Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to stand up here and support this bill, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024. It is a very special bill. It's a bill that will enable early childhood education and care workers, who are some of the most important workers in the country, to be paid fairly and enable a betterment in our economy. They deserve to be paid fairly. Achieving quality outcomes for children relies on a highly skilled workforce made up of well-supported and professionally recognised early childhood education and care sector workers. Decent wages are absolutely critical to reversing attrition and growing this crucial workforce.

Every day around this country, parents trust early educators with the most important people in their world and in fact the most important people in our nation: the next generation of Australians. We ask our early childhood educators to do some of the most important jobs imaginable, and they deserve a pay rise for doing that. That's what this bill delivers. It delivers a 15 per cent pay rise for up to 200,000 childcare workers—a 10 per cent pay rise from December this year and then a further five per cent pay rise from December next year. A typical early childhood educator will receive an additional $103 a week from December 2024, increasing to at least $155 from December 2025. A typical early childhood teacher will receive an additional $166 a week from December 2024, increasing to at least $249 from December 2025. This is important because what happens in early education and care is very important.

It's not babysitting; it's early education. Ninety per cent of our children's brain development occurs in the first five years of life. It's crucial, as all the research that we've seen shows, that the earlier you start educating a child, the better it is for that child. The long-term benefits for their education are huge when you start early. Studies have been done all around the world, especially here in Australia, that show that. No child expert would argue with that point. We hope this pay rise will encourage more people to stay in the industry, more people to come back to the industry and more people to think about becoming an early educator. More educators mean more children and more parents can benefit from the life-changing work that they do.

This bill also sets up the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers Special Account. This account allows us to deliver a 15 per cent rise over two years through the Early Childhood Education and Care Worker Retention Payment Program. It supports affordability for families by establishing a fee increase cap in the terms and conditions of the worker retention payment grant. This means that providers won't be able to raise their fees in the first year by more than 4.4 per cent. This will put downward pressure on fees, helping to make early education and care more affordable for the families that need it. The wage justice bill also encourages good-faith bargaining and the making of enterprise agreements in the early childhood education and care sector. It'll also help support the steps the government has already taken to make early childhood education cheaper for Australian families—and this is extremely important across the nation.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics, or ABS, census data shows that there were 2,280 childcare workers working in the Adelaide metropolitan area—mostly in my area—in 2021, which compares with 862 in 2011. This is equivalent to an increase of 1,418, or 164.5 per cent. As of July 2024, there were 157 early childhood education and care services within my federal electorate of Adelaide. This includes centre based day care, outside-school-hours care, family day care and preschools. There were 70 centre based day-care services and 50 outside-school-hours services in the electorate that I represent. There were 9,530 families using a childcare service in the Adelaide electorate and receiving the subsidy in 2023.

Like many people in this place, I've had the privilege of visiting many, many childcare centres in my electorate, and I know that the news we are hearing today through this bill will be received by the centres positively. For example, very soon I will visit the Lady Gowrie childcare centre in Thebarton. It is a great facility doing renowned work through the Lady Gowrie system that was set up many, many years ago. In fact, both my children attended Lady Gowrie when they were in preschool and the education they received there as toddlers was amazing. I take my hat off to Lady Gowrie childcare centres. I have visited many others, including Goodstart Early Learning Plympton, Goodstart Early Learning Prospect, the Parkside Community Child Care & Early Learning Centre, the Unley Community Childcare Centre and many others—Precious Cargo Montessori and, of course, Little Oxford Montessori. They are all doing amazing work and all caring for our children but, most importantly, providing an early education. For the children who are there for preschool, their brains are developing, they're learning and they're going to get the best start and best chances in the world when they start their primary school.

When you visit these centres, you get a greater sense of the importance of their work. When you sit and meet with parents, committee members and, of course, childhood educators who work there, you get a sense of how important this work is. You also get a sense of how hard they work, but, most importantly, you get a sense of the absolute commitment of these people, many of whom have been in this sector for a number of years. They do it because they're committed to this sector, not because of the pay.

As I said, I've sat and spoken with them. Recently, I went to the Unley Community Childcare Centre, where I met with Djarra Liotta-Ndiaye, an early childhood educator there, and with Nica Hilditch and Kate Goodwin-Smith, who are advocates and parents. They told me about their trials and tribulations. They told me about the long hours that they worked and their difficulties in recruiting staff. Even though it's wonderful to see families receiving cheaper child care under this government's proposal, there are still simply not enough educators to meet this demand. That's why this bill is so important. It is clear how critically needed this pay rise is for childcare workers. We are desperately keen to retain many workers and know how important it is to help parents and carers struggling with cost-of-living pressures.

Our government is absolutely committed to seeing Australians earning more and keeping more of what they earn, and we will keep working every day to deliver for all Australians, including child educators. We all know that Australians are doing it tough; there's no doubt. I hear it when I go doorknocking, when I'm out and about in my electorate and when I'm talking to people. Certainly, child educators are among the lowest paid workers across industries. This is why our government's No. 1 priority is easing the cost-of-living pressures that are around at the moment by bringing inflation down—as we've seen, it has nearly halved since we got into government—and with our tax relief and a whole range of other things. That's why this Albanese Labor government has introduced this bill. That's why, as I said, we delivered a tax cut for all Australians, including 93,000 people in my electorate alone, with an average tax cut of $1,540 per annum. Those tax cuts are providing greater tax relief to low- and middle-income earners, who, like our child educators, are disproportionately women. These tax cuts see 90 per cent of women taxpayers retaining, on average, an additional $707 per year compared with the previous legislated tax cuts. So this bill that we're debating here today will also help reduce the gender pay gap.

As the Prime Minister outlined in his speech yesterday, this is a good policy and a very, very necessary policy. Wages in early childhood education and the care work sector, which are very female dominated workforces, are among the lowest of the caring professions. These are the people that are looking after and developing our children and grandchildren. These are the people that are doing all they can to give those children the best chance in life as they grow older and go into school.

As I said, the award rates for professional qualified educators often are comparable to rates for most unqualified workers; they're pretty much the same. An effective supported bargaining process will also lift pay and conditions for the workforce and contribute to the government's ambition for a universal high-quality sector. With gender equity at the heart of the workplace relations system, government funding in response to supported bargaining will contribute to improvements in attraction and retention within the early childhood workforce sector. Having a sustainable qualified workforce promotes workforce participation by enabling more parents and carers to engage in work, study and training and improves educational outcomes by providing, as I said earlier, that high-quality education and care to the most important people in this nation: the next generation of Australians.

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