Good morning, Wentyl.

The Albanese government has long talked tough about cracking down on dangerous failings in the childcare sector – and this week it followed through with action. 

A family day care provider found to have left rat poison, dog poo and bleach within the reach of children became the first in the nation to be stripped of essential government funding. 

Laugh & Learn Family Day Care, which operates services for about 100 children at 20 private homes in Melbourne’s north, had its childcare subsidy funding cancelled immediately – forcing families to pay the full cost and effectively making the service unaffordable. 

In another shocking case to emerge this week, a Queensland childcare centre worker repeatedly slapped a child and grabbed their face, and centre managers failed to notify the regulator or the child's parents of the incident.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare (pictured below, apparently in the naughty corner) said cancelling the funding of the Melbourne centre "wasn't an idle threat", and warned other substandard services “this is not the end”. 

But it's taken the government nearly a year since gaining the power to cancel funding to actually follow through, despite issuing warnings to 115 services nationwide. 

A spokeswoman for Laugh & Learn claimed they were victims of a “witch hunt” so the government could show off its new powers.

But we’ve reported in depth over the past year about the appalling number of childcare services across the nation that are failing to meet the national quality standards.  Is this a sign that the watchdog is fed up with services being graded as “working towards” those standards for years? 

This week we also looked at why an elite private school "silenced" its students by ordering them to remove an online petition; the high sugar and fat levels in supposedly healthy lunch box snacks; and the cringe factor of teachers adopting Gen Z slang (hey, maybe that's the way to finally kill off "six-seven").

Have a great day and enjoy exploring the terrific stories below.