2026-10-27
The Australian Greens say another Four Corners investigation into horrific failures in early learning shows the limits of Labor’s response, more than 18 months after the crisis first made headlines.
The Greens have backed existing safety reforms but warned they would not go far enough to fix a system where intervention comes only after children have already been harmed. Measures like CCTV and funding suspensions can help expose abuse and hold providers accountable, but they cannot fix a system where corner-cutting is inherent.
The Greens are calling for a fundamental overhaul of Australia’s market-based childcare system, which funnels almost $20 billion a year in public funding into a sector dominated (70 per cent) by for-profit providers. Australian Greens spokesperson for early childhood education and care will pursue this line of questioning at Senate Estimates on Thursday.
Lines attributable to Senator Steph Hodgins-May:
“This is a national crisis. Every new headline makes parents sick to their stomachs.
“The media are being forced to do the job our regulators should be doing, exposing harrowing cases of abuse, neglect and safety failures in a system that is supposed to care for and educate our children.
“Our early learning system is dominated by for-profit providers. Almost 98 per cent of new services over the past two years were for-profit. We’re heading in entirely the wrong direction.
“When childcare is run for profit, children’s safety is put in direct competition with the bottom line. Every dollar spent on qualified educators and adequate staffing is a dollar that can’t go to shareholders. That is a fundamental flaw in a system that should put children first, always.
“Labor has responded with a series of band-aid measures that do not fix the conditions that allow harm to happen in the first place.
“What families are demanding is actual federal leadership that will confront the root problem. We cannot keep treating each new scandal as an isolated failure within a system that actively causes harm.
“If we take the profit motive out of childcare, we can put public funding back into qualified educators, better staffing and high-quality care.
“We need a system that is planned around children and communities, just like our primary and secondary schools, with quality and safety built in from the start.
“No parent should have to drop their child off before they can go to work or study, then spend the entire day worrying about whether their child is safe.”