New federal body, ministry proposed to protect kids
Farid Farid and Andrew Stafford |
Australia’s biggest childcare providers have told an inquiry that systemic failures across the sector had caused harm to children that could have been prevented if governments had acted earlier.
Former National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds – now CEO of the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia – said the regulatory framework the sector operated in was a mess.
She called for the creation of an Early Childhood Education and Care Commission to provide national oversight.
“While much of the media attention has been on individual perpetrators, the problems are much broader and demonstrate system-wide failures,” Ms Hollonds said.
“If any system needed a national oversight commission, this one does.”
Speaking at a senate inquiry into Australia’s early childhood education and care system, Ms Hollonds said predators too easily slipped between states and territories with different regulatory requirements.
The council represents some of the largest early learning providers in the country in both the profit and non-profit sectors. Its 18 members offer about a quarter of all early childhood placings in Australia.
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Deborah Tsorbaris, who replaced Ms Hollonds as Children’s Commissioner, told the inquiry that the trust of parents had been broken.
She called for the creation of a federal ministry for children, saying it would ensure “national leadership and accountability” in enforcing a recent raft of laws and measures federally and on a state level.
“We are starting to see the emergence of ministers for children in other jurisdictions, and we’re starting to see some really positive changes,” she said.
Ms Tsorbaris said an underlying problem was the lack of a Human Rights Act that could incorporate international child safety treaties that Australia was a signatory to.
“Child safety and wellbeing is not just an issue for the early childhood education and care sector,” the commission said in a submission to the inquiry.
The commission called for an audit on all laws and policies that affect children.
In response to recent scandals, childcare centres will be able to close at 5pm for mandatory training aimed at creating a safer environment for kids.
It was one measure Australia’s education ministers agreed to following sickening allegations levelled against Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown.
Brown, who was known to have worked at 24 facilities between 2017 and 2025, was charged with sexually abusing eight children under the age of two.
Other measures being rolled out include a CCTV trial in up to 300 centres, banning or restricting the use of mobile phones, an additional 1600 unannounced spot checks and a national register of childcare workers.
National monitoring of working with children checks was also an area that needed “a unified and nationalised approach”.
At present, alleged offenders can potentially keep their check for years until it needs to be renewed.
All jurisdictions have agreed to sign up to a “national continuous checking capability”, which will allow the use of state and territory police databases to monitor the criminal histories of check-holders in “near real time”.
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AAP
