Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's an absolute privilege to speak today on this piece of legislation because it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the constructive way that Labor, as an opposition, has worked with various ministers in the early education and childcare sector over seven long years. I see in the chamber the member for Kingston, the shadow minister in this space, and I want to call out the amazing way she works with government and the way she constructively goes through the detail, line by line, on every amendment they've brought into this chamber that reflects in the portfolio that is early education and childcare.

I'm really pleased to follow the member for Jagajaga and the member for Macnamara this afternoon—of course, all of us in the virtual parliament, at home in Melbourne, because of the position our state finds itself in. We're hopeful, at the moment, that we have turned a corner, but obviously we've still got a lot of work to do to ensure that our great state can get back to where it needs to be in terms of COVID-19. But it is that that drives me every day and has done since this pandemic began, because of course this piece of legislation has been talked about for some time. It's an amendment that was called for by Labor because this government failed to see that its standard legislation had left out some of the most vulnerable children. So I'm pleased to join my colleagues today to support this and say, 'Good; you're going to put back the things that needed to be put back to look after our most vulnerable children, to look after families who have interactions with DHHS and who have very difficult lives, and to ensure that those children, those very young children, have access to early learning and to a system and environment that gives them stability in their lives.'

I don't have to remind the chamber that, having been an educator for decades, I absolutely understand how important that stability is in young children's lives. We know what the research says. We know how important early learning is. We know that it sets children up for life. We also know that early education and child care is sometimes where the troubling things in a child's life are identified. It's incredibly important that these vulnerable children have access to that and that their families have access to the support that they need, which often comes from an observation in an early learning childcare setting. It often comes from the people working with those children. Alarm bells might ring, perhaps about a progression in terms of a milestone in speech, movement or health. So this is incredibly important.

I'd like to stress again the constructive way in which we've gone about pointing out the errors when the government changes legislation in this space, pointing out to the various ministers, across the seven years that I've been in the parliament, when they really don't understand the finer detail, particularly in this policy space. Of course we're going to support this amendment. We want to see those young children accessing early learning. I want to see them in the childcare centres in my community. In the community that I represent, we have high numbers of children who would be accessing early learning through this process. These are families where income is sporadic and where moving from place to place because of high eviction rates is common. Those sorts of things can cause enormous chaos in family lives, and this sort of capacity to have their very young children in early learning is absolutely critical.

The notion of us being a constructive opposition is incredibly important and pertinent at this time. It has been particularly critical since February, when the pandemic began and decisions were being taken. It has been our role to be that constructive opposition, to look at what the government is putting forward, to try and assist the government by pointing out what may not be painfully obvious to them but is painfully obvious to us. The first of those things, in the early education space, has been around the provisions that were made. The member for Kingston has been calling out where those omissions were, foreseeing the problems that were going to arise under the different models of funding and support for this sector throughout the pandemic. We know that early childhood is a critical federal responsibility and we know that, in that first wave of the pandemic, there was a litany of woes. In an electorate like mine, with over 60,000 families and the highest number of childcare educators in the state of Victoria living in just one of the suburbs that I represent, it is absolutely critical that the government get the support from us to get this right. And it has been a struggle. No matter which program was put in place to support this sector through the pandemic, there have been holes.

I'd like to think that the work of the member for Kingston and all on our side of the parliament, reaching out, has been critical in this. I know that in my electorate I reached out to my childcare providers, be they family day care or more traditional long-day-care centres, so that we knew what was going on and so that we understood the impacts of each piece of legislation being felt across the sector in various areas. Of course the demographics in each area are very different, from community to community, and therefore the funding models need to be very different. That has been really important work, but what we haven't been able to convince the government on, and what saddens me today, is that the premature withdrawal of JobKeeper from this sector has left communities like mine grappling with incredible issues. This government has pitted families, educators and providers against one another in these last few weeks here in Victoria. We've got educators losing hours, being stood down. JobKeeper is supposed to be about a connection to the employer. It's supposed to be a wage subsidy so that, across the other side of the pandemic, the business will survive and their relationship with their employees will survive. That's what it's supposed to be about. So withdrawing JobKeeper earlier than in any other sector was an error on this government's part, and it's an incredible error that it hasn't been fixed in Victoria with the rise of the pandemic here.

At the moment, across this space we've had different providers trying to explain to us, as local members, what it means for their particular centre. In an area like mine, without getting above 80 per cent attendance, 80 per cent capacity, in their centres, all centres could very well become unviable, so they are really stressed at the moment. The worst of this is that it isn't just the families and the educators; it's also the centres. In my area, I need those centres to survive. We all do. We need those centres to be open. We need those family day care providers to be working on the other side of this, when parents get back to work outside of their homes, for those who are working at home, and for when parents get back to work full stop, because they've been on JobKeeper or they've been on JobSeeker without having those hours.

When we went through the first wave, obviously JobKeeper was there for the childcare sector, but there were still issues. There were issues around parent contribution. Then we had the minister come out and announce free child care, because he took away the need for parents to pay the contribution. It was a great sugar headline, absolutely great—'Waive the fees for all parents'—but this did not work for every centre. In various parts of the community, people were celebrating, and, in others, they were wondering how their business was going to survive, wondering how they were going to pay their employees. So it's been in the implementation of these ideas around the sugar headline of free child care where the issues have really come, and there's been massive confusion, where the changes made by Minister Tehan have worked for some but not for others. Then we get newspaper articles, with one centre saying, 'This is terrific,' while, in another geographic space, it's a bad news story.

Then we had JobKeeper withdrawn prematurely, and in Victoria we are acutely aware of this failure. During the second lockdown in Victoria, I have, ringing my office every day, educators who've lost hours now. I have educators who have been stood down. I have centres concerned that they will not make it across the bridge to a post-pandemic world. And I have families—I'll give you one example. I was contacted last week by a couple. One parent works at our local hospital. The other parent works in the public sector somewhere else. They both work shift work. Under this new system, they feel deeply affronted because no-one understands their situation. They work shift work. They've got a child in child care, and they're only needing at the moment to access child care probably two days a week, because they've got their shifts so that one of them is home more often. They're being asked to pay for the full week. Their question is: why, as essential workers, are they being asked to pay the full-week parent contribution, while other people they know, who are not working, are having their fees waived, and people who are working from home but choosing not to send their children to child care, or are not able to send their children to child care because they're not essential workers, are having their fees waived and their spaces held?

These are the fine details that the member for Kingston gets herself across so quickly. These are the important things that this government needs to understand.

The Prime Minister said that he would give a triple guarantee. He said no-one would lose their job. He said it won't cost parents more. He said centres can decide whether they ask for the gap or not. He actually set up a system where he put the educators, the providers and the parents at odds with one another. Of course we can tell both sides of this story. When I'm talking to my local providers, they're saying to me: 'I don't have an option but to stand my staff down. That is the only way this business, this centre and this educational facility will survive and be there on the other side.' So it isn't just bad for one; it's pitted all three against each another.

This is the reality that we are living and it is a disaster in this sector. It will vary. It will be patchy from geographical place to geographical place, but for my community this is a terrible story. We have educators across my community who don't have a job. How do they stay connected to employers? They're now applying for JobSeeker where they can and where they meet the criteria. None of them feel comfortable and none of them feel that their job has been guaranteed by this Prime Minister. They feel incredibly let down.

Some families have their contributions waived; other families do not. The sector is beset with issues that are hurting families. They're putting educators onto JobSeeker, if they're eligible, disconnected from employers. The centres are facing choices between their employees and their viability, between charging gap fees and pressuring families, all while we are battling a global pandemic.

We are all being flexible, and this minister needs to advocate to the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to put JobKeeper back. This Victorian minister needs to understand the impact in his home state for the people I represent and the people he represents. And I'll leave you with this one thought: I am tired—and I know many of my colleagues are—of the good-news Prime Minister, smirking when it's good news. But when it's bad news he's shirking because that's what we're seeing on the ground: a sugar headline but no detail; not there to do to implementation and the hard work of going through it line by line, line by line. When it's good news, this PM smirks. When it's bad news, this Prime Minister shirks.

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