Wednesday, 3 June 2026

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:46): 9353 children are in out-of-home care in Victoria, whether it be in kinship care, in foster care or in the least preferred option, residential care. Surely how a government treats the children in its care must be the mark as to the success or failure of a government. The Auditor-General’s report today, Out-of-Home Care Services: June 2026, says that this system is failing. It is failing to keep up with demand, and it is failing to retain foster carers, which have declined almost 20 per cent in the last five years. Almost 20 per cent is a net drain on the system – and why? Because this government is not doing the right thing by the foster carers.

Let us look at some of the reasons why. The care allowance – this budget has provided CPI. What does that mean? For a child rated at about level 1, the foster carer gets an additional $1 a day, but this payment has not occurred for years and years – $1 a day for caring for some of the most fragile and vulnerable children in this state. If the child is rated at level 4 or 5 – high needs, intensive issues and potential disability – they get up to $3 a day extra. What is that going to buy a foster carer? What we see time and again is that foster carers are having to dip into their own funds and not being provided that resource from the government to look after, in short, the government’s children – these children that cannot be looked after, for whatever reason, by their parents. We see Victoria has the lowest base rate in Australia, so in this state we are paying our foster carers the lowest rate. There has been a 20 per cent net loss of foster carers in the system. That is an indictment on the government. Carer attrition, reduced recruitment and reliance on more-expensive residential care – and by heck, nobody wants to see children go into residential care. We asked the Auditor-General today, ‘What is the youngest age?’ A four-year-old child going into residential care – that should send a shiver down every member of the government’s spine.

What else do we see? The government is unfortunately failing our Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal children. They have the highest rate in the state of being in out-of-home care. Indeed, as of June 2025, the last set of data, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children represented 31.2 per cent of children in out-of-home care. Let me put that in context. If you go to the report, on page 18 – it is a sobering thought – there is a projection. The government adopted Closing the Gap in July 2020. The projection for 2031 is that there will be 1345 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. On this trajectory, on this projection – not my comments but the Auditor-General assessing the department – we are going to see 3709 children. That is a differential of 2360 children. These are not just numbers; these are children in out-of-home care that the government is failing. It is failing to make those inroads, and we see this at an alarming rate.

Unfortunately, we top the charts compared to other states. In the thousand children rated against a thousand, we have almost one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. This is unacceptable. This government has had a decade to make inroads into this, and it is failing these children. If we look at this, the government is failing out-of-home care. It is failing carers by not resourcing them properly, and they do a heavy lift. They care so deeply for these kids. They use their own out-of-pocket personal expenses and then they take traumatised kids and nurture them and give them a life, and this government is not providing that support to these out-of-home carers. Very sadly, rather than closing the gap, the gap is widening compared to non-Aboriginal children in this state. It is an indictment on this government. They must do better, and they should do better. We have a plan to do better come 20 November this year. We will do better, and we will see better outcomes for our children.