Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Spence for his question, because the member for Spence understands that investing in early childhood education helps workers, and it helps families. We're building the foundations for a future where every single Australian child and every single Australian family can have access to good quality early education. We came into government in 2022 with a commitment to make early childhood education and care more affordable through our cheaper childcare reforms. We quickly turned that commitment into progress, with more than a million families benefiting from those reforms. For an Australian family earning $120,000 a year, accessing 30 hours of early learning a week, they've saved around $2,766 since September 2023. Out-of-pocket expenses are still lower today than what they were before our cheaper childcare reforms.

That's real cost-of-living relief. But, of course, we know that there's more to do. That's why we're continuing to put downward pressure on fees through our fee caps—4.4 per cent in the first year and 4.2 per cent in the second year—as part of our worker retention payment. Our government has delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for up to 200,000 early childhood education workers right across Australia because we know that a strong and sustainable workforce is absolutely fundamental to a universal early learning system. That's why we've invested in it. I'm pleased to say that, in the short time since we've introduced that wage increase, more than 50 per cent of services have now applied for that wage increase. That's made a significant difference to the lives of so many early childhood workers, but also to the sector more broadly. New data just in shows that workforce vacancy rates in the early childhood sector have plummeted over the last 12 months, by 22 per cent since December 2023.

I'm asked about risks. The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition has confirmed that they will make huge cuts but that Australians will be left in the dark as to what those cuts are until after the election. But there might be some clues into what they might be cutting in the fact that they opposed every single cost-of-living measure that we put forward. We don't know what the risk is going to be, but we do know this: we know that while this Albanese Labor government wants to see children accessing the transformational benefits of early learning and wants to see families accessing the essential services they need so that they can work or study, the Leader of the Opposition wants to see bosses getting free lunches on the taxpayer dollar.

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