Education ministers agree to national worker register, CCTV trial

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Federal, state and territory education ministers have agreed to establish a national educator register and trial CCTV cameras in hundreds of childcare centres. The meeting was called in response to allegations of child abuse in the early education and care sector.

Transcript

00:00Education Ministers are calling this the biggest investment in child safety in Australia's

00:07history and they're putting up hundreds of millions of dollars to back it. As you said,

00:11the centrepiece really is this National Register of Workers which will give regulators real-time

00:15monitoring of who's working in a childcare centre on any given day. And also as it develops

00:22importantly there's a plan to put in either substantiated findings or serious allegations

00:27against workers so they can be tracked across centres and we can stop the kind of things

00:31we've seen where pedophiles have worked across at times dozens of centres and have just simply

00:36moved from either state to state or centre to centre to avoid accountability. There's

00:41a bunch of other measures as well. There's extra compliance checks, tougher penalties as

00:45you said, a limited trial of CCTV as well as mandatory child safety training. Here's what

00:51the Education Minister Jason Clare had to say about that.

00:55This is a team effort. Australia expects all of us to work together. They're not interested

01:00in excuses. They expect Labor and Liberal, State, Territory, Federal all to work together.

01:07The private sector, the for-profits, the not-for-profits. They don't give a damn about the difference

01:12or the breakdown or who's responsible for what. They just want their kids to be safe.

01:16And I hope that you see in the decisions that we made today that we're serious about that

01:20as well. We're serious about making sure that the paramount, the most important thing in

01:26our early education and care system is making sure that our kids are safe. This is not the

01:31end. But it's the next thing that we need to do.

01:36No mobile phones in centres as well. That's another measure. But what have experts said is

01:40missing?

01:41Look, Education Minister Jason Clare did say that this was just the first step. But a lot

01:46of experts have said this is only really starting to get Australia up to par to where it should

01:50be. I mean, the fact that mandatory child safety training wasn't happening, that gives workers

01:54the power to identify abuse. People are asking why that hasn't been happening, given those workers

01:59have a legal obligation to report abuse and to be able to identify it. Experts have said that

02:05there's bigger structural problems that are unaddressed, like poor staffing levels, loopholes

02:10that allow centres to avoid ratios. For instance, childcare centres are required to have one worker

02:16for every four babies in a centre. And that's been a longstanding ask. The Minister did say

02:22today that that was considered, and that the Ministers have asked the national regulator

02:27to come up with a plan on that by the end of the year. So we know that childcare centres,

02:32you know, is often for profit driven businesses, and there have been concerns about how they

02:37balance their responsibilities to their shareholders. But obviously, at times they haven't put their

02:43most important obligation to the children in their care, where many people think it should

02:47be. We also had heard from the National Children's Commissioner, Anne Hollands, who said

02:53that there should be a bunch of other reforms really that go to protecting children in areas

02:58outside of day care. And here's what she had to say.

03:01Today we're talking about the childcare sector, and the children in the childcare sector. But

03:06of course, that's not the only place where you find children. And I think it's important

03:11to remember that right now, there are still decades of recommendations from previous Royal Commissions

03:19and enquiries that are designed to help children in other sectors, like the child protection

03:26systems and the youth justice systems, which are failing right across the country, that have

03:33not been implemented because we're not working together across the Federation.

03:37That was Anne Hollands there putting some of her concerns about what else needs to happen.

03:42So I think the broad view across the sector is that they see today as an important start,

03:47one that also reveals just how much work there's still to do, Lorna.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended