Failing childcare centres will get grace period before funding is pulled
The rules were introduced to federal parliament on Wednesday following a spate of sexual abuse allegations levelled against Victorian childcare worker Joshua Brown, claims of children being mistreated in NSW, and earlier incidents in Queensland.
Education Minister Jason Clare has admitted the government had failed to act fast enough on the issue and introduced the bill to let the government shut centres down, put conditions on their operations, or strip their funding, as one of Labor's first actions in parliament after its re-election.
'I want centres to get to those standards,' Clare said. 'We don't want to have to shut centres down.'
But he said parents deserved to know if conditions had been imposed on a centre so they could decide where to send their children. Without government approval, centres will be denied access to the federal Childcare Subsidy, which covers around 70 per cent of their costs on average.
Labor expanded access to childcare subsidies before the election and has committed to building more childcare centres, driving the sector to expand rapidly, which has created an opportunity for for-profit operators to expand and put pressure on staff recruitment.
Education authorities already have the power to shut down a centre immediately if it poses an imminent risk to safety.
Mohamed, who asked to be identified only by his first name, has a three-year-old daughter who attends a childcare centre where Brown worked, but did not overlap with him.
He said the proposed legislation was 'better than nothing'. 'I think it's a step in the right direction,' Mohamed said. 'They should be losing funding if they don't get their act together. That's the first step. There's always more.'
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