Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am concerned about any injection of funds that could be inflationary at this time, when inflation is having a huge impact on cost of living, but childcare workers are some of the lowest paid workers in the country. In a budget of more than $600 billion, it seems reasonable that we should be able to find a few billion to pay women well and value our children's early education. I am concerned that there's no allocation of funds for this special account, despite the estimated cost of the grant program being $3.6 billion for the next few years. We'll have to wait for the annual appropriations bill to see how much money is put into this account, but the giving of grants is not dependent on funds being put into this account.

It's possible that the payments have been set up through this special account as a way of making it harder for an alternative government to take the pay rise away from childcare workers if the government doesn't win next year's election. But setting this up without allocating funds does feel like kicking the can down the road.

My last concern is in relation to the short-term timeframe. The bill is hazy about what happens after the first two years. The worker retention payment is considered an interim payment while the Fair Work Commission finalises its gender undervaluation review of priority awards and the government considers the recent ACCC and Productivity Commission reports on early childhood education and care. If the government wants to see long-term structural reform to pay feminised industries better wages and drive a long-term improvement in the quality of care, the government will need to come clean about how it would fund this in the long term. If this increase is not going to be paid through higher fees in the long term, we need to have an open discussion about the social and economic benefit of high-quality early childhood education and care. Without the support of the coalition, this may go the way of the similar Early Years Quality Fund, which was ended with Tony Abbott not supporting that program.

Another concern is the broad discretionary powers created. The government can make grants and there isn't much guidance on the use of these powers in the legislation. I am hoping that these and other issues are addressed in the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee's report, which I believe came out today.

Beyond the changes made in this bill, further reform is needed. There is some momentum towards creating universal access to quality early childhood education and care. This is obviously a big change and would require a pathway to get there, but it's the sort of bold thinking that has the potential to set us on a pathway to a better educated and are more fully productive population. I recognise that this would require nearly 50,000 early childhood education and care graduates a year by 2030, more than double recent graduating numbers. This will take time, but it seems to me to be the right direction.

The other reform needed is in relation to the activity test. The activity test is based on an assumption that early childhood education and care is a benefit for parents, not for kids. Recognising the benefits for kids, especially from lower socioeconomic families, leads to the conclusion that reforming the activity test would have long-term benefits. I would like to see the activity test removed, relaxed or substantially reconfigured in line with recommendations from the Productivity Commission, the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, the ACCC, Thrive By Five and Early Childhood Australia.

In conclusion, I support this bill as one step towards quality, accessible and affordable early childhood education and care. Early childhood education and care is important for kids and families. Like workers in many traditionally feminised industries, childcare workers are underpaid. We need to attract a quality workforce to educate and care for our kids, and paying them better is a good start. There are a few issues with this bill that I hope are addressed in the current Senate inquiry. In particular, the bill takes a short-term approach and doesn't allocate money to the special account being established, so it's kicking the can down the road on longer term reform and costs. The broad powers in the grant-making laws leave a lot to the government's discretion. So it's appropriate that the bill be reconsidered in a few years in light of a number of reviews currently underway.

While you couldn't say that the bill will have no inflationary impact, increasing the pay for our lowest-earning women seems an appropriate decision. Having more women here in parliament means that we are starting to correct the long-term gender bias in how we value different types of jobs. Paying childcare workers better is a good step, but I urge the government and the opposition to be bold in thinking about universal childcare access as a step to a better educated population and greater workforce participation for women.

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