I have been involved deeply and intimately in those consultations myself. As the former co-chair of the Social Services Regulation Taskforce I worked closely with National Disability Services and other disability stakeholders through that prism as well as a multitude of stakeholders through very regular consultations about the proposals in this form and previous forms but also the effective regulation of disability services in Victoria more broadly.

As the Shadow Minister for Disability, Ageing, Carers and Volunteers said, there has been some concern in the community about the nature of regulation – whether it is fit for purpose and whether people with a disability in this state know where to go if they have a concern or a complaint – and the reality is that the feedback to me through that consultation has been very clear that they do not. That was also the conclusion of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. It was also the conclusion in fact of the rapid review looking at the way in which children engage with government services and regulators. At the moment, we have a circumstance in which we have regulators with the word ‘disability’ in their name – the Victorian Disability Worker Commission and the disability services commissioner – but the remit of those is very limited. The Victorian Disability Worker Commission regulates disability workers on a voluntary basis, in effect – workers who have voluntarily registered to be within the orbit of that regulator. But the number of workers who have done that in this state is very small as a proportion of all of those who work in the disability space. Therefore, by definition, its capacity to regulate and to respond to complaints is limited. Much of the disability services commissioner’s role has been, in effect, superseded and absorbed as a consequence of the growth of the NDIS and services which were formerly within its umbrella having been transplanted to the NDIS, Commonwealth regulation and NDIS regulation, leaving only a very few forms of services – forensic disability and others – within the orbit.

So we have a circumstance where we do have regulators but their remit is limited. It has also changed. It is not, as it stands, fit for purpose. It is not clear for a Victorian with disability where they should go if they have a concern or a complaint. And we know – Acting Speaker Kathage, your own contributions in this place make it very clear – that notwithstanding the work of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, there are too many instances of abuse of Victorians with disability and others with a disability in our country. And there must be no wrong door. There must be no wrong door for those who are at risk of abuse or have experienced harm and abuse in the context of their care. It is imperative that there is clarity for consumers and those involved in service delivery and experiencing service delivery but also for our society more broadly and for a regulator to be empowered to have clarity, to have access to the right information and to be resourced to do the job.

Yes, I understand, and I have heard very loudly and clearly in the consultation that I have had and I know the minister has had, there is some concern in the community about the perceived loss of disability sector specialisation arising from merging disability oversight bodies into a broad-based regulator, but there will remain an enormous focus on disability within the Social Services Regulator (SSR). There will be no diminution of the focus on disability in the context of the system that these bills seek to create. An additional associate regulator role is being established in legislation, and these roles are flexible to enable the regulator and the system to adapt to sector needs.

I will return to these issues later in my contribution, but I did want to take exception to some of the things which the shadow minister put about in his speech at the start to suggest that there had not been consultation, to suggest that there was a uniform position among the disability community about what the government and what the minister have been proposing. I also do understand that Disability Advocacy Victoria chose not to engage in a consultation process, as is entirely their right, but to suggest that there was not that opportunity I do not think is a correct representation of what occurred.

On that note, the disability dimensions of these bills are incredibly important, specifically the disability dimensions of the social services regulation amendment. Others have spoken at length about why we have got to this place and the need to react rapidly to preserve the safety of children. As you, Acting Speaker Kathage, said and as others have said, nothing is more important in our community and our society. The rapid review made 22 recommendations for improved child safety in response to utterly abhorrent revelations and allegations earlier in the year. We want to see children safer across all settings, and children with a disability are a particularly vulnerable cohort, both in registered social services and in schools and early education. They deserve to be safe. They deserve and their families deserve to know where to go and to whom they should raise complaints and concerns when issues do arise. A fragmented system in which there is a lack of information sharing does them a disservice, and I think it is something that this Parliament needs to correct through the legislative proposals on the table.

I will not dwell upon all of the bills individually. Suffice to say that the social services regulation amendment transfers responsibility for the working with children checks, the reportable conduct scheme that currently is with the Commission for Children and Young People and the child safe standards to the SSR. It makes changes to the working with children check and the reportable conduct scheme as recommended by that Weatherill rapid child safety review, and it merges disability oversight bodies, including worker regulation functions, into the Social Services Regulator. The national law has been well described by others, and I will not dwell upon it here, but it is an important legislative change that gives effect to the things we know need to happen to keep children safe. We also will be establishing the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority (VECRA).

The ultimate intent of all of this is to improve the focus, efficiency and effectiveness of regulation. Regulator roles, once these bills are enacted, will see the SSR take charge of the regulation of social services, working with children checks, the reportable conduct scheme and overarching child safe standards, as well as disability oversight and worker regulation, making it clear for Victorians with a disability and their families that the SSR is the port of call and that there will be a very strong, specific focus on disability within that regulator. VECRA of course will take charge of regulation of early childhood education and care services, the early childhood worker register and the ECEC sector regulation of child safe standards, crucially with extensive sharing of information between the two. Collectively, the three bills will work together to strengthen information sharing, allowing for immediate action to be taken based on a broader range of information to provide more regulatory tools and actions for regulators.

The SSR amendment bill, as I have said, substantially amends the Disability Service Safeguards Act ‍2018, with extremely good reason, and seeks to consolidate disability oversight functions in the Social Services Regulator. Similar to the early childhood sector, the location of different responsibilities and different sources of information in the disability oversight area leads to the risk and has led to the reality that no one agency has a holistic focus on consistent protections and safeguards for children and adults in high-risk settings. We know many locations of delivery, such as specialist disability accommodation, day services and all of the breadth of services that Victorians with disability may rely upon, are high-risk. We have seen it through the royal commission, and we have heard about it in the context of Ann Marie Smith in South Australia, who I have spoken about previously. These are not abstract risks, they are real. They require better information sharing and a dedicated focus within a regulator that works and that has an expansive focus. That is what the SSR has. I have been on that taskforce. I have chaired that taskforce. I have seen the deep consultation that this government has had with community, with organisations providing valuable services across our community and with people with disability and their advocates in our society. I know that there are differences of opinion. There are concerns about the risk that the loss of some regulators which currently exist will mean a diminution of focus on disability. That is not true. I am here to rebut the contribution of the member previously. The focus on disability within the SSR will be paramount. It will be strong, it will be clear and it will provide a resource for Victorians with a disability.

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (16:32): On behalf of the Greens, I rise to speak on the government’s legislative response to the rapid child safety review and the bills that it has put forward as an urgent matter. Currently early childhood education and care is in crisis, and we have seen that play out in our communities in the most horrific way with the recent allegations that came to light of childhood abuse in the sector, but we know that the sector had been in crisis for a time before that. These bills come to this Parliament following the really important work by New South Wales Greens MP Abigail Boyd, who uncovered serious regulatory failures and alarming rates of harm in the early childhood care sector in New South Wales, which led to the ABC investigation which blew this whole thing open.

Following her incredible work and those revelations, the Victorian Greens and our spokesperson in the other place Anasina Gray-Barberio acted swiftly, requesting that the Victorian state Labor government produce the same documents here that were provided by the New South Wales government to their Parliament and to the New South Wales Greens. We asked for the same documents – documents that showed the extent of harm and abuse happening in our childcare system. But to date the Victorian state Labor government, nearly six months later, has not produced a single document here in Victoria – not one document. It really beggars belief, and I think it is quite shameful. It means that the state Labor government is leaving tens of thousands of Victorian parents with kids in child care, including me – I have kids in child care right now – completely in the dark about the true scale of the harm that is happening in the early childhood education sector. All we are asking for is the same level of transparency that the people of New South Wales have been afforded.

While the Greens pushed – this was before some of the allegations came out – what the Greens were pushing for was basic transparency for parents. Then these horrific reports of child sexual abuse across Melbourne childcare centres came out in the news. These were every parent’s worst nightmares come to bear, and it was exactly the situation that we were warning could happen.

My own kids are in child care. I have had three kids go through child care, and I am so fortunate to have been able to place them in a wonderful little centre in my neighbourhood, a co-op that is overseen by a volunteer parent board, a non-profit centre. There are incredible, incredible educators there, some of whom have been there for many years, if not decades, and I absolutely could not do this job without them. That is very clear. But many parents in my electorate, particularly those in Kensington, were absolutely shocked when the horrific allegations against Joshua Brown came to light because he had worked – for a very short time, thankfully – at a centre in our neighbourhood. That, I think, sent an absolute chill through every single parent who had kids at that centre or other centres where he had worked.

The thing is that this is urgent. This does need to be addressed, but these bills are coming to us after governments have ignored dire warnings for years and years, in particular from the commissioner for children and young people, and there is a lack of resources and holes in the child protection and working with children schemes that have existed that the government has been warned would lead to child abuse. There have been years of these warnings. Almost three years ago to the day the commissioner explicitly warned the government that children would be abused or continue to be abused by a person who would have otherwise been prevented from working with children as a result of the current scheme. So the state Labor government was explicitly and very publicly warned that children would be abused or would continue to be abused in childcare centres if something was not done. That was three years ago. And what did the state Labor government do in response to these repeated and increasingly dire warnings? Very, very little. For three years those warnings were ignored and action was not taken, which begs the question: what has the government been doing for three years? If they say that protecting our children is a highest order priority, why hasn’t action been taken in the last three years on these warnings? Labor sat on their hands until it was too late, and unfortunately the dire warnings of the children’s commissioner played out in the most horrific fashion across our news media. It is horrific to think that potentially they could have been prevented. We do not think it is acceptable to wait three years to act on these dire repeated warnings of systemic child abuse.

Once the issue hit a political crisis moment in the media – and I think the state Labor government realised that they were very late to the party and that they were very exposed now, having not acted for three years – there was a political and media crisis. And what did the state Labor government do? They did what they are very good at doing, which was to announce a review – a rapid review, in fact, is what they called it at the time. This urgent legislation that has come before us, we have been told, is responding to some of the recommendations in that so-called rapid review. But the thing is this morning we were given this document with these bills responding to this review and they are a thousand pages long. They are reforms to child safety standards, the working with children check scheme and also to areas of disability regulation and oversight. Labor has waited three years to act, and now we get a 1000-page bill that we are supposed to deal with in one week and that nobody had seen until this morning. It is pretty remarkable, actually. And because the sector has not had time to look at the bill, other members of Parliament have not had time and stakeholders have not had time, we are being asked to rush through a bill that is urgent, in one week, when the government has had three years to act. It just means that this bill will be much less considered and effective than it would be if it had proper scrutiny and oversight. And because we have only had a couple of hours with this bill, it means that I can really only comment generally on the details that I have seen of the bill, because we have not had a chance to read all the thousand pages yet.

The Greens have been calling for a strong, well-funded and independent agency with real power to investigate abuse, audit childcare centres and hold the sector and the government accountable. Instead the changes appear, as far as I have seen, to be quite superficial. This government has simply renamed the quality assessment and regulation division, the current regulatory body, and shifted it from sitting within the Department of Education to sitting outside of it. It appears it will have the same staff and the same workload and will be accountable to the same minister. So we are giving a new name to the regulator, but what good is a new name if the same government will continue to ignore its warnings and the system is not fundamentally changed to put the protection of children at its heart and have effective tools and teeth to do that?

It brings us back to what is really at the heart of the problem here: years of chronic underfunding and underprioritisation by governments of the early childhood education sector. As far as I can see, there are no minimum legislative requirements forcing the government to adequately resource the regulator for it to be effective in monitoring childcare centres or any legislated minimum benchmarks for inspection and compliance checks of centres. It seems that the regulator may proactively release information such as detailed compliance reports and allegations in childcare centres, but it is not mandatory under the act.

Victorian parents do deserve full transparency. This is about the safety of our children. We have the right to know what is happening in centres, what risks exist, what allegations have been made and what steps are being taken to protect children, and without that openness, trust in the system right now is really broken, and we want it to improve. We want that trust to be rebuilt, but that needs to be done properly.

The bill fundamentally also fails to address the true causes of why we are here today, which is that the for-profit model of child care is broken and it fundamentally does not work. Good governance and an emphasis on child safety, all of which cost money, seem to be mutually exclusive with profit-making. Providers can literally profit from cutting corners on child safety and from cutting corners when it comes to sufficiently resourcing educators. And then we have the commercial childcare landlords, where rent for these properties is often calculated per child, meaning that they are trying to jam as many children in as possible, treating each child like a dollar sign, not a person. When we are turning the care of children into a commodity in this way, exploitation and neglect thrive. When profit is the motive, exploitation and neglect thrive, and when market forces dominate, non-profit and community-run centres that put children first are pushed aside or shut down in favour of these for-profit providers, who try and do things as cheaply as possible to make the most profit.

G8 is the nation’s largest ASX-listed early childcare company, operating more than 400 centres across Australia under more than 20 brands. In 2024, last year, G8 reported a net profit of more than $67 million from revenue exceeding $1 billion. I do not think that is okay. I do not know if anyone else in this place thinks that is okay. I do not think it is okay for these huge often overseas corporations to be making these kinds of profits off our children and having a profit motive that is driving down standards of care and putting safety at risk. Some of the G8 centres charge families around $170 a day, or more than $850 a week, yet it appears from all of the reports that we have seen that the most profitable centres – the ones that are for profit, that are giving dividends to their shareholders – are also the ones that are most frequently not meeting national quality standards and where we are seeing repeated reports of neglect and physical and sexual abuse.

This keeps happening, so something is fundamentally wrong with the way that the sector is set up in the first place – not just the way that it is regulated but the way it is fundamentally set up. We need systemic change, not just legislative bandaids to try and make a political problem go away. We actually want to fix the problem, and I hope everyone would agree with me. I think we need a public universal childcare system. We would never accept in this state or this country big overseas for-profit corporations running our primary schools. We just would not. We would not accept that, so why do governments of both stripes accept this for early childhood education? These are the same kids. We know that so much – I think it is 90 per cent – of a child’s brain is developed before the age of five, and early childhood care is some of the most important care that our children get, yet we are happy to outsource it to big overseas for-profit corporations. I just do not think that that is right.

I want to talk a little bit about one other provision in the bill that the Greens are worried about. It looks like, from having had a look at the bill, Labor have also taken the opportunity – which they say is the response to the rapid review, which they say is urgent to fix the crisis in our childcare system – to take this bill and put in a section that removes dedicated oversight of disability service providers, including abolishing the disability services commissioner. The Greens have opposed this in similar legislation that has come before us. It looks on the face of it like they are the same reforms which Labor were previously unable to get support for through Parliament – we will take a closer look at that. But I think it is pretty awful form if Labor uses this urgent childcare bill to try and tack on and ram through changes to disability sector regulation and oversight and try and hide that under the guise of acting on the crisis in the childcare sector. I think that would be very cynical and a very disingenuous move from Labor, and I am sure that disability service providers and stakeholders would not appreciate it. I am sure that the disabled community here in Victoria would not appreciate it, and if this is what has happened in this bill, what a disrespectful way to treat the disabled community. We heard a government speaker before me say that the government thinks these changes are very much necessary. But if that is the case and the Labor government actually believe that, why have Labor hidden them in the middle of a bill that they say is about addressing the urgent need in the childcare sector? That just seems very tricky. It seems disingenuous and it seems disrespectful, and it makes me wonder what Labor are playing at and whether they have any intention of actually fixing the problems here or whether they are just using this as a political moment to get through a bill that they could not get through otherwise and sideline the disabled community here in Victoria.

We will be having some talks about that to try and fix what I think is a pretty egregious act, and we will spend some time – the little time we have over the next week – wading through the thousand-page bill. We will continue the conversations with the government. I thank the minister’s office for the briefing that we received yesterday, but there are more conversations that will need to be had. We in the Greens will continue to push for reforms that actually strengthen our childcare sector. We want reforms that are fair, that are carefully planned and that are shaped by the people who know the system best and have our kids’ education and safety as their top priority, that actually require full transparency from regulators and governments and centres that place children’s safety over company profits. We will continue to push for a free public universal childcare system that actually looks after our kids and sees them as humans, not as objects that they can make profit from.

 Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (16:49): There is much to be said here today about the three bills that have been put before the house and are being dealt with in cognate: the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025 and the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025. These are all very important bills, and they are tackling an issue which is at the heart of all good societies.

The intention of us all, basically, is that we treat and take care of the most vulnerable in our society as well as we can, and as a government that is what we seek to do as well when other systems sometimes fail. Nothing was more upsetting, I do not think, than hearing the allegations, and they have been traversed in here. There has been much said in the media, and I really do not want to go into the details of them, because taking a trauma-informed approach, I would like to avoid going back over and covering that. But suffice to say, and I have said it in here before, we all had a very visceral response when we heard about those allegations, and communities across the state of Victoria felt it very deeply, none more so than the families of the children who had been abused. There were a multitude of parents out there who were in fear that their child had been as well, so there was trauma for those involved. For all of us who have had children or know children or who have loved children, there is nothing more horrendous than the thought of harm being done to them.

As a result we did conduct or instigate the rapid review, and the result of that only a few months later is some significant pieces of legislation which we deal with here today. At the heart of them is trying to ensure that the systems not just here in Victoria but also nationally are bolstered and are enhanced and give power to regulators to ensure that this just simply does not occur again. That rapid child safety review, which was led by Jay Weatherill AO and Pamela White PSM, delivered 22 recommendations to strengthen child safety in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. As a government, we accepted every single recommendation and committed to implementing them in full, and these bills deliver the legislative recommendations within the remit of our Victorian government. We are leading the nation with the Education and Care Services National Law Amendment Bill 2017 as well. I am very proud that we are doing that and that we are the host legislature doing that work.

I want to pick up on the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 before I discuss some of the other elements here, and I note 10 minutes is not enough time for all the things I do want to go to and say. But I want to just look at the consolidation of disability entities and the establishment of a complaints function to ensure a more efficient safeguarding framework for children and adults with disability and people accessing social services. There is a real need for this to occur. According to the 2024–25 disability services commission annual report, the commission received a total of 69 new complaints in that year. This is the concerning part: of the 69 new complaints, only seven were assessed as being in scope. Sixty-two were assessed as out of scope, which means 90 per cent of the complaints made to them had to be referred elsewhere, including to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and the Social Services Regulator. The VDWC, the Victorian Disability Worker Commission, has also reported that a significant number of matters need to be referred elsewhere. That is absolutely indicative of confusion. That is what this bill seeks to remedy. We want to be able to provide disability service users with a straightforward system where issues can be dealt with under one roof. It is hard enough when you are in a situation that you need to make a complaint. When you get to a point that you need to actually raise a complaint about the treatment of someone with disability and things are already difficult for you, to then go down a pathway and be told, ‘Sorry, we can’t assist you here; you need to go somewhere else’ adds and compounds to the trauma for those people in the first instance. So to deal with that, which this bill seeks to do, is incredibly important.

The Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill is generated out of recommendation 8.1 of the review, which also noted that children in out-of-home care settings and with disability may be more vulnerable, and it is incredibly important that we focus on this too. This bill establishes that common foundation across social services so that all children have the same oversight and therefore are afforded all of the protections. That is incredibly important, and I really want to just highlight once again that statistic, that out of 69 new complaints made to the disability services commission only seven were in scope – a sobering one indeed. That in and of itself speaks to the importance of passing this bill here before us today.

On the package, the other two bills, I want to just quickly touch on some of the other elements amongst those, noting that there are only a few minutes left on the clock. The Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025, the VECRA bill, is establishing a new independent regulator to oversee early childhood and education services under the national law and the Children’s Services Act ‍1996. VECRA will also maintain a Victorian early childhood worker register, which is designed to align with the future national register, and that is incredibly important. I was listening to the member for Werribee before talking about his Victorian Institute of Teaching registration. I too am VIT registered, but my card is no longer blue. It is a glaring red, which means I am non-practising. However, I still have my national criminal history record check done on the five-yearly cycle, and that is such a high standard, that check. It is national, and that is important. As the member for Werribee was talking about, we understand the importance of that national overview, so I do think that the more here that we can develop through a national lens, the better for all involved. It is incredibly important, and child care is regulated – it generally sits within the federal domain, but we are doing our bit here in Victoria to ensure that Victorian children are in settings which are safer for them.

I do want to say, though – and I should have mentioned this earlier – I want to express my thanks to the early childhood educators who work so hard to take care of our children. My children were in early childhood education settings too, when I was working and they were younger, and those educators there were fantastic. They did so much good work with my children, and we were so thrilled that we had them as an option and I was able to get back into the workforce too. I do want to just acknowledge that, because I know that everything that occurred really affected the wonderful workers in that sector too. So I just want to thank them for the work that they do, because they are the vast majority out there.

The VECRA bill, which I was just touching on, responds directly to recommendation 9 of the rapid review, and that is the establishment of an independent ECEC regulator. Up until now ECEC services have been regulated by the quality assessment and regulation division within the Department of Education, and that arrangement has actually created potential conflicts of interest, as the department has been both regulator and operator of services. That is what VECRA will change. It will be a standalone authority, led by an early childhood regulator, reporting directly to the Minister for Children. VECRA will regulate ECEC services under the national law and Children’s Services Act and act as the integrated sector regulator for the child safe standards, and it will maintain the Victorian early childhood worker register, requiring providers to submit worker information and creating offences for noncompliance or misuse of data. I think that is critical. The register is absolutely critical. It will allow VECRA to track where individuals have worked. It is going to close dangerous loopholes, and it is going to share information with the Social Services Regulator to join up all those breadcrumbs of risk intelligence.

I think strengthening the working with children check is also a very important element of the Social Services Regulator bill. It needs a major overhaul, and this is what this will do. It is going to allow a broader range of information, including unsubstantiated allegations and Victoria Police intelligence, to inform working with children check decisions.

I just want to quickly note, with the few seconds on the clock, that the opposition’s bill was most concerned with giving regulators the ability to move quickly where there is a suspicion of risk, but critically, our work here in this bill has introduced the sharing of information for those decisions to be made. You cannot make a rapid decision in a vacuum of information. That information has to be at your fingertips in order for you to then make a rapid decision, and that is what this legislation does – the legislation put up earlier by the opposition had not actually gone to that. So that is a key difference, and I commend the bills to the house.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:59): I also rise to address a suite of three bills which are being debated concurrently principally related to the safety of some of our most vulnerable Victorians. I know that there have been for some time serious concerns about child safety and workforce matters within the early childhood education and care sector in Victoria. I further note that this came to a head in the middle of this year when a childcare worker in Victoria who had worked across 20 childcare centres around Melbourne was charged with more than 70 offences related to sexual assault and producing child abuse material.

I would like to commence by thanking those Victorians who are darn dedicated – those early childhood workers and educators who give of their selves and their expertise and who nurture our most vulnerable, who assist children to be their very best to learn and to grow in, not arguably but factually, the most formative time of their lives and who help parents to have an assurance that their children are being looked after while those parents are, given the economic state that we face at the minute, most often off at work earning a crust and providing for themselves and for their families. I want to say at the outset just how grateful I am, and I believe the alternative government here in Victoria is, for the work of early childhood workers and educators.

The second thing I would like to note is, frankly, the size of the bills. It is unparliamentary to draw attention to props, which I most certainly will not do. But I do hold those bills in my hands at the minute, and there are a lot of pages; there are a lot of words. There are a lot of reforms being proposed by the government in these bills, some of which the opposition – the alternative government – and some of the crossbench only received yesterday afternoon or yesterday evening. I think that that is a very unfortunate circumstance, and the contribution from the member for Gippsland East in this matter is noteworthy. The member for Gippsland East drew attention to the fact that he has concerns with the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 specifically in relation to the disability sector, specifically in relation to the consultation, or the lack of consultation, that the member for Gippsland East, who is also the Shadow Minister for Disability, Ageing, Carers and Volunteers, has had with the government’s efforts in that regard. I also note the response in the contribution from the member for Greenvale, who provided an alternative view to the member for Gippsland East. But I also think that when the government rushes such detailed legislation to this place – late, I might add, because this was promised to be delivered last month in October and it is now November 2025. Specifically in relation to this bill, the social services regulation amendment bill, it goes to quite literally hundreds of pages. I would propose recycling this bill by using it as a weight to keep a door open – a very heavy door, for that matter – at some point in the future, such is the weight of the pages of that bill and no doubt the complexity of the nature of that bill as well.

I think it is also important to draw the house’s attention to just some of the timeline that has led us here. In 2018 complaints to the quality and regulatory division about childcare provisions began to increase. Indeed from 2018 to 2023 complaints rose by some 45 per cent, while enforcement actions declined by 67 per cent. In 2018 there was one enforcement action for every 20 complaints. In 2020 a childcare educator was dismissed from a childcare centre for sexual misconduct after an internal investigation found he had been grooming and kissing toddlers. Despite this, the educator’s working with children check remained active, allowing him to continue working in child care. The government’s own regulator did not issue a prohibition notice to prevent him from working until 2024. In 2021 Ronald Marks was arrested for possessing nearly 1000 child abuse images. Despite the arrest, he retained a valid working with children check for four years after he was arrested. This allowed him to continue entering childcare centres and kindergartens. In 2022 the Victorian Ombudsman released findings warning the government that Victoria’s working with children check system was among the weakest in the nation.

The Ombudsman recommended several reforms, including allowing the regulator to act on credible risk information without requiring a conviction or charge, permitting the secretary of the department to access and consider any relevant information to determine suitability and ensuring suspensions remain in force until appeals are resolved. The government did not respond to these recommendations in 2023. By this year enforcement actions by the regulator had dropped to one per 88 complaints, indicating a severe decline in regulatory response compared to 2018. In 2024 the regulator finally issued a prohibition notice against an educator dismissed in 2020 for sexual misconduct. However, the individual’s working with children check remained active until at least August 2025.

In July 2025 childcare worker Joshua Brown was charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material relating to allegations involving eight alleged victims. The government introduced new regulations in response to these shocking allegations. In early August 2025 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a journalistic organisation, reported that the educator dismissed in 2020 still held a valid working with children check despite being prohibited from working with children.

In mid-2025, before August, the government launched their rapid review into child safety following public and media pressure. In August 2025 the Liberals and the Nationals, Victoria’s alternative government, introduced their own Worker Screening Amendment (Safety of Children) Bill 2025. This bill proposed reforms based on the Ombudsman’s 2022 recommendations, including allowing immediate action on credible information, linking the working with children check system to the Victoria Police database, maintaining suspensions during appeals, reducing working with children check validity from five years to three and mandating training in child safety, reporting obligations and abuse awareness. The Allan Labor government and members of the government in this house on the occasion of the introduction of the coalition’s bill voted that bill down. In October 2025 the government missed its own deadline in response to the rapid review, which identified, for example, the provision of this legislation that we are discussing now to the Parliament. And here we are in November 2025 considering the government’s bill.

Throughout this process, throughout these many years, where there have been issues uncovered and exposed, whether it be through the interrogation of government ministers, whether it be through the FOI process, whether it be through committee reports or whether it be through the Ombudsman’s consideration of these very, very important matters, the government have maintained that they have full confidence in the regulator. The government have maintained throughout that entire process that they have full confidence in the regulator. Riddle me this: why have the government outlined in their briefing to the opposition a $45 million investment in these reforms, including 100 new staff and including 60 new compliance officers for the new Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority? If everything is so hunky-dory, if everything is just going so swimmingly well, if everything is pointed in the direction of doing what this government should have been bloody doing for as long as this has been an issue and has been identified as an issue, why have the government been backing in their regulator? And now, after media pressure, after report after report, after pressure from the opposition, the government finally acknowledges that the system is stuffed and that it needs serious reform and serious investment. Why has it taken children to be vulnerable, children to be put in positions where they are vulnerable, children to be put in positions not just where they are vulnerable but where they are abused and where they are exploited? Why has it come to that? Shame on this government. Shame on this government for not doing more earlier. If there is one obligation of any government, it is to protect our most vulnerable. By all accounts, up until this point, this government has well and truly failed, and Victorians know it.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): Before I call the next speaker I would like to acknowledge a former member for Narracan in the gallery, Ian Maxfield. And I remind members not to punch up the furniture. The furniture has not done anything to you.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:09): If only you could measure the weight of bill books or the theatrics in actually getting law reform through; if only that was the measure of success. I am still trying to figure out what the narrative was there, other than ‘Government bad. We’re good. Politicisation again,’ because, as the member for Werribee said, at a crisis point that united the federal parliamentary system in reform, the national laws into urgency and the mostly collaborative response in the national law reform that we saw in Canberra, we have not seen that kind of approach here. We saw an evening where members were accused of being complicit in child sex offences on the social media of the Leader of the Opposition’s political party. That was played out and is something that should be substantially above the gutter and trawling nature of the politics that we see of those opposite.

When we think about shame in crises that we have, Victorians are dealt a disservice when that kind of politicisation, an approach that is unbecoming of this Parliament, is the approach that we see, particularly when we see the trauma of those who will now carry the visceral impact of being victims and victim-survivors of child sex offences into the future. Their families, those that love and care for those children, will live with this forever. We see this all the time in the prevention of family violence ‍– and the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence is at the table – and the intersection with sexual violence: attempts to go down that horrific path of politicisation. As the member for Sandringham said, remember the bill they brought forward was very rushed and half-baked. Those opposite are now criticising the level and weight, literally, of the bill that undernotes the substantial complexity of law reform in this space. So I just caution people; the way that they approach such serious content in this house requires sensitivity because we are speaking about the most vulnerable Victorians, who are victim-survivors now, and we should do them a service in elevating our approach and our response.

People will viscerally go back to the moment when this first burst into the media. I think we were in Parliament at the time. There was a response from the federal minister at the time, because this was cross-jurisdictional and across states and territories. There was the vulnerability of anyone that has got a child or been a mentor to or guardian of a child, not knowing in that moment whether their children might have been impacted. There were childcare services some members of Parliament in this place knew were are under the same management and operation as those organisations. You go to that moment and the vulnerability that you feel when you hand over your little one for the day and you hope that everything will be all right.

We have to confront that there are some of the worst elements of humanity that live amongst us in Victoria. We got close to this when we saw the apology to people impacted by child sex offences and reforms. It is mind-blowing, the scale of people who are a risk to our children. The scale of it is overwhelming, and it is incidental that we found this out through police investigation. And so the primary prevention and intervention here have to be through the regulations and agencies, to have eyes and ears on people and to make sure that we have the most stringent protections available. This is what the rapid review does. It provides a significant blueprint for reform and the overhaul of the working with children check.

I acknowledge the substantial amount of work that has been done by ministers, and the leadership of the Premier, to bring this legislation here today and to get it to this point. We acknowledge those that have been impacted and hope that, in processing their trauma and impact in the future, this provides some level of reassurance of prevention of these instances in the future and assurance that we will support those families going forward as well.

It is important as well in the context of the conversations around disability support, and we know the streamlining of this is really important. Rapid review recommendation 8.1 goes to the proposals related to disability safeguards and creating common foundations across social services and disability settings. We have seen some of the most horrific things uncovered in the treatment of people with disability and then also in the aged care reforms.

There are horrific people in our community who will do anything to exploit the vulnerabilities of systems and impact on people who are vulnerable in our community. The rapid review acknowledged that perpetrators exploit system loopholes and administrative gaps to target vulnerable people. We must acknowledge the system changes that we need to make and the commonality that we find in vulnerability across other sectors, and equally as vulnerable and concerning is the disability sector. We have seen some of the common foundations: alignment of worker prohibition schemes, prohibiting of workers through the regulator, complaints alignment of management and NDIS worker screening moving into the Social Services Regulator space. This is a critical alignment. It goes to the rapid review. It needs to be acknowledged, and it needs to be responded to. We cannot waste a moment when vulnerable Victorians and their families, the people that they care about and love, and their communities rely heavily on government and the regulators to be in that space going forward.

I really want to also call out the establishment of the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority. Establishing that new independent regulator is really critical as well. We need to ensure that there is trust and confidence across the sector, because there is still a significant amount of vulnerability and trepidation from families and communities right now. We want to be assured that when there are concerns in the early childhood sector or in the disability sector that people are held to account, there is a prompt response and there is always a cautious and caring approach to that that has the interests of our kids at the forefront of everything we do. There is nothing more paramount than that.

Across the nation we see the national law reforms, and I want to touch on that as well. It is a significant effort in such a crisis setting to then unify six states and two territories in a response like that. I want to also call out the national response that has been led by the federal minister Jason Clare and his team and department as well. To deploy this within this year is a substantial response. It requires a lot of effort and a lot of coordination across ministers and departments to get this right and make sure that it lands and is fit for purpose into the future as well. These reforms across these multiple bills and the national law reform rules that have been put forward are critical as well.

This is a substantial piece of legislative work that you cannot really grind into 10 minutes of a contribution, but it goes back to some of the fundamental tenets here of service sector industries that have a for-profit basis and the impacts on ratios and the impacts on engagement in our settings. I have met with early childhood educators who have detailed their lived experience of what they need to get through in a day and how some of those vulnerabilities can impact on the safety of kids. We need to be at the forefront of listening to the workers who are supporting our kids each and every day. We have a significant amount of resourcing to allow for that collaboration and to make sure that where someone is deemed to be acting inappropriately or is at risk or where there are instances of impact on our kids, those situations are met with urgency and critically responded to all the time. It is a harsh tension that we see in the national disability sector, in aged care and in early childhood where there is a profit component. I think everyone in government on this side feels that tension point and what that looks like, so how do we balance that into the future? The analogy from the member for Point Cook was outstanding. When organisations and providers breach regulations, they will be impacted into the future and may not hold those licences. This is a critical element of this as well. This is critical work. We commend the work that has been done by ministers and the bills to the house.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (17:19): I rise to speak on these three bills – the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025, the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025 and the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025 – which I will call the Social Services Regulator bill, the VECRA bill and the child safety bill. It would be nice to be able to congratulate the government for bringing these bills, but they do not deserve any credit for this. This has been a sorry saga from no later than 2021. It is a record of failure, an unwillingness to address the urgency of the trauma that eventually was visited on young kids, the most vulnerable in our community. To see from the earliest of moments when the Ombudsman took the matter on in 2021 and then reported in 2022 the government sit on that report, as others have pointed out, for three years, then rush into this Parliament nearly a thousand pages of changes which not even those on the opposite side appear to have had a chance to really digest – no-one could in the short period, given that the rapid review reported only in mid-August. We want urgent action, but it is important to point out to the Victorian people and parents in particular that the Allan Labor government has failed them. It has failed parents and their children by not acting urgently when it could have and should have acted.

Many speakers have addressed the bills before the house. I want to talk about a few things, four points in particular. First of all, I want to point out that as urgent as the matter is, it does not appear that the government, whilst bringing these three bills before this house, feels any urgency to commence these schemes. The child safety bill, if not proclaimed earlier, will commence in February. The VECRA bill, which establishes the so-called independent regulator, and I will come to that in a moment, is to commence, if not proclaimed earlier, in October of next year. So much for alacrity, so much for urgency. The government gives us no time to digest that bill but is prepared to see it commence in nearly a year’s time. The Social Services Regulator bill, which is a nearly 500-page bill when you add in the statement of compatibility and the second-reading speech with the text of the bill, does not commence, if not proclaimed earlier, until January 2028.

We are talking about a system that is under siege, that has not been managed at all well, that has seen serious trauma visited on young kids and their families, and yet this government is prepared to defer the commencement of this so-called urgent legislation. Not only is that a problem but the question may well be asked, if you’re going to push off the commencement, particularly of the VECRA bill and the Social Services Regulator bill, for a year or more than two years, then why are we given only a day to digest the bill? Why couldn’t we have been given at least a couple of weeks to work through this? Because I doubt the government has got it right. History shows that when you introduce changes of this scale and enormity, it pays to have scrutiny, to have debate that is meaningful. We are all going to do the best we can. But I think it is fair to say it is hard to acquit that obligation when we have got a thousand pages or more of bills that involve very serious matters and we are given effectively no time to address them.

There are a couple of other points that I want to make, because a lot of points have been made. In particular I want to acknowledge the member for Kew and the then shadow minister, who did a great deal of work on this subject, as we all know. The first point I want to make is about the Social Services Regulator changes, which certainly make sense in terms of consolidation of functions. That is not the end of the game, though, as we know, in public sector governance. You have got to make sure the functions are actually discharged. It is important to rationalise those services, but the point I really want to make in this respect is that I hope and trust that the government is not going to use the transfer of those functions from the Commission for Children and Young People to the Social Services Regulator as a means of hindering the ability of the CCYP to do its job. It has a very important role to play in our system when it comes to child protection, kids in out-of-home care and kids who need support in the system and the ability of that office and the staff of that office to be able to hold the government to account when we have seen even more traumatic instances where young kids have lost their lives in out-of-home care and in the childcare system. We have asked questions about that in question time.

It is vital that the government does not use this opportunity to then nickel-and-dime the CCYP under the pretext that things have been shifted to the Social Services Regulator. That is the first thing. The second point I want to make is in relation to the early childhood regulator. The rapid review recommended that that be set up as an independent body and, yes, independent of the department. But I want to sound this note of caution. VECRA, according to the second-reading speech, is to report directly to the minister. The minister, under the bill, has powers to require reporting and investigations by VECRA. In my view, there is cause for concern about whether independence is actually being achieved here, because whilst the line of answerability from the regulator to the department might have been broken, it is still to the minister. The minister, it may be said, has interests that are very much aligned with the department. If you look at the relationship, say, in another context, between the Minister for Police and the Chief Commissioner of Police, it is very clear that the chief commissioner has, under the Victoria Police Act 2013, functional autonomy. There are some general directions that the minister can issue, but the role of the chief commissioner and the prerogatives of that office to be able to manage the police force are very safely guarded. Given what we have seen in the early education and childcare sector, with all manner of abuses, I think the idea of independence is best achieved when there is more functional autonomy than what this bill will provide. We are calling for that independence, and we have called for it – the member for Kew did that very well. But this bill leaves me concerned that the VECRA will still be potentially beholden and subject to, if not influenced by, the interests of the government, and that is a real concern to me.

The final point I want to address is funding for this, and staffing. The government talks of a $45 million commitment and 100 staff, and you have to look at other instances and other parts of the Victorian public sector where the government has hopelessly and miserably failed to staff those areas of government and public service delivery. Victoria Police – is it well staffed? No. We have 2000 ‍vacancies. Its Best Start, Best Life program is hundreds of childcare workers short, with no hope in the foreseeable future that the government can find the staff for this. So I only hope that the government can find the staff that will be necessary to actually discharge the functions of oversight, accountability, compliance and enforcement that have been so far lacking and that have been highlighted in so many scathing ways by the Ombudsman, by the rapid review and by others, including the CCYP.

As for overall funding, it is hard to see how the government is going to fund this. It has had to play catch-up on childcare and early childhood funding. It was $1.7 billion in the 2024–25 year. The government says it is spending over $2 billion on the whole sector this financial year. You have to think. These are quite substantial changes, including many extensive machinery-of-government changes. I am tipping that $45 million is not going to address all of that, particularly with 100 staff. So in a budget that is already exceeding $2 billion, they have got to find even more. You have to ask: if they have gone basically from $1.7 billion in the 2024–25 year to over $2 billion, what are they actually addressing with that extra money if not safety concerns?

I finish on this note. As others have said, we will not be opposing this. But let me make it clear to Victorian families and in particular parents of young kids in our early learning and education system: this government has failed you.

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (17:30): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on several bills on childcare safety and reforms, and I will speak to some of the reforms that are part of the various bills ‍– 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 – which we are debating today. This is about overhauling and improving our child safety regulation in this state, and it is part of our commitment that we made earlier this year that we would accept all 22 recommendations of that rapid child safety review, which was handed down by Mr Weatherill AO and Ms Pam White PSM in August.

I have heard lots of contributions today, and all of us agree that the safety of our children is paramount, especially in our early childhood education settings, and that they are and should be our highest priority. Every parent who drops off their child at school or at an early childhood centre, or with others, with adults who are caring for them, need and deserve the confidence of knowing that when they do drop their child off they are leaving them in a place which is safe, caring and built around looking after their wellbeing. These bills certainly are there to strengthen that foundation of trust, because we must have trust in our educators, trust in our system and trust that this government is particularly doing the work to make sure that the welfare of every child comes first.

I have the pleasure of visiting kindergartens and childcare centres across the Bellarine fairly regularly, and I always admire the care and dedication of our educators that are working in these settings. They deal with small children. I used to be a primary school teacher; I had grade 6 students, and that was about as young as I would like to go. I could not be a prep teacher, and I do not know whether I could do early childhood myself. But these educators are just incredible at looking after our youngest little Victorians, and I thank them for all the work that they do. They certainly play a really vital role in children’s lives. They are in places where children go to explore the world; they grow, they learn, they play, they build friendships and they have really great connections with their educators. They are part of your family many times, and they guide these young people with their emotions and their social development every single day. But as I have said, we have to have confidence that those settings are safe, and it is within the system of regulation, oversight and accountability that we have a role to play here in this place.

One of these bills is the social services regulation bill, and that is about consolidating those key child safeguard functions – the working with children check, the reportable conduct scheme and the child safety standards – under one strengthened independent regulator. This is going to bring all those protections together and create a more streamlined and powerful framework to safeguard children. Under this bill, instead of appealing to something like a VCAT tribunal, decisions will now be able to be made subject to an internal review with advice from an independent expert panel, ensuring that greater expertise in matters of child safety and disability.

This bill also introduces mandatory child safety training and testing for all applicants for a working with children check, and this is to ensure a base level of child safety literacy. All employers engaging people in child-related work will be required to also verify participation in the working with children system. This builds a record of where people are working and allows the regulator to notify employers if a person’s clearance is suspended or cancelled and/or to track their work over time. This is about strengthening the integrity of our system. It is not just a compliance matter; this is about embedding in every decision that we make in every workplace and every interaction that families can have that confidence that the people who care for their children are not only qualified but appropriately vetted, trained and monitored as well. This is about a culture. It is more than compliance; it is about culture and a culture that puts children first. Recognising that trust between families and educators is sacred, and ensuring that safety is never negotiable, this is about reforms that families can have confidence in.

The Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025 is a landmark step in our government’s commitment to ensure that every child in early childhood education and care in Victoria is safe, protected and given the best start. This part of this bill responds directly to the recommendations of the rapid child safety review that we initiated, and it is talking to recommendation 9 in full. This is about establishing an independent early childhood education and care regulator and creating a Victorian early childhood worker register. Both of these are really important, critical parts of the system. The children that go to care, as I have said, have that right to be safe wherever they learn, play and grow. This bill ensures that we look at this sector that is rapidly growing and growing in complexity. I think I remember the minister explaining at the start of the year that if we were going to design a system, we would not design it as it is right now; we would design it in a different way. But we are trying to deal with a system that the private sector has gone into, and so now we are trying to reform a system that has already been in place for many, many years.

Currently the services are regulated by the quality assessment and regulation division within the Department of Education, but the department also operates services, which can create a bit of a conflict of duty. So this bill transfers a regulatory power from the department to a new, independent Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, and others have spoken about that and have called it VECRA. VECRA will be led by the early childhood regulator and report directly to the Minister for Children. This independent structure will ensure effective oversight, as I have talked about, in an ever-increasingly complex sector. VECRA will also be integrated into a regulator for the child safety standards, consolidating oversight and ensuring children’s welfare is in focus. By consolidating information across all the providers, VECRA will be able to quickly identify which services a person has worked for, should it arise, and the register is also able to share information across the Social Services Regulator. It is about joining up those critical data from multiple sources to better protect children. This will make sure that the functions of each – VECRA and the Social Services Regulator ‍– support each other. As I have said, this is about more than compliance; it is about building a culture that puts children first. It eliminates conflict of interest and ensures that in every corner of the state in Victoria’s early childhood sector children can learn, they can grow and they can thrive in environments that are safe, nurturing and fully accountable.

Just in conclusion, when I speak with parents across the Bellarine community, a message comes through every time, and it is something that I feel as a parent as well: we just want the best for our kids. We want our kids to be safe, we want our kids to be happy and we want our kids to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for them. So many families and childcare centres and kindergartens become an extension of your family. They care for our children, and we rely on and trust them deeply every day. That is why these reforms really matter, because they are about strengthening that trust, giving parents’ confidence back into places where they know that their children will be safe but also grow into wonderful human beings, with wonderful memories of their time in child care. Again, I thank the workers for their care of our youngest children.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (17:40): I also rise today to speak on three bills at once: 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. Like you have heard from so many people before me, this is a day when people are running around desperately trying to do their jobs as legislators, look at the detail and understand the impact on Victorians and Victorian families. We are put under immense pressure with the lack of transparency from this government. Some of my comments are cautious given the allowed time that we have actually received to go through thousands and thousands of pages of words – this is extraordinary. I have been in this place for three years, and I think that every Victorian should be concerned about this sort of behaviour from the government, because it is frustrating to stand here and debate three major pieces of legislation, only having received them yesterday afternoon. When we received the bill briefing from the department, I think we had about 45 ‍minutes notice. For something of this magnitude and which will have this extraordinary impact on families, it is shameful. The integrity of this Parliament – we have heard it from so many people on this side – is about our ability to properly scrutinise the laws that govern Victorians, because there are far too many unintended consequences otherwise that we have seen from this government.

The three bills will bring profound change to hundreds of thousands of childcare workers, providers and families and, most importantly, to the safety of children right across this state. Rushing this legislation through – something of this magnitude – and not allowing members time to read, digest, review and speak to our community, those that it will impact, undermines our democracy and our trust. Transparency is not courtesy; it is essential for trust. When the debate is truncated on something as fundamental as the framework that protects our kids and our children it is little wonder that Victorians have lost trust in this government. The handling of this is shameful. I have got to repeat that, because this is a disgrace.

We need to remember why we are here: the bills before us. This government’s own rapid child safety review identified the shocking failings – a fragmented system, poor information sharing and regulators without the tools to act on risk. The review called for urgent reform – urgent. Apparently three years after the Ombudsman warned about this is urgent enough. This government missed its own deadline to introduce this legislation by more than a month. During that time children remained in environments where risks were known but not addressed.

I will start with the Victorian early childhood regulatory bill first. It finally establishes an independent regulator for the early childhood education and care sector – something that the opposition has been calling for since July. This is a long time in the lives of our children. The Liberals and Nationals released our Safe from the Start plan, which calls for the replacement of the current regulator, the quality and regulatory division of the Department of Education, with a fully independent statutory authority. It was warned back then that it was a clear conflict of interest for the department to regulate childcare centres while also operating its own. The government ignored that advice until it could no longer look away, until the polls reflected that Victorians had had enough. The government says that this new regulator, the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority (VECRA), will come with $45 million funding and 100 new staff, including 60 compliance officers, which I think tells you a lot, everything you need to know, about how badly and under-resourced the old system was.

I am going to share some figures with you, and I want you to know that those figures are people – families and children – and process that. That is why we get angry on our side about this delay, because lives are at risk – children’s wellbeing, mental wellbeing and our families’ trust in the system. Since 2018 complaints have risen by 45 per cent, with parents calling and saying, ‘Something’s not right. My instincts tell me or evidence says something is not right.’ Enforcement actions have dropped by 67 per cent. That is out of balance. These are not the numbers of a regulator coping with its case load. It is a hallmark of a system that is failing, and the red flags should have been seen years ago because they were there. The Ombudsman warned the government three years ago that the working with children check system was among the weakest in the country. Instead of acting, Labor voted down a private members bill from the member for Malvern and the member for Kew at the table and failed to act on those reforms immediately.

This could have been done months and months ago. Imagine the lives that would have been protected months ago. While we welcome the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, it is hard to applaud a government that is, again, years too late with such significant reform. VECRA is going to establish an early childhood register in Victoria. This is something we did propose months ago. A central register for all qualified childcare workers is a vital transparency tool. It helps ensure that employers, parents and regulators can access up-to-date information about who is working with children, their qualifications and any disciplinary action. It is a basic measure of accountability and, again, it should have been implemented months ago.

On to the social services regulation bill: I have got to say this one I have to process still, get some understanding about it and check it with those that are going to be impacted. By initial reports it sounds like this has been pushed. It will transfer the significant powers of the existing Social Services Regulator into a single body responsible for overseeing the working with children check, the reportable conduct scheme and child safety standards. The current system, we know, is patchwork, and there are gaps. The business units with overlapping mandates, unclear responsibilities and no visibility of risk do create confusion and danger. The idea is to see the disability oversight bodies merged under the SSR, and families have been calling for a consistent approach to worker regulation across disability and social services for years. But I just do not understand the magnitude of this work and the impact on the disability sector. If we have seen the Ombudsman and the regulator in this area already underfunded, the enormous amount of work that is going to sit with this regulator does concern me.

One of the most significant changes in the bill is that the regulator will now be empowered to act on risk before harm occurs – a shift from reaction to prevention. As a mum I say it is about damn time. Both VECRA and the SSR will be able to act on credible intelligence, even when allegations have not been proven, and suspend or supervise workers who present an unacceptable risk. The Ombudsman’s report – again, back in 2022 the report was explicit – said regulators should be able to refuse or suspend a working with children check where there is an unjustifiable risk, even without a criminal record or disciplinary finding. The reform is welcome, but I just find it heartbreaking that it took years and years, media exposés and criminal charges for this government to finally act. I have got to say there is something similar with the bail reform happening right now – so many victims before this government is forced to act, and only when the polling shifts. One of the most glaring failures of the old system was the lack of information sharing. Under the reforms VECRA and the SSR will finally be able to share critical information about worker suspensions, prohibitions and risk assessments. It is wild that that does not already exist.

The final bill, the early childhood legislation amendment bill, strengthens the national framework under which early childhood services are regulated. I am trying to have self-control right now, because I am fuming as a mother representing Victorian parents who have had to complain about the safety of some of their childcare providers. The most basic duty of any government is to protect the vulnerable. That is our job. When children are harmed in the very places meant to keep them safe, that is a failure of the government from both a policy perspective and a moral one. The solutions were there years ago. The Ombudsman told the government what it needed to do. The opposition, months ago, handed it to them on a platter to protect our children. The opposition will support these bills because child safety must never be a partisan issue. Child safety cannot wait, and it should never depend on whether Labor finds it politically convenient to act.

 Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (17:50): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the debate on the three child safety bills, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025, the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025 and the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025. I do want to start by acknowledging the impact on the children and their families of hearing the allegations of child sexual abuse not so long ago. I know that my community, as with every community across this state, were shocked and horrified at what they were hearing had occurred in those childcare centres and how sickened they were to hear that. I know for many parents it was a pretty frightening time not knowing whether their children had been victims of that sexual abuse. It was a very difficult and challenging time for many people across our state.

I do also want to take a moment to acknowledge the early learning teachers and staff and acknowledge that they have suffered as well. It has been very difficult for them. They have also been shocked and horrified at what has occurred and the fact that it is their industry that has come under extreme scrutiny now – not that they have an issue with that, but I think many of the male workers in child care and in kindergartens became punching bags. I heard quite a few stories about that and parents saying they did not want their children in centres where there were male workers. To some degree I understand that, but I think there are many male childcare workers – well not that many, actually – that are out there who are good, honourable people and have been subject to some abuse, and that abuse has not been justified because they are good workers in what they do. We do not have a lot of male childcare workers in Victoria, so I would like to think that they could stick it out and continue the great work that they do.

We know that perpetrators prey on vulnerable people in our community, and those little children were impacted under just horrific circumstances. The fact that they were able to do that clearly indicates that we need to change things and make it safer for our community and make it safer for those children in child care or kindergartens, where they are vulnerable. We know that for parents here in Victoria dropping your child off at kindergarten or child care can be tough on the first couple of days when their kids start. As parents, we want to feel confident. We want to know that our children are safe and that we, as the lawmakers, are continuing to look at what needs to change over time, not just for those there now but for generations to come, so that they are safe and cared for in the best possible way. These perpetrators, as I said, focus on the most vulnerable, so we have to strengthen the laws to protect the vulnerable children and reassure families, teachers, staff and the broader community that we will continue to keep their children safe.

As soon as these allegations came to light we took immediate action. We banned the use of personal devices in childcare centres, and failure to comply could result in a cancellation of service approval and a fine of over $50,000; we established a register of early childhood educators, and one of the bills before us today enhances that register; and we commissioned an urgent review into child safety in early childhood education and care settings and the working with children check in Victoria as it relates to the early childhood education and care sector, led by Jay Weatherill AO and Pamela White PSM.

In response to the rapid review’s 22 recommendations, we released a government response and implementation plan for each and every recommendation, and these bills before the house acquit a number of the key recommendations. The package of reforms before the house today establishes the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority as an independent body, and our new Social Services Regulator bill brings child information out of silos and consolidates the working with children check, reportable conduct scheme and child safe standards into the one independent entity.

In terms of the Social Services Regulator, the bill will consolidate key child-safeguarding functions – the working with children check, the reportable conduct scheme and the child safe standards – into the Social Services Regulator. It will strengthen working with children checks to allow a broader range of information to flow to the Social Services Regulator to consider when deciding whether to grant, refuse, suspend or cancel a working with children clearance. It will consolidate disability entities and establish a complaints function to ensure a more efficient safeguarding framework for children and adults with a disability and people accessing social services. These reforms will result in a strengthened, independent Social Services Regulator to regulate the safety of children and people accessing social services. In terms of the area of disability, when we did the inquiry into people with disabilities in residential care and abuse, we made some significant recommendations about protecting those children and young people in residential care from abuse, so I am very familiar with the work that we did there and the importance of that work.

The bill also enhances the working with children check by enabling the regulator to consider a broader range of information, including unsubstantiated allegations, and to exclude workers from receiving clearance on the basis of a lower threshold. In line with the rapid review recommendations, the bill will also change appeal pathways so that working with children and worker prohibition decisions made by the regulator cannot be appealed to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Instead these decisions will be subject to internal review, with advice from the independent expert panel providing greater expertise in matters of child safety and disability.

The bill requires mandatory child safety training and testing for people applying for working with children checks to support applicants to have a base level of child safety literacy to equip them to recognise, identify and adequately act to protect children from abuse. The bill will require all those who engage people in child-related work to verify that engagement with the working with children check system to build up a record of where people are working. That is one of the obvious things that has come out of the review – that people were moving around not only Victoria but interstate when there were questions about the appropriateness of them working with children and there were no checks and balances in place – so this is a really important one for us. This will enable the regulator to notify employers if a person’s clearance has been suspended or cancelled, and it will allow the regulator to track where a person has been working over time.

The NDIS review and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability both found that the current disability safeguarding landscape is often inaccessible for people with disability seeking to complain. As I said, part of that committee inquiry that I was involved in really identified that. In fact at the time when we did the inquiry the evidence presented was that nobody had ever really been charged with sexual abuse in disability settings, which was pretty concerning given the evidence that we had heard.

In addition, the rapid review recommended that the new intelligence and risk assessment function work together with other regulatory systems so there is a common foundation across social services, including disability, to better protect vulnerable people. This bill also proposes a reintroduction of an out-of-home care worker and carer register, covering the same scope of workers and carers as the previous Victorian register. I commend the bill to the house.

 Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (18:00): It is my pleasure to make a contribution on these three bills that have been sort of concatenated for the purposes of this debate and are being debated concurrently. I start by outlining, on first principles, that I think the chamber is in absolute agreement that nothing matters more than keeping children safe. I have heard the member for Sandringham, I have heard the member for Euroa and I am sure there have been other members speak about the primary role of this government, and any government, being to keep the most vulnerable people in our community safe. I share that goal, and the goals of this bill – goals around stronger safeguards, better information sharing and clearer oversight – are the right goals; the goals are good. Parents and schools and communities rely on the regulatory framework. They rely on those systems, and they need to know that there are rigour and integrity in those systems. But good intentions are nowhere near enough when it comes to child safety; the laws themselves must be tightly drafted. They must be practical, but they must also be fair, and our responsibility as legislators is, yes, to support the principles but also to scrutinise the detail. We must get this right in here before it fails out there. I want to thank the department for the work they have done in pulling all of this together in a very, very short period of time. It is a shame, though, that that work has ultimately been devalued, I think, by the government’s appalling process, and I will speak to the process deficiency.

This is the 1100 pages of bill we were given less than 24 hours ago. There is no way any ordinary person can even read the thing, in all likelihood, let alone develop a nuanced understanding of what it is that this bill is trying to do. I have heard the member for Preston and the member for Broadmeadows complain in recent weeks that 13 days was not enough time to scrutinise a bill. I heard the minister responsible for this bill in the other place just minutes ago complain about having three weeks to deal with the Voluntary Assisted Dying Amendment Bill 2025 – three weeks. Try less than 24 hours. The hypocrisy is absolutely extraordinary. And it is hypocrisy of course that extends to the ordinary business of government and opposition. Had the roles been reversed, I have no doubt that Labor members would be making the same passionate case for the lack of ability to scrutinise this bill, and I have no doubt that LNP members would be making, if they were the government, the same case: that it is urgent and it needs to just get done. But it just speaks to the naked politics that is actually at play here in the attempt to ram this thing through the Parliament without nearly enough scrutiny.

It is because of the deficiencies in the scrutiny and it is because we do not get a chance to really hoof our way through all of this in less than 24 hours that I will be moving some amendments. Under standing orders, I advise the house of amendments to two of these bills and request that they be circulated. Those amendments simply amend the review timeframe, so rather than having a five-year review or a review that kicks in five years after some various steps in the act, these amendments make sure that the review happens earlier, and it reflects the lived reality that this chamber has not scrutinised this bill. It simply has not; it cannot in the period of time it has been asked to do it. It has not scrutinised this bill and has not had a proper look at the bill, so let us bring the review period significantly forward so that we can have a proper look at this bill and see if we can surface some of the difficulties with it. That is the reason one of the amendments is adding a clause to introduce a review mechanism. One of the amendments simply amends the existing review mechanism clause and shortens the timeframe. But the effect of both amendments is to make sure that the two bills that were introduced and second-read today are in fact formally reviewed by the minister in a six-month timeframe rather than a five-year timeframe to pick up the errors that no doubt will be contained within.

There is a structural flaw I want to go to in the bill, which is about the conduct of internal review under the changes that the government proposes. The government proposes that VCAT is out, and if you have got a difficulty with a decision that the Social Services Regulator has made you need to make application to the Social Services Regulator to review its own decision. It is commonly referred to as marking your own homework.

The reality is that that is a flawed process. Do not take my word for whether marking your own homework is a flawed process, just have a flick through the various bills that the government has introduced in this and other parliaments over the life of the government. The Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Act 2025 was all about getting rid of the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation and replacing it with the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission to eliminate reliance on internal compliance. Human source management – again, do not rely on the police reviewing these matters internally. PWSIA, the Parliamentary Workplace Standards and Integrity Act 2024 – we are not going to rely on an internal review mechanism; we need external review. The Local Government Act 2020 and the Local Government Amendment (Governance and Integrity) Act 2024 replaced councils’ internal disciplinary panels with independent arbiters and councillor conduct panels. So everywhere you look there is evidence of government accepting the very basic premise that reviews of decisions ought to not be conducted by the decision-maker.

Reviews of decisions should not be conducted by colleagues of the decision-maker – people who share desks with the decision-maker. What you have here is an absolute nonsense, where the regulator must ensure that an internal review of the decision is made by a person who did not make the original decision, sure, and to the extent practicable was not substantially involved in the process of making the original decision. So it is a colleague, they need to be at or about the same level or higher and they have got to be suitably qualified. But here is the catch: under 92D(2), and I am at line 30 of page 83 of the bill, these subsections, these rules about who gets to determine the review, do not apply if the original decision was made by the regulator personally. So there you go – if the regulator personally makes a decision, you appeal that decision to the same person, and that person is asked to review her or his own decision. What a nonsense. We are throwing VCAT out, and the only way to get around this, well, you are off to the Supreme Court.

Let us talk a bit about that. If I am a junior childcare worker I am earning – and we have pulled the numbers from the most recent table – as little as $45,770 as a baseline salary. To file for the Supreme Court – just to file – is 850 bucks. So that is 2 per cent of my annual salary gone just on the filing fee. If I have to retain counsel or actually get some research done or anything, that is going to escalate astronomically. So if I have been the victim of industrial or workplace malice, if someone is just running against me – or they just want my shifts and they have just made up some rubbish about me ‍– they throw in this thing and the regulator makes a decision. My only avenue to get it reviewed is not VCAT, a no-cost jurisdiction with pretty gentle application fees. No, my only avenue is off to the Supreme Court. That is but one example that we have been able to surface in a very, very preliminary review of this monstrous, monstrous tome of material. That is an example of the government asking the regulator to mark its own homework.

And who, in fact, are we talking about when we say the regulator? Members in this place in various commissions around the government would be very familiar with the terms ‘commissioner’ and ‘commission’. I think we all intuitively understand what the difference is between a commissioner and a commission. Well, under the Social Services Regulation Act 2021, the regulator is both the statutory authority – the body – and the individual appointed to run that regulator is also the regulator. It is inherently confusing, and you do not have to take my word for it – on the vic.gov.au website about the Social Services Regulator there are two sentences: one, ‘The Social Services Regulator is an independent statutory authority’ – I get that. I think we are all following along at this point. Jonathan Kaplan is the Social Services Regulator. Which is it? Is it the person or is it the independent statutory authority? This confusion permeates the totality of this bill and the totality of the act it is trying to amend. We have powers of the commission being granted to the regulator and powers of the commissioner being granted to the regulator. But there is no distinction drawn in the substantive act that we are amending between the regulator the person and the regulator the statutory authority. A lawyer is going to eat that up for breakfast, that you have all these powers that are in some senses exercisable by a person and in some senses exercisable by an authority. It is an absolute nonsense. That is but one in this vast tome of legislation that we have not been given enough time to read. I commend my amendments, particularly, to the house. We ought to have a proper review of the act.

 Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (18:10): I rise today to speak on this very, very important suite of bills on behalf of the children in our care. I think these bills are a statement that we will not tolerate substandard early childhood education provision in Victoria. You will see me make some pretty big calls today, because there are some definite misunderstandings about the legislation before us.

What I do want to put across to the house very early on is that we cannot let children wait and we cannot allow systems to suffer neglect and for complacency to fester, and that is why we are here today. I want to be really clear: the early childhood sector is foundational. The hours and the days in the early years matter, and so do the early years workers. As a former teacher – I was primary- and secondary-trained and did work in both those sectors as well as special schools – I have got to admit, as well as being very angry about what happened this year, I was particularly sensitive to some male former colleagues that are in schools and are under a lot of pressure. They worked in primary school settings, which I will go into a little bit in my contribution.

The reforms that these bills put before us are really reinforcing oversight, and that is what is needed here. Whether it is about the premises themselves, whether it is about the viability of the provider or whether it is about the educator standards or about how they are dealing with risk management, mitigation and transparency and overall how they enforce the rules that are already there, this bill is about ensuring that children are safe in all those aspects, that all those aspects which are part of our acts and laws already are being enforced and that our regulatory authority has teeth.

I am thoroughly gobsmacked today. I have only had the pleasure of listening to probably the last hour of this debate, because I have been in meetings, but it seems to me that some opposition members are acting like there are no laws in place at the moment to keep children safe – no laws in place to stop children being sexually abused while in care or in education facilities, no mandatory reporting and no regulation – and that that must be what we are legislating today. Well, I just want to let the opposition know that we have had the basic tenets of what we are talking about here today in this house for decades – and some of them would be aware of a little inquiry called the Betrayal of Trust inquiry, which was in 2016. Out of that inquiry were born 11 child safe standards, and those child safe standards are the backbone, the bible, of primary and secondary schools – state or private or Catholic, whatever. They are the bible of how you run a school and how it is child-centred and child-safe and children are the priority.

What we are talking about today is not so much about the rules, it is about a lack of compliance culture that was alive and well in some of these institutions. This is not about laws on paper. This is about making sure we regulate to make sure those laws are put into practice. It is about a child-first culture. The teaching industry is not impervious to what happened this year. We have seen what happened in Beaumaris. We have seen various vicarious liability issues at the moment for various schools; Geelong Grammar would be one. I would say that this would most likely be a lot rarer or perhaps never has occurred in a state school in Victoria. I want to go through the differences here, because it is not so much about the law, it is about the culture. It is about the fact that schools are not usually run for profit. Schools are not run by the CEOs of Affinity Education, who quit. Schools are not run so that they make a profit for investors. Schools are run with children at their heart. What I have read about this year would not have been tolerated in any school that I visited or worked in in my career – and I started teaching around 2001.

Hearing issues like someone with a mobile phone in a school would be cause for mandatory reporting ‍– it just would be. Hearing that a teacher was behind a closed door one on one with a student would be a case for a report and a mandatory reporting system. Because schools operate under strict and stringent mandatory child safe standards, they have got greater supervision, clearer staff governance, stronger reporting and complaints and escalation systems and fewer settings where staff can move around untracked as well. But most of all, there is a culture of institutional accountability, there is a culture of safety for children, there is a culture of putting the child first, and what this comes down to is schools are not strictly run for profit. While they have to be run as a business, they are not run so much as a company.

The case of Joshua Brown exposed systemic failure points in the sector. It is not good enough for us to sit here today and not have an understanding of what happened there. This person has form. One thing I would like to speak about briefly is a key feature of one of these bills, which is to amend the national law as it applies to all states and territories, and it is in the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025. The predator in question was sacked from one centre within 18 ‍days of working at that centre, and I believe it was about maybe a bureaucratic error – maybe he did not report something right; I stand to be corrected on that. But he was moved between centres, and I guarantee you there were workers in these centres and there was management that had their doubts about him, whose ears pricked up, whose hair stood up on the back of their neck, but they were not clear about how to report that, they were not clear about what to do next, and this bill assists in that. We have to explore the notion that because of their inability to do that he was managed out of a centre and put in another centre innocently. This key feature of this bill, which is to expand the information-sharing powers of the regulatory authority to proactively share information about individuals with their current approved provider and gather and share information with recruitment agencies, goes a long way to ensuring things like this do not happen again.

I caution people not to rely too much on the argument of a working with children check, which the media did. A working with children check only tells us that somebody has done something wrong when they have done it wrong. What we want to do, and what these bills together do across the nation but also here in Victoria of course, is ensure that the rules that we have already got in place through inquiries like the Betrayal of Trust, with all the frameworks and strategies that are there already, are complied with, and we are keeping children safe because of that. Someone might call me out on this ‍– they might say I am one-eyed – but interestingly, working in education settings, what I have seen in the childcare settings shocked me. But it is not about the fact that the laws are not in place, it is about a culture that is about the dollar and cuts corners, and children suffer.

What I would also say to the opposition is: this is not about sides. Yes, we all saw the stupidity of putting people’s faces on social media and saying, ‘They don’t support more protections for children; they’re allowing potentially children to suffer.’ This is not about sides; this is about children. Let us not debate in abstract while we know what happens when we actually do not enforce these things. Children cannot wait, families cannot wait, educators cannot wait. We need a constant vigil against predators, and that only comes from a good culture, because predators will always find the gaps in the system. And we need to constantly review our culture. We need to constantly ensure we have a good regulator to make sure people are adhering to the rules. It is fine to have rules, but we have seen where, because of I think the structure of these systems, being private child care, that has failed. It is all about culture, and these bills go a long way to ensuring we build that culture up. I commend the bill to the house.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (18:20): I rise to stand and make a contribution to the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025. This is a bill for an act to establish the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, to provide for the Victorian early childhood worker register, to make related consequential amendments to other acts and for other purposes. We also have two other bills before us: the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025 and the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025. It does astound me that the house only received these bills 24 hours ago, the additional two bills. Yes, we need to act on these important pieces of legislation, but we also need to be provided adequate time for what is before us today. And when you look at this stack of papers that we have beside us here, how on earth we are expected to get through that? I do not think you would expect any other workplace to have to do that and do their job well. So we have all been scrambling to try and summarise the highest and most significant priorities of these bills. Everyone in this place owes it to every Victorian family to make the changes needed to ensure that the most vulnerable people in our community are protected from the horrific incidents that have occurred and we hope will never happen again. Everyone in this place, I know, wants to keep our children safe, and we have had many contributions today.

It has been horrific and traumatic what some families have gone through and will continue to be affected by, and I think we need to be mindful of that today. This is exactly why we are here. This is one of the strongest reasons we are here, discussing much-needed changes to legislation that need to occur to protect, as I said, the most vulnerable people in our communities and to support families. Families have to have confidence that their children will be safe and protected, not let down by a flawed system. We must see real transformation and reform that regains faith, trust and confidence. I choose not to use any names of those that have actually done the horrific things to these children. I think when we all look back at that time, we feel sick and we feel so saddened for those families. And as I said, they will continue to suffer. I had my children in child care, as many have in this place. My children are adults now, and my oldest daughter is actually a teacher. I was chatting to her just last week about this legislation coming through this place. There is no doubt that schools want a safe workplace. As the member for Frankston alluded to, we know teachers want to keep their children safe. Sometimes there are flaws and there are ways that perpetrators just do it – they get through those loopholes – and there will be schools and families facing significant issues. But as my daughter said, they constantly put safety as the top priority. With every meeting, conversation, school policy and thing that they work through, front and centre is the care of their children.

I have a friend who works in child care; she is a very close friend of mine. She worked in child care for over 20 years and now she is an educator at TAFE, and she is doing a wonderful job. But she said when these really awful incidents happened, it affected her students, her families, the whole education sector as well as childcare centres in the region. At that time families started to question if their children were safe: was that childcare facility providing protections and making sure to care for their children? People started to really question, which was really hard, as I said, on the workers and also the families. So I think it is really important that we are really strong in this place and that we let families and educators and schools know that we are doing all that we can to make improvements in this space. We know the government should have perhaps acted sooner and we have been lagging behind for a long time. The government is now playing catch-up, and it begs the question: why has it taken so long? We know that the working with children check has been a significant failing, and I know the member for Frankston also alluded to that. But I think when there are weaknesses there, we have to strengthen it, we have to revisit it and we have to make sure – it is all very well saying that this is someone that has had an offence in the past, but we need to make sure that there are also significant processes when we put people into these places. I agree with that.

It is hoped, though, that through the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill we seek to strengthen the working with children check system by removing silos and giving the Social Services Regulator more powers as well as also fixing the siloing issue by allowing better information sharing. In addition, the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill moves the reportable conduct scheme and child safe standards from the commissioner for children and young people to the Social Services Regulator. We do hold some concern that the government has been coy on what this means for the funding for the Commission for Children and Young People, which has currently been occupied by an acting commissioner from the department, creating a conflict with this critical government oversight body.

The Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill seeks to strengthen laws regulating early childhood providers to make sure that the safety, rights and best interests of children are paramount by issuing suspension and supervision orders to workers who present an unacceptable risk, creating a new appropriate conduct offence, banning personal devices in services by law and establishing the national early childhood worker register.

Largely, the amendments that are contained in this bill and the others before the house follow the rapid child safety review, as previous speakers before me have mentioned, which was commissioned by the government back in July and conducted by Mr Jay Weatherill AM, former Premier of South Australia, and Ms Pam White PSM, an experienced public servant, who delivered the final report of their findings to the government on 15 August. The review itself made a total of 22 recommendations to the government to improve the regulation of early childhood services. The bill today directly addresses recommendation 9, which calls for the establishment of an independent regulator for the early childhood education and care sector, which in the current system is under the quality assessment and regulation division of the Department of Education. As the review highlights, the current regulatory framework is insufficient, is not independent from the government and needs significant reform. We know that early childhood education and care is vital in providing children with the best possible start in life. It gives young learners access to critical development experiences that shape their futures. But with that access comes the added responsibility of ensuring that the environments are safe and, secondly, well regulated and staffed by qualified and competent individuals.

I have a niece who has a family day care – she cares for children in her home – and she was telling me that to set up her business she had to go through really strict regulations. I was interested in some of her surroundings in chatting to her. She does work alone with four children, and she is so well suited. The families love her. She moved out of the town of Benalla, and the families moved with her. They basically said, ‘We will drive out to be with you,’ because they knew their children felt safe. But it is an interesting model when you think that there is one person working in their home caring for four children, as she is. She is 21, so quite young, and I think these are the times when we are starting to see where things work really well on the one hand and then where the flaws happen on the other. It is this side where we start to really think: how can that be made safer, and how do we know that things are safe for a child?

These bills do go some way in achieving some of the improvements in accountability and transparency, something that we on this side of the house absolutely support. We need to make sure of timeframes – that when we bring things to this place they are perhaps managed in a more timely manner. We also need to know whether, when we have reviews, they need to be reviewed in a shorter timeframe. We need to make sure that things are working so that there is proof when we make these changes as part of legislation that they are working and that children are kept safe.

I just also want to talk about some of the things that happen across my community when it comes to child care. We have a very large shortage. I want to acknowledge the amazing childcare workers, who do a great job. We know there are so many that will always do the right thing. It is unfortunate, as I have said, that at times they have felt vulnerable in their workplace. I also want to acknowledge the hard work that is happening in the kindergartens and the early childcare centres; they are doing such great work. We have significant shortages in my electorate when it comes to staffing. We need to make sure that we also have mechanisms in place so that we can fill these important roles, because we do need to have facilities that can accommodate the needs for our younger people.

But overall I think it is great to see change is happening. As I said, we have some concerns, but we need to just continue to make sure that the things we do put in place are working, even if that does mean we review sooner. How do we support those organisations? If it is not us, who is it that can make their workplaces better and make sure that families do not feel as vulnerable? I think there is some work to be done there. I think there needs to be some form of health and wellbeing support, because I do know that at times it is a tough job when you have got a person in charge of other people’s children and they have got staff that they have to also make sure are meeting expectations. We know that there are some things that are not being met. What does that look like when it also comes to providing the framework to meet those requirements? Because there are some changes in here, and we need to make sure that they are achievable.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:30): I rise to support these early childhood safety and working with children reform bills that are currently before the house. As the state member representing Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West, but also as a local parent, I remain absolutely committed, as we all do in this place, to helping to keep our children safe. When hardworking local parents do the morning drop-off at a local childcare centre, they rightly expect their children will be placed in a safe, caring and nurturing environment – because nothing is more important than the safety, welfare and wellbeing of children in our homes, our neighbourhoods, our streets and of course our early childhood education settings. From the outset I also want to acknowledge the outstanding work of the vast majority of early childhood educators and care workers, who are skilled, hardworking and professional and absolutely committed to protecting and caring for our youngest Victorians.

Educators of course are our greatest asset in keeping children safe in these education and care settings. However, following the absolutely distressing, horrific and disturbing allegations of several serious alleged incidents of child sexual assault, abuse and mistreatment in the early childhood education and care settings, including across Victoria, New South Wales and also Queensland over the course of 2023, 2024 and 2025, these vile allegations highlighted the urgent need for further action by governments at the federal and state levels and the education care sector to further improve the safety and quality of education and care standards and checks and balances across the country and in this state. As a state member of Parliament, and again as a local parent, I was absolutely sickened and horrified by these allegations of abuse. They are shocking and painful for the families that are directly impacted, who are living every parent’s worst nightmare, and also upsetting to many Victorians more broadly. I also acknowledge the overwhelming number of well-intentioned and hardworking early childhood staff again, who feel betrayed also by these events. Those accused of these horrific crimes, if found guilty, should only face the very toughest of consequences.

That is why the Victorian Labor government commissioned the rapid child safety review, led by former South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill AO and Pam White PSM. The review made 22 ‍recommendations to drive urgent improvements in child safety, which the Victorian government has accepted and committed to implementing. The review found, and I draw the house’s attention to page 4, that over the past decade the early childhood system has undergone rapid growth:

This growth has occurred without a coherent plan. Rather, the market has been left to respond to financial incentives that do not drive investment in quality, safety, or in a stable and well-supported workforce.

Since 2015 in Victoria, the number of long day care services has grown from 1,280 to 2,049, a 60 per cent increase …

in services in 10 years.

Of the 769 new long day care services in Victoria since 2015, 726 (94 per cent) are operated by for-profit providers.

The report found that:

For-profit long day care services in Victoria are more likely to be rated as ‘Working Towards the National Quality Standard’ than not-for-profit long day care services, and less likely to exceed the National Quality Standard. They are also more likely to be working towards Quality Area 2 (child health and safety) and less likely to exceed Quality Area 2 than not-for-profit long day care services. There are now thousands of –

early childhood –

… services in Australia run by providers with a complex array of business structures and priorities.

The sector faces significant workforce challenges including shortages, casualisation and the use of labour hire, and high turnover rates. In Victoria, 66.8 per cent of long day care and standalone kindergarten service staff have worked at their service for 3 or fewer years, including 22.7 per cent for less than one year. Analysis of large providers nationally by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission showed not-for-profit long day care services had a 27 per cent turnover rate, and for-profit services had a 41 per cent turnover rate ‍…

Double the rate. Essentially, far too many for-profit providers have been responsible for putting profits before children; putting profits before the safety of children; putting profits before staff recruitment, training and retention; putting profits before good centre governance, oversight and fostering a safe culture of children, families and staff alike; and putting business interests first ahead of the safety and wellbeing of children. When combined, the review sought to respond to these and other varying organisational, staffing, care and oversight issues experienced across the sector. The review’s recommendations were directed at taking the steps necessary to ensure that predators do not get into the early childhood care system; that if they do, they are quickly detected and excluded; and finally, that we make sure that, if detected, such predators never work with children again.

On 27 August 2025 the first tranche of urgent reforms, as recommended by the review, were introduced by our Victorian government to strengthen Victoria’s working with children laws and enacted. Key changes included ensuring that anyone banned from child-related work interstate will be banned in Victoria and requiring a working with children clearance to be immediately suspended while it is under reassessment for intended revocation, with no exceptions. We also banned mobile phones and personal devices in early childhood settings.

The additional reforms contained within these bills before us will further strengthen these safeguards and standards for children, staff and centre operators. When combined, they will expand the Social Services Regulator, establish a new Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority and support changes to national law and a national approach, amongst many other reforms. In terms of expanding the Social Services Regulator, it will bring the working with children check, reportable conduct scheme and child safety standards under the one roof of this regulator by 2026. The regulator will have the authority to act swiftly and decisively and have the power to immediately reassess, refuse, suspend or revoke working with children checks when credible information is received. This will be backed by a new intelligence and risk assessment unit, giving the regulator access to evidence-based tools to assess risk and ensure consistent and robust decision-making. Mandatory child safety training and testing will also be introduced for all working with children check applications, and employers and volunteer organisations will be required to notify the regulator when they engage a working with children check holder, ensuring real-time oversight and accountability.

In line with recommendation 6.2 of the rapid review, VCAT will no longer review working with children check decisions. Instead, an expert panel with specialist skills will ensure decisions are made by those with the knowledge and experience to protect children. The legislation builds on urgent reforms already delivered, as I said, including automatic bans for individuals prohibited from child-related work in other states and territories and immediate suspension for working with children clearances that are under review, again, with no exceptions. The rapid review highlighted that children with disability may be at higher risk of abuse, so in addition to these reforms we are bringing the disability services commissioner, Victorian disability worker commissioner and disability worker registration board into the expanded regulator. I draw the house’s attention to the contribution of the member for Greenvale in that regard.

When it comes to the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, we introduced the legislation to create VECRA, which will replace the quality assessment and regulation division, QARD, operating independently from the Department of Education, as recommended by the review. VECRA will be a nation-leading statutory authority that will begin operations in January 2026, led by a dedicated early childhood regulator. It will more than double compliance checks across services, giving parents confidence that their children will be safe and well cared for. The new regulator will oversee the early childhood worker register established in July this year, which already includes more than 68,000 staff working in services that receive kindergarten funding.

We are changing national law of course too. All states and territories have agreed to reforms to national law that ensure the safety and quality of early childhood education across the country. This bill will facilitate these changes to national law, and we are also including additional powers that will apply only in Victoria, going further than the national agreement. These changes to national law include introducing a statutory duty to make the safety, rights and best interests of children the paramount considerations of those who work in early childhood; mandatory child protection and safety training in all services; enhancing the regulatory tools available to address individual worker conduct and increasing penalties and extra powers for regulators to take action against these providers.

I also want to draw the house’s attention to some feedback that I received from locals at the time of these allegations being aired earlier this year. I had an email from a lady, Renu. She wrote:

As a grandparent of two young granddaughters, I am writing with deep concern following the recent and distressing news … and the serious charges brought against …

an early childhood worker.

It is deeply unsettling to hear, time and again, of individuals in positions of trust within our communities who pose significant threats – particularly in spaces meant to nurture and protect our children.

She called for action. I got an email from a man by the name of Luke. I have spoken to all these people too, by the way. He said:

I am writing to you today as a concerned constituent and a parent of a young child in our local community. The recent harrowing news of the alleged sexual assaults in a Melbourne daycare centre … has left my family shaken.

…

The trust that families place in our early childhood education system is paramount. When this trust is so horrifically violated, it sends a shockwave of fear and distress through the entire community, leaving parents questioning the safety of their children in environments that should be nurturing and secure. The ripple effect on the mental and emotional wellbeing of families is immense.

Maxine also sent me an email, and I had an extensive conversation with her as well. But essentially her email to me says:

Thank you for the call earlier today …

As per our conversation … I would like to see:

•   Government invest in more government run and owned or not for profit centres

…

•   Prioritising child safety over workers rights when there is a substantiated claim, allegation or investigation. During any investigation, a worker should be stood down …

Suspension of working with children checks should take place as well. It goes on to say:

•   Parents must be notified immediately if an investigation is taking place AND … PARENTS should be able to prioritise their child’s safety and not be worried about the financial impact of keeping them at home.

I say to Renu, Luke, Maxine and so many other residents who contacted me at the time: that is why this bill is before the house, to help make safety for your children, and all of our children in Merri-bek, Pascoe Vale, Coburg, Brunswick West and across the entire state, the first priority when it comes to child care, early childhood education and learning centres. This of course also builds on the investments we have been making to improve early kinders across our community.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (18:40): It is always wonderful to be the last speaker on a bill last thing in the evening.

Anthony Cianflone interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Second last. I am more than happy to contribute on this bill, because it is an important one and it is about three years too late. As a working mother, I used child care for years with my two boys. Fortunately for me, I had a spot at the Murray Valley Aboriginal Co-operative Early Learning Centre and then the preschool after that, thank goodness. But Robinvale, where I live, has been in the news regarding the very broken system around child care over the past two to three years. We have had illegal childcare homes or family establishments in the news. We have had a fatality because of that, so I know this only too well.

As a mother, you know how much trust you place in those early childhood educators, centres and services. When you drop your child off, whether it is to day care, to kinder or preschool or to school – and you are often rushing between work and school runs and everything else that you have to manage as a parent – you are not just handing them to a carer or an educator. You have to have full trust in that person, and you have to have full trust in that centre. So ultimately you have to have full trust in the system that regulates that person with the most precious thing to you in the world – that is, your children. If that trust is not there, then that system does not work and parents and families will find it hard to work, and that system has been illustrated to be flawed and broken.

The Ombudsman recommended changes three years ago. This is three years late, and because of that, children have unnecessarily been put in danger. The most precious things in the world to parents have been placed in danger, have been violated and, in the case of my town of Robinvale, have died. That is not okay. That is simply not okay. So when I hear members on the other side stand up and talk about how much work and how much investment has gone in – children have died in a broken system that was identified three years ago. That is unforgivable – unforgivable. I was going to cut this short – I say that all the time – but I probably will not, because there are a few other things I want to get to. I will not spend all of my time just on the most important aspect that any government of the day has as its biggest remit: to protect the community, protect our kids and make sure the systems are fail-safe. This government has failed at that, and children have died because of it.

Can I pause for a moment and talk about the dysfunction with which we are debating all of these bills. Even the member for Shepparton, who is usually the utmost professional – she just does her job; you never hear her say a bad word about anybody – was frustrated today at the fact of having to debate three bills concurrently and not spend enough time on each one of them. I am sure everybody in this place could have easily dedicated 10 minutes to each of these bills. So the manner in which this is being done, as I said in the government business program debate earlier today, just contradicts and makes a mockery of the Westminster system of Parliament and the conventions that we uphold in this place, and it shows that this chamber is out of control, but we know that.

I do want to spend a little bit of time on the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025. It is a big one, but as I was flicking through this earlier today, I did notice that this is the bill that deals with the Disability Service Safeguards Act 2018 and also the Disability Act 2006. The member for Gippsland East earlier spoke about this. When I picked this up, this seems to be because the changes to the disability sector have been on the cards for quite some time and now have been shoved into this social services regulation amendment bill to abolish the commission and the commissioner and put them into the super Social Services Regulator, which is exactly what the sector did not want. The Premier can get up in Queen’s Hall and say ‘Nothing about us without us’ – which is what the sector wanted. That is what the disability sector wanted; they wanted a say. Guess how many stakeholders were consulted with this part of the reform? Zero. There are 20 that the shadow minister has spoken with and speaks with often, but zero have been consulted. So we end up with the super Social Services Regulator and with this one being just shoved in there like it does not matter. It does matter; it matters a lot. I just think the way that this has all been gone about is, again, an illustration of the lack of transparency, the hypocrisy and the utter delusion that we continually see from this government. Is it any wonder Victorians are frustrated right now? If you actually get out and talk to Victorians, you will hear that they are incredibly frustrated. They feel like they are being gaslit and they feel like they are not being listened to, and they are right. There is a reason they feel like that. So to have another example of that today is, again, incredibly frustrating, and those 20 stakeholders that were not consulted are incredibly, incredibly frustrated. They will no doubt be writing letters to the shadow minister, the member for Gippsland East, because he has consulted with them and does on a regular occasion.

For parents in regional Victoria, as far as early childhood and early childhood learning go, affordability remains the biggest barrier. Black markets and illegal operators only pop up through necessity and when there is a market there or a gap to be filled, which is why we have had illegal operators in the past. Affordability and access are huge issues still, even though we have had several new early learning and childhood centres. One of these, which is yet to be built, is, I might add, across the road from a backpackers – which is actually code for an establishment which houses itinerant workers – which has just applied for another 90 beds to be added to their establishment. It is just the most inappropriate place to put an early childhood centre in Red Cliffs. It is ridiculous. Is there any wonder that the community there is screaming for someone to listen to them? But the council have approved it, which is bizarre to me. Sometimes the lack of logic and common sense are just baffling to me. But we do need them, when the government announces more early childhood centres, childcare places and access, particularly in the regions. Our region has been noted plenty of times before. The Mitchell report identified it as a childcare desert, which it is. In towns like Hopetoun there is still no child care for parents within an hour or an hour and a half. It is insane. Private providers are pulling out because it is just not feasible. So whilst many families in Mildura, Robinvale and Hopetoun are struggling to find places in early childhood, this is three years too late.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (18:50): I rise to make the last contribution before we go to adjournment tonight. I want to thank the house for the opportunity to make a contribution on these very important matters. I want to start by thanking every single childcare worker who works incredibly hard in our state, who turns up each and every day to support our youngest Victorians and who conducts themselves in the most appropriate and professional manner – both those within my electorate and those right across the state. Acting Speaker Mullahy, as I am sure you know and many members in the house know, the vast majority of our childcare workers, our early educators, do an outstanding job in helping our little ones to be their best and in helping our little ones as they grow and develop and learn, particularly for those most important first thousand days of their lives.

What we have seen this year – the matters that are contained in this bill and others that we have spoken about previously in the house, those matters have been really well canvassed – is of course that we have these most devastating, most traumatic and horrible circumstances where we find somebody doing the worst of things in the community. What we need to do is deal with these matters in a robust, effective way. These matters need to be dealt with by a range of agencies, and I will go to some of those shortly. But also, as has been canvassed by the minister and others, we need to be able to provide for the best possible framework within our country, to provide for that support and service and, most importantly, the protection of children in our local community.

As a parent I have heard a number of parents, members and others speak about the issue of trust, and they are absolutely right – this is about trust. There is nothing more important than your little one. I certainly know, as a parent, doing that drop-off, particularly when they start, can be really challenging for them and for parents and grandparents and the like. It can be a very challenging experience. What we need to make sure these bills do is provide for the very best possible framework and system. What we saw through the work of Victoria Police and the subsequent investigations – and they continue as we go forward – were the most vicious of acts. The government took steps then and continues to take steps to make sure that we are providing for a new framework, in terms of both regulation and a national framework that goes to these very serious matters.

What we will have is the expansion of the Social Services Regulator; the work around the working with children check, the reportable conduct scheme and the child safety standards, bringing them under one roof by early 2026; and of course the regulator’s determination to have the authority to act swiftly and decisively and the power to immediately reassess, refuse, suspend or revoke a working with children check when credible information is received. And of course we will have that important backing from the new intelligence and risk assessment unit, giving the regulator access to evidence-based tools to assess risk and ensure consistent and robust decision-making.

The recommendations and the work of the report, which have been well canvassed in a number of members contributions – and I am looking now at the outstanding member for Pascoe Vale, who referenced these matters as well – was important work and of course was commissioned by the government after those horrific incidents came to light. Recommendation 6.2 of the rapid review includes the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal no longer being able to review working with children check decisions, and instead there is the replacement of this by the expert panel with specialist skills to ensure the decisions are made by those with knowledge and experience to protect children. And the legislation, as others have mentioned, goes on to build the urgent reforms already being delivered, or adds to, I should say, the measures that have been already announced and well canvassed.

There are of course a comprehensive range of functions that are contained within the legislation and the bills that are before the house. What this goes to is making sure that we are providing for a system that is, it must be said, highly dynamic. We know that having that interaction – both as parents and members of a local community, speaking to constituents within our own electorates and knowing that these are dynamic settings and are settings in which we place a profound sense of trust in those early educators and those people who care for young ones within our community – and making for a robust and comprehensive framework, not just for this state but for the entire country, is something that is incredibly important. There should be no difference – there should be no change to the importance of caring for young people in these settings, whether you are in WA, the Northern Territory, Tassie, Victoria, anywhere in our country, and arguably you could expand that to anywhere in the entire world. We here in Victoria are tasked with creating legislation that goes to protecting young people within our own state, and I want to commend the work that has been done at a national level to provide for these matters.

As we change from the Acting Speaker to the Deputy Speaker, I will just straighten up a little bit further. We of course know the importance of these matters. Making sure that these provisions are in place, making sure that these provisions do go to addressing the most horrible of circumstances, the cruellest of acts, is something that we remain committed to. Listening to local communities and hearing from parents, from family, from friends and from those that have been affected by what has occurred, I think everybody in this house, no matter which side of the chamber they are on, was absolutely devastated to learn of those reports. The work that has been done since is incredibly important, but the work is certainly by no stretch finished nor concluded.

Vigilance, best practice, listening to the experts, doing all of the things that we know good governments do is of course something that we remain committed to. Making sure that there is a comprehensive and robust framework in place is the priority of the government, because there can be nothing more important than protecting our little ones, there can be nothing more important than helping them grow and learn and develop and there can be nothing more important than keeping evil, despicable people out of the system and never having the opportunity to prey. That is what it is – preying on and targeting the most vulnerable people. It absolutely makes you sick, and for people to commit these acts is horrendous. We remain focused on making sure we are supporting all parents, all young people and of course, as I mentioned at the start of this contribution, the vast majority of early educators, who do the right thing. With those comments and given the time, I commend the bills, not the bill, to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.