Large childcare providers found in breach of safety directives will face $500,000 fines – a 900% increase – under new laws to be introduced by New South Wales parliament on Wednesday.
The proposed legislation will grant greater powers to the early childhood regulator to suspend educators and revoke quality ratings in a suite of measures addressing grave concerns about safety in the sector.
The legislation contains more than 30 proposed changes to the act governing the delivery of early childhood education and care.
Some changes will implement reforms that were agreed to at a national meeting of state and federal education ministers last month. But the Minns government says the NSW measures go even further and will be “nation-leading”.
Among the proposed changes are measures to allow the early childhood regulator – responsible for monitoring safety at childcare services and administering penalties for breaches – to suspend or revoke quality ratings during or after an investigation into a service.
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Quality ratings, which are issued to a childcare centre after an inspection process and published on government websites, are often one of the only tools available to parents to make decisions about a centre’s quality and safety. They have been criticised by multiple reviews of the sector as being frequently out of date and not taking compliance issues and investigations into consideration.
The proposed legislation would also allow the regulator to suspend individual educators and publish more information about high-risk services, including any current investigations into them. It will also offer greater protections for whistleblowers.
The legislation will also see fines for breaches increase, with penalties tripling across the board and set to ramp up by 900% for large childcare providers that operate 25 or more services.
The penalty for operating a service without a responsible person present will increase from $5,700 for individuals and $28,700 for corporations to $17,100 and $86,100 respectively; an additional penalty for large providers is capped at $258,300.
Those who fail to comply with a direction to ban an inappropriate person will now face fines of $34,200 for an individual and $172,200 for a corporation; an additional penalty for large providers is capped at $516,600.
Courtney Houssos, the acting minister for education, called the legislation “the most significant reform to the national law in 15 years”.
“The current law has failed to protect children and it is no longer fit for purpose.”
Abigail Boyd, a Greens MP and the chair of the NSW education committee who is at the forefront of pushing for changes to the sector, called the reforms “both highly significant and underwhelming at the same time”.
“That’s how far below public expectations the regulatory regime has been allowed to slip, out of public scrutiny,” she said. “We welcome these reforms that will bring us up to a minimum of what families and children deserve and expect.”
Boyd said some changes – such as more stringent checks on workers and childcare centres – were really “bare-minimum expectations”.
“So let’s not get too excited or think that this is anywhere near the level of reforms required to put this sector back on track and restore faith in these services.”
Boyd said the committee “don’t for a moment consider our job to be complete”.