Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

The first 1,000 days from conception to a child's second birthday offer a unique window of opportunity—of tremendous potential but enormous vulnerability—to build a healthier and more prosperous future. My interest in this area comes not just from being the father of two young children, one almost one year old, but from having worked in this policy area with the WA state government nearly two decades ago as well as seeing the need and programs in my own community.

Broadly, Australia's children are doing well, and most are safe and healthy. However, the first 1,000 days are critical. In fact, before that a future parent's health, prior to conception, is also very important. That 1,000 days is when a child's brain begins to grow and develop and when the foundations for their lifelong health are built. There is a great deal of research in this space ultimately making similar findings. Countries that fail to invest in the wellbeing of women and children in the first 1,000 days lose billions of dollars to lower economic productivity and higher health costs. Leading economists across the globe are calling for greater investment in nutrition and wellbeing of mothers, babies and toddlers as a way to create brighter and more prosperous futures for us all.

In 2020 UNICEF ranked Australia 32nd out of 41 nations for child wellbeing, noting that we are 'falling short in delivering consistently good health, education and social outcomes for children'. For a rich, privileged country like ours, that is completely unacceptable. Across the country, 41 per cent of Australia's most disadvantaged zero- to five-year-olds live in the top 20 per cent of the most disadvantaged suburbs. Children from socially and economically disadvantaged areas typically have poorer physical health, have less access to learning materials and are less likely to access materials they need.

It's communities like mine that need extra intervention. In the electorate of Burt, which I represent, the Challis Community Primary School integrated early childhood and family support service and parenting centre aims to prevent early disadvantage from becoming an ongoing drag on a child's chances of success in life as well as those of their family. The catchment area for the Challis community school has a SEIFA rating of 965.9, which is well below the 1,000 score average—indeed, materially below.

The origins of the parenting centre at Challis are quite interesting. The school was looking to improve the outcomes for its students graduating year 7, and then year 6, and found that its student cohort entering school were entering at a lower level of capability than the average cohort across Perth and across Western Australia. When looking at what they could do to affect this for the better, they decided to work with local health services and develop parenting training services to work with child health nurses and integrate directly with new parents exiting hospital to create that connection with the school.

It is indeed troubling to find there is a need to teach parents that feeding very young children on the bread from a hamburger is a terrible idea, due to the sugar content of that food. But it's important that we don't blame the parents because there are many intergenerational problems that have arisen over time. Indeed, most of our learning about parenting comes from that which we saw our own parents do. And if you have not been fortunate enough to grow up with parents who have known how to provide correct nutrition and developmental support for children, or you were removed from your parents at an early age, as many of the parents of students in my community were, we lose these benefits of passed down knowledge and information. The parenting centre at Challis, and programs like it, seek to intervene to make sure we don't have this as an ongoing problem.

Changes such as making sure we have continuity of midwifery care would also help a great deal in improving outcomes for children by improving their lives in those first 1,000 days. More child health nurses, and ensuring they are available and able to meet frequently with new mothers, are also very important. Unfortunately, many child health nurse services have been negatively affected by COVID. Family centres around Western Australia that used to provide such capacity-building facilities, as Challis does now, need additional funding to continue to do that great work. And, of course, providing better access to child care is a core part of the policy platform that Labor takes forward to the next election. Ensuring that more families have access to child care that is affordable and available to them is so very important for ensuring the future of our children in our communities.

It's in the best interest of our communities that we have these services available to support all families. It takes a village to raise a family, but if you don't have a village available to you then you need these supports. We need to support these families and our communities to get the best outcomes.

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