Childcare Centres

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Education. How many childcare centres in South Australia do not meet minimum standards and are currently classed as 'significant improvement required' or 'working towards reaching the minimum standards' and has the government addressed all Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care recommendations that relate to childcare standards? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: Recent data from the Productivity Commission shows there were more than 2,300 serious incidents in South Australian childcare centres in 2023-24, including serious injury, ambulance attendance and missing children, an increase of 40 per cent in three years.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:48): I thank the member for a very important question on a very important topic. I am sure a number of members of this place will have followed the national news this week that was broken in a story by Four Corners about some very disturbing incidents of abuse and neglect towards a young person in a childcare centre in New South Wales.

I saw that exposé and read a number of follow-up articles that were written about that incident and similar ones. Of course, I took a great deal of interest in that as the minister responsible for those areas in South Australia. It is also true to say that any incident like that, the ones referred to by Four Corners, or the ones alluded to by the member for Colton, should be taken seriously by all ministers and everyone in this place—and we absolutely do.

The first thing I might say specifically in response to the member's question is that in the case of the Four Corners story, the two private childcare providers the subject of that story don't operate in South Australia. That is not to say that we should not be looking at what happened in New South Wales and making sure that there are things in place so they cannot happen here in South Australia, but those two providers in question do not operate in South Australia.

There has been some talk from those opposite and certainly interstate this week around whether or not there needs to be some kind of broader inquiry into incidents such as this in the childcare system in Australia. My answer, when asked that on ABC radio this week, was a very clear one. It was alluded to in the member for Colton's question to me, which was around the fact that we had a royal commission, which was primarily about how we go about delivering on the election commitment that we made here in South Australia back in October 2021, that if we were elected to government, we would roll out three-year-old preschools starting from 2026, and we are on track to do that.

The royal commission headed up by the Hon. Julia Gillard not only made recommendations on how this government should roll out three-year-old preschool but also looked at private childcare providers as well because, of course, part of the model recommended by the Hon. Julia Gillard about how we would roll out three-year-old preschool is to utilise an existing capacity in the long day care sector. It was only right that we looked around at what was occurring there and make sure that some steps were taken, as the member for Colton correctly pointed out, to make sure that assessment and ratings are done under the national scheme. We do have same catching up to do on that.

I can inform the house that one recommendation in particular, I think it was recommendation No. 7, was that the state government ensure sufficient resources are available to the Education Standards Board, which is the independent regulator here in South Australia—

Mr TEAGUE: Point of order: standing order 98(a). Again, this is all very interesting debate but the question that the minister should have within his grasp was how many childcare centres are in these categories. It's a question that begs a straightforward answer in terms of a number.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my right will come to order. Member for Newland! As I have mentioned before, the minister has four minutes to answer the question and I think it has always been accepted that they can create a case around their answer and provide information, which I am pretty sure is what the minister is doing.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER: Thank you, Speaker. I was asked specifically about recommendations from the royal commission, and I was reading out the pertinent recommendation from the royal commission which I have in front of me because I actually foresaw that might be a question I might get today. In a bid to make sure that I could give you an answer, because I assume that's why you are asking the question in the first place, I have brought it in and I am providing that to you. If you give me the decency of the last 45 seconds, I will keep going and I will give you the answer to the question that you asked.

That recommendation was that we actually properly resource the ESB. The ESB is the Education Standards Board, the independent regulator, that does the work which prevents these kinds of things from happening. They have been begging for that money all through 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 and you lot said no, no, no and no. What did we say? We accepted the recommendation and we have put $7 million more into the independent regulator, and do you know what that has resulted in? It has resulted in a 63 per cent increase in visits to childcare centres—a 63 per cent increase in visits to centres so they could actually do this important work. That's why we accepted the recommendation.