What Labor needs to do about child safety

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As a vicious coastal low continues to lash the east of Australia, the Albanese government is dealing with a brewing crisis in the childcare sector.

A Melbourne childcare worker was charged with more than 70 offences on Tuesday, and now a second man has also been charged with serious offences.

It comes as the Education Minister Jason Clare is pushing for the power to cut funding to childcare centres, failing to meet safety standards.

But is a national register needed?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvelis.

And I'm Brett Worthington.

And Brett, we need to start with, and you know, podcasts, you always like to start with, you know, the

light and the sort of to and fro, which is a different tone, but there's nothing positive or light about this.

This is so horrendous.

It's a horrific story, this childcare story, and a warning really for anyone.

There is going to be details of alleged child sex offences.

They are distressing.

I find them distressing.

Some people find them so distressing, they can't even hear about it, and I get that.

But on Tuesday, a Victorian childcare worker was charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual offences, with his alleged victims being between five months and two years of age.

You know there is not an adjective, there is not a word that really captures how bad this is, how revolting this is, how much it's I think breaking the confidence of so many parents in relation to like trusting the system.

Now the Victorian government has moved to strengthen their working with children laws, although this man had got one of those.

So, you know, that itself would not have stopped this.

Also to put centres on notice, to ban personal devices in centres.

They can't record this kind of hideous material.

A ban on personal devices in force now from September the 26th.

Both state and federal ministers are rightly labelling this as sickening.

It is sickening.

That's not in dispute.

How do you understand the response from the federal government?

And the reason it matters is, well, of course, anything matters, but so much public money goes into childcare.

Parents must use it.

They need to know that their kids are going to be safe.

So what are they doing?

Are they stepping up?

Are they taking this as seriously as they should be?

Yeah, I think you're right, Piquet, in saying if this doesn't meet the threshold of horrific, then I'm not exactly sure what would meet that threshold.

And in the months since the government's been elected, there's been a lot of focus on the whopping majority that they have and how commanding that means for the new Labor government.

But this is an issue that goes into households across the country.

No one cares how many seats you've got in the House of Representatives and what was decided back in May.

It's about what are you doing with that power?

And if we think about children in childcare, much like elderly people in aged care homes, these are our most vulnerable people in the community.

The level of trust that families, and particularly parents in this case, put in the care keepers that they entrust to look after their children.

This was horrific for them to make this discovery.

Claire O'Neill, federal cabinet minister, we saw the scenes on morning television today tearing up talking about the panic that went through her when she was quickly checking the list to see if one of her children went to the the childcare centre that was in question here and you know politicians are accused of many things but I think a rare moment to get to see the human side to remember that they are parents as well and I think that that you've got so many particularly parents with younger children in the cabinet will be interesting to see how they respond to an incident like this.

Now, Jason Clare, as the education minister, is saying that there are things that the federal government can do in terms of funding and whether or not a facility is following through.

But it'll be really interesting to me about how having parents in that cabinet room and parents of young children in particular that will know this horrific scene right to their core, how they now will respond to this.

Yeah, it's actually a really good point you make.

And actually, Jason Clare, when he was talking, talked about how one of the affected parents, and remember, affected means a broader group.

So lots of parents have been notified.

They're erring on the side of caution and suggesting health checks.

This man had a sexually transmitted disease.

It's really kind of

like alarming.

Imagine receiving that call.

But Jason Claire revealed, you know, even a friend of his was a parent that is that was notified.

So it's not only just

the relevance of thinking about your own lived experience and the parallels.

Like he knows someone.

Like this is really real.

This is an an area I know really well.

Everyone is checking in on their friends.

I mean, you know, there's childcare centers very close to me.

It's serious.

It makes politics real for people because it's literally their children and their households, which it goes to the core of what they're doing when they're going to work each day.

And so the federal government does need to step up.

We have heard some of that language, I think, from Jason Clare.

There are some elements that some people won't love.

And I'll tell you one.

He did reveal he'd been notified.

So he knew before the parents by the Victorian government.

That raised some eyebrows like what?

They've sat on this.

Authorities to give their side of the story say well they had to make sure everything was

so tight.

Obviously there's a legal issue.

This man's alleged to have perpetrated.

You know you can't have a court system that

is compromised but at the same time they didn't want to wrongly identify any children because they're trying to identify these children.

It's pretty...

So I understand that.

I get that.

I think you would too.

But I think hearing it, it's pretty jarring, right?

Like that, you know, these politicians know for a week and all these parents just found out.

How is it that I might not know?

And especially given the concern about,

I just can't underestimate or overemphasise the innocence of children of this age in particular and how...

smashing into your core this moment could be and then potentially finding out that there was a delay with which you might have been notified about this.

Now, at the same time, you can appreciate that government requires these things to be investigated thoroughly, and people in authority do need to know about things in advance of, because the question potentially also would have gone, well, Jason Claire, when did you know about this?

And if he's discovering after the parents, that too potentially becomes an issue as well.

But given the innocence of children in particular, it's clearly a very sensitive topic.

Yeah, it's such a sensitive topic.

Okay, so where are we at?

Some new developments, of course, from

the state government.

They have primary responsibility here.

Of course, it's happened under under their watch, but then a whole lot of national questions are being asked.

We know Jason Clare is sort of saying, hey, there's no silver bullet here, but yes, they will remove phones.

That's one recommendation.

He's asked his department to get legislation drafted as quickly as possible.

Okay, again, they're trying to

do the work, but also demonstrate to everyone, hey, we're dealing with this urgently.

We're not kicking the can down the road.

If the centre's not up to scratch, if they're not meeting safety standards, there'll be consequences in terms of funding.

No one wants to lose their funding because of course that makes you uneconomic.

These centers, even the profits, they exist on public money.

If the public money isn't there, their business model collapses.

So I think they think that the fear of that will make them be more compliant.

But there's one elephant in this room that I want to raise, and that's money, money, money.

Compliance costs money.

It's expensive work, right?

So that there are spot checks, that the centers know, oh, you know, we might be surveilled, the staffing issue, that there's always the other recommendation, you know, there's always second line of sight, then there's the education piece, any childcare worker being educated to identify grooming or unusual behaviour, being able to set that up.

And then a national register potentially, Brett, right?

In the teaching profession, my partner's a teacher.

I'm bringing a bit of the personal knowledge I have.

She said to me, you know,

we have registration.

we take this stuff really seriously.

There is a problem in the childcare sector.

There is a problem that needs to be addressed.

And so all of that has to happen, I think, immediately.

And it goes to one of the ongoing issues that affects all parts of this country is the nature of the federation and the difficulty that we see there, that you've got both federal money involved and then potentially regulation that is enforced at a state level.

And we see time and time again that interlocking between state and federal agencies is just not up to scratch in a lot of regards.

Now, in this case, you've got the suggestion that information isn't necessarily shared across borders unless someone has been found guilty of child abuse.

It's too late then for so many, right?

It's just too late.

So, that's the early detection that you need to be doing.

That's right.

And

you hear politicians at times talk about, we've got to cut red tape, cut it, slash it, we're going to get rid of it all.

And you kind of think, well, what is red tape?

Red tape is regulations.

And if we can't agree that regulations are clearly needed around incidents like how childcare facilities are operated and run and regulated and how aged care facilities are not carried out.

That's why we had a royal commission into the aged care sector.

There are those calls now for the Greens for there to be a royal commission into the childcare sector or whether or not you've got groups like the Parenthood, which are saying they want a national early childhood watchdog.

Someone needs to be out there enforcing it and checking it and having centres feeling like they are at risk of being audited any day of the week so that what is happening in there is not just legal and meeting all the standards and appropriate, but is in the best interest of the children that are being sent there by their families.

Yeah, so we know that the state and territory attorney generals are going to be meeting to discuss harmonisation, that fancy word for having the same rules in our country, information sharing next week.

Okay, that's good.

There's another idea about CCTV in childcare centres.

You know, Claire, Jason Clare says it's one of the things ministers around Australia are looking at.

I think all of it is going to have to be really seriously, potentially rolled out.

And look, I'm going to talk a lot about this stuff tomorrow in the party room too with Fran, because I think there's some big questions.

Of course, there's fears about an exodus of men from the sector.

There aren't that many as it is.

So all of that has to be talked about really, you know, in a pretty serious way that

doesn't, of course, cast doubt on men who are doing like hard work, who are good people.

But I'm glad yesterday I was a bit worried.

I didn't see enough of the federal response.

We're seeing more of it now.

They might not want to own some of the issues because they're so ugly to deal with, but you have to.

It's actually called governing.

And that's what leadership is.

You're the buck stops with you.

Look, I want to change the topic to

another kind of really significant thing that's going on for Australia, although not at all resolved.

We know that Penny Wong has been on the international stage, which of course is what she does.

She's the foreign minister, so it's literally in a job description.

She's gone to Washington for that quad meeting of foreign ministers.

She's had bilateral talks on the sidelines with the U.S.

Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who's her opposite number.

On Wednesday morning, the Foreign Minister did a lot of media, and that's good, telling us what's going on there.

She said their meeting was positive.

She said Australia's case for a tariff exemption has been made clear.

But, you know, we've been making things clear for a while, Brett.

We love making things really clear.

We're not really getting anywhere, though, are we?

Yeah, there's no real inroads that are necessarily being made there.

And to what extent that was ever going to be realistic is probably unlikely.

And I think even ahead of the meeting that never happened between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump, there was even that push within parts of the government to say, look, we're not expecting to actually get a carve-out, but we want to be able to make the case directly to this transactional figure.

It's really interesting to me the way in which, because it's obviously sitting in the environment of that review that's being carried out into AUKUS to test whether or not the AUKUS deal to supply the nuclear-powered submarines to Australia meets the America-first agenda.

The way in which Penny Wong in particular is selling this as a domestic manufacturing promise into the US, it's less so much about the Pacific and about security and geopolitics and whatnot.

It's about, hey, we're going to put a whole lot of money into your domestic manufacturing sector, and that's going to help you build a whole lot of nuclear submarines.

And so whether or not that is enough to kind of get it across the line, but it is also that feels like it's just a boil that the government's going to need to lance at some point.

Every day, Anthony Obenezi pops up.

It's like, have you met Donald?

When are you going to meet Donald Trump?

Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.

And he will be a figure of this next three years anyway.

But I suspect the government just wants to get this meeting over and done with.

Whether or not we get a tariff reduction, I suspect it's very unlikely at this stage.

Yeah, I think it is unlikely.

And, you know, that's why the Prime Minister's been making the point also that even though he wants a zero tariff as a say, he says we've got the lowest tariff.

And we do, like, that's true.

And it's we do have the best of a bad deal it's just it's a point where where donald trump wants to cut deals and anthony albanese is sitting there going we've got a deal we just want you to follow through on the deal which is to not have these tariffs so i look i appreciate it must be frustrating for the prime minister but you know the omnipresent nature of donald trump is he hangs over everything and no matter what we're talking about here he'll always have a factor over that i suspect Yeah, I was actually just talking to an American journal who is going to be on afternoon briefing later, but he's someone I know really well.

And he was saying to me,

he's so present over everything.

And I said, you've got to understand, here I am in a beautiful country with

millions of people dealing with many of our own issues.

And we spend so much time talking about your president.

It does my head in, even though I'm part of the problem, like it is a necessary thing, but it's wild how much he's actually colonized our brains.

Yes, I was at a press conference recently and someone, when we were walking away, they said, isn't it exhausting that everything that the government announces essentially says, how will Donald Trump respond to this?

What will Donald Trump make of this?

And, you know, that too, like, hangs over the meeting.

Like, you must have a fear going in as the Prime Minister thinking, Donald Trump's going to take questions.

What on earth am I going to have to sit there and smile and sit through and really have no ability to control what is happening?

It's definitely going to be a theme.

It'll be a theme for this Prime Minister and whoever wins the next election, too.

Whoever wins the next election.

Getting ahead of yourself there.

Yes.

Okay, I'm not ready for that yet.

Look, just doing exactly what I said we wouldn't.

well, I didn't say we wouldn't do it, but I acknowledged was an issue.

Let's just talk about Trump.

He's kind of talking up this ceasefire for Gaza.

On Truth Social, and I'll quote, he says, you know, Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalise this 60-day ceasefire, during which time we will work with all parties to end the war.

That war is never ending.

That pain is never ending.

If you can get a ceasefire, it would be incredible.

But

I don't know.

Is this another case of Trump telling us something's about to happen that isn't necessarily yet quite cooked?

The devil's always in the detail, right?

Absolutely.

And the scale of what needs to be landed here, obviously, promising signs if there's anything close to 60 days being followed through.

And particularly, what will be interesting about getting more and more humanitarian aid into Gaza, in particular, it's been a clear frustration from a lot of countries like Australia to make sure that the most vulnerable people who are doing it the hardest within Gaza are getting the support that the global community wants to send to them.

Whether or not the 60 days can hold or is realised, I think will be really interesting to watch and see.

And the extent to which, because of what's happening in Iran, had less of a focus on Gaza and also then Ukraine as well.

It is a reminder that there are these wars that are dragging on and we might forget about them day in, day out, but they are very much dominating the lives of a lot of people.

So watched that space.

Like that's the vibe.

A 60-day ceasefire would be

just incredible for the people of Gaza just to breathe.

There is no safety in that place.

I think we would have seen the scenes the other day of that cafe that was bombed and, you know, women and children at that cafe, just unspeakable levels of devastation.

But

he's also said he was going to resolve Ukraine in one day, and that clearly didn't happen.

So this is a man who has a sort of, how would you describe it?

Like, I feel like, you know, those mice that are sort of on the little thing, the little wheels.

Spinning the wheel round and round and round and round.

And that's the whole Bannon thing, like the flooding the zone.

Ah, there's this, there's that.

And yeah, the coherence is not always there.

And you just wonder the extent to which Donald Trump appreciated the scale of what he is trying to land with Middle East peace.

And he might think, you know, I'm going to get a ceasefire and I'm going to have this deal.

It's like, it would be a huge achievement if Donald Trump was able to deliver Middle East peace.

We are far from seeing that being realised yet, but it would be an interesting moment if it could get anywhere near being realised.

But I'll leave you with this idea as well, Pika.

Father, sorry, brother Ollie Pickett is the senior Australian of the year.

He's been out and about today doing some media.

And he just, he's with this group called Wheelchairs for Kids.

They're volunteers.

They make wheelchairs and they send them to kids with a blanket and a toy attached to them.

Today he mentioned that their next shipment is going to Jordan.

It's going to help the children of Gaza who are now in Jordan, are requiring aid and humanitarian support.

They've been able to get to Jordan.

It's just an incredible story that a group of the average age is 74, they're building wheelchairs in Western Australia and they're sending crucial aid to help the consequences of these wars that we are seeing drag on.

Yeah, that's well, that's incredible.

Look, I just want to leave us with a story that broke yesterday afternoon, so we're recording this on a Wednesday, and got overshadowed by this hideous childcare

story.

But the Europe Commission, which is a commission that was set up by the Victorian government, the first and at this stage only Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry handed down its final report.

100 recommendations, some big things, including in these words, this was a genocide for what happened to Indigenous people in Victoria.

I worry the government's commissioned these things and are they deeply engaged with the messages and I think it's an important thing to be deeply engaged in.

We were going to have a national truth-telling,

but we're not now.

The Prime Minister doesn't seem terribly interested anymore, burnt by the voice, but in Victoria it's happened and its findings are pretty, you know, devastating, but I think important on the historical record.

Don't you reckon, Brett?

Yeah, we definitely bear a responsibility to not turn away from what's being put forward before us at the moment.

And

to talk about the work.

That's it for politics now today.

Tomorrow I'll be back with the party room.

The party room at abc.net.au is where you send questions to Fran and I.

We dealt with some really heavy topics, right?

I know people sometimes want to look away, but when we look away, we don't get stuff done either, Brett.

So let's try not to look away as much as we can.

I think that's right.

If we do it all together, then it just makes it a whole lot easier, I suspect.

Yeah, for sure.

Brett, thank you.

See ya.

Thanks, PK.

Bye.