I rise today in support of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Strengthening Regulation of Early Education) Bill 2025. This is a bill that no one ever wanted to have to introduce, but it is absolutely necessary.
It comes in the wake of devastating, heartbreaking revelations of abuse in early learning centres, including some of the most horrific cases we have seen—especially those in Victoria, which have left families reeling and a sector in crisis. These were not minor oversights or isolated lapses in judgement. They are appalling breaches of trust. Children, our most vulnerable citizens, were failed in the very places that should have offered them safety, care and a nurturing start to life. Families are rightly furious. Educators who do the right thing are gutted. And Australians everywhere are asking how on earth this could happen under the watch of a system designed to protect.
When a parent drops off their child at care, it is one of the most profound acts of trust. They are entrusting someone else, an educator, a provider or a caring community, with the most precious thing in the world. Our first responsibility as parents, educators and lawmakers is to protect children. And when that trust is broken we have a moral obligation to respond swiftly, thoroughly and with unwavering conviction. This bill is that response. It's more than just a policy document; it is a line in the sand.
This bill delivers on a comprehensive, systemic overhaul of the national regulatory framework for early education care. It will put in place safeguards, standards and accountability measures, and let me take a moment to outline what some of those reforms involve and why they are essential.
Firstly, it will establish a national register of early childhood educators. This is a really long overdue mechanism. It means every educator working with children must undergo mandatory background checks, including working-with-children clearances and police checks. Importantly, it introduces nationally consistent disqualification provisions so that individuals who pose a risk can no longer simply move interstate to escape scrutiny. This register will ensure transparency, traceability and integrity across the sector. It will give regulators and families confidence that those working with children have been appropriately vetted and are accountable to a central standard.
Secondly, this bill gives stronger powers to regulators. Providers who pose a risk to child safety will no longer be able to slip through the cracks. This bill enables the immediate suspension or cancellation of approvals where there is credible risk. There will be no more lengthy procedural loopholes that prioritise paperwork over protection. The safety of children will always come first.
Thirdly, this legislation mandates real-time information sharing between jurisdictions. One of the most chilling aspects of the recent abuse cases was that for perpetrators who had been flagged previously, in some cases in other states, those warnings failed to follow them. This bill will end that. Regulators will now be empowered to share intelligence across borders, preventing dangerous individuals from simply moving states to continue working with children.
That's a really important measure, and we've learnt the benefit of ensuring that perpetrators of violence and abuse don't get to skip state and territory borders to escape scrutiny. We've done that in family violence spaces. I'm the member for Newcastle, and I've seen entire royal commission dedicate two volumes to the type of child abuse that took place in my region. It was, again, in a very different set of circumstances, but it was at a time when people had every right to have expected the institutions that their children were in to be places of protection and trust.
These are all very important measures. They're not by any means the end, and I'll continue my speech. The fourth component of these measures is around the introduction of a child safety code of practice. That's to be developed in partnership with state and territory governments and guided by expert advice. This code will set clear, enforceable expectations for all educators and providers. It will no longer be good enough to just say the right things in a policy document tucked away in somebody's bottom drawer. Child safety will be a daily, demonstrable practice with clear consequences for failure. That is exactly what all of our communities expect.
The fifth part of this legislation will require mandatory reporting and data transparency for all serious incidents, and that includes physical or sexual abuse, significant injuries and breaches of duty of care. Parents will have a right to know. Regulators will be empowered to respond, and public confidence in the system can begin to be rebuilt.
Finally, and critically, this bill enshrines a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who poses a threat to the safety or wellbeing of a child—no grey areas and no second chances. If you harm a child or you have been found to be unfit to work with children, you will not be allowed anywhere near a care setting. These aren't cosmetic changes; these are systemic reforms designed to put children first—to always put children first. They're designed to raise the floor of safety and quality across the board and to ensure that the horror we've seen in recent times is never allowed to be repeated.
For families in Newcastle, this bill will help restore confidence in the early childhood system in our city. Early education is a vital part of everyday life for families right across Newcastle. They rely on early learning centres to support their children's development, to enable parents to go to work, to study and to participate fully in their communities. We're lucky to have so many passionate, professional and dedicated early childhood educators in Newcastle. They show up every day with care, compassion, creativity and an enormous sense of responsibility. But even the best educators need to be backed by strong systems, because no child should be safer in one centre than in another, and parents shouldn't have to cross their fingers and hope that they got lucky with the choice of care they made. Every single parent deserves to know with confidence that the person looking after their child is trained, trustworthy and fully supported. They deserve transparency, they deserve protections and they deserve peace of mind. And educators themselves deserve better. They deserve a system that celebrates their dedication, that weeds out bad actors and that lifts the status of their profession. A strong regulatory framework protects not just children but the integrity of the whole sector. Let me say this clearly: this bill is about restoring confidence, not just in regulation but in the promise that every child in every postcode has the right to be safe, nurtured and valued from the very beginning.
This bill builds on the strong foundations already laid by the Albanese Labor government in the early education sector. We've never treated child care as a luxury or an afterthought. For us it's central to our vision of a fair, productive and inclusive Australia. Since forming government, we've made child care cheaper for over one million Australian families, including thousands in Newcastle. We've increased the childcare subsidy—up to 90 per cent for low-income families—ensuring that money is never a barrier to accessing quality care. We've delivered a historic 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood educators, a long-overdue recognition of the vital, skilled and emotionally demanding work that they do. We've announced the three-day guarantee, replacing the Liberals' punitive activity test, so that every child, regardless of their parents' work hours, has access to early learning. We've established the $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, which will build and expand more centres in areas of need.
These reforms are already changing lives. They're lifting quality, they're expanding access and they're making early learning more affordable and equitable, and that is exactly what Labor wants to see. This bill is our promise to families that we will never turn away from the hard conversations, that we will always stand up for the safety of children and that we will always back the people and the systems that nurture them every single day.
