Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to see that the coalition have had a change of heart and are going to support early childhood educators and support wage justice. I've been in this parliament for 11 years now and I remember one of the first acts of the Abbott and Hockey administration was to axe the national early years quality fund that was created by the previous Labor government to start addressing the inadequacy of pay and wage justice for early childhood educators. So it's good to see that, after decades of campaigning and decades of reform put forward by Labor, the coalition have finally got onboard and are going to help deliver wage justice for early childhood educators.

This is a sector that is highly feminised. Over 96 per cent of people working in early childhood education are women and it's one of the reasons why so many people have said that this is also about pay equality and pay justice for women working in this sector. Quite often throughout this campaign over the last two decades, early childhood educators who have degrees, who have diplomas, who have certificates, have compared their wage to the wage of male-equivalent industries with certificates and diplomas, and the numbers just don't stack up. For far too long, women working in this sector as early childhood educators have been paid minimum wage—the award—and this bill helps incentivise and encourage services and educators to get together to collectively bargain to lift themselves out of being trapped in low pay.

Early childhood education sector workers do some of the most important work in our country. They work to give our children the best possible start in life. They work with parents to literally give meaning to that term 'it takes a village to raise a child'. Everything they do helps to shape the next generation. They embraced the National Quality Framework that was introduced by the former Labor government. They have goals and plans that they draft for each child in their education and care services. Yet for all that extra work they do, that individual planning that they do, the education that they provide for our youngest Australians, they have not been compensated or paid. They have not had the wage justice that they deserve. It took this government, a Labor government, to introduce these reforms to see them finally be paid what they are worth.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the many activists in my local electorate who've campaigned for this for decades, some of whom have retired but are still excited to see that the next generation of educators will benefit from their campaign. For example, Roe Sally worked forever at the Goodstart Golden Square centre. Her passion for early years education is extraordinary yet she did it on minimum wage. She was so committed to the families and to the children but, equally, she was committed to the other women working in the sector and to the union that ran the campaign, the United Workers Union. If we wanted to keep qualified, good educators in the sector, we had to address the matters of pay. I want to acknowledge Ash and Lisa, who are still working in the sector. Lisa, who is now the director of the Bendigo Goodstart centre, says that she already has the list of educators and teachers that she is ready to call up to say, 'You can come back now; we've fixed the pay.' One of the key reasons why women leave the sector is because the wage that they earn doesn't pay the bills.

Too often, I have heard, like other members of parliament on this side of the House have heard, that educators could earn more money working in retail or working in hospitality than they could working in early childhood education because it was an industry that was stuck on the award. Far too many great educators left the job, not because they didn't love the job, not because they didn't get fulfilment out of the work, but because it literally did not pay the bills. This bill and addressing wage justice will encourage women to come back to the sector. I know, through talking to my local centres, that is key.

It's not just something that, anecdotally, we're hearing from people, from centres and from educators. It was also supported by the Productivity Commission's release of its report a few weeks ago that said that the first step to increasing access to ECEC for families is addressing and building the workforce, and pay is critical to that. Far too many services in our deserts—and I acknowledge the previous speaker, who spoke about deserts. I too even have them in an electorate like mine. It is a regional electorate with nowhere near the geographical challenges of the member for Grey's electorate, but even in my electorate we have desert areas.

These services have delayed expansion plans. They've been closing rooms or limiting enrolments because they just haven't had the qualified staff to open. I've been to many centres in my own electorate where the front room or the back room is closed. On the Building Blocks website, they have the capacity to take more children, but they refuse the enrolments because they know they don't have the staff or won't be able to attract the staff to open their rooms to full capacity.

We conducted our own survey where we wanted to get a handle on how many centres this was affecting. So we rang all of our directors in our electorate and just asked, 'Is staffing an issue, and by how much?' All of them except for a handful said that they were not at capacity, because they didn't have the qualified staff required. The few centres that were at full capacity included the council run centres—where they are under a different enterprise agreement where they pay their staff more—and they were able to run at full capacity. So having qualified educators is linked to being able to expand services, and having wages fixed is linked to being able to have the qualified staff.

This wage justice bill does two important things. It will help address workforce shortages by supporting those workers by increasing pay, with 15 per cent for eligible workers over two years—as identified, 10 per cent this year and a further five per cent next year. A typical early childhood educator will receive an additional $103 from December 2024, increasing to at least $155 in December 2025. That's real pay justice that will make a real difference to household budgets. A typical early childhood educator teacher will receive an additional $166 from December 2024, an increase of at least $249 from December 2025.

This is critical if we're going to achieve another objective around kinder and make sure that all of our children have access to three- and four-year-old kinder before entering their foundation and prep years. The Victorian state government has set a bold plan in terms of kinder attendance, yet this state kinder funded program is struggling to keep up with demand. In my area, like most other areas of Victoria, it falls to the kinder program in the long day care setting to be able to make sure that every child has access to the kinder requirements that they need to transition into the foundation years of primary school.

What I also really respect about this bill and what I'm so pleased to see is that it's not just a straight increase to the award. It is about incentivising enterprise bargaining. It encourages good faith bargaining and the making use of the multi-employer bargaining stream that was introduced by this government. This fund will help support that legislation achieve its objectives. It will help support the steps the government is already taking to support early childhood educators and to see a fairer bargaining system.

In my own family's experience, like so many in this place, I could not do this job without the amazing educators and teachers in my children's life. I have a three- and four-year-old, and we've had the opportunity to not just attend our local Annie Galvin, which is a council run centre where my children are today—although they'll be home by now and getting ready for dinner; they've also had the opportunity to attend the service here at Parliament House, the Capital Hill Early Childhood Centre.

I want to take a moment to thank and acknowledge the great work of Melita and her team, who balance the unique position of parliamentarians and staff enrolling their children on a casual basis during sitting weeks. They manage the disruption of our children coming into their service, yet they don't miss a beat in the quality of the education that they provide. For my daughter Daisy, this was the first childcare service that she attended. She was born right before COVID, and, as you know, Victoria went into lockdown before any of the other states. A lot of the natural opportunities for young children, for babies and for parents with toddlers to interact in playgroups, rhyme times and tumble tots, all those things you usually do in the first 12 months of life, were suspended. So the very first children that Daisy met were at the Capital Hill Early Childhood Centre. I think of the impact that had. I think of the opportunity she had to be able to do what is just so natural for young children to do—to learn, to meet, to play and to interact with children.

We'll be talking about the impact that COVID has had on Daisy's generation for many years. I do know that, during that period, our early childhood educators really stepped up. They really made sure that essential workers had an opportunity to go to work, to do what we needed them to do, and that their children were cared for. They were such an important part of the response. Yet they did it with not a lot in the way of thanks, particularly from the previous government. They did it on minimum wage. They did it while dealing with all the other barriers that came with the COVID years. There were drop-offs at the gate. There were masks all the time. There was the challenge of separation anxiety, with parents unable to stay in the room with their children that little bit longer. We had to communicate through apps and notebooks because we had to limit our engagement. But they did it, and they did it well. They made sure that those young children still had a quality education and a great experience, as well as the foundation to their stepping stones for being successful in their primary school years.

This bill addresses a campaign that has been run by our unions that have been involved in this sector for a long time. They did it not just for their members but for every child, every child that will enter into their service for years to come. I pay tribute to the United Workers Union, the Australian Education Union and the Australian Services Union for their passion and their commitment. I also acknowledge the amazing educators who just did not give up, from the days when they walked off the job to draw attention to this issue to working and to the delegations they've had in this place. They invite us into their service with warmth. Regardless of political colour, they will always welcome a member of parliament to share with them the work that they do and how critical it is.

This bill is critical to ensuring we achieve our ultimate goal, which is access to universal early childhood education. I look forward to the work that our government will do to help achieve that. Until we have a situation where every child, regardless of their parent's income or postcode, has access to early childhood education, work is not done in this space. Critical to getting there is ensuring we address wage justice and that we are paying these amazing educators and teachers value for their work.

I cannot think of another example in the Australian workplace or in the Australian economy that speaks more to why we need a parliament, why we need to address gender equality and why we need to address pay. I encourage all of those present to vote for this bill. I would again like to acknowledge the extraordinary work of the many educators and teachers in my electorate who each and every day give our children the great opportunity of early childhood education and the care that they require.

See this speech in context