Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024 is a hugely significant step, and it's a sign that the Albanese Labor government understands early childhood development, understands our society and understands our future. My electorate of Macarthur has one of the highest growth rates in the country, and our fertility rate is well past that of population replacement. We're a rapidly growing electorate, the biggest in the country by population, and we have many young children and young families who require high-quality child care and early childhood education.

I'd like to congratulate the Minister for Early Childhood Education, who has visited my electorate several times and has been an iconic figure in the development of early childhood education policy since we've been in government. I congratulate her on this bill. I also congratulate the Minister for Education, who, again, has visited my electorate on a number of occasions and has been a towering figure in the development of education policy in Australia over the last three years. I feel very proud that I've been able to have him and, indeed, the Minister for Early Childhood Education visit the electorate of Macarthur and see our wonderful kids and their families, who are the future of our country and our society.

The purpose of the bill, of course, is to establish an account to fund grants that support financial incentives for early childhood educators by increasing their wages. This has been a long, long journey for me, as both a politician and a paediatrician. I love visiting early childhood education centres. They are really exciting places where we can see the potential of our kids blossoming with the support they get from our early childhood educators. I've been to just about every early childhood education centre in my electorate, and some outside the electorate as well, in almost half a century. My own children have benefited from the support of early childhood education workers, and I thank them so much for the support they've given my family and my patients as a paediatrician.

When I say it's been a long journey, as a young medical student I was involved in a study that looked at brain development in young children and found that the brain development in terms of the number of neuronal cells was virtually complete by age two. The connections that come after that are in response to stimulation from the environment that occurs. We are to thank our early childhood educators for that stimulation and that support that they give our kids in early childhood centres around the country. The fact that we can see the wonderful potential of those children is a tribute to our early childhood education workers and to the families that support our children as well.

The first part of this bill deals with a range of matters, including the object of the bill and provisions that establish the payment systems and the support and supervision of that. Our early childhood educators have done a wonderful job, but they've been underpaid for many, many decades. This has led to poor career structures. It's led, in many instances, to frequent staff changes. Anyone who's had children in preschool understands how important it is for our kids to have a stable teaching environment and teachers who are there for the long term.

All six of my children have benefitted from early childhood education centres in my electorate of Macarthur, and they're all well grown now. In fact, we now have nine grandchildren, who have also benefitted from early childhood education. I love going and seeing my own children and grandchildren in early childhood education. I love seeing my patients, and I love to see the support they're getting and how they're growing up with the support of our early childhood educators. To have a plan where they now have a remuneration system that allows them to live a normal life in stable housing, to be able to feed their families and to be able to educate their own families is a really crucial step. It's a sign, as I've said, that the Albanese Labor government understands the huge importance of early childhood education and what it is doing for our children and for our future.

Our society depends on our children having the best education possible, and we know that that education starts from birth. As a medical student, I was involved in one of the first studies that looked at brain development in very young children. In more recent times, I've been promoting the First 1,000 Days as an early childhood development program to see how we can stimulate the brain development and the overall development of our young children. That is a very important thing that we're only now beginning to recognise. It is so important for the future education of all our children. If we can build on this further, it will be of great benefit to our young children.

We know that many young children in the past missed out on the benefits of early childhood education, and we know that from talking to our teachers. It has been shown that children who start school at age five often develop language and skills much slower than those who've been to early childhood development centres. It is something that we need to encourage, and it's important to recognise that all children should start school on an equal footing. This bill, by getting proper remuneration for our early childhood centre teachers, will help stimulate the ability of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to enter early childhood education. The bill establishes the mechanism for this, and we will build on it further.

I congratulate the ministers involved, and I look forward to visiting many more early childhood education centres to see the progress of my grandchildren and my patients, who are attending the preschools in the Macarthur region. I thank all of them—the teachers in the centres—for their support over many, many years of the early childhood development of those kids. I look forward, in the future, to seeing them prosper even further in our schools, our universities and our TAFEs. Our children deserve the very best. In centres around the world, we know that the very best centres provide ongoing early childhood intervention and support for children from a very early age, with a seamless transition into primary school. I'm very hopeful that will continue in Australia, provided we can build on this bill, make sure we have a stable workforce and make sure that workforce is properly trained and attuned to the developments of the 21st century in early childhood education. I commend this bill to the House. I look forward to its implementation. I congratulate the minister, and I congratulate all those early childhood intervention teachers that have been involved in getting this bill through the House.

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