I rise to speak on the Children’s Services Amendment Bill 2019. I have to say it has been absolutely wonderful to be sitting here today in this place and listening to the acknowledgement of the hard work and the most valuable work that the early childhood educators in our community deliver to our children. I have to say it means something to me personally because my mum, my sister and my mother-in-law all have qualifications and are currently working or have worked as early childhood educators. In fact I grew up in a town that my mum helped raise, and that is because she was the local family day care mum, and she was called ‘Mum’ for over a decade by so many of the children from my home town.
Mum worked tirelessly from home helping raise Kingscliff’s—my home town—future generations. And I say she worked tirelessly because, let us face it, working with children, caring for them, teaching them and guiding them in their early years is not an easy task. And decades on my mum is still working in a caring profession. She did a TAFE course and retrained in aged care, and she currently works for Bupa. We have all been listening to the stories coming out about Bupa’s nursing homes, and I am not here today to talk about their record in aged care. But I do have to say that Mum spends her shifts caring for the elderly, people with dementia mostly, and if there is one thing our aged-care workers and our early childhood educators share, it is that they are some of the most poorly paid workers in our community. Yet the contribution they make to our lives, whether it is to the elderly, whether it is to people with dementia or whether it is to our children, is absolutely extraordinary.
As the member for Sandringham has worked out, we all have children, and as my mum pointed out—
Member interjecting
He certainly is. And we all get old. It is people in these professions, mostly women—let us face it, they are mostly women—who offer the care, the love and the kindness that our children and the elderly need and benefit from. I say to those opposite, and I notice that there are very few of them in the chamber right now, that these workers not only deserve our utmost respect and our gratitude but they deserve a decent pay rise.
More locally, in my electorate of Tarneit childcare workers make up approximately 4.1 per cent of the suburb of Tarneit’s working population. There are a lot of these incredible workers, again most of them women, living within the community, a community that is giving birth to over 100 babies every single week. As a result of this government’s impressive commitment to early childhood education, employment in this industry is expected to increase. Already we have committed an unprecedented $1 billion in this year’s budget towards early childhood education, of which $880 million is going to go towards the rollout of three-year-old kinder, because let us face it, every child deserves the best start in life. By 2022 every three-year-old across the state will have access to 5 hours a week of kinder subsidised by this government. By 2029 this number will increase to 15 hours a week. This will also result in an extra 6000 jobs in early child care. This dedication shown by our Labor government is in stark contrast to those opposite, who spent next to nothing on kinder infrastructure.
In my electorate alone there are at least 150 different early learning centres, whether they are kindergartens, learning and development centres, family day cares or before- and after-school care providers, and they do an important job in our community by looking after our kids while we are at work. For the most part they do a good job. In the year that I have been the member for Tarneit I have had many interactions with the early learning centres in my community. Recently I even had the wonderful member for Carrum join me at one of the centres in Tarneit where we were lucky enough to sit in on a lesson that was conducted entirely in Punjabi. The member for Carrum and I sat by and watched the kids read Where is the Green Sheep? in Punjabi. Kids were invited to go out and play or eat their lunch in Punjabi. We even danced with the kids to Bollywood music, again in Punjabi. I cannot describe how marvellous it was to sit there and watch my local kids speak, listen and interact in Punjabi.
This is having a huge effect on families in my community because for the first time many of these kids are starting to converse with their grandparents in Punjabi and that has started to deepen the children’s ties and connections within their own family units right here in Tarneit. This is not just by accident or because I am the member for an incredibly diverse and multicultural electorate, it is because this Labor government has invested $17.9 million so that 5000 preschool students across Victoria can now learn a language in addition to English. Why? Because we know that when our youngest Victorians learn a language other than English they are going to be at the front of the pack. We know from research that learning a second language is hugely beneficial. It is not only fun but it improves our brain function and actually helps kids learn English better. It also gives kids a deeper appreciation of our multicultural society. I also personally think it helps them to learn to accept their mates.
This bill is incredibly important because it makes sure that childcare providers are operating to the best possible standards in this country. It does this by aligning the Children’s Services Act 1996 with the national quality framework under the Education and Care Services National Law. While these two systems are similar, they are not always consistent. The changes in this bill are going to create a universal standards framework for all early childhood services and ensure that all regulatory frameworks are consistent throughout Victoria.
As it stands, only 8 per cent of Victorian early childhood centres are regulated under the Children’s Services Act, with the rest subscribing to the national quality framework. Most of these are occasional or family day care centres. As a result of aligning the act with the national quality framework, these centres are now going to operate under the same standards that apply to all other early childhood centres in Victoria under the national law. What this essentially means is that families who rely on these services, and there are thousands of families that use these services, can be certain that there is consistency across the industry.
This bill also adopts the relevant objectives and guiding principles in the national law and applies them to the act. This re-orients the objectives of the act to include providing quality educational and developmental outcomes, along with ensuring, most importantly, the health, wellbeing and safety of our kids. I am sure that is something we all agree is of paramount importance to childcare providers.
The requirements to operate a children’s service will be changed under this bill. This can include requiring providers under the act to appoint nominated supervisors and persons in day-to-day charge of services. The changes stipulate more explicit requirements for these roles and what the provider must take into account when appointing people to these positions. These changes are really important because they are going to stop dodgy day care providers from operating. Unfortunately I think I can safely say that we all know that those providers do exist. I recall a provider in my electorate whose licence was revoked due to major compliance issues. These can include OH&S violations, child safety issues, financial mismanagement or not having appropriately trained staff.
That is why it is absolutely reassuring to see that this bill introduces new offences, such as when a children’s service operates without a nominated supervisor—because we cannot have children’s services operating in our community in a manner that is illegal. It is a risk to themselves and it is also a risk to the children in their care. As a parent I would not want my children being supervised by a shonky childcare provider. These offences will help to deter service providers from operating in this way.
This bill contains a lot of changes, and these are changes that we will feel the flow-on effects of in our children in the next generation. There are so many parents—and I was going to say ‘mums’, but mums and dads—who rely on whether it is day care, long day care or kinders, and they include families that are relying on family day care services to provide the best quality child care, guidance and love towards their children. I commend the bill to this house.
