Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee (part 2 of 3)
12 February 2026
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Senate Education and Employment Committee Australian Parliament
00:00 - 03:26
Speaker 1
That goes to... I mean, I'll I'll see what information the department has about that timeline, which was, of course, managed by the Victorian government. But, again, that goes to some of the the need for reform of the kind that we're talking about. And I think when you ask about my action, senator, and I hope you'll listen to the answer, you know, all of our focus and attention, has been on strengthening the sector to help keep children safe. I mean, nobody is looking away from this.
And the the package of reforms that we have in place, was agreed by all jurisdictions, you know, of all stripes. It was supported, by the coalition. It's been supported by the sector. It's been implemented on time. And our response is really the policy response that is needed to strengthen the sector.
And it has absolutely been informed by these horrific experiences, including the experiences of those families who were initially left off because services were working on a paper based roster system, that is completely, inadequate when it comes to high risk settings, where children are involved. So I hope you will go to the package of, measures that we're putting in place to to strengthen the sector, senator, which are substantial. You know, for the first time in a couple of weeks' time, there'll be mandatory child safe training so that educators and services are able to better detect and prevent this sort of thing from happening. For the first time in a couple of weeks, of course, as I said, we have the first ever nationwide register of early childhood educators. We have banned the devices in services, that are used, in this, horrific sort of, crime.
We are trialing CCTV to see if that would assist and what guardrails need to be put, around it. We are providing more information to parents about the services, conditions, and breaches so that they, have that information to make informed decisions than has ever been, provided before. We have tripled the penalties, that providers face if they fail to keep children safe. We have amended, the laws that structure the system, the national law, and the family assistance law for the first time to put child safety and well-being as the paramount consideration, of that law. So the policy response to this, in addition to, the previously announced, measure of amending our ability to withdraw CCS funding from those providers who we think are not doing the right thing, has very much been driven by the horrific experiences of these families, and that has been the scale, and the intent and the focus, of our response, senator.
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