Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons for his question. Actually, it was quite fantastic to be in the member for Lyons's electorate recently, in Sorell, and visit the Bridgewater Connected Beginnings site, talking to community members there about the importance of the early years in a child's life and about our changes to make early learning more affordable for families in Australia. These are changes that are laying the foundations for a better future, in the great Labor tradition of social and economic reform—reforms like Medicare, like superannuation, like paid parental leave—and building on the Labor legacy that brought in the National Quality Framework for early childhood education and care.

Our changes are good for children and good for families, and they are reforms that are good for the economy. They will boost productivity, boost women's workforce participation and give parents more choice. From 1 July, over one million Australian families—1.2 million, in fact—will benefit from more affordable early childhood education and care. We know the cost of early learning has often put it out of reach for many families. This is responsible cost-of-living relief that will make a real difference to family households right across the country. We're making these changes because we believe that every child, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, no matter who their parents are, should be able to benefit from access to good-quality early learning.

We know that, in the first five years of a child's life, a child's brain develops more and faster than at any other time in their life. You can see it when you go to one of these early learning centres and you sit with the beautiful children there. We want to make sure—and we're doing that; we're making sure that every child can learn, can grow and can thrive. We're looking comprehensively at how our early childhood sector operates, commissioning the Productivity Commission and the ACCC to undertake reviews. Both these reviews are consulting widely with sector organisations—including organisations like GrainGrowers Australia, who I met with yesterday over breakfast to discuss the unique needs of rural and regional families. They told me about the importance of accessibility and flexibility in early childhood education and care.

Australia now has a government that has made early learning a priority and is working to deal with the issues that have been ignored for way too long. We're proud of what we have achieved in this first year, but there is much more work to do and we're getting on with the job.

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