Let’s start today: Ros Baxter’s closing call to transform Australia’s early years

As the 2025 National Early Years Summit drew to a close on 18 June, Dr Ros Baxter, CEO of Goodstart and former senior bureaucrat was asked to share her reflections from the Summit and on the work ahead. Speaking to a room filled with leading voices in early childhood education, health, development and care, she honours the collective knowledge in the room while calling for sustained, courageous action to reimagine the early years system for Australia’s children. Her address urges a deep and deliberate focus on implementation, inclusion and national coordination with children’s interests at the centre of every decision.

 

I want to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of these lands, the Yugerra and Turrbal people. These lands have been places of child-raising for millennia, and we have a rich history to learn from. 

 

Next, I want to acknowledge how humbling it is to stand here in this room of giants. 

 

I see people who have worked in and around children’s policy, advocacy, development, health, education, protection and care for so long. And who have so many achievements under your belts. 

 

We say it takes a village, but this village feels more like a nation, coming together across  geographies, disciplines and day jobs.  From Doomadgee to Canberra; Logan to Hobart. To chart a better future for our children. 

 

We all felt deeply the news last week about the latest AEDC results. It reminded me of a story that comes from the time my youngest child, James (we call him Jem) was doing long day care, he was about 3. 

 

Because he was the youngest of four, dinnertime at our place could be pretty chaotic. One night after long day care, my daughter was complaining loudly at the dinner table about  why we were having slow cooked lamb again. (She hated anything made in the slow cooker, which I considered a direct conspiracy against me as a working mum).

 

Jem looked up and said loudly: “Nevie. Like Maria says (Maria was his educator) ‘you get what  you get and you don’t get upset’.” 

 

My husband and I looked at each other like we had discovered gold. Thank you Maria. 

 

We loved this phrase. It could be applied to so many situations. I even once used it with a minister who was pushing some impossible deadlines. 

 

But today, I think… we have a moment to get upset. We have all come together to say we want, we need, more than we are getting. What we are getting, what our children are getting, is not good enough.

 

So what now? 

 

For those of us who work in and around early childhood it’s always been clear that the answer lies in the early years. In that fleeting moment of opportunity, in the first five or so years of life, to nurture and shape strong, secure, agile brains. To use this powerful moment to redress the disadvantages brought to children by factors outside their control. And for the last few years it’s started to feel like everyone else is catching on.  

 

The exciting (and I guess tricky) thing is…they’ve caught up in a rush, all at once. At times it felt like the deluge of attention might drown us with its breadth, speed, and ferocity.  At other times we’ve felt a little leapfrogged great implementation ideas overtaking (perhaps) where we are at and what we are capable of.  This Summit has offered a pathway to pick through the deluge, to start to make sense of it.  It’s combined blow-your-head off possibility with a real appetite for rolling our sleeves up and getting into the nitty gritty of how. 

 

Some things have come through with resounding clarity and consensus. 

 

• It is clear we all want a better way of doing and investing in the early years. 
• It’s clear that community services and partnerships, including those critical early  health and parenting services for mums, babies, and families, are a key component. As  in leaning into and learning from local and First Nations services and models
• It’s equally clear quality ECEC that is truly universal available where it is  needed, staffed by well trained people, inclusive and affordable is also game-changing.
• Over the last couple of days we’ve also talked about how we’ve all seen the growing  incidence of additional needs among our nation’s children. This can no longer be treated  as a niche issue. A quarter of our children start school developmentally vulnerable.

 

And we know that we have the evidence-based tools to reduce that. 

 

And finally

 

•  It’s clear that we know some places need more. And they aren’t getting it now because of a patchwork of provision, overlapping responsibility, and death by trial.

 

So we do have a fleeting moment both in a child’s earliest years, and in this remarkable  period of consensus. Maximising this moment means we need to…Take a beat means taking a beat to consider how the future should look before we rush to how we might deliver it. What do we all want these early years to look like for children, families and communities? How inclusive? 

 

How good? 

 

How safe? 

 

We also need to push in, this means pushing in a bit to understand other spaces, because lives don’t come neatly packaged for bureaucratic convenience. For example, pushing into those rooms where policy makers are trying to solve foundational support. We need to think about implementation, it means paying attention to the messy, fractured, grotty task of implementation.

Because we aren’t where we want to be right now, and we won’t be tomorrow. We need to pay some real and detailed attention to how the bridge to get there might look. Not just imagine that glorious tomorrow and hope it will come to us. 

 

Ambitious policy so often founders on the rocks of poor implementation. We don’t want to be that ship wreck. A few parts of that implementation bridge have started to come into focus at this Summit. For a start, it’s looking very likely that we will need some national planning to help us in this a body with the right view, and authority, and resources to bring the threads together. 

 

For seconds, the PC and CPD both identified this will be a ten to fifteen year journey, to unpick what we have without dropping any balls, and to start to turn this massive ship. There are a million children in ECEC alone, even before we consider MCH and the other parts. 

 

In the first phase, let’s say the first 5 years, we should roll our sleeves up to do the hard yards. In particular, we need one overarching agreement to be our touchstone.  

 

I like to think of it as a grandmother agreement, in honour of the many grandmothers I have met in my 30 years working with vulnerable children, often holding communities together. 

 

This agreement should be a compact not just between governments, but also between  governments and non-government players. An agreement on Early Childhood Development as a whole, not on individual parts of the system alone. Not state by state, as tempting as that is for governments trying to negotiate these things.

 

Because we’ve seen in the last week where disparate state approaches have landed us. It should explicitly set out those priority places where we just need to crack on. Minister Plibersek talked about 235 communities where much of our national disadvantage resides. And it should be clear about the role of profit because there may well be a role. There certainly is right now.  So let’s talk about it.

 

And let’s talk about how to support those who don’t make a profit but keep delivering for children, their people, and the communities everyone else finds too hard. This agreement should be capable of evolving, through added schedules, as we do the work over the next few years on ECEC funding, on inclusion supports, on preschool. 

 

Phase one should also establish some central stewardship in early childhood. I cannot see a way to do what we want to do without it. This authority should have a few key roles. A focus on supply of those critical services we want for all children in the early years (especially in the most disadvantaged places) maternal and child health services, parenting support, early learning. With foundational support building from that rather than being built separately. 

 

The steward should also focus on workforce and professional standards, safety, and the kind of quality required to shift outcomes. It will take later tranches of work, probably 10-15 years, to complete this project. To continue the work of moving this barge incentivising, building, integrating. 

 

Much has already been done at the level of the community committed, visionary people who have driven services and integration forward. But now the national infrastructure must match that ambition. We must begin in phase one with getting the institutional arrangements right. 

 

We are on a radical journey to build an Early Childhood Development system that moves the dial on child outcomes. It’s crucial, not just to individual human lives, but to Australia’s future, as a declining birthrate means we can no longer afford to leave any child behind.  

 

As we leave here let’s keep our destination firmly in sight, but also the steps to get there. Let’s do the things first that need to be done first, then the next things, then the next things.

 

And let’s make children’s interests our compass. Not bureaucratic convenience, not historic funding relationships between federal and state governments.

 

Turning vision into implementation, with children at the centre

 

Dr Ros Baxter’s closing address offered a clear-eyed, inspiring call to action, one grounded in deep sector knowledge and united by shared purpose. Her reflections distilled the momentum and clarity that emerged across the two-day Summit, reminding all in attendance that vision without implementation is not enough. 

 

As the early childhood education and care sector stands on the cusp of transformative change, her final words serve as both a challenge and a charge: to place children at the centre, act with urgency, and begin the hard work of building a better system starting today.