Source: Murray Darling Basin Authority

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks very much for coming along. Today’s a big day. Today, I’ll introduce two pieces of legislation. The first, to cut student debt by 20 per cent; and the second, to cut funding to childcare centres that aren’t up to scratch, that aren’t meeting the sort of minimum standards that parents need and that our children deserve.

The first piece of legislation to cut student debt by 20 per cent is something that we promised, I think, every day of the election campaign in every part of the country. It means cutting the debt of three million Australians. A lot of those are young Australians. Often young people don’t see themselves on the ballot paper when they go to vote, but a lot of young people did at this election, and they voted for it in their millions. The impact of this legislation is that for the average person with a student debt, they’ll see their debt cut by about $5,500. That’s a big deal. That’s a lot of weight off their back, and it will help a lot of young people that might be just out of uni, just out of home, just getting started.

The second piece of legislation that I’ll introduce is about giving the Commonwealth the powers that we need to be able to cut access to the child care subsidy for centres that aren’t up to scratch. I think the whole country has been sickened and shocked by the revelations that have come out of Victoria in the last few weeks, and a lot of work is needed to rebuild trust in a system that parents rely upon every single day – more than a million parents across the country – and this legislation is part of that. The biggest weapon that the Commonwealth has to wield here is the funding that we provide that enables child care centres to operate. It’s something like $16 billion a year, and that covers about 70 per cent of the cost of running the average child care centre. Child care centres can’t operate without it, and I think it’s fair, I think most mums and dads will think it’s fair, that if centres are repeatedly not meeting the sort of standards that we set for them, that we should have the power to be able to cut that funding off. This is not about shutting centres down. It’s about lifting standards up and giving us the powers to make that happen.

I might pass to Andrew to talk in a little bit of detail about the cut to student debt by 20 per cent, and then ask Jess to talk a little bit more about the legislation that we’ll introduce today to be able to cut funding to centres that aren’t up to scratch.

ANDREW GILES, MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND TRAINING: Thanks very much, Jason. From our very first day in office, the Albanese Labor Government has been committed to breaking down all of those barriers that have held back too many Australians from accessing education and training. And today, we take another really big step forward in that regard. I’m going to talk really to make two points about this. The first one is to recognise the significance, as Jason just laid out, of this first piece of legislation – a piece of legislation that we talked about constantly through the campaign, and indeed since the commitment was made some months before that. A commitment that really resonated with so many Australians, three million of whom will benefit from this cut. Real cost of living relief. Money back in the pockets of Australians who can do with that help and that message of reassurance. I want to say this, though – not only have we been listening to students in Australia, we’ve been listening to all of the students in tertiary education and apprentices too, because this is not just relief from HECS debt. It’s relief that will also support nearly 300,000 students with various VET loans. They will also benefit.

And that leads me to the second point I want to make here. There really is never a better time than now to think about pursuing a VET pathway. At the same time that we made this commitment that Jason will be introducing in the form of legislation today, we also made our commitment to make Free TAFE permanent. And that has been an extraordinary success in turning around the skills crisis and breaking down another barrier that’s held back too many Australians from accessing skills. As of today, more than 170,000 Free TAFE courses have been completed. More than 650,000 enrolments have taken place. This is making a huge difference alongside so many other incentives, like the one that’s just rolled out for 1 July encouraging more people to pick up the tools and become a housing tradie. There is more to be done of course, but all of these commitments demonstrate our determination to do everything possible to deliver cost of living relief today, and to create more pathways for more Australians to get the skills they want to do the jobs that we need. I’ll hand over Jess to talk about the second bill.

JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: Thanks very much, Andrew. Thanks very much, Jason. Well, every child deserves to be safe in early childhood education and care, and every parent deserves to know that their children are safe too. But it has been a really distressing time for children and their families as we see these revelations unfold in Victoria. It’s been distressing for parents. It’s been distressing for the vast majority of early childhood educators as well, who are just going into work every day to take the best care that they can of our nation’s children. We want to rebuild the confidence that our early learning centres are safe and that they do provide quality early education. And of course, the vast majority of our early learning services do that every single day. But there are some repeat offenders who continue to put profit ahead of child safety, and that’s what the legislation that we’re introducing today is targeted to deal with. We have a strong message for those providers who do put profit ahead of child safety, and that is that we want you to lift your game or to leave the sector.

Our focus is going to be on helping those providers to lift their game, and this legislation will give us the tools to do that. It will allow us to withdraw Commonwealth Child Care Subsidy from those providers who persistently and consistently let families down. It gives us a strong stick that we’re willing to use to drive standards in early childhood education to deliver the quality and the safety that parents deserve.

JOURNALIST: Minister Clare, the Minister has just spoken about this legislation being a stick to encourage providers to do the right thing. Are there any, what else is in this bill to actually help some of the providers to do more? I mean, some of the big providers have talked about needing more funds or assistance for training, for instance; for CCTV cameras and so forth. What else is in this bill beyond stick?

CLARE: Well, this legislation is about giving the Commonwealth the power to cut off funding, cut off the childcare subsidy funding to centres that aren’t meeting that minimum standard, that are repeatedly not meeting that minimum standard. Now these centres know the standard they have to set, now they know what the consequences will be if they don’t meet it. The legislation also gives more power to the authorised officers in our department to be able to do spot checks of centres, particularly in the area of fraud. This is another area that is very serious that we’ve been working on, that I’ve been working on now for three years. The Government’s provided about an extra $220 million for fraud investigation of early education and care. It’s helped to claw back more than $300 million for the Australian taxpayer. This gives more power to our officers to be able to do spot checks without a warrant or without the AFP on board, but they will also be able to, if they spot safety concerns, pass that on to state regulators as well.

Now, Josh, you make the point that this isn’t the only thing we need to do, and that is absolutely right. When education ministers meet next month, we’ll be talking about some of the things you just mentioned. A national educator register so that we can track workers from centre to centre and from state to state. I think the revelations in Victoria over the course of the last few weeks tell us exactly why this is so important. CCTV and the role that it can potentially play in deterring a bad person from doing heinous things and also helping police with their investigations, but also the sort of training, mandatory child safety training, that already exists in the courses but doesn’t exist in the classroom, doesn’t exist in centres, that can play a crucial role in helping to make sure that the 99.9 per cent of people who are good and honest and hardworking and care for and love our kids and educate our kids every day, the people who are aghast at what they’re reading in the newspapers and are angry that their profession is in the media for the wrong reasons, have the skills they need to spot a bad person before they act. To have the skills that they need to spot somebody who might be looking to do something terrible to children or to distract them from stepping in and stopping it from happening. So whether it’s the register, whether it’s training, or whether it’s CCTV or a bunch of other things that will come out, I’m sure of the rapid review in Victoria and the work that’s being done in New South Wales, all of that is on the table when education ministers meet next month.

The other thing I should mention here for the sake of completeness is the Attorney-General will also meet with AGs across the country next month to look at the reforms that are needed that are long overdue to working with children checks.

JOURNALIST: How many breaches of the minimum standards would take you to strip the childcare centre of its funding? What’s the threshold in the legislation?

CLARE: State regulators can shut a centre down right now if they think there’s a real and imminent threat to childcare safety. So they can do that today. What this legislation gives us the power to do is to shut a centre down if we think they’re below the minimum standard and they’re not likely to get there or they’re not intending to get there. So we can issue a show cause notice and say you’ve got 28 days, give us a good explanation about why you’re not there or we will cut your funding. Alternatively, we might set some conditions on the centre and say you’ve got a period of time to reach that standard, to meet the requirements that the state regulator has told you to reach, potentially to employ a child safety expert in the centre to help you reach them. And as I said, I want centres to get to those standards. We don’t want to have to shut centres down. But also we want to make sure that parents know that if a centre has a show cause notice given to it, or it’s got conditions that are imposed upon it, that mums and dads at that centre deserve to know that we’ve done that and to be able to make a decision about where they want to send their kids.

JOURNALIST: You just said that state and territory governments already have the power to shut down centres. What difference is this going to make now that the Commonwealth has that power as well?

CLARE: Well, they have that power and they use it. This is an additional power to make sure that the centres, and there are a number of them that are not at that minimum standard, take the action that they need to take to lift their standards to the sort of standards that we set as a nation, that parents expect and that our children deserve.

JOURNALIST: So do you think that state and territory governments haven’t been doing enough of that kind of putting that pressure and threatening to shut places down, or shutting places down, if you feel like the Commonwealth needs to step into this?

CLARE: Well, states do that work now. They tell centres about the standards they expect them to meet, and sometimes centres don’t meet them, and the problem remains unfixed. This gives us the power to step in there where centres are just either deliberately or for whatever reason not meeting those sorts of standards. The bottom line, though, is we all need to do more here. States need to do more. The Commonwealth needs to do more. Centres need to do more as well.

JOURNALIST: Minister, just on HECS, obviously this is a one-off cut, but what about future students? Is it not unfair to only have this one line in the sand and cut it by 20 per cent? What about the students of the future?

CLARE: Look, I think there’s a lot of work to do to make our education system better and fairer. And there’s a lot of work to do to make our higher education system better and fairer. The fact is today about 50 per cent of young people have a uni degree, but not everywhere. Not where I grew up, not in the outer suburbs of our big cities, not in regional Australia, not amongst kids from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds. And I want to fix that. That’s what the Universities Accord is all about, and we’ve already taken steps to implement some of that report –

JOURNALIST: Does that –

CLARE: Hang on a second. Part of that’s Paid Prac that rolls out this month – financial support for the first time for teaching students and nursing students and midwifery and social work students while they do the practical part of their university degree. Part of it is also uncapping funding for the fee-free university bridging courses that help make sure that people that have finished high school, or maybe they haven’t finished high school and aren’t ready for a uni degree, are ready for it. Part of it is also changing the way that we fund universities. Over the course of the last 12 months or so, I’ve struck agreements with every state and territory to fix the funding of public schools, what David Gonski called for more than a decade ago. Now, what we’ll do next year is change the funding of universities, so it’s needs-based as well, and the funding follows the student. And so more funding flows to students from disadvantaged backgrounds and students from regional Australia, because we know that there is not just fewer young people from disadvantaged backgrounds starting a degree but fewer finishing a degree.

It also means, and I’m sorry for the long answer, but this is a comprehensive piece of work, building and operating more university Hubs in our outer suburbs, in our regions. When I was a kid growing up, there were a lot of Macca’s logos and a lot of Westfield logos in Western Sydney, not a lot of uni logos. Uni felt like it was someplace else for somewhere else. And a lot of my mates just either dropped out of school or finished school, never thought of uni because they thought it wasn’t for them. I want to change that too. And that’s what those Hubs are about. But this Accord is big. It’s the work of multiple governments and multiple ministers. That’s why we’ve set up the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to act as a steward to drive long-term reform here. And there is more work to do. This is just the start.

JOURNALIST: If I can just follow up on that. Does that mean some of those changes involve potentially cutting student fees into the future?

CLARE: Well, the ATEC’s job is to look at all of that. Not just that, but all of that.

JOURNALIST: Can I go back to child care? I’m obviously very mindful you’re introducing this legislation today and the national database, it does require sort of corralling the states and territories. It’s a tricky job. Can you wait for this much longer, for this meeting to happen in the middle of August or later in August for a three-year period? And then can I ask as well, what’s the timeline for fresh year is setting up the database? This would take some time, would it not?

CLARE: Josh, the truth is this should have happened yesterday. And this can’t happen fast enough. And states are already taking steps to expand their existing teacher registers. Victoria is a good example of that, and they’ll have that stood up by the end of August. So where states do that, that’s good, but we need to join it up, because to make the system work the way it needs to work, we need to be able to track people not just from centre to centre, but from state to state. And if you want evidence of why that’s important, have a look at the Ashley Griffith case in Queensland from a couple of years ago.

JOURNALIST: If I may, this is on another issue –

CLARE: Yep, and then we’ll bounce back.

JOURNALIST: When are we looking to see the Government’s 2035 emissions target, and can we expect a more ambitious target?

CLARE: Oh, look, I’ll ask you to talk to Chris Bowen about that. I’m pretty busy today on some pretty important things.

JOURNALIST: Just back on the future student stuff, the cost of an arts or humanities degree has almost doubled under the last government. Is that something you’re looking to change this term?

CLARE: Really, it’s the same answer that I gave just a moment ago about the role of the ATEC.

JOURNALIST: Could I just follow you up on one of the questions you asked a minute ago? What’s the timeline for setting up a register like this with the national database for the childcare workers? I mean, and I believe there was a Child Safety Authority report in 2013 that said investigations into –

CLARE: 2023, I think, Josh?

JOURNALIST: Maybe 2023. The problem is investigations into sexual assaults that were unsubstantiated, whether they would be included in a data set?

CLARE: Two separate questions. We want to stand this up as quickly as possible, and I mentioned in my previous answer the work that states are doing, but ACECQA, the National Independent Authority, is doing that work about what the elements of the register need to involve, and that will be presented to ministers when we meet in August. On that second question, that’s something that attorneys will be looking at as part of the working with children checks.

JOURNALIST: Is it time for a national watchdog in this space?

CLARE: Well, one of the things that the Productivity Commission recommended when they provided us with a blueprint for reform of early education and care, and I touched on the Accord, which is the equivalent for higher education, is a national early education and care commission. And I’ve got an open mind about that. I’ve said that in the media last week. What that report said is we’ve got to do a number of things to build a better, a fairer and a safer early education and care system. One of those, the first of those, is to pay workers more. When you pay people more, more people want to and we’re seeing the evidence of that this year. That 15 per cent pay rise has meant that we’re now seeing more people come back to the sector and building a permanent workforce. Our kids will be safer if the workers are permanent, that they’re not moving in and out of centres all the time. So that pay rise is already reaping dividends for parents and for our children. It also recommended that we remove the activity test so kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t miss out on the value of early education and care. And it’s recommended a commission like this. In its report, it didn’t say that this would have a role in safety, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t. And this is something that we will look at in the future.

JOURNALIST: It was already hard to get child care workers in Australia. I know that there’s been a pay rise since then. Are you concerned that people aren’t going to be choosing child care careers following the really heinous allegations that have come out?

CLARE: I might ask Jess to comment on this as well because I know how dear this is to your heart. We want people to do this job. There aren’t many jobs in this country more important. They’re vested with the trust of our most precious things, our children. The little ones that walk through the door or are carried through the door of centres every single day. And that pay rise is doing what we really wanted it to do last year. We’re seeing the number of people applying to be an early education and care worker jump by, what is it, Jess, more than 20 per cent. The number of vacancies drop by about the same amount as well. That tells us if you pay people more, people want to do the job. And I do worry that these people who do this incredibly important job, one of them is my cousin, she’s worked in this sector for 35 years. I remember when my little guy first went into care, I said, ‘how do I pick a good centre?’ And she said, ‘go to the place where the people have been working there forever, where they don’t want to leave.’ That’s a great centre, but it’s also a safe centre. And if we want that to be everywhere, you’ve got to pay people better. A lot of people have been leaving to go and work at Bunnings and Woolies just because you could earn more. And so that’s why that pay rise is important and that’s why rebuilding trust and faith in in this service, in this system, is so important.

WALSH: Thanks, Jason. Well, I think when Jason’s answered a question, there’s not much left to say. But I’ve been going out to early childhood education centres for the past few weeks and talking to educators as they grapple with this. And they are absolutely devastated and distressed by these allegations. But it’s not making them want to leave the sector. It’s making them determined to stay. These are the people who want to provide quality early childhood education. That is what they are there for. That is what they are going into work to do every single day. We do want to see more dedicated, committed early childhood educators in the sector. And that is exactly what is happening with the pay rise, a historic pay rise of 15 per cent that educators themselves advocated for years and years. The previous government didn’t take action on that front. It meant that early childhood educators were undervalued. It meant that in our first term of office the workforce was really in crisis. People were leaving the jobs that they love because they weren’t earning enough and love just doesn’t pay the bills. So what we’re seeing with this pay rise is people coming back to the sector. We’re seeing people stay in the sector and we’re seeing them able to provide that really high quality care that children deserve and that they want to provide. And again, that continuity in an early learning centre with educators is the absolute key to quality and safety. When educators know each other, when they know the children, when they know the families, that’s when we get quality, safe, early childhood education. This historic 15 per cent pay rise has been a game changer for that.

CLARE: Thanks very much everybody.
 

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