The independent member for Kurrajong, Thomas Emerson MLA, has reiterated his calls for strengthened regulation and greater support for locally-run early childhood education and care centres following news that Edge Early Learning has entered voluntary administration. 

“Parents haven’t had the transparency needed to make informed choices about who’s caring for their children. The more information families have about what’s happening in early learning centres run by some of these big for-profit providers, the more they’ll start voting with their feet,” Mr Emerson said. 

Last year, Mr Emerson successfully pushed to release thousands of government documents revealing disturbing cases of child safety breaches, inadequate supervision, insufficient support for educators, and regulatory failure in parts of Canberra’s early childhood sector. Edge Early Learning Charnwood had one of the highest number of complaints, serious incident reports and compliance notices in the document release, including complaints from staff raising concerns about the low standard of care promoted by centre managers. 

Following the closure of Edge Early Learning Higgins by the regulator, Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA), the centre encouraged families to send their children to Edge Early Learning Charnwood. 

Under Mr Emerson’s questioning, CECA revealed in Budget Estimates last month that it was also taking regulatory action against Edge Early Learning Charnwood.  

“We’ve seen an explosion of big for-profit centres – where child safety breaches are statistically far more common – while small community-run centres struggle to stay afloat,” Mr Emerson said.

“Governments have let big for-profit providers run rampant in the early childhood education and care sector, with disastrous consequences for children and educators alike.”

“Both levels of government need to do much more to support the viability of the smaller, community-run centres, while cracking down on dodgy operators.”

BACKGROUND:

In February 2026, Mr Emerson introduced a motion to the ACT Legislative Assembly calling on the ACT Government to adopt a significant package of reforms to address regulatory issues and strengthen the early childhood education and care sector.  

The motion included 13 measures including establishing a public register of regulatory enforcement actions related to child safety breaches, land use reform, exploring options to cap centres’ surplus revenue to ensure sufficient investment back into the workforce, establishing an online portal for verifying Working With Vulnerable People card numbers, updating the ACT's early childhood strategy with a renewed focus on child safety, and more. 

The ACT Government is required to provide an update on their progress in implementing these reforms in September 2026, and to provide a final report and an updated early childhood strategy by February 2027.

On the back of Mr Emerson’s advocacy, the 2026-27 ACT Budget included $11.4 million over four years to strengthen the regulation of early childhood education and care, including increasing the capacity of the regulator, Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA), to undertake assessments, audits and investigations.