Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this legislation, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Early Childhood Education and Care Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2021, on behalf of all the men and women in Dunkley who want to be able to progress their careers and also have a family. I rise to speak on this legislation on behalf of all of the men and women—predominantly women—who work in child care and early education and want to be able to pursue a career which sets up our children to have the best future possible.

Before I turn to this legislation and to those people, I want to put on the record how proud it makes me to have colleagues and friends in this place who are walking the talk. In this term of parliament alone—remembering that we aren't even two years in—the members for Lilley, Canberra, Jagajaga, Bendigo and Kingston have all had babies and have all come back to work, both in their electorates and in this parliament, in order to stand up for their constituents and for people across the country. We're very much looking forward to the return of Senator Marielle Smith and the member for Bendigo, who will be coming back soon. Senator Smith has had her baby, and the member for Bendigo may well be giving birth as I speak.

We all know that you don't have to have children in order to understand deeply how important it is to make sure that we have a childcare and early education system that sets up children for the future and that allows men and women, who are still predominantly the caregivers, to get back to work and have a career. You don't have to have children to understand that, to fight for it or to be passionate about it, but it doesn't hurt to have in the ranks of a party of government people who are living that experience. I want to put on the Hansard record that I am assisted every day by my friends and colleagues—the women who have given birth and who, even though they are often so exhausted they have to use toothpicks to prop their eyes open, are fighting to make sure that life is just a bit easier for other women and families.

The Morrison government likes to talk about jobs—jobs, jobs, jobs. Very rarely, if ever, do we hear them talk about jobs in the early education and childcare sector. Very rarely, if ever, do we hear them talking about an industry which is predominantly staffed by women and which is chronically underpaid. We hear them talking about the industry when they think that they can fool parents across the country into thinking that they have the answer to escalating childcare fees. We heard them talk about the early education and childcare industry last year when the first workers to have JobKeeper ripped away from them were early education and childcare workers. But, when it comes to talking about the pay and conditions of the workers, there was a resounding silence—a little bit like the Prime Minister's silence in response to the march of thousands and thousands and thousands of women on Monday. So, like my colleagues on this side of the chamber, I want to take this opportunity to thank every single early educator and childcare worker in my electorate who goes to work every day to care for and educate other people's children and does so for chronic underpay because it is a feminised industry. And I want to promise you that the fight is not over to make sure that you are valued both economically and in the way you deserve with the praise you should get from a government that hears you and sees you.

Sometimes it feels like the reason the Morrison government doesn't implement really great, progressive policies is that Labor advocates for them, or sometimes the reason the Morrison government doesn't accept that the problems exist is that we're the ones pointing them out. So, in this speech, I want to rely, firstly, on the Productivity Commission, which is an institution that the Morrison government and conservative governments often like to turn to for advice. In this case, though, they seem to turn to it for advice when it says what they want to hear but not otherwise, because we know that in 2019 the Productivity Commission put out a report on government services that showed that childcare costs are locking Australian parents out of the workforce. We know that the data reveals that almost 300,000 Australians are not in the labour force due to caring for children. This is an increase of 5.9 per cent. That really matters. Jobs, as we all know, are not just about earning money. Earning money is really important, particularly for a lot of low-income families where the second earner is locked out of the workforce because they can't pay childcare costs, but work is not just about money. Work is about dignity. It's often about worth. It's often about feeling like you're contributing to your community, to your country, to the world around you as well as to your family. When people are locked out of the workforce because they also want to have a family, that's just not right. It's fundamentally wrong. That's why it needs to be fixed.

The number of parents saying they're not working mainly due to the cost of child care has skyrocketed by 23 per cent. Australian parents are really struggling to work the hours that they want to work. It's not financially healthy, it's not healthy for people's mental health, it's often not healthy for people's physical health, and it needs to be changed. That's why Labor has a policy to make child care affordable for Australians. When the median cost of child care soared by 5.6 per cent in a year, from 2019 to 2020, to almost $523 a week, we know we have a problem in terms of fairness and equity and access. Now, $523 a week might not seem very much to a lot of people in this chamber, on the other side, or to the people out there who have been lucky enough to have had opportunities in life to obtain a high-paying job, but I can tell you that, for people in my electorate, $523 a week is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. The Morrison government itself predicts that childcare fees will well outstrip CPI for years to come, so action needs to be taken and it needs to be taken now.

I mentioned Labor's plan for child care. It is a well-crafted and well-thought-out plan. We'll scrap the $10,560 childcare subsidy cap because that's what often sees women losing money by doing an extra day's work. We will lift the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent. We will increase childcare subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000. Importantly, we would task the ACCC to design a price regulation mechanism to shed a light on costs and fees and drive them down for good. An Albanese federal Labor government would listen to the recommendations of the ACCC, unlike what this Morrison government is doing with the Productivity Commission review and other reviews. For example, the review of sex discrimination in the workplace that was carried out by the Human Rights Commissioner was left sitting on the desk for a year. The government didn't do anything about it until they were at the centre of a national maelstrom about sexual harassment in the workplace. That's just one example.

Like many of my colleagues on this side of the chamber, last year, during the pandemic, I received call after call and email after email from families and childcare providers who were beside themselves about how they were going to be able to go to work if they couldn't pay the childcare fees or if their childcare centre couldn't stay open, and from workers and providers who couldn't understand why it was their industry that was being picked on by the Morrison government when stripping away JobKeeper. They told me in a Zoom meeting that I held in August of last year that even before the pandemic there were issues in the sector, like the affordability of fees and the low pay for educators, which I've spoken about. But the pandemic and the economic recession that came with it have made addressing problems with access to child care and insecure employment across the industry even more important.

One of the questions I was asked in the forum—which the state member for Carrum, Sonya Kilkenny, also attended because she is so hardworking and so caring about women and children and their future—was a question from Kylie, which was, 'How can we get our government to respect our industry?' You know you're in trouble as a government when working people ask, 'How can we get the government to respect our industry?' The first answer, and the most obvious answer, is: at the next election, replace the current Morrison government with an Albanese Labor government which has a genuine plan for childcare fees and childcare workers. That's what we need to do.

As I go around my electorate, as I've had the privilege to do since the restrictions were lifted—I visit Lang Park Early Learning Centre and Kindergarten; the Lyrebird Community Centre occasional care program; Frankston House Sanctuary of Early Learning, which is soon to open another centre in Seaford; and, most recently, Peninsula Grammar's three- and four-year-old kindergarten—I will continue to bring two messages. One is that everyone who works in early childhood education and care deserves to be treated better by their federal government; and the second is: 'I hear you, parents. You need to be able to afford child care so that you can get back to work, further your career and look after your families, and I'll be continuing to fight for you at every opportunity I get.'

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