Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Early childhood education is vital. It's good for the economy, it's good for families and it's amazing for our youngest Australians. If we want to invest in our human capital and be a wealthier, smarter country 20, 30 years from now, it is one of the smartest investments that we can make. That is why the government's commitment to a 15 per cent wage rise for early childhood educators, contingent on centres not increasing their fees by more than four per cent over 12 months, is so welcome. It's good, sensible Labor policy. It's good for workers and it's good for families.

Now, you'd expect the opposition, the alternative government in the country, to support it, but once again they're full of negativity and blatant lies. On 9 August, Liberal senator Gerard Rennick, in his own words, on X, formerly known as Twitter, said:

Institutionalised Childcare is a sacred cow for the Labor Party. It helps to fulfil a number of their goals. 1) Destroy the family unit. 2) Brainwash children early with the woke mind virus …

To suggest that by lifting wages for hardworking early childhood educators the government is seeking to 'destroy the family unit' is frankly just alt-right lunacy, but it's also profoundly insulting to every Australian mum and dad and carer, and sometimes grandparents, who have cared for kids, who parent kids, who have chosen to access child care for their children to balance work and family responsibilities. There are even people who are not in the workforce at the time who want to access early childhood education and invest in their kids. Peter Dutton recently said that this Liberal senator, this same guy, Senator Rennick, has 'demonstrated he's not afraid to take up the fight in order to defend the values of the LNP' and 'I ask you to support Gerard as part of my team.'

It's not the first time we've seen this attitude. Remember they were infighting in their own party room over childcare subsidies when they were in government. One of the LNP good old blokes club even went so far as suggesting publicly that working women were 'outsourcing parenting'. That led to weeks of infighting in the coalition party room, and it's never been clear just how many of them support that view and support Senator Rennick.

It is crystal clear, though, that the Liberals do not support wage increases for workers. And it's no surprise. When they were in government, it was their official economic policy. I quote their then finance minister. He said that low wages were 'a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture'. I'll give them that. That's one thing they did achieve in their wasted decade of decay and dysfunction: real wages went backwards.

For people in my electorate, God knows how many childcare workers—I meet them when I doorknock and I see them at the childcare centres—and all the parents who rely on quality early childhood education, this is incredibly welcome.

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