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

Before I start, I might just add that the Minister for Education is currently chairing a meeting but will be here at the end of this to do the sum up. In the meantime, I'm really proud to stand up here and talk about the achievements of the Albanese government—a government that understands the value of education.

Labor knows that education has the ability to transform lives, to break poverty cycles and to open up those doors of opportunity. I have said this before because I know this—because education changed my life. In our first two budgets, the Albanese government delivered significant investments in education, and I'd like to start particularly with early childhood education. We've made early childhood education more affordable for more than one million families across Australia. We've made investments to help retain our quality, highly skilled early childhood education workforce whilst also attracting new people into the profession, and we've made early childhood education more accessible for First Nations children.

The budget builds on this investment as we chart a course to a world-class, universal early childhood education and care system. In this budget, in early childhood education and care, we've provisioned funding towards a wage increase for the early childhood education and care workforce. This is an important step, a fairly significant step, to properly valuing and recognising this profession and building a stable and sustainable workforce. The Productivity Commission and the ACCC have both told us that building that workforce is vital to realising our vision of a world-class, universal early childhood education system that is accessible, affordable and inclusive. We cannot achieve this without a quality early learning workforce, and we know that the key to this is wages. That's why we're taking action now to make a wage increase a reality, with $30 million to build the IT and payment systems that will be needed to deliver on this important commitment.

In this year's budget, we're also continuing to ensure more children are able to access the transformational benefits of early childhood education, with a further $98.4 million for the Inclusion Support Program. This budget is also making significant investments in schools and higher education—for all education from birth right through life. We're delivering on the Albanese Labor commitment and our plan to build a better and fairer education system from early childhood education to school education and tertiary education.

In schools, the Albanese government is offering the biggest increase in federal funding to public schools that has ever been delivered. This includes more than $785 million for my home state of Western Australia to fully fund all public schools in WA by 2026. In higher education, we're responding to the Australian Universities Accord, including by providing cost-of-living relief for students and making tertiary education more accessible. These investments include wiping $3 billion in student debt, fixing the indexation of HELP loans, helping students overcome placement poverty with prac payments and preparing students for university with fee-free uni-ready courses.

All of these commitments are just the start of how our Labor government is also continuing to deliver for young people—for youth. Of course, my other portfolio is in youth. This budget helps young people with immediate challenges while also setting them up for the future. Investments in this budget directly address what young people have told us were the top priorities for them through our national youth consultations that we undertook last year. This includes not only measures in the Education portfolio that provide greater access to affordable and free education and training but also measures in other portfolios that provide cost-of-living relief and mental health support, address climate change and improve housing affordability and rent costs. We're also implementing initiatives outlined in Engage!—a strategy to include young people in the decisions we make.

So we remain committed to empowering young people to play a role in shaping the government policy and programs that matter to them. Through the Education portfolio, we remain committed to a fairer, more equitable and inclusive education system for all, from early childhood right through to school and right through to university, because we know that that's what sets up Australians for opportunity and success. (Time expired)

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