Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Production of documents

Working with children checks

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:08): I move:

That this house, in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within 30 days of the house agreeing to this resolution, documents relating to the Department of Government Services 2025 initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme, including but not limited to all reports and draft reports.

Recent news of a childcare worker in Melbourne’s south-east being charged with more than 70 offences against children in his care has horrified and shocked Victorians. Disturbingly, this person was able to hold a valid working with children check. Evidently this system is broken. The best time it could have been fixed was before this abuse happened. The second-best time is now. I want to acknowledge the Australian Childhood Foundation and survivor Emma Hakansson, who have been calling for governments across Australia to embed mandatory child abuse prevention education in working with children checks for some time now. I also thank Emma for the support that she has provided me in understanding this issue further.

Unfortunately, it was not these calls that led to the initial review that is the subject of this motion. Instead we understand that this review commenced following the ABC’s investigation into Victoria’s working with children check scheme, highlighting it as the weakest in the country. Victoria’s scheme does not allow for consideration of evidence of abuse or concerning behaviour that has not resulted in a criminal charge or a disciplinary or regulatory finding, unlike all other states and territories. This reporting included stories of disturbing educator misconduct. This misconduct caused the educator to be fired. Because police did not have to press charges it made no difference to their ability to hold a working with children check. In some cases, educators with multiple separate investigations into their behaviour have been allowed to continue to work in childcare centres.

While we welcome the announcement that from August the department’s screening can take into account prohibition notices, including from the Department of Education, when determining or revoking a person’s permit, there is still much more to be done. Children are some of the most vulnerable members of our society. They deserve to feel safe and be protected. The Australian child maltreatment study paints a bleak picture of how well we are doing at this. This study found almost three in 10 Australians over the age of 16 had endured child sexual abuse, equating to approximately 4.5 million individuals. For most people, it rarely happens once and it is someone known to them. Experiences of child sexual abuse have lifelong and wide-reaching, devastating consequences mentally, physically and socially. It is unacceptable that our working with children check scheme is a tick-box exercise. Essentially, as long as you have not already been charged with abusing a child, you get approved. This does little to stop people who seek out these industries to prey on young people.

It was disappointing to see the Victorian government fail to respond to the Greens documents motion that would require them to publish details of enforcement actions against childcare operators. This information will provide transparency on the state’s childcare crisis and must be responded to urgently. My adjournment request to the Premier in February, asking her to call for a nationally harmonised working with children check that includes mandatory child abuse prevention education, also remains unanswered. Crimes like this can be prevented, and we must all do better.

The former Victorian children’s commissioner, the Victorian Ombudsman, the Australian Childhood Foundation, victim-survivors and MPs across party lines have all been calling for change to working with children checks for years. It is shameful that this government has sat on its hands for so long and allowed this broken system to continue. Why did it take so many children getting hurt for there to be finally movement on this? All the way back in 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made it clear that the working with children system in Australia was inconsistent and complex and required immediate changes to stop predators. We recognise the government’s urgent review into child safety in early childhood education and care settings and the working with children check in Victoria, and we understand that a final report is being handed down on 15 August this year, but time is of the essence.

It is for these reasons that we request documents relating to the Department of Government Services’ 2025 initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme, including but not limited to all reports and draft reports, be published. We urge the government to comply with this request. Transparency is the first step in improving this system for our young people.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (10:13): Thank you very much for the opportunity to rise to support the motion proposed by Ms Payne for the immediate tabling of the Department of Government Services’ 2025 initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme. I would like to take a moment to thank her for this motion and acknowledge that this is a very serious and urgent matter facing Victorians and their families. They must be able to trust that their children are safe all the time and anytime. Whether they are at child care or school, performing extracurricular activities or simply being under the supervision of a caretaker, children should always be safe to learn and develop in any environment. This government will always put the safety of the most vulnerable Victorians at the forefront, and in April we moved to review our working with children scheme and update the Worker Screening Regulations 2021, a system that currently holds accounts of over 2 million people that have a working with children check. People that hold a WWCC are subject to ongoing monitoring of their criminal history and relevant disciplinary findings through multiple institutions, in accordance with the Worker Screening Act 2020.

With this, each year on average more than 400,000 applications and renewals are processed, contributing to the education and caretaking of the community workforce throughout Victoria. The working with children checks, assessments and regulations are not only specific to one state but also consider interjurisdictional information on the national reference system to ensure that any worker is suitable to work within the early development sector. The working with children check assessments vary in complexity and category, with last year around 900 clearances being removed or indeed re-evaluated, ensuring the security of children and the legal upholding of our caretakers. The upcoming review, which is already underway into child safety in early childhood education and care settings and the WWCC in Victoria, will report back to the government no later than 15 August this year. That is coming up very soon. The review will not only direct us on the right path to strengthen the check in Victoria but also ensure that children across our state will be safe, no matter where they are or who they are with.

I would like to take a moment to say that this is not the only step. We acknowledge that there is more to be done, not just in Victoria but across the country as well. This is a national issue, and a nationally consistent working with children check framework with more security, more scrutiny and higher penalties must be a priority for our Commonwealth colleagues. Be assured that this government will not wait. We will implement this change now, and there will be further announcements from the government and changes to strengthen the working with children check system in time. We have also announced – I will just briefly update the house – a ban on the use of personal devices in childcare centres and are working to establish a register of childcare educators. These proposals are not an attack on the workers, and I would like to make that very clear. They are boundaries and safety nets for the safety of Victoria’s youth of our future. It is also a safety net to ensure our wonderful carers and teachers who work with or care for vulnerable members of our community are safe and suitable to do so and help cultivate the future of Victoria.

The Allan Labor government will always protect the young generation of Victoria, because the children we serve to protect are the members of society today and the leaders of tomorrow. They deserve nothing less than the government’s full and unequalled attention over the course of our work here in the Victorian Parliament. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I will just reinforce that I stand here to support the motion proposed by Ms Payne for the immediate tabling of the initial review.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:17): I am pleased to rise and strongly support motion 985, which Ms Payne has brought to the chamber. It seeks, through standing order 10.01, to require the Leader of the Government to table in the Council within 30 days of agreeing to this resolution documents relating to the Department of Government Services’ 2025 initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme. It seeks not just the reports but the draft reports as well. This is a very important motion. The chamber has got a scrutiny role to hold government to account. For that reason, the opposition routinely supports documents motions. But in this case, we even more strongly support it because of the urgent public necessity of getting to the bottom of what has gone wrong with our child protection system.

We have all been shocked in recent weeks hearing these stories – the completely and utterly unacceptable stories. It is clear that the government did not act in an early or timely way on these matters. It is clear that the government has dropped the ball on these terrible issues. We have seen the Premier and the minister in this chamber seek to hide and to find silly and obscure reasons why they cannot answer basic and direct questions, so this documents motion is very important. These documents ought to be able to be located cleanly and quickly. Ms Payne is not seeking a big shopping list of documents; she is seeking a very sharp, short group of documents. I would urge the government, in the spirit of discussion about document provision, to actually provide this even earlier to the chamber. There is nothing to stop the government from providing this in seven days to the chamber. The documents are easily locatable. I am speaking ahead for Ms Payne, but if there were individual references to persons where there was a legal matter or something of that nature, I am sure that the chamber would understand that those aspects of the documents ought to properly be treated as confidential. But at the same time, it is our understanding that the document is a broader policy examination and an examination of the system, and those matters are not matters that should attract any protection of any sort. The government ought to thereby quickly provide that matter.

If the government was sincere about this, they could provide that in seven to 14 days without any difficulty, in my humble view, and they ought to do so. The community is wanting to know what has gone wrong on these important childcare matters. So I am quite clear on this: I strongly support the move by Ms Payne to seek these documents. The opposition strongly supports that, and we see this as part of a coordinated attempt to actually ensure that there is greater scrutiny and accountability of the government on these important childcare centre issues.

This is part of a pattern today where the chamber is expressing clearly its view that these matters have got to be dealt with expeditiously and comprehensively. Seeking this document is an important wedge of that approach by the chamber. The referral that Ms Crozier will move later to the Ombudsman is another part of it, and Ms Gray-Barberio’s approach to ensuring that there is a proper committee oversight is also a part of that approach. We see these as integral and actually dovetailing very neatly together to actually make sure that there is a proper and thoughtful response by this chamber – but more importantly, by the Parliament as a whole – to what is an undoubted community problem. This has to be fixed, it has to be fixed quickly, and this is an important step in achieving that.

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (10:22): I too rise to contribute to Ms Payne’s short form documents motion 985, the initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme. On the outset I would like to say that the Greens will be supporting this motion calling for the release of documents related to the Department of Government Services 2025 initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme.

What we have seen unfold over the past months, and the calls for reform that have come as a result, is unfortunately not the first instance of advocates raising concerns about Victoria’s working with children check, and Ms Payne has already spoken to this. The 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, numerous children’s commissioners and the previous Ombudsman in 2022 have all been calling for this Labor government to enact urgent reforms for many years now. And there is a reason for that: because the risk of harm to children has been too high for too long. And where do we find ourselves now? Children have been harmed – thousands of children.

I want to extend my thanks to many stakeholders who have helped us to understand some of the current flaws in the system and the urgency to act right now. Victoria’s system is an outlier amongst other states and territories. For example, it cannot consider evidence of abuse that has not resulted in a criminal charge or regulatory finding. Other jurisdictions allow much more information to be considered when considering child safety risk assessments. So while welcome, this review comes years – decades – too late. Back in March 2024 the Greens wrote to the government about this very issue, asking the government to strengthen its working with children check because we needed robust systems in place. But we also know that the working with children check schemes are just the bare necessity if we are to have a functioning network of service systems that place the protection of children front and centre. We have that opportunity to scrutinise this with this motion by Ms Payne. We have an opportunity to strengthen the working with children check, a scheme that right now is very weak. We have an opportunity to prevent predatory perpetrators, who see early childcare settings as a playground to commit their heinous crimes and abuses.

An initial rapid review has already taken place, but we do not know what it found. The government right now cannot be trusted to mark its own homework. This government needs to work with the Parliament to fix this crisis, and in order to do that it needs to be transparent and release these documents immediately. We also know that without an independent watchdog there is no oversight of compliance or enforcement for these changes, let alone complete transparency regarding the nature of any findings that are made. The Greens will continue to urge this government to establish a system that ensures transparency and accountability and that child safety is prioritised above all else and not political damage control. I commend this motion to the house.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:26): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this important documents motion. I would like to thank Ms Payne for presenting the motion to the chamber today. Like all members, I acknowledge that this is a profoundly serious matter that all Victorians are taking very seriously and that I think it is fair to say all members across this place and across the aisle in the other place too are taking very seriously.

Families must be able to trust that their children are safe, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that they can, which is why in April we moved to review the working with children check scheme and update the worker screening regulations. It is also why the government will not be opposing this documents motion today.

This is a documents motion which goes to the work of the Department of Government Services specifically in relation to the specific review of the working with children checks, but as other speakers on this debate have discussed, it comes in the context of a broader incident which we have all been horrified by recently. I will resist the temptation to offend sub judice and continue my thoughts on that. I will keep my remarks to the heart of this but acknowledge that there is also a review going into child safety in early childhood education and care settings, which is being led by Jay Weatherill AO and Pamela White PSM, and the government has already committed to accepting every recommendation of that report. We are committed to ensuring that those who work with or care for vulnerable members of our community are safe and suitable to be in those roles.

There are some further comments that I did want to make, but given the approaching clock deadline I will conclude my remarks there but again acknowledge Ms Payne’s dedication on this issue and acknowledge the fact that whilst we will, as we do in this place, negotiate and discuss and perhaps argue on the merits of different courses of action, this is a very important topic.

Motion agreed to.