Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The early years are such an important time of life for development, and ensuring that access to high-quality early education is affordable in Australia will benefit the nation significantly. That's why the Albanese government is making changes to make education cheaper. According to data, last year 73,000 people who wanted to work didn't look for work because they couldn't make the cost of early childhood education work for them and their families. So cheaper education and care is good for children, good for families and good for the economy.

My community of Chisholm will benefit enormously from the changes to early education and care. In the electorate I represent in Victoria, the number of families who access child care is among the highest in the state. In Chisholm alone, 7,200 families will benefit from our changes. That's the fourth-highest number in the whole of Victoria. So this is incredibly important to me and to the people who sent me here to Canberra to represent them and help build a better future.

Around 96 per cent of families across Australia who use early childhood education and care will be better off, because from July this year, only a few months away, the government will lift the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families with a combined income of under $80,000 and will increase subsidy rates for families earning less than $530,000. We'll also keep the higher CCS for families with multiple children aged five years and under in care. Our plan for cheaper child care makes early childhood education and care more affordable for around 1.26 million Australian families, and no family will be worse off. There are real benefits for Australian families, especially when a lot of people are struggling with inflation. A family on a combined income of $120,000 with one child in care will save around $1,780 in the first year of this plan.

Childcare costs, unfortunately, increased by 41 per cent under the previous government. That's a significant burden to families already struggling to make ends meet. We came into government after a decade of wasted opportunities under a government that oversaw enormous increases to the cost of child care and also saw Australia do really badly when it came to gender equity. We, in fact, went backwards in terms of gender equity under the previous government.

Our plan for cheaper early childhood education and care will not just ease financial pressure for families but also aid in lifting women's workforce participation. The reality is most primary caregivers and stay-at-home parents are women, and this decision is often partly fuelled by the question of which parent has the higher earning capacity, given the expensive costs of child care. We have a gender pay gap in Australia of 14.1 per cent, and it is often women in feminised industries who are the ones that do worse, both while working in the early childhood education sector and as consumers of it. So I'm really proud that our government is not just putting these measures in place but also working to legislate measures to decrease the gender pay gap and to properly value all workers for the work they do. Workers in female dominated industries have persistently earned less historically, and that's despite the fact that workers in these key industries are vital for the functioning of our society.

We know our landmark reforms, such as cheaper early childhood education, are only possible if we retain, recruit and train a high-quality workforce, and we have a plan to deliver just that. That begins with the recognition and professionalisation of the workforce—recognising that this is a workforce of educators, not child minders; that these are highly trained experts; and that there is a significant and respected career pathway in the early education sector. After a decade of neglect and inaction from the previous government, we're making changes to ensure that we are able to have a sustainable early childhood education workforce and sector.

I know our plan is incredibly important to my community, because people in Chisholm tell me that it is. I'm here to listen, to advocate, to represent and to work as a member of the Labor government for real solutions for the real issues facing people in my electorate, and I'm so proud of what we're delivering.

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