Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow, early childhood educators from across the country are taking strike action. As a parent with two young children in early childhood education, I understand why they're taking this drastic step and why they are taking action. We've made arrangements in my family to make sure that our kids won't be at child care tomorrow. We will honour what these educators are doing, and they're doing it because the sector is in crisis. The previous government did not do enough to secure jobs and conditions in the sector. One of the first things that they did when they came to office in 2013 was scrap the national quality fund, the fund that would help address the wages crisis that we have in the sector. The other thing that the previous government did during the pandemic, which really hurt us in Victoria, was to not extend JobKeeper to casuals working in early childhood education. What it meant was that skilled educators who worked as casuals left the sector. I found out last week, when I was visiting centres in my electorate that will be taking action tomorrow, that these casual workers have not come back. There are centres like Goodstart Early Learning Strathfieldsaye—which is a good centre and has a waitlist—that are only open to 65 per cent capacity because they can't get educators to work. The sector is in crisis, and we will work with it to turn this around.