Independent MLA Thomas Emerson has questioned the point of tripling fines for non-compliant childcare centres if the ACT’s regulator can’t impose them. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
The reason why the ACT’s childcare regulator hasn’t issued any fines since its establishment is because it doesn’t have the ability to do so.
There are 374 early childhood education centre services in the ACT, attended by more than 31,000 children. As of 30 June, 2025, 350 of the ACT’s 374 approved services had a quality rating against the National Quality Standard. Of the services, 87 per cent are rated as “meeting”, “excellent” or “exceeding” the standard.
As of the end of the last financial year, the regulator began 82 investigations. Of those, 58 have been completed and 60 are still under way. Some 123 compliance actions, including prohibition of individuals from working in the sector, were also issued.
Kurrajong Independent MLA Thomas Emerson has questioned why there hadn’t been any fines handed out in the past five years despite recently-released documents showing several instances of repeated safety breaches by certain childcare and out-of-hours school care providers and centres.
These include children suffering head injuries or broken bones due to inadequate supervision, children going missing from or being left behind in centres, children being left in nappies for hours without being changed and a child eating a death cap mushroom after a centre failed to remove the poisonous fungi.
A spokesperson for the regulator, Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA), said no fines had been handed out because there was no “legislative mechanism in place” in the Territory to allow infringement notices to be issued under the National Law.
“[To do this] would require significant resources across government, not only to the development of a Magistrates Court (Education and Care Services National Law) Infringement Regulation framework to prescribe the relevant offences and penalty amounts, but also to the maintenance and operation of this capability,” the spokesperson said.
The regulator’s main functions are to assess and rate services against the National Quality Standards, compliance and risk audits, investigation of notification and complaints and to provide information about the National Quality Framework.
NSW, Queensland and Western Australia are currently the only jurisdictions with laws that allow their regulators to issue fines.
CECA-issued show cause notices and compliance notices to centres outline the fines a service could face if breach allegations are substantiated.
Children’s safety in early childhood education centres has been in the spotlight in the past 12 months, leading to national reforms.
Education ministers across the country agreed on a range of joint actions in the sector, including a National Educator Register rollout from February.
Other actions flagged for early 2026 are making mandatory child safety training available, CCTV assessments on selected services nationally and, pending passage of legislation, tripling the maximum penalties under the National Law and National Regulations and getting inappropriate conduct updated legislation in place.
Education and Early Childhood Minister Yvette Berry confirmed the ACT had been looking into fines since May 2025 after an independent review into the NSW Regulatory Authority was released.
“Currently jurisdictions are inconsistently applying fines [and the NSW] Wheeler Report set out examples of the low compliance impact of fines and the small numbers of infringement notices issued,” she said.
“The Wheeler Report recommended exploring more opportunities for issuing infringement notices and other financial sanctions to support regulatory outcomes.”
She confirmed CECA started to “actively explore” the feasibility and cost effectiveness of setting up infringement notices in September 2025.
“This work is considering legal issues, viability and effectiveness of a fines system,” Ms Berry said.
“If CECA began issuing fines in the future, it would be just one compliance tool among a broad range of compliance tools already available.
“Additionally, the Australian Government now also has the power to withhold or cease Childcare Subsidy Payments for serious and repeated non-compliance.”
The ACT Government has promised to bring forward additional reforms to improve the quality and safety of Canberra’s early childhood education.
This includes a review of educator-child ratios, looking at how to better support effective supervision at centres and the consideration of mandatory registration for early childhood teachers (which is currently voluntary).
CECA is also conducting unannounced audits.
Mr Emerson said the inability for the regulator to issue fines was “outrageous” and needed to be addressed.
“Dodgy operators should not have been allowed to repeatedly prioritise profit over children’s safety without any risk of bring fined,” he said.
“This is one of many alarming revelations coming out of this document release, which the government has opposed at every turn.”
Do you know more? Contact cfenwicke@region.com.au.
