Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

In the time I had before the debate on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024 was interrupted on 10 October, I was making the point that the coalition values, as it should, the role that early childhood educators and childcare workers play in the education of our youngest students. That is why the coalition certainly doesn't stand in the way of a wage rise for early childhood educators and teachers. But of course we do have some very real concerns.

Those concerns, from my electorate's perspective, deal with issues around accessibility of child care, but I'll speak to those issues a little later. What I want to do is highlight some of the headline concerns. I spoke to the first issue before debate was interrupted, which is that this increase, whilst welcomed, is slated to cease on 30 November 2026. So it does beg the question that I asked previously: what happens after 2026? What happens beyond that date? It's a very important question and it's one that hasn't been resolved by those opposite. In fairness, it ought to be. I don't think we should regard this as anything other than a pre-election sugar hit unless that question is resolved by giving the detail around it.

The second principal concern I have with this is I don't understand why, in a situation where we're looking to provide early childhood educators and childcare workers a wage increase, this has to be effected, if you like, via a workplace instrument. We live in the real world and the reality is the reason why it's being effected by a workplace instrument and why a workplace instrument needs to be in place for a service to access this grant funding is this is in an effort to appease unions.

In a sense the Albanese Labor government is covertly attempting, by stealth, to unionise the early childhood sector. That is completely unnecessary and feeds to this suggestion that, again, this is not only a pre-election sugar hit but it's also about growing the size of the unionised workforce in the country—a workforce which, left to its own devices, is becoming a small fraction of the working population in Australia.

The next concern I've got with this approach is the troubling habit we're now seeing from those opposite. I've made the point that all educators do incredibly valuable work and of course we want them to be better paid for the work they do. And we in the coalition want to see higher real wages, but that's the point. It's real wages that we're focused on; higher real wages for hardworking childhood educators and, in fact, higher real wages for all Australians. But the key to meaningful wage increases isn't sugar hits like the one contained in this bill. It's about doing the hard work to bring down inflation and to boost labour productivity.

I fear those opposite have given up the fight to bring downward pressure on inflation and boost labour productivity.

My friend opposite scoffs, but every day they come into this place and almost every measure is effectively targeted towards driving up the cost of everything, whether it is energy policy or industrial relations policy. Perhaps those opposite—the member interjecting in particular—might want to reflect on the real cost to Australian families of 12 consecutive interest rate increases. I would have thought the Queensland election not 10 days ago might have been an opportunity for those opposite to get real-world feedback, but of course they haven't. That's fine. Let's proceed through to March, because I think in March there will be some more real-world feedback for those opposite.

I want to talk about childcare deserts. In my electorate there are many places where, it doesn't matter how much you are prepared to pay for child care, there is no child care. There are other places where child care is provided one half-day a fortnight and it's delivered out of the boot of a car. It's completely unacceptable. Those opposite have spent two years tinkering with the arrangements for child care, increasing subsidies for those who can put their children in child care and now increasing notional wages. Of course, that's not in real terms but in notional terms. It has done nothing—not one additional place.

While I've had the pleasure and the privilege of being the member for Barker, this has become a real issue. It's increasingly an issue in regional communities. And so what have I done? We've always tried to find solutions. In the community of Southern Mallee, in Lameroo and Pinnaroo, there was no childcare service. In the course of the last term, the coalition government, together with the Southern Mallee District Council, with my advocacy, were able to build not one but two childcare facilities in the communities of Lameroo and Pinnaroo. How did we do it? We took drought funding. As a community they decided that the No. 1 priority in their community in the midst of a drought was to build childcare facilities. You might think for a moment think: is there an obvious connection between drought funding and child care? But if you live in a rural community you'll understand it. One of the best ways to drought-proof your farming enterprise is to create off-farm income. In many of these communities, one or other of the parents was required to stay at home on duty because there was no opportunity for child care. Not in all cases but in a lot of these cases professional women were at home caring for children in circumstances where the broader community was screaming for people to join or re-enter the workforce—as nurses at local hospitals, teachers at local schools, farm contractors, you name it. That's what we've seen at those facilities. We've seen those facilities built. They are run by the Southern Mallee District Council. As a result, many people have been able to re-enter the workforce. It was not just those communities. The community of Karoonda did similar, building a childcare facility.

These communities ought not to have to rely on ad hoc and occasional grant funds to achieve these outcomes, not when the Commonwealth is spending such significant sums in and around child care. What we need to see is a set of policies that not only address affordability and questions around employment and ensuring there are enough childcare workers and early educators. We need policies that are focused on addressing the childcare deserts, because it's not right that people in my electorate don't enjoy the same sort of support that people in rural cities like the one I come from or indeed the capital cities like colleagues sitting opposite come from enjoy. That's what we need. We need a balanced approach to the question of child care.

I am reminded that, where we have the resources, we need to balance them appropriately. I come from the great state of South Australia. Not many people know this, but South Australia has the greatest dichotomy in the world—not in Australia, but in the world—between the number of its citizens living in a capital city relative to its next largest city. That's 1.3 or so million people in Adelaide and 25,000 or so people living in my hometown of Mount Gambier. It speaks to the difference for South Australia, in particular, of that disparate population.

While I come from Mount Gambier, with a population of 25,000 people, I also represent communities and local councils that have as few as a thousand ratepayers. I mentioned two in my contribution: the Southern Mallee District Council and the District Council of Karoonda East Murray. These councils are leaning into child care not because they're appropriately resourced to but because they have to. I call out to those opposite—and I say this on the basis that these councils often have very large road assets in very broad council areas but with a very small population basis—if it's good enough and important enough and high enough a priority for those very small councils, like the government authorities in my electorate, to make accessibility of child care a priority, which isn't a traditional responsibility of local government, then it's got to be good enough for those opposite to take responsibility for governing for all Australians seriously.

If those opposite were governing for all Australians, then they wouldn't be doing the bidding of the union movement in this bill. Instead, they would be thinking deeply about what remote, regional and rural Australians need as well. I fear that those opposite increasingly don't have anywhere near the front of their minds, in policy debates or considerations, the concerns, the wants and, in this case, the needs of rural, regional and remote Australians.

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