Tuesday, 20 September 2022

Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms SHING:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (15:47): Between 2012 and 2014 the Hawks went back to back to back. Well, today, here in the Legislative Council, we are going Bach to Bach to Bach with the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022.

Members interjecting.

Dr BACH: Don’t look at me like that! Once again, the Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this bill brought before the house by Minister Stitt, one of my favourite ministers. This bill seeks to enhance the regulatory system for early childhood education in Victoria. The bill proposes various amendments to several acts. It is following a national quality framework review which occurred in 2019, and at a meeting of education ministers nationwide on 6 March earlier this year the final review was endorsed. I will talk about some of the specifics of this bill, noting that we do not oppose it. We do not oppose the key elements of this bill because the purpose of this bill is to seek to make the early childhood education and care sector even safer for children and to lift quality.

I know that I will also speak for the minister when I say that the overwhelming majority of those people who work in this sector are quite amazing and have the highest regard of course for the safety of the young people in their care but also seek to ensure that a really rigorous education is offered to them. I know this to be the case from personal experience. I know this to be the case because, as I have discussed with the minister on a number of occasions, I have a daughter in three-year-old kinder—and a wonderful thing three-year-old kinder is as well, a wonderful thing. She is at a sessional kindergarten, so I might make some remarks about sessional kindergartens, but previously my daughter had been in a different so-called long day care setting. Again I know I speak for the minister when I say also that I do not love that language. I think the amazing people who work in this sector do not love that language, but that is the language that is so often used. The minister is careful to talk about early childhood education and care, and I seek to be careful as well. I spent my life pre-Parliament teaching in secondary schools, so I am a parochial secondary school teacher, but all the research shows that those of us who teach in the more senior years can make nowhere near the impact that those teaching in the early years can make, and yet as a society we still do not pay enough respect to those working in this sector—a message that the minister seeks to propagate at every opportunity as well. In seeking to make these immensely important educational settings for the youngest Victorians even safer, we as a Parliament are certainly not questioning the dedication and skill of so many wonderful people, overwhelmingly women of course, who work in this sector every day.

Of course it is worth noting that overwhelmingly people in this sector support this bill, so what a nice way to almost end our session together by once again talking about a bill in this area that has the support of the opposition and the support of the government. I am hopeful of support from a large portion of the crossbench.

I have previously aired some of my views about some recent changes that the government has made that overwhelmingly are fantastic changes by the way, Minister Stitt, but will have and are having a significant deleterious impact upon one element of the broader sector: sessional kindergartens. On this point Mr Hodgett, the Shadow Minister for Early Childhood and Children—I no longer have the great privilege to shadow Minister Stitt; I have been relieved of those duties—the member for Croydon in the other place, will have more to say on this important matter in the lead-up to the election. But I do not think that a bill like this is necessarily the place for partisan pointscoring, not so late in the session. It is a good bill. We do not oppose this bill. I thank the minister for bringing it forward and for the fantastic collaboration of so many wonderful people right across this very important sector.

Sitting suspended 3.53 pm until 4.13 pm.

Mr McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (16:14): This bill is about how we raise the next generation of Victorians, about how we engage with our kids in child care, kinder and maternal and child health in their crucial first years of life and about how we set them up for their lifetime. Given I see early childhood educators almost every day of my life at drop-off and pick-up, I speak with particular passion on this bill. I am so grateful to the workers who support our kids and our family day in, day out. In both child care and kinder, our kids receive such beautiful care from so many beautiful people. Every day I am impressed by the care and dedication our early education workers provide to babies, toddlers and children, who at such a young age can be so demanding. These workers are not simply minding our kids, they are teaching them about the fundamentals of what it is to be human and gifting our kids with skills to help them through life. I am deeply passionate about preventing mental illness in future generations, and early childhood is the place to make the biggest difference. Our early educators build the foundations of the mindset our children take into and through their lives. They help our kids identify, control and continue to master their feelings and control their behaviour.

In speaking on the bill today I want to highlight the work of a Victorian-based national mental health charity, Prevention United. I spent time talking with the founder and CEO of Prevention United, Dr Stephen Carbone, who told me that it is possible to prevent mental health conditions and that this is an area we should always be working towards. The early childhood sector is fundamental to this.

When it comes to building the mental health and preventing the mental illness of future generations, there are two areas to focus on—building protective factors and reducing risk factors, or, simply, maximising the good and minimising the harmful impressions that we leave on our kids. Protective factors for our children and their social and emotional skills are their resilience, their self-esteem, social skills, mindfulness and basic literacy and numeracy, which enable them to participate in the community. Risk factors include experiences of abuse, neglect and trauma. The more these can be limited or eliminated, the better the mental health outcomes for the next generation will be. If kids know that the world is good and that they have a safe place in it, they will thrive. Building lots of safe and secure attachments to other adults in the community, like educators, reinforces this, and this is why child safe standards are so important. It is also why it is so important that early childhood education is affordable and accessible.

Kindergarten programs in Victoria, including the new three-year-old kinder program and existing four-year-old kinder, will be free from next year. We will establish 50 government-operated childcare centres over the decade, ensuring that early childhood education is available in areas with the greatest unmet demand and providing convenient access for working parents. The affordability and accessibility of child care is so important to the economy, especially for women’s participation in the workforce. The more we strengthen parental leave, child care and workplace flexibility, the more we will maximise the full potential of our economy.

Accessibility also includes the extent to which early childhood services can welcome a diverse range of families, including culturally and economically. The more families are included in early childhood services, the more cohesive our society will be. Including families that are marginalised is so important for breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Early childhood services do a fantastic job working with child protection and foster families to include children who are at a higher risk of adverse events. Supported playgroups are a great example of this, where skilled childcare workers work with families to build confidence in their parenting skills.

In recent years it has become completely accepted how important self-understanding and self-awareness are. Top levels of success are now equally attributed to mental health awareness and wellbeing as much as any skill. Just look at the incredible season the Collingwood Football Club had in 2022. An almost identical team with identical skills went from 16th on the ladder to one point from a grand final they would have won. Mindset is an incredible thing, and around the world elite athletes, soldiers and businesspeople are trained to improve their mental state to get the most out of themselves.

We can make massive changes as a society in big areas like violence and mental health. Too often violence and other forms of maltreatment are part of a generational cycle, and we must work to stop this. Early childhood is the time in life where we can break this cycle. It also gives kids the best start in life and sets them up for participation, first in the community and school and then in the workplace and broader society. But early childhood support does not just help the kids; it helps the whole family and the wider community and economy as well.

New parents need all the help they can get, as bringing home a baby for the first time, or second or third for that matter, is one of the biggest and most challenging events in life. There is no preparation for bringing home a newborn. Midwives and maternal and child health services come into the home, sit with families, often over a cuppa, and give that reassurance that you, your partner and new baby are going to be okay. This is such a fundamental service for families—learning how to care for a newborn, making sure they are feeding and growing, and spotting any early signs that something may need further attention. These first weeks are crucial, and home visits from skilled workers are so important for supporting new parents to form a secure attachment with their new bub. Giving confidence and reassurance to new parents sets them up for success, and the impact of this service can never be fully measured.

The nurses who do this work are kind and come across almost like family whilst working to the highest standards. This bill reinforces those highest possible standards for our maternal and child health services. This support does not stop with the health of the baby. Victoria’s holistic maternal and child health services also connect new parents in the community with parents groups. No-one knows what you are going through in life like someone who has been through the same thing or someone who is currently going through the same thing. I hear all the time that lifelong friendships are made at parents groups, not just for the parents but for the kids too. I know that has been true for my family.

The other parents in our group have been a great support and great friends, but now a few years in we still get involved in weekends away and even Friday night takeaway, with a WhatsApp group for last-minute catch-ups. When you have got a couple of kids screaming at you, there is nothing better than getting other kids to distract them and getting some adult chats in. These friends now slot into the wider support network for so many parents, added to family and neighbours. I believe it takes a village to raise a child, and whether that is any of the above—neighbours, whatever family might be around—it is important for families to be able to draw on them at all times.

That is the motto of a local children’s service in my electorate of Eastern Victoria, the Tyabb Village Children’s Centre. Tyabb Village is a family-run business that operates a fantastic childcare centre and supports local families. The village offers long day care, soon-to-be three- and four-year-old kinder, home-cooked meals and a focus on outdoor education and getting the kids out into the community. Lavinia and Richard have big plans to start a farm kinder program to extend their outdoor education passion and philosophy. The 2.7-acre site will host a barn-style learning centre as well as a working farm, which is the perfect backdrop for building skills and connecting kids to animals, nature and themselves. The program will continue the current work of building social and emotional strengths and growing little people who are confident amongst their peers, able to self-settle and aware of who they are.

The children at Tyabb Village are already environmentally aware, and some are even activists. The flow-on effects of this are that the kids go home and advocate for changes like setting up compost, using less plastic and soft-plastic recycling. The same applies to food: Richard cooks delicious, nutritious meals and the kids try lots of different foods and learn about healthy eating, including learning valuable life skills by cooking with their peers. All this knowledge goes home with the kids at the end of the day. With the farm, the kinder kids will know where food comes from and how it can be produced sustainably.

Already the kids go down to the paddock classroom every Wednesday, and when they come back they are relaxed, calm and happy. There is nothing like watching kids in gumboots with mud on their hands splash and play in a puddle. To raise a generation of people with strong ties to the community and their local environment, we want them out spending time in these environments. I visited the site, and this is exactly the kind of holistic early education that will build connected, resilient kids for the future. I could not be a bigger supporter of the work they are doing, and I will work closely with Lavinia and Richard to advocate for funding for these amazing plans.

There remains a fundamental responsibility for governments in this sector, and that is to ensure safety, quality and affordability in children’s services. This bill updates and integrates the Victorian quality system in line with the most recent five-yearly review of the national quality framework, changes that have been agreed to by all education ministers around the country. The result of this is strength in standards of care, improved safety and quality and a more streamlined approach to regulation of child safe standards. The efforts we put into our young can make big changes—and quickly. In just a decade our three- and four-year-olds will be early teens, and if we can build into them the basics of wellbeing, youth mental health in the future will be much improved. It is pretty simple: we want people to be happy and healthy and to respect themselves and others, which will in turn lead us towards a safe, happy and healthy society. The amendments contained in this bill support this through necessary updates to the way we regulate safety and quality in our maternal and child health and early childhood sectors.

Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (16:23): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Due in part to overtaxation and unchecked government spending leading to inflation, living on a single wage is not an option for many young families like it used to be. This is why access to safe childcare services is more important and more in demand than ever. However, we have a major problem with child care in Australia. The cost of child care in Australia has become prohibitive—and that is if you can find a placement. In Australia we are paying more of our income compared to many other parents around the world, and we have a gross workforce shortage. This is having a flow-on effect not just for families balancing childcare fees with other costs of living but for society as a whole, with many mums scaling back their workforce participation to ensure their family can access a higher rate of childcare subsidy or because they are on seemingly endless waiting lists with no relief in sight.

The answer to the cost of day care and workforce issues is relatively simple but would force the government to admit that the problem was created by government interventions in the first place. Just like in other sectors, such as energy and tertiary education, the heavy hand of government has distorted demand and market pricing. I have previously warned in this place about the dangers of further regulation and increasing the qualification levels required of our childcare workers, and on that occasion I said:

If we get rid of the over-regulation, then more workers can enter the industry, providers can operate efficiently and with lower costs and then more services can be offered to more people, including those in rural areas, at a lower cost.

This particular bill creates a new regulator, expands the national quality framework and uplifts the qualification requirements of maternal and child health nurses. These appear to be more structural measures of quality that lend themselves to easy industry oversight and assessment but appear to have little relevance to the actual quality of the service. These structural measures increase costs. We need to stop adding onerous regulations in this place. We need to walk them back and focus on policies which make it easier and cheaper to run a childcare centre—that is: remove red tape and adopt sensible tax and energy policies. The Liberal Democrats believe in appropriate yet minimal regulation. As such we will not support this bill.

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (16:25): I am very happy to speak on this bill, and I should emphasise that when we are talking about regulation, underpinning that is a good and sound purpose. I would assert for the benefit of the chamber that strengthening the safety of children in their early childhood services and improving oversight and compliance tools for the Victorian regulatory authority are sound purposes. When you are thinking about some of the most vulnerable people, children in their early childhood years, I would suggest that there are very sound and good reasons for regulation in this space. I think perhaps ideological arguments about regulation may not be the best fit when discussing this bill, because the bill really does have a very sound purpose. There are, I would say, very few young children who can defend themselves, and they definitely need some objective and independent oversight to make sure their best interests are at heart. So, hopefully to allay the concerns that may have been raised over there by the Liberal Democrats, there is a sound purpose for the regulation in this space. I am very confident in saying that I think it is certainly well founded.

On that note I will just go to the fundamental tenets of the bill. There are two main objectives. One is implementing the outcomes of the review of the national quality framework, the national regulatory scheme for early childhood services. If we are looking at consultation—again to assert the very good and sound purpose for this bill—the national quality framework review involved two rounds of national public consultations with a high level of sector engagement in consultations during 2019 and 2021, which further lends support to the basis and certainly the work that has gone into developing this particular bill. The proposed amendments arising from the NQF review reflect consultation with the sector and are expected to have support from the sector. So I would assert quite confidently it certainly attests to the validity of the bill being debated here today. The second objective of the bill is to enable the child safety standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator in an integrated manner, which is a very logical way of moving forward as well. Further to the validity of this bill, education ministers have agreed nationally that the national quality review changes will commence from July 2023. So you can see that there really is a strong consensus on the changes being brought about.

A further note, I should say, is that passage of these amendments through the Parliament is time critical. Victoria is the host jurisdiction of the national law and needs to ensure that the bill is passed this year to enable the implementation of the outcomes mid-2023. So it is actually really important as we are debating this bill today that we see its safe passage through the house to ensure that the time-critical changes can be brought about in an efficient way. Passage of the bill is also critical to ensuring the integrated sector regulator provisions of the child safe standards can commence on 1 January 2023 along with the rest of the new enforcement regime for the standards, because it is all very well to have standards, but they have to be able to be enforced to be worth their weight in the long run and to in the end achieve the outcome of establishing those standards in the first place.

The bill also makes maternal and child health amendments to safeguard the prerequisites to become part of the MCH workforce and is consistent with the government’s commitment to deliver a high-quality service into the future. Certainly the education of Victorian children is of the highest priority, and I do not think anyone could doubt that when you look at how much our government is investing. We are investing $5 billion in universally funded three-year-old kindergarten delivered across the state in 2022, including $1.68 billion for infrastructure. And a further $9 billion was recently announced to make three- and four-year-old kinder free in participating centres from 2023—I think this has been suggested, but just to reinforce how committed we are to this very important stage in children’s lives—to build 50 government-run low-fee childcare centres in areas of greatest demand, with many of them to be built on or next to the government schools, and to introduce a year of pre-prep, doubling four-year-old play-based learning to 30 hours per week. It also attests to the value of that early education in establishing the best possible outcome for children later in life. The good news is that the first of the 50 childcare centres will open from 2025. Pre-prep will be gradually implemented from 2025, with full implementation in 2032. Combined, these reforms will create 11 000 new jobs for early childhood teachers and educators. And as is consistently the case with our government, it is a holistic approach, on the one hand providing optimal education for Victorian children while also stimulating jobs in the sector, much-needed jobs, to make sure that Victorian kids get the very best education from early in life, right when they need it, to set them up for the best possible outcome in their futures. And it is really supporting contemporary models of education that Victorian children deserve.

A further point that I was going to make was really to just delve into some of the elements that are really being put forward today in terms of the amendments. One, safety measures in family day care are a particular focus. We know this is where regulatory measures can be strengthened, with, unfortunately, an over-representation of incidents and cancelled licences. So coming back to the point upon which I started my contribution to the debate, there really is an impetus to bring forward these changes here today. Family day care coordinators will be required to complete child protection training prior to commencing employment and to undertake annual refresher training, which would seem to be very fair and reasonable in light of the vulnerability of children. The regulator, the Department of Education and Training, will have improved access to information about the types of homes and buildings that family day care operators are working from, which will assist in emergency situations. Again you can see that that is very logical and fair and reasonable under the circumstances. Furthermore, the regulator will be able to more rigorously assess the fitness and propriety of service providers across the sector, including by asking questions in any format and assessing their knowledge of the national quality standards. We could see that there is a strong consensus on these elements and certainly an imperative to make sure that children are being looked after by persons who are truly across these fundamental elements of actually being a service provider in this industry. A service licence will be able to be cancelled or not approved if provider approval under the Commonwealth family assistance law has been rejected or cancelled, and maximum penalties for offences under the law will be increased to align with CPI increases. It is not that there is an emphasis on a punitive element, but rather it is incentivising the best possible care and outcomes for Victorian children and making sure that there is appropriate regulation and that the standards of the care of those children are being adhered to.

Amendments will also be introduced to reduce the burden for education and care services, including extending the validity of the highest excellent quality rating from three to five years—so you can see that will certainly alleviate some of the burden in that space—and aligning the definition of ‘person with management or control’ of a service with a family assistance law definition to better capture persons exercising significant influence over the operation of the service. So you can see that there is an important clarification being brought through there. The guide to the national quality framework will be updated and streamlined, and there will be changes to improve guidance and provide better resources and tools to help providers and services more easily comply with regulatory requirements. On the one hand you can see that there are essentially a better framework and better controls being put in place for the betterment of Victorian children but also balancing that with making sure that providers are perhaps better able to understand or be fully aware of what they need to do in this space. It is really supporting from both angles, and I think that is certainly very important.

The Secretary of the Department of Education and Training will be able to regulate the child safety standards in the early childhood sector as an integrated sector regulator. What does this mean? This means providers and services will only need to deal with the existing regulator exercising one set of powers, so you can see a streamlining of processes there. This will support early childhood services to comply with child safe standards so that protecting children from harm and abuse is embedded in the everyday practice of leaders, staff and volunteers. Again, it seems to be a pretty commonsense approach, and we certainly want no less when it comes to protecting Victorian children. While some safety measures will impose modest costs on service providers, there is also some reduction in burden, which is important. The projected cost impact of implementation of all NQF review recommendations in Victoria is $2.1 million per year over a 10-year period.

The bill also includes some amendments relating to maternal and child health nurses. These amendments allow staffing requirements for maternal and child health nurses to be formalised in regulation. Why? To ensure that staff have appropriate skills and qualifications to provide high-quality and safe services. So you can see that there is a consistent theme here, and that is on the one hand making sure that the best interests of Victorian children are at the forefront and that regulation, which is appropriate, is being implemented, but on the other hand also a streamlining or integration of services as well, so it really enhances the functioning of the sector overall. That is really, really important bearing in mind the significant and, I would say, unprecedented investment in early childhood education by our government, factoring in that those early years of life are, as we know and as studies have shown, absolutely critical in terms of, really, the best outcomes for children as they grow over time and into their adult years. Because we are very aware of this and we see it as of the highest priority, it makes sense to also be bringing through these reforms at this time to ensure a truly holistic approach when it comes to the massive reforms that are coming through in early childhood education. On that note, I commend the bill to the house.

Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (16:39): I rise to make a contribution on this important bill, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and I am pleased to see that the opposition is supporting this bill. What we know about our early childhood services sector is that they are wonderful, hardworking and dedicated professionals. They do amazing work for our littlest Victorians. Every time I visit a kinder in my region I have the best day out ever, because it is such a delight to visit our kinders and see our littlest Victorians learning in wonderful and supported environments and all the amazing things that they do through play. It makes you feel like you are a kid again when you sit down and play with the playdough or play with the building blocks or whatever it is that the kids have got out. We know that young children learn through play; they also learn about interacting with each other and how to get along with each other. But it also is about school readiness for these kids. They learn to sit on a mat, they learn to pay attention—all those sorts of things. They are all really critically important foundational things that need to be laid down for when they do attend prep. Kinder is so critically important.

In regard to this bill, as we know, the early childhood services are governed by the Education and Care Services National Law and an accompanying set of national quality standards. But over the past couple of years a nationwide review of the national quality framework has been undertaken, and the framework incorporates the act and regulations and the standards. The review found a number of ways in which quality and safety can be improved, and that is effectively what is at the heart of this bill and the changes that are being proposed. These things include better safety mechanisms for children who are transported to services on buses, greater child safety training requirements for family day care coordinators and improved access to information about family day care providers by the department—in other words, the regulator. The regulator will be able to more rigorously assess the fitness and propriety of service providers across the sector. Maximum penalties for offences under the law will be increased to align with CPI increases, and this will also enable child safe standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator, the Secretary of the Department of Education and Training, so services are dealing with a single regulator. Again, these are amendments that go to making our early childhood services safer and continuing to lift the quality of these services for children, because as we know, our littlest Victorians deserve the best, and they are certainly getting that with our wonderful early childhood educators.

Another great initiative that this government is doing is making sure that we can attract more people to the sector to work as early childhood educators. I know people can access our free TAFE initiative to become an early childhood educator. It is a wonderful initiative because we know, with all the investment that our government is making in the childhood space—like free kinder, or free pre-prep as we call it, so three- and four-year-old kinder—we need people to work as early childhood educators, and there has never been a better time to work as an early childhood educator than now. Our free TAFE initiatives will help people get into those jobs, the jobs they need, and get the skills they need for the jobs that they want. Free TAFE is an important initiative to do that, because we need lots and lots of skilled workers in that pipeline to come through and be early child educators. It is a critically important role. Again, the laws proposed under this bill are about lifting the quality and safety standards for the sector, because we continue to learn and continue to have continuous improvement in this space. As I said, we have listened to the nationwide review, taken that review very seriously and looked at the improvements that were recommended through that review. Again, we are acting on those sorts of things to make sure that our littlest Victorians continue to learn in the safest environment possible and continue to learn and grow.

Just on that, I might reflect on a critically important and really well received initiative. By way of example, Minister Stitt, the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, and I went to the Donwood aged care home in the Eastern Metropolitan Region, in Croydon. It was an amazing day. We saw the kindergarten come into Donwood aged care. It was lovely. We saw the residents in the aged care facility sitting with the kids. They were all playing and interacting with one another. Just the joy that that brought to the faces of those elderly residents at the aged care home was absolutely amazing. What we saw there was the power of education for our youngsters but also the power of positive interaction on an intergenerational basis for young people and also for older people. Now there is talk about getting older kids—like, teens—involved in the same sort of process. We can get some teens interacting with older Victorians. For example, if they have never had grandparents themselves, they will have an opportunity to mix with older Victorians and have an older adult in their life—because, let us face it, our families might look very different to what might have been the Brady Bunch kind of model. Not everyone comes from a Brady Bunch family, and sometimes it is good to have some options around having older adults in your life. It could be parental role models or grandparental role models.

What I saw when the minister and I went to visit Donwood aged care with the Maroondah Pre-school was that our elderly Victorians still have so much to give to our youngest Victorians. As I said, joy was brought to the faces of those elderly residents. Many of them were elderly but a little bit frail and some of them were suffering with dementia, but you could just see that that interaction with our youngest Victorians through play really brought a sense of joy to those people, and also the kids experienced that sense of joy and that grandparental kind of role model of an older adult. So it really is a win-win situation. Again, they were learning through play. If you looked at the floor, it was an absolute mess—there was paint everywhere—but that is the whole point about play; you get messy, right? And the whole point of having the best play experiences is being messy.

I have also seen in kindergartens in my region the fantastic initiatives of our early childhood educators, where they make sensational outdoor play spaces—you know, making it available so children can climb trees, for example. I remember quite a few years back there was a thing about not allowing kids to climb trees because it could be a little bit dangerous, but it is actually—

Dr Bach: Shameful.

Ms TERPSTRA: I know—let kids climb trees all the time. It is about taking responsible risks and learning from those risks. But also in those outdoor play spaces I have seen some amazing creation of natural environments—like water running through creeks that have been made inside the centre so children get to experience playing in water but also becoming muddy, building mud pies and doing all of those sorts of things they would experience in an outdoor environment.

Dr Bach: Brilliant.

Ms TERPSTRA: It is absolutely brilliant.

Ms Stitt: Bush kinders.

Ms TERPSTRA: Minister Stitt was just saying ‘Bush kinders’, and I can reflect on my own children’s experiences. My son went to a Steiner kinder, and I used to love the way that they would make bread. They would make the bread together, they would then bake the bread and they would sit down for morning tea and eat the bread. It was actually an amazing thing. It was a lovely thing, but again, it is part of that experience of learning to do something together and sharing in that experience—in that case, eating the bread at the end. They were creating something together and then sharing in that experience together. So there are lots of different opportunities for young Victorians in kinder.

There are lots of different settings. Like I said, there are Steiner kinders, there are Montessori kinders and there are our mainstream kinders, but I also see our excellent early childhood educators taking the best of all of those options and incorporating them into the kinder environment, in any event. With the Steiner environment there are differences in that and with Montessori there are differences in that, but every time I go and visit a kinder in my region, what I see is the children getting the very best of each of those environments, and it makes for an excellent experience for those children. Again, I am loathe to say ‘learning environment’ because it is not a classroom environment because the children are learning through play. That is something that is critically important, and you want to see that happening. There is lots of finger painting going on, lots of puzzle making going on and just all manner of things. I know any parent who has had children at kinder would well remember the tonnes of boxes and cartons that used to come home after the kids had been at kinder for the day. They would have made lots of things out of cardboard boxes, and you are thinking, ‘My recycling bin is going to explode because I have got no place to put these’. And you had to keep them. You could not get rid of them. You had to keep them for many years.

Dr Bach: They know if you chuck it out.

Ms TERPSTRA: They know if you chuck it out, and you cannot chuck it out because otherwise they get very upset. There is a lot of thought and creativity poured into those projects, right? You know, you come home with all of this stuff. That is the whole thing about kinder: it is amazing. It also engages the parental community. We would always donate things so that the kids could have lots of the materials that they needed, whether it was boxes, paper—all manner of things. It was fantastic.

I might remark on a really good experience that just came back to me of when my son was at a Steiner kinder. One of the things that Steiner kinders do is they celebrate the seasons coming in. I think it was the autumn season and one of the activities that they did was they made lanterns out of wax paper and then put a little candle in it and did a walk through a bush area at twilight. That was celebrating the autumn season, and we walked with the kids through these woodland environments. Those sorts of things were amazing experiences for our young learners.

Minister Stitt talked about bush kinders earlier. There are so many different things and experiences our young Victorians can experience in a kinder, and all of those things provide a really rich environment for the continued development and expansion of their knowledge and their experiences outdoors. It is an amazing thing. I mean, we know that for kids to continue to develop and grow they really do need those outdoor experiences—to get exposed to nature, to the natural environment. Like I said earlier, water play, playing with mud, playing in an open creek or outdoor area, or climbing trees—one of my favourite things to do, and I reckon Mr Barton would agree with me on this.

Mr Barton interjected.

Ms TERPSTRA: That is right. One of my favourite things to do when I was a kid was to climb trees and go down the creek. I would just say that, again, those are outdoor, natural experiences for kids, and we really need to make sure that our kids, when they are going to kinder, can get those outdoor and natural experiences, because climbing trees and those sorts of things are about taking responsible risks. You learn that if you climb a tree and you have not got the right grip, you might fall and that is not a great thing. Again, taking responsible risks is really, really, critically important, as is allowing our kids to have those fabulous experiences. Our early childhood educators—the way they program these learning experiences for kids, the kids get such a rich and active environment and opportunities to participate in all of these many things.

This bill, as I said, is about improving the safety standards, and it is critically important to make sure that our littlest Victorians are as safe as possible. Our government has taken and will continue to take all the issues of child safety and quality provision seriously. We already do have a very rigorous safety and compliance framework which children’s services must operate in, and this bill will further enhance those requirements.

We have got a strong track record in investing in our regulator. In the 2020 budget the government allocated $46.5 million over four years to maintain existing regulatory operations and address growth and risk in the sector. This bill ensures that we have those laws to monitor, enforce and support the sector, and of course our budget commitment also demonstrates our commitment to make sure that the sector is appropriately resourced. I might leave my contribution there, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (16:53): I want to make a contribution about the early childhood learning sector. It is something that at my age I never thought I would be doing, but I am having a real-time experience with it right now as Becky is now getting towards three. She is just over 2½, and she has been doing day care for a year and a half or so now. And some of that was through the COVID times, which was challenging for everyone. But I have got to say, before having my own experiences with this I never really gave the whole early learning, day care sector—which I think is probably the wrong thing to call it—much thought. But as time has gone on I have watched the amount of things that she has been taught there whilst playing. And if anyone had said ‘play-based learning’, I would have said, ‘Maybe you need a new dealer’. But now I watch and I see that they make them do little things that may look innocuous to us, but the children are learning stuff. They are learning to play in a group. They are learning to paint. They are learning to fall from trees—maybe not fall from trees, not at that age.

It is through that that I have watched the early learning educators come and go. To be honest, the vast majority of them are just fantastic people trying to do a good job, trying to do the tough job of looking after so many kids—I know there are ratios and things like that—and I see them putting in their heart and soul. The vast majority of them just love children, and you can see it. We have made some good relationships with them as we go along, and as they move on for various reasons it is difficult. Fortunately kids get over stuff pretty quickly. But I watch them, and it is one of those things: I do not think they pay them enough. And the problem is, as usual: where does the money come from? Maybe that is a thing for the government to help with.

We use Bambini in Hampton, just as a free shout-out to them, and the people that run it and the day care educators there are awesome. They have been responsive. They have worked hard. As I said, I watched them through the COVID era. I watch them through the era now, post COVID, which is nearly as bad because of the amount of lurgies that are going around. I am now enjoying yet another one that she has brought home. But that is also part of the thing of making their system better. All through it, I have watched these people just march on. You can see it is not for money, it is not for ‘This is my job’; it is because they enjoy doing their job.

I think the whole thing is it needs to be a tightly regulated area, because there are little children. Some of them cannot walk. In fact Becky could not walk when she went in there, really, so it must have been more than a year and a half. I have watched the other kids in her little group go from little things rolling around on the floor to now all running around and screaming and riding little bikes and things like that. Every single day that she goes there those people are part of it.

I am going to keep my contribution quite brief, but I just think the people that do this—and I have only had a very small experience; it is very narrow—just need to know they are appreciated, much like teachers. As I said, I do not know that calling them day care centres is really fair. These people are teaching the children. They may not be teaching them to read or write, but they are teaching the basics of life. I am going to leave my contribution at that. I just wanted to chuck that in. As I said, it is something I am going through now. When I first started the whole thing, I was very, very dubious, but now I am definitely a believer.

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:57): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. It gives me great pleasure as a former minister to actually speak on an early childhood bill. This bill is about making a number of amendments to make child care safer for children and to lift the quality of services. The bill requires that all family day care coordinators complete child protection training prior to commencing employment, and the bill provides for greater access to information about family day care providers by regulatory authorities. The regulator will also be able to assess more rigorously the fitness and propriety of service providers across the sector. The bill also makes some minor amendments relating to maternal and child health nursing services to require providers of maternal and child health nursing services to employ or engage only if they have the prescribed requisites. It makes changes to numerous acts. I am not going to list all of those, but they are the acts that regulate children’s services in Victoria, whether they be education or care services, and they are very important acts.

The Liberal Party will not be opposing this bill. However, I would like to make some comments about early childhood and the quality standards and where we are in Victoria today. We all know that early childhood is vitally important. The services that are provided in the early years do deliver back in spades to the Victorian community. A media release that the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep put out on 1 September talks about how every dollar invested in early childhood education receives $2 back over a child’s life. The Heckman curve tells us that every dollar that is invested in early childhood services actually delivers $17 back to the community over the lifetime of a person as well. We know that 95 per cent of a child’s brain development occurs in the first five years of age, so what is happening in early childhood services is the most vital time of a child’s education. This is when they learn to learn. If they do not get it when they are young, it becomes a struggle for them later on. The minister’s press release from September also acknowledges that children in grade 3 who went to kindergarten were 15 to 20 weeks ahead of those who did not, and by age 16 students who attended two or more years of kindergarten would have better cognitive and social skills, higher exam scores and better social and emotional outcomes and be more likely to go on to higher academic study. This is not rocket science. We need to get early childhood right.

One of the things that is concerning me about early childhood in this state is the percentage of children who are attending four-year-old kindergarten in particular. The kindergarten participation rate when I was the minister in 2013–14 was actually at 98.2 per cent. That was very high. We worked hard to get that up. We took the Aboriginal participation rate from around 57 per cent to just over 95 per cent, but the general rate was 98.2 per cent. It has never reached that level again under this government; in fact it has declined. In many years the closest it got was about 96 per cent or something in 2015, but what we saw in 2020–21 was a decline to 89.1 per cent. This was nearly 7 percentage points below the government’s own target. Then their target for the next year again was set at 96 per cent, but they only expected to achieve 92.9 per cent.

I have gone through all of the reasons why early childhood is so important, and what we know is that you cannot get those early childhood years back. It is cognitive, the development that happens in that first five years. Their early childhood education is the one time you have to get to that child. You cannot get a four-year-old kindergarten year back when the child is six. They have moved on cognitively. It is critical that this government improves those participation rates to get back up to that very high 98.2 per cent that we had achieved. We were aiming for even higher, and the government have certainly been negligent in allowing it to drop to below 90 per cent to 89.1 per cent.

The rating systems in Victoria are also showing that there has been a decline in standards. To her credit, Maxine Morand was very, very strong also on improving quality and outcomes in early childhood services, and I took over that work. I was very proud to actually chair the ministerial council at the time when we implemented the national quality framework for early childhood in this country, and I drove that agenda nationwide. But what we find here in Victoria currently is that there are three early childhood education centres with ratings that are more than seven years old—they have not even had their ratings upgraded—109 with ratings that are six years old and 634 with ratings that are five years old. This was all reported in April 2022 in the Age in Melbourne. The Community Child Care Association president, Julie Price, said that the long delays and old assessments could devalue the system, because when an assessment is seven or five years old or when you take seven to five years between assessments and ratings, all services are not necessarily improving. You need to have those ratings coming through regularly so we know that improvements are being made. It is also very important to parents to know what the current ratings are before they send their children to a centre.

In this article a spokesperson for Goodstart Early Learning, which operates 640 centres around Australia, said that parents relied on the ratings, as I have just said, to make decisions about where to enrol their children, but she said many state regulators were falling short, with long breaks between assessments due to underfunding and insufficient staff. We know that Victoria is falling short on those assessments, and we see that there are more than 100 centres that have not been assessed within the last six years, three that have not been assessed in the last seven years and also 634 that have ratings that are more than five years old.

There was also an article that appeared in the Sunday Herald Sun in September—not so long ago—that talked about the KindiCare quality index rating. It said in Victoria there are 234 centres that are rated as just being ‘fair’, and this means that they are still working towards meeting the national quality standards. These are standards that have been in place for about 10 years in this country, and they are still working towards them. It is not good enough, and this minister should have been working harder to make sure that all of our centres are up there meeting those national quality standards and delivering the best early childhood education in Victoria.

We know that we are going to need about 11 000 additional kindergarten teachers in Victoria over the next 10 years, but it is also important that we do have the best trained and the best qualified staff in early childhood, because—I went through before all of the reasons why—early childhood is the most important time in a child’s education.

I have to say that when I was the minister I was really heartened by the fact that I had the support of both the Minister for Education, Martin Dixon, and the Minister for Higher Education and Skills, Peter Hall, in actually turning education on its head in Victoria. It had all been about the higher levels of education prior to that, and these were two ministers who actually agreed with me and who recognised that early childhood was the most important level. I think it is important that parents start to focus on this as well. Parents traditionally sent their child—they may or may not have—to a kindergarten, their child attended a local primary school and maybe a local secondary school, and then when their child got to be in about year 10 they started to think, ‘Perhaps we should send them off to a private school to finish off their education’. Well, actually I would be investing all of the money that I was going to invest in private schools for years 10, 11 and 12 into their early education to make sure that they got the best start to their education, and then they would have better opportunities for learning for life.

What we have seen here in this state in their haste to train teachers is that we have got now—and this was a press release from the minister in July—an accelerated bachelor of early childhood education. I hope that this accelerated bachelor does not lead to a decline in the quality of the training of early childhood teachers. It should not cut corners at all. We need to have the best and the brightest teaching in our early childhood years, and I certainly hope that in their haste to train up to 11 000 additional educators this government are not cutting corners on quality in the education of those staff. This was a concern that was actually raised in the Shepparton News in response to that media release of 15 July. In the Shepparton News on 19 July there was an article called ‘Sector boost’, and it talks about concerns being raised about fast-tracked degrees. It quotes the director of Inspira Kids in Kialla as saying:

It’s great that they are accelerating the bachelor’s degrees; however, we need to make sure that these courses still have the same amount of placement hours as before …

She went on to say:

If we’re shortening the degree, and shortening the amount of time spent on placement, then the teachers who are graduating are less prepared.

This is the concern that I have. We cannot cut corners when it comes to training these teachers. It has to be a high-quality degree that they are getting so that we then have the best educators in early childhood.

I would encourage this minister to go back and look at the work that Maxine Morand did and the work that I did in investing in the early years and investing in quality, to make sure that early childhood education in Victoria is the highest quality that it can possibly be but also to make sure that she does the work to find all of those children who are not attending a kindergarten program in the year before school and to get the percentage of children well up back into the high 90s; 98.2 per cent as we had it and even more would be a great target for her to set rather than being satisfied with 89.1 per cent of children attending kindergarten.

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:11): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. This bill is about making child care safer for children and lifting the quality of service. I believe it is the responsibility of every adult to look after our children and to ensure their safety, so I welcome any changes that set out to achieve this. The changes will result in family day care coordinators completing child protection training prior to commencing employment. They will also mean that the questions can be administered to an applicant for provider approval to assess their suitability and to access their knowledge of the national quality framework. They will update the maximum penalties for offences. Put simply, protecting children from harm and abuse will be embedded in the everyday thinking and practice of leaders, staff and volunteers.

The amendments will also require providers of maternal and child health services to employ or engage nurses only if they have a prescribed prerequisite. The guidelines outline the qualifications and registration requirements for maternal and child health services. Not only will maternal and child health nurses need the appropriate qualifications, but they will need to be registered as a midwife. I am not quite sure if you know this, but I actually studied midwifery for a year. I was also on Maribyrnong City Council for 21 years, and we had a lot of maternal and child health nurses. I am a mother of five. I realise the very important role that maternal and child health nurses play in our communities. They are who each mother or parent goes to with every little developmental query about a small baby or infant.

I am also concerned, though, that during this time we have a shortage of maternal and child health nurses. Earlier this year I raised the problem that Melton is experiencing in this area. It is nearly every local government area that is struggling to actually get qualified maternal and child health nurses. Melton City Council, as an example, is projected to increase its population from 185 471 to 264 651 by 2031 and then to 448 000 by 2051. The weekly birth numbers in the City of Melton have increased from 47 babies born each week in 2020 to between 60 and 90 babies born each week in Melton. New clients entering the service are also up from 242 in 2020 to 352 today. I could go on to the statistics for Wyndham or Sunbury or even Maribyrnong or Williamstown. There is an increase in the number of babies born in each of those municipalities—the City of Maribyrnong, the City of Hobsons Bay, the City of Brimbank, the City of Melton. All have had huge increases in the number of babies born. So we need maternal and child health nurses.

The government’s requirement for further qualifications I support, but the government also actually has to help this workforce to get these qualifications. Otherwise we are going to continue with the shortages that we have at the moment. How is this government going to help them upskill? Will they financially assist? Most councils have reached out themselves, trying to entice people to come forward to become maternal and child health nurses. What they have done is actually even offered to pay for their schooling because of the shortages that they are experiencing in each local government area. There are so many job applications open; in recruitment they are constantly looking for maternal and child health nurses.

Has any consultation been done with local government? That is my question. Have they actually spoken to all of the local government areas to see how they can assist more maternal and child health nurses to get into the system? Are there going to be additional nurses being trained in hospitals? Now you have to have nursing and midwifery, and then you do your qualifications to become a maternal and child health nurse. We have lost obviously a lot of midwives. We lost a lot of maternal and child health nurses and childcare workers through this pandemic due to vaccine mandates—mandates that we never needed to have—and we could have retained the already skeleton workforce that we had. This government needs to drop the mandates to actually get the midwives, the childcare workers, the cleaners, the maternal and child health care workers back into those councils.

Protecting children from harm and abuse has to be embedded in the everyday thinking and practices of those that work with them, but it also has to be embedded in the thinking of every individual. I support the government’s changes, but there is more that needs to be done to protect our children. These lockdowns obviously never needed to occur. The amount of sexual abuse and the calls from children that were suiciding never needed to occur. If this government did not take the approach of lockdowns and mandates, the number of suicides from—

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Gepp): Dr Cumming, I ask you to come back to the bill. There is no point of order from any member in the chamber, but we are straying. Can we come back to the content of the bill rather than straying into matters that have no relationship to it.

Dr CUMMING: Acting President, I thank you for your interjection, but—

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Gepp): It is not an interjection, Dr Cumming. It is a request from the Chair to come back to the content of the bill.

Dr CUMMING: My apologies, Acting President. I am fairly sure that we are talking about child protection, and I am thankful for the government’s amendments to strengthen the requirements and to have those safety checks. But in the last couple of years the number of children that were not protected, because of lockdowns, and the amount of abuse that occurred are extremely sad. I know it is making the government very uncomfortable. Nobody likes to talk about sexual abuse of children, but unfortunately the statistics do not lie. The number of children calling Kids Helpline doubled if not tripled. The amount of sexual abuse that was occurring in homes due to lockdowns is extremely uncomfortable, but it is true. The mandates never needed to occur, nor did the lockdowns.

Ms STITT (Western Metropolitan—Minister for Workplace Safety, Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep) (17:20): I thank all members for their thoughtful contributions in relation to this debate. This is a bill that is all about making early childhood services safer and continuing to lift the quality of these services for children.

If I can just respond briefly to a couple of members’ comments: on Ms Lovell’s invitation for us to invest all our money in the early years, of course we do not need any invitation to do that. This government is absolutely committed to investing in early childhood education and care. We have already committed $5 billion to three-year-old kindergarten. We know that having two years of early childhood education will be an absolute game changer, particularly for those children experiencing disadvantage and vulnerability. I would just contrast our investment and commitment—$14 billion on landmark, nation-leading early childhood reforms, including $5 billion to three-year-old kindergarten, which is now fully rolled out across the state, and our Best Start, Best Life reforms will build on that—with the Baillieu-Napthine governments’ investment of just $400 million for that entire term. I think that we do not need any invitation, Ms Lovell, to invest in early childhood. We are absolutely doing so.

These reforms—there is no question they are big and they are challenging, but they are going to be life changing. We could not successfully implement any of these reforms without the support of our wonderful workforce. I commend the comments made by a number of members about the importance of the early childhood workforce in our state. They have done an incredible job, particularly over a couple of very challenging years. They are education professionals, and I will always do whatever I can to elevate the status of those workers and do everything possible to continue to retain the excellent workforce we already have and attract a really strong pipeline of teachers and educators as we move through our reforms.

Fundamentally the bill before us today is about the regulatory framework and the expectations of the sector. We obviously have high expectations when we are talking about child safety. Just in relation to a couple of the comments made by Dr Cumming: I do want to reassure you, Dr Cumming, that there was extensive consultation by my colleague the Minister for Health with the Municipal Association of Victoria about the changes to maternal and child health requirements. We are not actually requiring anything new in terms of the qualifications. We are just making it abundantly clear in the legislation and reiterating what already exists in regulation. There has been, as I say, consultation with the MAV, local government and of course the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, who represent maternal and child health nurses. Our government has also recently announced free nursing and midwifery courses, which is highly relevant to building that strong pipeline. Maternal and child health nurses require a midwifery qualification as well.

Just getting back to the guts of this bill, there are two main objectives of this bill: implementing the outcomes of the review of the national quality framework, which a number of members have touched on, and the national regulatory scheme for early childhood services—enabling the child safe standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator in an integrated manner. The amendments will lead to improvements in educator practices, qualifications and understandings. They will also improve parents’ understanding and awareness of service quality, safe practices and risk mitigation. The bill will support early childhood services to comply with child safe standards so that protecting children from harm and abuse is embedded in the everyday practice of leaders, staff and volunteers. These amendments are supported by every state and territory, and Victoria is the host jurisdiction of the national law.

It is important that this bill is passed in a time-critical manner so that all other jurisdictions can implement the outcomes of the national quality framework in mid-2023 and the commitment that had been made by education ministers. The passage of the bill this year is critical. I thank members who have indicated that they will not be opposing the bill and those that have indicated that they will be supporting the bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Third reading

Ms STITT (Western Metropolitan—Minister for Workplace Safety, Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep) (17:25): I move, by leave:

That the bill be now read a third time.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.27, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council have agreed to the same without amendment.