Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the challenges being faced by kindergartens in my electorate of Hotham. For decades now, we have known that early learning is what matters most to setting children on the right path. It is good for parents, it is good for families, it is good for the community and it is great for the economy. The evidence shows that, for every dollar we spend on the early years education of our children, about $5 to $9 is returned to the community down the track. This is an investment no-brainer. Yet what we have seen over the last two years of the life of this government is more or less constant attempts to create an uncertain policy environment for Australia's kindergartens. My message to the parliament this morning is that this has to stop.

One kindergarten in particular that I want to draw to the attention of the House is the Glen Eira Kindergarten Association, which started with pretty humble beginnings as a pilot program with four services and it has grown to full KCM status with eight services within just 18 months. It is not hard to understand why. I have visited the kindergarten and it is a really extraordinary early learning environment. It is a place of incredible, quality educators who are looking after these beautiful young people living in this community in Glen Eira. They have a really thoughtful curriculum. It is a great, welcoming community space and a great place for families to get together and develop that really critical early learning environment for the kids in this community. It has a quality of care that I want to see for every Australian child in every Australian community.

But what this kindergarten faces, as do many around the country, is incredible uncertainty—in particular, for continued Commonwealth support for 15 operating hours that should be the right of every Australian child. The changes that are being proposed are set to dramatically increase the cost imposed on families. We are talking about increases of somewhere between $385 to $599. These increased costs are of course going to impact more on low-income families, yet we know that it is the low-income families and the children growing up in those environments that will benefit the most from that early learning.

The association faces huge challenges in trying to maintain affordable fees, and at the very same time they are trying as hard as they can to cater for as many children as possible. What we know is that this association, knowing the great quality of care, is going well out of its way to fill its places to its absolute maximum. But other regulations are meaning that at the same time they have to increase their staffing requirement. So we have a complex policy environment faced by this kindergarten, which is really just doing what it can to try to give the children at the kindergarten the best start in life. It is time that Australian public policy caught up with decades-old research and allowed centres like Glen Eira Kindergarten to continue the incredibly important work they do in laying the foundation for a generation of well-rounded Australian children.

See this speech in context