Senior Liberal says parents right to be furious at politicians for failing children

Australia Broadcast Center

15 hours ago

Parents should be furious at politicians for failing to keep Australian children safe, senior Liberal Melissa McIntosh says, demanding an explanation for why governments have sat on their hands on several known issues in the childcare sector.
Ms McIntosh said governments must explain why a number of reforms were not already in place.
"There is something seriously wrong and every single parent in this country has a right to be very angry and to be asking serious questions right now of our politicians, all of our politicians, including myself," Ms McIntosh told ABC Insiders.
The Coalition has been cautious not to politicise the issue of child safety in the wake of another horrific instance of alleged child abuse in the care sector.
Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences involving eight children at a Melbourne childcare centre, with new information still emerging that he may have worked more shifts at some centres than first thought.
In the days after those charges were made public, Liberal Shadow Minister for early childhood Jonno Duniam said every measure must be considered, and the opposition would work with the government to see reform done urgently.
This morning, repeating that the Coalition would support any "reasonable measure" the government put forward, Ms McIntosh also demanded an answer from the government.
"The Albanese government has said itself it has been too slow to act. Why? Why has it been so slow to act? Why have we seen multiple accounts of child sex abuse take place before the government [acted]," she said.
After Australia's worst paedophile Ashley Paul Griffith in 2023 pleaded guilty to abusing dozens of children over almost two decades, federal and state governments began work to strengthen child safety.
A number of those changes have been announced in recent weeks and months, including moves to ban personal mobile phones, publish more data on childcare provider compliance and increase penalties on non-compliant centres.
The federal government also announced legislation to cut off funding from providers who repeatedly failed their safety and quality obligations, which would be introduced to parliament this month.
The Coalition has already indicated it would support those laws, and Ms McIntosh said bluntly this morning if a centre was only "working towards" compliance "that means they are not at standard".
Currently, providers can continue to receive the Child Care Subsidy and open new centres even if centres are only "working towards" being compliant with Australia's quality and safety framework.
But a number of other reforms, including to the Working With Children Check, have not been made despite recommendations to do so being made a decade ago.
And with gaps in the system again in the spotlight, there is a wider debate about whether the system should be completely reformed, and funded more like the public school system.
Ms McIntosh said the federal government could work on child safety while also continuing its plans to expand the network by delivering 160 new centres and guaranteeing three days of subsidised care.
But she said the federal government must make safety the priority.
"We shouldn't even be talking about whether the sector is a safe place for our children," she said.
"They should be able to do both."