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

Since I've been elected, one of the greatest joys in this job has been to visit early childhood education centres and meet with the hardworking educators and the bright young residents in my community who benefit so much from the time they get to spend with educators. I hear from families all the time about what a difference our policies in the early childhood education and care space are making to their lives and how they are improving the capacity for workforce participation, which I think we all know benefits women most. I'm also really proud to be part of a government that has recognised the importance of addressing the gender pay gap when it comes to feminised industries. Since we were elected, our government has taken a number of measures to do this, and I'm pleased that the pay gap is the lowest it's ever been; although, of course, there is an extraordinary amount of work we still need to do.

This piece of legislation, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024, really goes to the heart of making sure that there is, as the title of this bill would suggest, wage justice for workers in the early childhood education and care sector, a highly feminised industry. I've visited many early childhood education and care centres in my electorate, including a recent visit to the Goodstart centre in Mount Waverley with the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. We received a wonderful welcome, a very warm sense of hospitality and a beautiful painting created by the children, which I know now sits in the Prime Minister's office. The reason I mention this is that it really underscores how important it is to make sure that we offer the very best possible education and care and the very best possible wages in this sector. The fact that the Prime Minister has engaged so deeply in this area I think demonstrates our very sincere commitment to improvements in the sector.

This bill establishes a special account to fund grants to approved early childhood education and care providers to support a wage increase of 15 per cent for eligible workers over two years and limit increases to fees charged by providers. So this is really a win-win situation. We are going to make sure that early childhood educators are paid more, with an increase of 15 per cent to wages, and we're also going to limit the increases to fees that are charged by providers. I know this will be very welcome for households right across my electorate of Chisholm and indeed right across Australia. This bill builds on our government's support for the early childhood education and care sector and our support for Australian families more broadly, including the cheaper child care measures which we've already implemented, which have made ECEC cheaper for more than a million families.

We know that providers have been delaying expansion plans, they've been closing rooms and they've been limiting enrolments, unfortunately, because it's been really difficult to find staff. We know that one of the reasons for this has been that the wages have not been a fair remuneration for the kind of work that is being undertaken in centres right across the country. Fair wages—for those who, I hope we can all agree, are some of the most important workers in the country—are critical to reversing the attrition we've seen and for growing the sector workforce. This is a crucial step in charting the course to universal early childhood education and care.

This bill delivers on the joint announcement made on 8 August to deliver a wage increase to address ECEC workforce shortages, improve service quality, support the affordability of early childhood education and care for families, ensure the sustainability of the sector and encourage good-faith bargaining and the making of enterprise agreements in the sector.

This bill provides the legal framework for the establishment and operation of a special account which will be used to administer the Early Childhood Education and Care Worker Retention Payment grant. This grant program will deliver targeted financial support to ECEC providers, enabling them to offer wage increases to their eligible workers. The creation of this special account aligns with our government's commitment to supporting the ECEC workforce.

This bill also establishes the terms and conditions of the ECEC worker retention payment grant, including a limit on fee increases charged by the provider. The grant guidelines will set the limit at 4.4 per cent in the year from 8 August 2024, and the ABS will develop a new ECEC cost index to guide limits on increases in future years. This is an important affordability condition that will ensure we keep downward pressure on fees for families. This is just another example of our government's focus on relieving the cost-of-living pressures that households are experiencing, and I hope that people in this place can support this initiative.

The wage justice special account will be established from the date that the act comes into effect, with funds to be drawn from 1 July 2025. The account will be credited over two years, based on the estimated annual expenditure profile for the ECEC Worker Retention Payment. The special account will be time limited and will self-repeal on 30 June 2028. To enable the first payments to be made in December of this year, grant agreements will initially be supported by using a special appropriation which already exists under family assistance legislation. Transitional provisions in the bill will ensure that grant agreements are subsequently deemed to have effect under the bill, with funding supported by the new special account from 1 July next year.

This is a really important piece of legislation. It recognises that decent wages—fair wages—are critical to reversing attrition and growing the workforce. The lack of fair wages has been impacting the availability of early childhood education and care for families and has been limiting opportunities for people who are passionate about working in this industry but require higher wages to support their own families. It is a significant development that early childhood educators are going to get a 15 per cent pay rise. In the time I've been in this parliament, and before, I've met with many early childhood educators and carers. I know just how passionate they are about the work that they do. But I also know about the level of burnout that our workers in centres are experiencing as a result of attrition and about the concern that they have for the children and families they care about when they aren't able to provide the level of service they'd like to.

I want to very sincerely thank and acknowledge the many, many educators and families who have been advocating for change in this area, to commend them for their steely focus on this issue and for elevating it to ensure that it has received the national attention that it deserves. We all know that early education gives children their very best start in life and gives families the support and confidence they need to return to their workforce—because they know that their children are being educated by well-paid, highly skilled professionals.

The pay rises we're seeing here will set a new standard in early childhood education and care, and there's no going back. This is a really important, big step forward. I've spoken to early educators who say that this pay rise is transformative. This has been a missing piece, as far as they're concerned, in the work that they do in providing children and families with the high-quality early education and care they deserve. As I said, there's been a lot of attrition and, as a result, a lot of staff burnout among those who remain. This pay rise will mean that around 200,000 educators who have been struggling to meet the cost of barest daily essentials will now have the opportunity for stability and security in their lives. I think we could all agree that's what they deserve.

It's clear that this pay rise is part of a broader approach that our government has taken to lift the standard and improve accessibility to early childhood education and care. As I mentioned earlier, this goes to the heart of gender equality in this country. Not only are we lifting the wages of a highly feminised workforce but, through doing so, we're enabling carers, who are largely women, to enter the workforce, should they choose to do so, with confidence. Our government made a similar decision in relation to aged-care, again a highly feminised industry. It delivered a pay rise there that recognised and respected the highly skilled and very important work that aged-care workers do.

I feel really proud to stand here and speak on this issue as part of a government that recognises the importance of this sector, but I wouldn't be able to do so were it not for the many people who've spoken to me about this over the years and who've been fierce in their determination to see this change. Every time I enter an early education centre, the love that educators have for their work is so apparent, and the children are clearly thriving in the centres in my electorate. I've spoken to families who say that this is a key issue for them, ensuring they have confidence to go back to work and ensuring that their children are educated from their earliest years. We know that the first five years are incredibly important in a child's life. It is so significant that our government is recognising that importance by ensuring the sector have certainty and, through pay rises and other changes, the respect that they deserve.

I look forward to visiting, once I return to my electorate, more centres. I know I will be opening an early childhood education centre very soon. There's a lot of growth in this sector in my electorate. But for the moment I'm very pleased to stand here as part of a government that is delivering wage justice for early childhood education and care workers—wage justice that is much deserved.

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