Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party has been a party of fairness and equality of opportunity, a party that supports working people and their families. In less than three years the Albanese Labor government has put forward what I would consider to be transformative policies to build a universal early childhood and education system accessible to all Australian families.

I will tell you about a specific example of these transformative policies and their impact on people. In my electorate of Wills a young family, recently migrated to Australia, have a young daughter who didn't speak a word of English when she came to Australia with her family. She started at a childcare centre in Brunswick, in my electorate of Wills; as soon as she came to Australia, that was the beginning of her education. She gets a fair bit of fairy bread—hopefully not too much because there's a bit of sugar in that—and the sandpit is her favourite place to play; that's what I was told by her. Within six weeks of her arrival she was speaking fluent English. She was even saying 'mate' and 'g'day', so she had a bit of Australian slang as well. That is the power of early childhood education. It is not just child care. The people that work in this sector are early educators. They are trained and have specific qualifications—tertiary qualifications and diplomas—that go to the very important development of young children and their early education. That's why we respect the work they do and why we supported pay rises for those workers.

I can't remember the last time those opposite, who are resisting and opposing this bill, advocated for families, for equality of opportunity, for choices for women or for an equitable and open education system to give every single child the same start in life; I don't think they ever have. In contrast, this is a Labor government, the Albanese government, that is building Australia's future, and the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025 is an important part of this. We want to make sure every child gets the best possible start in life. That's why we've introduced the three-day guarantee for all families. This is to guarantee all families three days of the childcare subsidy each fortnight, with 100 hours guaranteed for families caring for First Nations children and families who work, study or train.

This three-day guarantee will increase entitlements for over 100,000 families across the country, with more than 66,000 families expected to be better off in the first full financial year of implementation—and, importantly, no family is worse off. That's at least 100,000 children—probably more, because parents sometimes have more than one child; I don't know why because it's a lot of work having two and a lot more work having three!

The member for Fremantle is saying how much work it is! But it is a great joy of our lives to be parents, despite how challenging it can be. We are talking now about well over 100,000 children that are going to benefit and access this transformative benefit of early learning.

Think about the ripple effect of that for a moment—the young girl who learned English within six weeks and how that impacts her engagement with her parents, who are also learning English. Think about the ripple effect of over 100,000 children getting access to early education. If one child in my community of Wills has the potential to make a difference to the lives of her family and the community around her, each of those people will do the same and contribute positively to the world around them. Times that by over 100,000. It's such a positive and wonderful thing for the members of the community across the country.

This bill is another step in our plan to build a universal early education system and—an economic point here—it saves parents around $1,370 in the first financial year. It replaces the former activity test put forward by the former coalition government, the Liberal government, with a new three-day guarantee in early education. When the former coalition government delivered their 2018 childcare package, they actually halved the number of subsidised hours of care that low-income families could access. That went from 48 to 24 hours. The number of low-income families accessing care went from 32,000 down to 6,500. That wasn't an accidental policy; it was built on the ideological position of those opposite, which led to increasing inequity and excluded communities of people from accessing early education and care. That also has a ripple effect—not a very good one; a negative ripple effect. That is what is most disappointing about their opposition. In government they can do things like that and have a negative impact, but, when we try and do something positive, they still stand in the way of that and they still say no.

This bill builds on the Cheaper Child Care reforms, where we cut the cost of early education and care for more than a million families and introduced a 15 per cent pay cut—pay rise, I should say—for early educators. I spoke earlier about the importance of early educators, the work that they do to teach young children. That very formative part of their development in the early years is so critically important. That 15 per cent pay rise—I had a slip of the tongue earlier because I was looking over at the opposition. I think they might have cut if they had the chance. We supported a pay rise for early educators, and that is so important. These reforms are all part of our expansive commitment to early education across the country.

Since we came into government there have been 1,083 new services, including 325 in regional and remote Australia; and more than 90,000 additional places in early education and care. This is part of a package establishing the $1 billion Building Early Education Fund to build and expand childcare centres in areas of need, including the outer suburbs and regions, as I mentioned. Under our government, with Cheaper Child Care, we increased the childcare subsidy, meaning a family earning $120,000 with one child in care three days a week saved around $2,140 last financial year.

This is thousands of dollars back in the pockets of parents, back in the budget for families, to provide vital cost-of-living relief so that they can invest in their children's future. We know that investing in child care has that ripple effect. It's about early education. It's about the children's development. It's about the ripple that they will cause and their positive impact across community. It's about the economic impact for families and their ability to relieve some of the cost-of-living pressure but also re-invest in their children in many other ways.

We invested around $3.6 billion to make the wage increase for early childhood educators happen. That was a serious commitment because we value the work of those educators. It is a largely feminised workforce. I think around 90 to 95 per cent of workers in that workforce are women. They were seriously underpaid for the work that they do. If you look at the equivalent tertiary diplomas in education, the cert IVs and so on, in other sectors where it isn't as feminised, they were getting paid more. They were really underpaid. This was a real correction—an absolutely necessary correction, given the importance of the work that that sector does. Typically a full-time early educator was paid an award rate. They will receive a pay rise of at least $103 per week, increasing to at least $155 per week from December this year. We know this is a feminised industry. We know there is a serious challenge with the gender pay gap. This was the Albanese government taking real action, $3.6 billion worth of action, to try to address that gender pay gap, which still exists in many sectors. It certainly was the case in the early education sector.

I hope no-one here undervalues the work of these early educators. They're not just babysitters, which was a prevalent view or a stereotype. The work they do in the development of a child's learning and education is of critical importance, and so many studies have shown how important that baseline is in those early years. The work they do is professional, it is informed by evidence and it is critical to the development of our children.

Our commitment to these workers is also a commitment to women, given the very high percentage of women in that workforce. We are also committed to giving all children equal opportunity. I mentioned the Labor Party being the party of equal opportunity and fairness, and this is about equal opportunity for early childhood education and care. We're also committed to giving families the choice to work out childcare arrangements that work for them.

Some of us who have smaller children know how difficult it is to juggle their schedules and taxi them around, to be a taxi or Uber driver for your kids; but, more than that, there's the emotional investment we make, the planning and the investment we make in children's education. That is so important. Parents of families need choice to be able to manage this and to have flexible arrangements. We understand more choice and support for families, particularly for women, is so vital, giving them that ability to be flexible and to make their own arrangements.

Unlike those opposite us, we are working towards a universal early childhood education so that families choose rather than feel compelled to stay home with the kids or send them to child care. It should be up to the families. We all know how vital it is for parents to have time to care for and bond with their child. This is for the wellbeing of children, their parents and the broader community. That's why we expanded the Paid Parental Leave scheme to a full six months by 2025. That's why we added superannuation to that scheme as well. We have made it more flexible to support parents in the transition back to work and made it much easier for parents to share care by creating a single gender-neutral entitlement that both parents can access. I think that's great for dads—and, again, we're removing stereotypes about that because it is important that families have that flexibility to choose their arrangements.

We've heard before about needing a village to raise a child and having a community to raise a child. It might be a cliche, but there is great truth to that. It does take a multitude of different members of the community and the environment that our children develop in and learn from in so many ways across the community. It takes good policies as well to give that scaffolding and that framework for the development of children and raising them in the best possible way.

The transformative policies we have put in place in a very short time under the Albanese Labor government, in early education and child care with respect to families and flexibility and with respect to health as well, are so important in that respect. That is why a re-elected Albanese government post this election—I don't know when it's going to be, but post this election—if we are re-elected, is going to establish the $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, which will build and expand on more centres in areas of need, including outer suburbs and in parts of regional and remote Australia.

All of this is important to us. Many of us who are either parents or have nephews and nieces or whatever it might be understand how significant it is to have quality early education and development for children in those early years. That's why this government is so committed to it. We care about this. We are doing the work to put in place policies that make a difference for families, for children, for parents, to give them flexibility in their arrangements and in their commitments. We value the work of early educators and we're putting real money on the table, as far as wage increases go, because we care. We care about these things because we know how important the start that our children have is for our society. That's why the Albanese government is working to build this universal early childhood education and care system. It's something that we will always be committed to because it's in our DNA. As I said at the start of this speech, Labor is the party for fairness and for equality of opportunity—that means something to us—and for support of working people and working families, and for giving families the best start in life and their kids the best start in life.

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