Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill before the House today will help address significant workforce shortages in early childhood education by supporting the delivery of a wage increase of 15 per cent for eligible workers over two years. A typical early childhood educator on award wages will receive an additional $103 a week from December 2024, increasing to at least $155 from December 2025. A typical early childhood teacher on award wages will receive an additional $166 a week from December 2024, increasing to at least $249 a week from December 2025. These are very significant pay increases.

The wage justice bill also establishes terms and conditions of the ECEC worker retention payment grant, including a limit on fee increases. Let's be clear: the government does not accept centres seeking to raise fees for families as a result of these wage increases. Our measures put downward pressure on fees, helping to make ECE more affordable and accessible for families. The wage justice bill also encourages good-faith bargaining and the making of enterprise agreements in the sector. This will help support the steps the government has already taken to make ECE cheaper for Australian families.

In September 2017, I spoke in this place when on the opposition benches to stand with the United Workers Union's Big Steps campaign and the early childhood educators of Tasmania in their struggle for better pay. I asked for the undervaluing of our early childhood educators by the then coalition government to end. It never did. I'll take the words of the member for Gippsland at heart that there is a good deal of bipartisanship in this place, but it took the election of a Labor government to bring wage justice to early childhood education workers. Unions have played a pivotal role in these changes, with the Australian Education Union, the Independent Education Union and the United Workers Union all advocating tirelessly for their members.

Jo Schofield, National President of the United Workers Union, said:

This wage increase recognises a group of predominantly female workers who have been undervalued for decades, despite providing the social, emotional, and educational foundations for Australia's next generation. It means educators will be able to stay in the sector and in the jobs they love.

Early Childhood Australia CEO Sam Page agreed it was time to value early childhood educators. She said:

This is a well overdue pay increase, and I am thrilled that the Government has acknowledged the professionalism of our educators … Early childhood educators play a crucial role in the learning and development of young children, and this recognition is a significant step towards valuing their contributions appropriately.

Paying ECE workers fairly is a crucial step in charting the course to universal accessibility of early childhood education and care. The Albanese Labor government is proud to say to our early childhood educators and carers that we value you. We recognise your essential work, and we will continue to support you, just like you support the families who entrust their children with you.

I would like to mention and congratulate Tammy and Michael of Bagdad Education and Care, who in August were awarded national winners of the excellence in early STEM education for their project 'Will the ropes break under our weight?' Codeveloped with children aged three to six years old, this project involved children experimenting with ropes, physics and motion over many months to develop and test hypotheses around the properties of ropes and how to strengthen them. It's tremendous—and I'm sure the member for Gippsland will take note—that the highest quality early STEM education in the entirety of Australia took place in a very small town in my electorate. I commend the work of Tammy and Michael, who provide an exceptional service, locally owned, locally delivered to local children and families, and they deserve all the support they can get to ensure they can continue to provide their service to the community for many years to come.

The work of Bagdad Education and Care reminds me that 90 per cent of brain development happens before a child reaches school age. Just think—in their project at Bagdad, those preschool children were learning physics. Fostering brain development with early childhood education has benefits throughout life, and I would argue it is one of the most important investments we can make as a country. The Australian Early Development Census demonstrates early learners are advantaged with significantly higher social and emotional skills. Early learners outperform their peers in physical, cognitive, communicative, socioemotional and adaptive developmental criteria. When they enter school, children who attended early childhood education consistently show higher test scores across mathematics, science and literacy compared to those who did not. ECE provides a massive head start.

I take the words of the member for Gippsland to heart; there are significant parts of the country where there are not enough early childhood education centres. A good way to start is to make sure there's wage justice for staff. If you can attract more people into the sector, then it makes it much more attractive.

Conversely, a child deprived of ECE performs worse in every metric by nearly half. Before you say that kids in early childhood education are more likely to come from more affluent and stable homes, which skews the figures, I have to tell you that, no, that's been taken into account. The figures are consistent across socioeconomic categories. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with access to ECE perform better than those without. It's the same story across all other socioeconomic categories. The common factor is the existence or absence of early childhood education in a child's life.

The 2014 Australian government report called Access to early childhood education in Australia: insights from a qualitative study confirms that most parents are aware of the advantages of early childhood education. The study also details that many parents make the difficult decision to opt out of ECE because of concerns about cost and quality—and that is something that this government, elected in 2022, eight years after that study was published, is doing something about. Early childhood education and care workers are simply some of the most important workers in the country, but, for far too long, their pay has not reflected that. Just like in aged care, early childhood education is an overwhelmingly feminised workforce and, just like in aged care, the pay has been too low for too long. No early childhood educator should have to face the choice of leaving the job they love because they need a job that will pay their bills.

With this bill, and with the other changes that we've implemented over the past three years, this Labor government is changing that. We are progressing towards universal early childhood education that will be accessible for every Australian family. We're not there yet; we have some distance to go; but we have started the journey. The Albanese Labor government has already taken significant steps to make early childhood education and care more accessible for more Australian families. More than a million Australian families are benefiting from our cheaper childcare reforms, which are already reducing out-of-pocket costs for centre based day care by 11 per cent, while preserving higher subsidies for families with multiple children in care. More than 1,400 families in my electorate of Lyons are included.

After just three years of Labor government, the early childhood education and care sector has grown by more than 30,000 workers. We haven't just arrested the decline that was occurring under the former government; we've turned it around. This achievement is a direct result of our efforts to respect ECE workers with higher pay and to work alongside providers to develop practical solutions for staff retention and strengthen recruitment and training. We are investing in the next generation of early childhood educators already, with our Australian Labor government providing more university places and more access to fee-free TAFE. We have provided sustainability grants for regional ECE centres, ensuring that no matter where you live—with some exceptions, unfortunately—there is a quality centre available to you.

I recently met with Letitia at Discovery Early Learning Centre in Bridgewater, Lucy at Uniting outside school hours care in Bagdad, and Monica at Bicheno early learning services on Tasmania's east coast. All are receiving sustainability funding to ensure that access can continue for disadvantaged and regional communities. I heard similar stories from each of them: demand is increasing, but trying to find, train and retain employees is a constant challenge. Decent wages are critical to growing the workforce and providing the service. Services nationally have been delaying expansion plans, closing rooms and limiting enrolments because they simply couldn't find enough qualified staff. That has been impacting on the availability of early childhood education and care for families and limiting parents to shorter hours. As well as the impacts on childhood development, this means more parents, usually women, are staying home when they'd rather be in the workforce, contributing to both household earnings and national economic output.

In providing wage justice to ECE workers, this Labor government is supporting workers, supporting children, supporting families and, ultimately, supporting the national economy. I commend the bill to the House.

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