Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

As a parent of four young children, I've seen firsthand the benefits of early childhood education. Ensuring that all Australian children have universal access to early childhood education is vitally important to a child's development. It lays the foundations for their school education, their wellbeing and their general living standards. It's crucial that all children have some access to some form of early childhood education. It's good for a child's brain development, for their fine motor skills, for general knowledge, for musical and artistic ability and, importantly, for social skills. Any parent will tell you how much a child soaks up and learns in those early years.

It's one of the great marvels of humanity, I believe, to watch a child learn in those years zero through to five—how to use their hand-eye coordination and how to speak and communicate. It's the great marvel of modern humanity, and I don't know why any person under the sun would want to cut funding for programs that deliver that early childhood education and make it available and accessible to Australian children, particularly those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. But that is exactly what the Turnbull government is doing in risking this funding beyond 2019 and not providing certainty for the states that deliver those programs on the ground. It's a matter of deep concern to the Labor Party, because every single member of the coalition parties, the National Party and the Liberal Party, has voted for and supported a budget that does exactly that—potentially risks funding beyond 2019 to the tune of $440 million for early childhood programs throughout the country. Last week it was confirmed that the funding has not been renewed through the national preschool and kindy program.

The minister has made much of the reasons behind that, stating that this is Labor's view of what's actually going on. It's not Labor's view. It was confirmed in the media just a week or so ago. Robert Bolton, the education editor of The Australian Financial Review, stated in an article entitled 'Surprise $500m hit to preschool funding':

Preschool and early-learning education for more than a quarter of a million Australian children is under threat as the federal government prepares to cut nearly half a billion dollars of spending on the sector.

There it is in black and white. That's the view of an independent editor for education for The Australian Financial Review. So for the minister to come in here and say that that's not what's occurring is simply misleading the House of Representatives.

I want to make a name of the National Party—the minister represents a National Party area—because the Nats have this great habit. When the Turnbull government does things like cutting funding for Medicare and schools and hospitals, the Nats slink back to their communities and, when the people of the country blow up about it, they tell them: 'Oh, no! That wasn't us. We didn't vote for that. That was the Liberal Party. We don't agree with what the Liberal Party does.' But then they come back in here and, of course, that's exactly what they are doing when voting for coalition proposals and supporting these cuts that have been outlined in the budget.

This program is pretty important—350,000 preschoolers across Australia rely on this program to get a good start in life. Many of them are from disadvantaged backgrounds. They include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. When we talk about closing the gap on educational disadvantage in this country, access to preschool education is vitally important in achieving that goal. We'll have no hope of reaching that goal if Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids miss out on those foundational education years.

We've seen some pretty bad decisions from the Turnbull government, but this one would have to take the cake. Labor is opposed to this because in government we established federal funding for this program. We instituted the first national preschool and kindy program agreement, which was signed by Labor in 2008, and preschool enrolment increased from 77 per cent through to the 93 per cent it is at today. That one figure alone is proof that this program is working. It's proof that this program is getting more kids into early childhood education and providing them with the foundational support they need for a good education. For this minister and this government to be risking that program by cutting that funding is despicable and must be opposed.

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