Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Forty-seven years ago a little girl went along to preschool. She used to cry and say to her mother: 'Mum, why do you send me there? You don't work. Can't I just stay at home with you?' And her mother said, 'Because it's good for you.' That little girl was me. As the months and years went by—a couple of years at preschool—I learned to love preschool.

Just a couple of months ago I went back to that same preschool: Kurri Kurri and District Pre-School Kindergarten. It was such an incredible experience to be there and see the children and the teachers. I was instantly taken back to those days. I thought about the cohort of kids that I went through with and how most of us have turned 50 and where our lives have headed.

We call it child care, but really it's early education. It's where, for those who are fortunate enough in Australia, our education, in a formal way, begins. It is vital to our national prosperity. Across my electorate of Paterson, early educators work every day. They work tirelessly, as they have through this pandemic, ensuring that parents could work, be it at home or at their place of work.

Access to this early education/child care ensured many families could work during the pandemic with minimal disruption. That is why Labor has put forward the idea that child care is critical to our national prosperity. We are at a juncture in Australia. We have choices to make now to get out of this terrible Morrison recession we have found ourselves in. Really, it has been a situation that no-one saw coming, but we can see our way clear if we make really smart choices moving forward.

Early education and child care is such a smart choice, even for people who don't have children. I just want to speak about that briefly, because I know there'll be many who'll say: 'Well, I don't need child care. My kids are old enough now' or 'I've never had children.' Child care—early education—is good for all of us, because it releases those people who may have been at home caring for children into the workforce. That creates jobs and prosperity across the community. This is not just for people who have children and who need child care. It is for all of us. It is a massive economic lever.

Kate Carnell, small business people, large businesses—they've all recognised the power that this move will have to ensure our country can be more prosperous. That's why Anthony Albanese, in his budget reply, promised that under a future Labor government we will deliver more affordable child care. We understand the cap holds people back. Parents understand this. I couldn't tell you how many times over the years not just as a local member but as a parent I've heard mostly women, to be fair, say, 'It's actually not worth me going back to work full time, because child care is so expensive.' We need to remove this hurdle.

In five or 10 years, when we finally get this done, we will look back on this and say, 'Why didn't we do this earlier?' This is really very, very important not just for our young developing children but for our economy and for our nation as a whole. It means jobs. It means more parents are able to rejoin the workforce. Australia, as a nation, will be able to get a head.

I just want to go back to my preschool and thank the wonderful director, Nicci McDowell, because she said this to me: 'Early education and child care need policymakers and the broader community to grasp the benefits of early learning for children, families and the wider community. We need to address the unequal access to early learning, we need to build the early learning workforce and we need to ensure the delivery of high-quality early learning and care, regardless of the service type or location.' Nicci, you've summed it up. You get it. Labor gets it, and we'll make it happen, as a government.