Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Early Childhood Education and Care Coronavirus Response and Other Measures) Bill 2021 is a good bill. I'll support it. Honourable members have spoken at some length about the merits of the bill. I'm going to take this opportunity to have a different response to the bill. It's good as far as it goes, but it's just another example of how, in this country, we're always fiddling around the edges. A bit of a change to early childhood education policy here, a bit of a change to early childhood education funding over there. We are just fiddling, when what we actually need to do is take a step back, look at the big picture and be prepared for bold reform, really bold reform, just like there was last year with the need to effectively make early childhood education funding free during a period during the pandemic. That's what we need to do.

We need to take a big step back and we need to say, 'Let's really do early childhood education effectively by making it universally available and free for any member of the community that needs it.' I'll say that again: let's have free universal early childhood education in this country. Big and bold, a bit more like what happens in the Nordic countries and other countries. At the moment, it's hard to get, it's expensive and it's targeted for certain sectors of the community. No, let's have free and universal early childhood education. Let's make it free and readily available for people who are not in the workforce, for people on low incomes, for people on high incomes, because, let's face it, every sector of the community—this is about community, not economy—has needs that need to be met. For example, someone who's not in the workforce might need respite. They might need time without the kids so they can look for work. They might need time without the kids so they can be trained and educated to join the workforce. They might need time out of the workforce with their kids because their children have special needs, or just because they love their children and they want to have some extra time beyond what might be provided through the very short maternity leave provisions in this country.

At the other end of the spectrum, successful people should also have a right to access child care. How else are we going to have equal representation of women at the top levels of the corporate sector? How else are we going to have an equal representation of women on boards of the big corporations? How else are we going to get equal representation of women in this place? How else are we going to let them all achieve their potential? Unless all women, from the most disadvantaged through to the non-working right through to the most successful women, have free, universal child care in this country.

That will of course require a big expansion of the early childhood education sector, and it will cost big bucks. The question is though: can we afford it as a country? The answer is: of course we can. In a normal financial year—not a pandemic year—the federal government spends about half a trillion dollars. That is just a remarkable amount of money. It's such a large amount of money as to be almost incomprehensible. Where it goes is all about priorities for a government. I would have said having universal, free early childhood education in this country should be a top priority because it's good for parents, it's especially good for mums, and it's very good for the children. All the evidence shows that being in early childhood education is very beneficial for children—not all children, and there are a lot of good reasons why some parents would not want their children to go into early childhood education, but it's beneficial for a lot of children. It's certainly my experience with my own daughters. I really saw them bloom in the early childhood environment. So, yes, we can afford it. And it will give everyone the opportunity to work and, in particular, for more women to join the workforce, which is what many of them want to do.

The Productivity Commission estimates that there's something like 165,000 parents in Australia who want to work but are not able to work because they can't afford early childhood education or they can't access early childhood education. That's 165,000 people we could have in the workforce growing our economy, growing our community and making our country better in certain ways. No wonder The Australia Institute estimates that with free child care our economy would be $140 billion bigger. In other words, it's not going to cost the federal government money; it's going to make the federal government money. So, even if the federal government is not really interested in giving access to free universal early childhood education to all the parents in the country, surely it should be worrying about the budget bottom line—a $140 billion bigger economy if we had free universal childhood education. Frankly, I think that's a slam dunk.

Let's make a quantum leap with early childhood education. When we often refer to it as a way of achieving equality in this country for women, again, we're fiddling around the edges a bit here, because we tend to have those stovepipes. We talk about sexual assault—good heavens, haven't we spoken about that a lot lately?—and the sexual misconduct of men and the need for men to improve their behaviour, and we talk about early childhood education and we talk about gender ratios in the parliament and we talk about wage disparity, but we're talking about all these bits and pieces. Again, why don't we take a quantum step and say, 'We as a community, we as a parliament and you as a government need to have a holistic response to gender inequality, and we need to fix it as a country.' It's not going to be fixed by ticking all these boxes like better child care and committees in the parliament investigating allegations. What we need to do is have equality in our DNA and not to be a box in a department or a minister's office to tick when they're looking at a policy initiative. It needs to be in our DNA. Everything we say and do, every policy we formulate and every bill we pass in this place has to be aimed at the goal of genuine equality in this country, not some tokenism like having a Minister for Women. What has that achieved? I think that's tokenism, and it's even more obviously tokenism when the Minister for Women wouldn't go out and front that rally on Monday. What an opportunity for the minister to put her heart where her mouth is and to go out and to speak to the crowd! Yes, it would have been difficult. Yes, it would have been confronting. Yes, there would have been risks. But wouldn't that have been a strong demonstration! If it were in our DNA, the Prime Minister would have gone out there. Yes, there would have been embarrassing photos in the paper the next day. It would have been very awkward. But what a strong act of leadership it would have been! What a strong signal it would have given: 'Yes, we as a government, as a parliament and as a community are going to address the issue of the inequality in this country in the myriad of ways it occurs.'

I won't keep the House too much longer. I just want to make this point really clearly: let's stop fiddling around the edges when it comes to early childhood education. Let's seriously have a discussion about the merits of universal free child care in this country and how it would unleash $140 billion of economic activity; how it would put 165,000 people, mostly women, into the workforce if that's what they want to do; how it would improve our community and our society through the fact that parents, if they wanted to, could have their children in early childhood education while they have some respite, which is very important, particularly if they're dealing with mental illness; how it would allow parents to spend time with their kids and develop their relationships; how it would allow parents to spend time with their children with special needs; how it would allow parents to go out and look for a job or be trained or educated for a job; and how, at the other end of the spectrum, we would find that, if everyone had access to the workforce on an equal footing and were able to stay at work for the full day and have a full career, we would have 50 per cent of senior management roles in our corporations being filled by women and we would have women in 50 per cent of seats in here, on both sides of the chamber. Oh, heavens! There is so much that could be achieved if we had that sort of vision, and it would not cost the government money, because the economy would grow so sharply and so strongly. The economy would be better off, and I reckon the budget would be better off.

The other point that I made is that we need to think boldly not only about early childhood education but about achieving equality in this country. Yes, free universal early childhood education would be a building block of achieving equality in this country, but, again, it's just a building block when what's actually needed is for us as a community, and us in here in the parliament, and you over there in the government, not to think that ticking boxes and having tokenism such as a minister will solve the problem but to think about equality being in our DNA. Everything we say, every idea we get, every policy we formulate and every law we pass should all be with a mind to achieving equality in this country in all the countless ways it can be achieved.

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