Address to the House of Representatives, Bills

Thursday 12 February 2025

I also rise to speak on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. The member for Adelaide reminisced about the 'Walk in their shoes' campaign, and it brought back memories for me. I recall a similar experience, working for a day at the magnificent Wonderschool in Conder. That work wasn't limited to the soft stuff. It included some of the dirty work too, and it was a reminder for me of what amazing work our early educators do right across the country.

As the member for Bean, which is home to thousands of young families, I'm pleased to speak in support of this bill. But let's be clear. The Liberals won't support cost-of-living relief for early education and care or kids need access to ECEC, but they will support free lunches for bosses. We know that these legislative changes will be on the chopping block, but they won't be on the menu after the election if the Leader of the Opposition gets his way.

Like all my Labor colleagues, I want to make sure that every child gets the best possible start in life. I know the benefits that my family have received from access to early education, particularly at the Jenny Wren Early Learning by Busy Bees centre in Mawson, in the electorate of Bean. I'd like to thank those early educators who did so much great work for my family, as well as all early educators right across Bean. As a government, we believe every child has the right to go to early education to help make sure they don't start school behind, and our Labor government is going to make this possible.

This bill will replace the activity test introduced by the Liberals with a new three-day guarantee. The three-day guarantee will deliver additional cost-of-living relief for more than 66,000 families after the changes commence in 2026. The young families and children who live in Bean will benefit from this move. This reform is just part of Labor's next steps to building a universal early education and care system, expanding access to quality early education right across the country. It builds on cheaper child care, which cut the cost of early education and care for more than one million families across the country, as well as our 15 per cent pay rise for early educators.

Child care is of critical importance to the residents of Bean. Availability, cost and quality are issues that are raised with me as I do my job listening to the views, concerns and aspirations of local residents right across Bean. I believe that all those involved in the early education and childcare sector—state and territory governments, which regulate the industry, the private and public bodies which participate in the industry, and the national government, which provides considerable funds into the sector—have a duty to update the rules and arrangements to meet the needs of today.

For many, family life in Australia—and no less so in Bean—is changing. The nature of work is also changing, with more and more workers not having regular hours or work patterns. Consequently, the rules around child care and early education need to be adjusted to make sure that all kids, particularly those in disadvantaged groups, get access to the services that are available. As outlined by the minister and previous speakers, the bill provides that all families will be guaranteed three days, or 72 hours, of childcare subsidy each fortnight. Families caring for First Nations children will be guaranteed 100 hours each fortnight, and families who work, study or train will continue to be eligible for 100 hours of subsidised care each fortnight.

The background and context to the changes are important, and I'll now address the background to what we're discussing today and cover some of the other essential actions being taken by this government that are complementary to the bill under consideration. As reflected on by the minister when introducing this bill, when the Labor government came to office in 2022, we came with a commitment to make early childhood education and care more affordable through our cheaper childcare programs. We quickly turned that commitment into progress, with more than a million families benefiting from those changes. Recent data shows that an Australian family on an income of $120,000 a year, paying the average quarterly fee for 30 hours of child care per week, has saved approximately $2,768 since September 2023. This is of great assistance to the young families of Bean and throughout the nation.

We also commissioned the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Productivity Commission to each do a review, providing guidance on how we can achieve our vision of a universal early learning system—a system where every child, no matter who they are, no matter their background and no matter where they live, has access to quality early childhood education and care. The Productivity Commission inquiry, in its interim report, told us that the early childhood education workforce should be the first priority for reform, including through better pay and conditions. The Productivity Commission made it crystal clear that the workforce is fundamental in addressing any changes in availability.

Last year, we passed the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers Act, supporting a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood education and care workers—increasing the wages of up to 200,000 early educators—and addressing exactly this issue. Significant, momentous, historic, a monumental moment, proof that early learning matters and life changing—these are just some of the descriptive words that early childhood education advocates and workers have used to describe this government's 15 per cent wage increase. We know that the foundation of a universal system relies on a stable, secure and valued workforce, and this wage rise will help achieve that by retaining our existing early childhood educators and attracting new workers to the sector. Recent Jobs and Skills Australia data indicates that workforce vacancy rates in the early childhood education and care sector have plummeted over the last 12 months, with internet vacancy rates down 22 per cent since December 2023. But that's not all. The wage rise is linked to caps on fees. For providers to be eligible, they must not increase their fees by more than 4.4 per cent in the first year and 4.2 per cent in the second year. This is putting wages up for workers and keeping costs down for families.

Over the last 2½ years, we have made significant progress in building these foundations for a universal early childhood education and care system, but we know that there is still more work to do. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry recommended that the government consider removing, relaxing or substantially reconfiguring the current activity test. In their final report, the Productivity Commission recommended all families who to choose to use early childhood education and care 'should be able to access at least 30 hours or three days a week' of high-quality early learning. The Productivity Commission also noted that ensuring that all children aged zero to five years have access to some form of high-quality, subsidised ECEC for at least three days a week, or 30 hours, for 48 weeks per year, would accommodate the needs of families and deliver the benefits of ECEC participation to children.

Again, the government is acting in introducing the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill, guaranteeing families at least 72 hours of subsidised care per fortnight. The three-day guarantee is about making sure that every child can have the best start in life—that all children are ready to learn and ready to start school. It's about making sure that every child, no matter their background and no matter where they live, has access to the transformative benefits of early childhood education and care, and that's as important to the families of Bean as it is to families right across the country. We know how precious the first five years of a child's life are. It's a time of extraordinary growth—of emotional and intellectual development. In these years, children learn foundational skills. They learn to socialise and develop emotional skills that they can then build on when they start school.

Replacing the Liberals' activity test, which locked out children and families, with Labor's three-day guarantee is such a crucial step in delivering on our commitment to universal early learning. When the Liberals introduced the childcare-subsidy activity test in 2018, they stated that it was designed to encourage workforce participation. But, as Thrive by Five's Jay Weatherill states, while the activity test was intended to encourage parents into work, in fact it has done the opposite. It has limited choices and made it harder for parents, especially single parents, to make an income. An evaluation by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found no evidence that the introduction of the activity test caused any increase in workforce participation. The Productivity Commission—that well-known socialist organisation!—found that the effects of the activity test on workforce participation were, at best, ambiguous. Instead, the activity test has made early learning harder to access for many families. It has disproportionately affected those families that may be experiencing disadvantage—possibly the families that could benefit most from this access. The children who'd benefit the most from high-quality early education and care are, right now, the least likely to attend—this is what we're aiming to address.

In 2021, only 54 per cent of children in the most disadvantaged areas were enrolled in early childhood education and care. This compared with 76 per cent of children in the highest socioeconomic areas. These same children are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable. The most recent Australian Early Development Census report found that only 42.7 per cent of children experiencing the highest level of socioeconomic disadvantage were developmentally on track upon starting school, compared with 54.8 per cent of all children. These changes are critical to address this disadvantage.

In conclusion, as the member for Bean, which is home to thousands of young families, I'm pleased to speak in support of this bill. I know how critical the work of our early educators is right across Bean. I'm fortunate in that my family has benefited from access to early education for each of our children, and I want to see that access provided to families right across Bean. I want to make sure that every child gets the best possible start in life.

But the truth is that the benefits of these reforms are at risk from those opposite. Free lunches for bosses take priority over cost-of-living relief for early education and care. We know that this is likely to be one of the areas that will be part of the $350 billion of costs that, maybe, the constituents of Bean and the constituents of every electorate across this country will find out about the day after the election.

But that's not good enough for the people of Bean. It's not good enough that we put such critical reforms at risk. The new three-day guarantee meets the needs of families today. It will benefit many families and children in Bean and right across Australia. Don't put these critical reforms at risk. Make sure that they don't go on the chopping block. Support early educators, not just across Bean but right across the country, for the extraordinary work that they do now and for the extraordinary work that they can continue to do across some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country.