Ms SPENCE (Yuroke—Minister for Community Sport, Minister for Youth, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (16:59): I am pleased to rise today to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Regulation of Student Accommodation) Bill 2020. As the Minister for Youth I feel compelled to add my voice to the contributions on this bill. I am very pleased that those opposite have noted that they will be supporting this bill, a bill that will go towards securing the safety of our children.

As a mother, I can attest to the fact that there is simply nothing more important. When a parent entrusts their child into the care of another they should have the utmost confidence that those responsible will protect that child from harm. That goes for friends and family, that goes for babysitters, that goes for childcare workers and that certainly goes for teachers and other school staff. It is utterly unimaginable to me that someone would wish harm to a child, and child sexual abuse is an evil violation of the rights of the most vulnerable people in our community. It is an exploitation of the trust that children and young people so naturally place in adults, and when it happens children are forced to carry the trauma of abuse with them for ever. It cannot be undone, and it can have lifelong consequences. Our institutions have an obligation to act hastily as soon as there is the slightest suggestion that child sexual abuse could be occurring under their watch.

That is why in November 2012 the then Prime Minister, the Honourable Julia Gillard, MP, announced the establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. After a five-year inquiry the final report was handed down in December 2017, and now it is on us—governments and institutions across the country—to implement the recommendations from the royal commission and to do everything we possibly can to ensure that we are responding to child sexual abuse swiftly and appropriately.

The findings of the royal commission identify that children in boarding schools are over-represented in reports of sexual abuse and that this is due to a number of factors which place boarders at a higher risk than their day student peers, like power imbalances between adults and dependent children and unsupervised contact between school staff and students in the close confines of boarding schools. History has shone a light on the prioritisation of institutional reputation over the rights and safety of children. Unlike students who attend day school, boarders live on campus and rely heavily on school staff to meet their needs throughout the school year. While educators and other staff in Victoria’s boarding school community should be commended for the tremendous work they do every day to nurture the minds of our young ones and keep them safe, there must also be protections put in place to safeguard against any abuse of power by those in positions of authority, because these actions can result in a lifetime of grief and trauma for victims. Our laws should ensure that every school student is equally as safe as their peers, whether they live at home or in school-based accommodation.

This bill addresses recommendation 13.3 of the royal commission, which stipulates that school registration authorities should monitor government and non-government boarding schools to ensure they meet child safe standards. It seems a simple thing to do. After all, child safe standards are applied to all organisations in Victoria that provide services for children to ensure their safety is promoted, that child abuse is prevented and that any allegations of child abuse are properly responded to. The problem is the framework for the registration and regulation of schools does not yet apply to boarding premises, because school boarding facilities do not strictly fit within the current definition of school in the Education and Training Reform Act 2006. That means the powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, who regulate compliance with the Victorian child safe standards, are unclear in the context of school boarding premises. Therefore there are currently no government regulators that directly monitor the compliance of school boarding premises with the child safe standards, and this bill seeks to change that, because protecting children and promoting their safety is everyone’s business. It is incumbent on governments to put in place laws and structures that ensure children are protected.

This bill will establish a framework to ensure boarding premises are registered and regulated in line with schools in the education and training format. Hence it will clarify the powers in the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority to regulate school boarding premises by ensuring that child safe standards and other prescribed minimum standards for registrations are satisfied. The bill applies to any premises whereby accommodation services are provided at a cost to enable a person to enrol in a registered school and therefore excludes private residencies, camps, hospitals, schools, respite care, homestays and facilities that already comply with child safe standards. It will establish an offence with a maximum penalty of 10 penalty units for anyone who oversees an unregistered school boarding premises.

This is what must be done to ensure that school boarding premises are as safe for our children as day schools, because every parent should have full confidence that when they send their child to school they will be kept from harm’s way no matter the circumstances. This government believes and supports survivors of child abuse. The royal commission heard the personal accounts of over 9000 people over five years, and their stories will not have been told in vain. We have made a promise to each and every one of them and their families that we will do all that we can to prevent abuse from occurring and that where it does we will respond to allegations quickly and appropriately.

This legislation is another step towards fulfilling this promise. Improving child safe approaches in institutions will reduce the risk of child sexual abuse. We are plugging the gaps wherever child safety standards do not currently apply, such as in school boarding facilities. Boarders deserve to be safe from sexual abuse just like their day student peers, just like every child and every person at every point in the life.

I want to commend the previous speakers on this bill who have spoken about the horrors of child abuse, the Betrayal of Trust inquiry and the royal commission. And of course I would like to commend the Minister for Education for bringing in this bill to fill yet another important gap in protecting children and responding to the recommendations of the royal commission. With those few words, I commend the bill to the house.