Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At 3.20 pm today, roughly 3,000 early childhood educators will walk off the job in pursuit of equal pay. These are women with skills and qualifications that this government continues to ignore. They have degrees and they have diplomas, and yet they are paid as little as $21 an hour. This government continues to ignore their campaign and their ask for equal pay. In fact, on the anniversary of this miserable mob coming to power let's reflect on what they have done to women working in early childhood education. One of the first things that they did on coming to power was to scrap the Early Years Quality Fund, a way in which businesses and women could access funding to increase their pay. They also tried to abolish the National Quality Framework, another way which recognised the skill of women working in early childhood education.

Today at 3.20 pm, 10,000 families will be affected and have to find alternative care arrangements for their children. It didn't need to be this way: if only this government had just listened to women working in early childhood education and partnered with the sector to fund professional wages. It is time for equal pay for our early childhood educators. It is time for big steps, and it is time that this government backed the women working in the early childhood education sector.

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