Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Across Australia, almost two million children attend child care. The vast majority of them are aged zero to five and attend childcare centres before they are old enough to begin school. The first five years of a child's life are the most important as they lay the foundations for health, safety, development, learning and happiness for the rest of their life.

Today, I stand proudly with the more than 80,000 early educators who will be sending a clear message at 3.20 pm today, as part of the Big Steps campaign, that it's time they were recognised and time their pay was increased. Childcare workers and early educators are not being treated with respect. The facts speak for themselves. They get paid as little as $20 per hour, half the national average wage. Making matters worse is that 97 per cent of educators are female, which only further widens the gender pay gap in Australia. Those 80,000 childcare workers are shaping and looking after the most important people in the community, our children. Many of these graduates, after studying a four-year course, end up with a HECS debt that exceeds $25,000. That means those early educators will be paying off their HECS debt at such a low rate between their late 30s and 40s.

Also, across Australia, we know the Australian government spends less than 0.48 per cent of GDP in the sector, significantly less than the OECD average of 0.8 per cent. This means Australia is trailing behind countries like Mexico, Romania and South Korea. Time and time again, studies have shown that the return on the investment for education for zero to five years outperforms any other form of education, measured in both economic and social success. There's no other way to look at it. We are languishing behind other nations across the globe.

Today, my message is clear: I stand shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of workers in my electorate and those workers across the nation who are simply asking for a fair go. I say congratulations to United Voice for their outstanding campaign of making this a national issue. I'll continue to add my voice to this important campaign because our children and the early educators deserve much, much better.