Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer qualified support for the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022. In Australia, we take for granted the fact that school is universally available to our children and families. Every child can access infant, primary and high school via the public system. Yet, despite all the evidence about the benefits, we continue to baulk at providing universal publicly funded early childhood education and care. These benefits are for both children and families, providing children with the foundations needed for their education while enabling women to enter the workforce.

For so long, increasing affordable learning and care has been in the too-hard basket. For many women, that has meant that being at home and folding the laundry is more affordable than working. Constraining women to unpaid work is good neither for women nor for an economy struggling to boost productivity. The Minister for Women has said:

If women's workforce participation matched men, we would increase GDP by 8.7 per cent or $353 billion by 2050.

The ACTU told the current Senate inquiry into work and care that there would be another 893,000 women in the workforce if they were able to participate at the same rate as men. The Parenthood noted to the same inquiry that last year the World Economic Forum ranked Australia 70th out of 153 countries for female workforce participation and that just 56 per cent of women in Australia aged 25 to 40 with young children took part in paid work.

So Australian women are the best educated in the world but rank way down the list for workforce participation. Why? Today, secondary income earners, mostly women, can lose 80 to 100 per cent of their pay for working more than three days a week. Why would you bother? Around 60 per cent of secondary-income-earning parents work part time. This bill could incentivise hundreds of thousands of parents, mostly mothers, to increase their days of work, both benefiting the economy and improving female financial independence and security.

Child care is not welfare. Early childhood care and education is not babysitting. This is economic policy. This has been central to my platform since day one, and the people of Goldstein voted for it. Treasury forecasts suggest that these reforms will generate the equivalent of 37,000 additional full-time equivalent employees, or 185,000 additional days of work. The Grattan Institute modelled 220,000 additional days of work from this reform. This could not come at a better time, amid chronic workforce shortages across the country as employers struggle for staff, while many of our highly educated female workers stay home because working is not worth their while or is not available or is not flexible enough to suit their casualised, irregular or short shifts.

This bill represents the biggest increase in affordable early learning and care since the Howard and then Rudd government reforms to the childcare benefit and rebate in 2007 and 2008 respectively. But there are pitfalls. Childcare fees have grown more than 40 per cent in the last eight years. With billions of dollars funnelled into child care, guess what happens. Fees go up, rents go up and the cost of care goes up, without transparency. Transparent pricing information is an important part of this suite of reforms. So are the ACCC review into this and the Productivity Commission's review that will report next year. We must ensure that more subsidies don't just continue to lead to higher costs of care.

But we must do more than that. I applaud the government's intent to make early care more affordable and accessible, but I also call on the government to take a brave and systematic approach to restructuring the system. One in five Australian children starts school not ready. It is two in five in country areas, and half of First Nations children. Children who arrive at school unprepared rarely catch up. This is a disgrace. A system of universally accessible early childhood education and care that doesn't penalise already-disadvantaged children by locking them out of the system because their parents don't work enough to fit the access criteria is what is needed. This bill does go some way to addressing this issue but it should go further. It should be amended to drop entirely the so-called activity test, which disproportionately affects low-income families generally, as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and their children.

In 2018 the previous government halved the minimum childcare subsidy entitlement for families who didn't meet the minimum threshold for the activity test. This has had consequences, unintended or otherwise, especially for those low-income families. Data provided to Senate estimates last financial year found that in July 2018, before the changes were implemented, 54,300 families were entitled to the minimum weekly hours of care. Three years later that number had plummeted to 21,110 families, an overall reduction of 42,000 families. The tightening of the activity test had been recommended by the Productivity Commission. However, the Productivity Commission also acknowledged that it could deter some parents from taking a job with very low hours per week. Research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that, while the greatest negative impact of the activity test changes has been on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, they are also disproportionately hurting low-income families and those from non-English speaking backgrounds. Low-income families are more than six times more likely to be limited to one day of subsidised care per week, and it's a similar story for those from non-English speaking backgrounds.

This legislation is a start. But the government should consider it a launch pad to consider the structure of the system and how we value the care and education of our youngest children and the value that their mothers can add to the workforce.

There's another workforce piece. Considering existing vacancies, this reform will require an additional 16,000-plus early childhood educators across the country, especially targeted at the so-called childcare deserts where it's all but impossible to get a place. Turnover in early learning has jumped from around 20 per cent to 30 to 40 per cent in the last year. We can't provide care without carers, and this turnover is a direct reflection on the underpaid and undervalued nature of care among a burnt-out workforce. Childcare centres in Goldstein are already struggling for staff. The government has found savings in its original estimate of the cost of this program. I urge the minister to consider the value of putting that money back into the system in the form of better pay for early childhood educators, who are currently paid as much as 30 per cent less than their primary school equivalents.

There is something deeply troubling about the fact that not only are women being disadvantaged by being unable to afford care or find care places for their children but also the predominantly female workforce is undervalued and underpaid, compounding the very problem that we are here to solve: how to underpin a better future for our children.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Early childhood education and care is not just child care; it's not just babysitting. Early childhood education is exactly what the name depicts: early childhood education. It is a vital and an essential part of our education sector and it is an indispensable component of a modern education system and a modern economy. It is a sector that will ensure that our children develop the vital foundations that they need to succeed in their later schooling and, indeed, beyond. It is a sector that provides vital social skill development, social and emotional learning, speech and language development and pre-literacy development. Children need these skills—especially if they are expected to be ready to participate in a primary school curriculum. Early childhood education is an important step in their developmental journey. Our government, the Albanese Labor government, will ensure that it is more accessible for more Australian families right across Australia and indeed on the Central Coast. This is particularly true for the thousands of families in my home electorate of Robertson that will benefit from this new policy. This policy, this legislation, will impact multiple generations, and we will continue to see the benefits of this bill for families for years to come.

At the end of the day, what this means is that, by ensuring that early childhood education and care are more affordable for more families, both on the Central Coast and around Australia, more people—in particular, women—will have the choice to return to the workforce, increasing economic opportunities for families and giving families the freedom to control their own future. Businesses currently screaming out for workers in my electorate will have a larger pool of available workers. Some of the barriers to access, such as those stemming from socioeconomic inequality, will be broken down, allowing more children to access early education, ensuring the foundations of their journey of lifelong learning are strengthened.

We must also recognise that this is a cost-of-living relief measure for thousands of families who are doing it tough, having to choose between keeping a roof over their heads, purchasing their essential medications or ensuring that their children are receiving early childhood education and care. Those are not decisions that should be made in this country today, and it is simply not good enough. That is why this policy was developed. That is why this policy was shaped over the course of the election—because we observed a need throughout the community to improve access. The numbers were telling us from an education, economic, workforce and productivity perspective that there was a need. This is why this policy was recently introduced to the floor of the parliament.

This education, this economic reform, will cut the cost of early childhood education and care and will benefit over one million Australians. Over the last eight years, costs for early education have dramatically increased—41 per cent—creating a barrier to education, a barrier to entering the workforce and a barrier to improving and expanding our economy. Over 90 per cent of families who have children in early childhood education and care will benefit from this progressive reform, and what must be stressed is that no Australian family will be worse off under this bill.

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022 will allow people to re-enter the workforce if they choose. For example, primary carers will be able to work more paid hours and days if they choose to. In this example, they are most commonly women. It is a fact that women in Australia today are twice as likely to work in a part-time capacity due to responsibilities that are associated with caring. Of women in Australia with children under six, 60 per cent work part time. For the majority—this was raised with me time and time again when doorknocking and phone banking around parts of the Central Coast, and I'm sure this is true for many parts of Australia—working more hours or more days does not make financial sense when you have children in early childhood education and care, not when almost everything you earn when working a fourth or fifth day is captured by the cost of early childhood education and care.

This is not only costing these families, who, as I said earlier, are already doing it tough; this is also costing our nation in workforce participation, productivity and the education fundamentals and groundwork for our children. During the election we continued to say, 'No-one held back and no-one left behind,' and we meant it. This bill is an example of our commitment to the Australian people, and it is an example of our commitment to the people of Robertson. This is not a tax concession, and do not let anyone tell you that this is welfare. This is economic reform. This is forward thinking and this is nation building.

This means more people, in particular women, on the Central Coast will have more choice. If primary caregivers work part time, it should be because they want to work part time, not because they have no other financial option. People will have the opportunity to increase their earnings and people will have the opportunity to maximise their career potential. People will have the opportunity to save for their retirement.

As I said earlier, businesses in my electorate have been screaming out for workers. This bill means more workers will be entering the workforce. Treasury estimates that, with our early childhood education and care reform, 37,000 extra full-time workers will be added to the economy in 2023-24. That is the equivalent of an increase of up to 1.4 million hours per week next financial year, in paid hours worked by women with young children. Extrapolated, that equates to approximately 72.8 million hours next financial year. What this means is this: it's good for children, it's good for families and it's good for the economy. However, without the educators, without the teachers, our children would merely be attending an empty room. Early childhood education and care is a reality because of our highly trained educators throughout Australia, who work tirelessly to provide our children with the best education and the best teaching that they have to offer.

Access to early childhood education provides vital social skill development, vital social and emotional learning, vital speech and language development, and preliteracy development, all of which are essential for ensuring that children are well prepared for primary school and well prepared to engage with the primary school curriculum. Barriers to accessing structured early childhood education mean that at present a frightening number of students are commencing kindergarten with skills well below those required to successfully engage with the primary curriculum. I have been repeatedly advised, by local speech pathologists and primary school teachers in my home electorate of Robertson, of the staggering yet increasing number of students who are commencing kindergarten in our primary schools with skills well below those expected of their age. How can we expect our future generations to succeed with this track record? It is a track record that Labor will not stand for. No-one held back and no-one left behind—and it's time to do better. It's time to be better. It's time to give our future generations the opportunities that they so rightly deserve.

Compounding the issue is the reality that we have a real shortage of educators and teachers right across the country, including in my electorate of Robertson. We cannot continue to silo different sectors of the economy because it suits government and politicians. We need to be agile. We need to be adaptable to the challenges that face modern Australia. We need to be part of the solution—no more temporary bandaid fixes. A Labor government means real change. It means real strategies, and that's why our government is funding additional university positions and fee-free TAFE places: 20,000 Commonwealth supported university positions and 465,000 fee-free TAFE places, many of which will be dedicated to our early childhood educators and our teachers in our community. This incentivises people to train in this area and enter the profession, providing a much-needed boost to the workforce.

Wages for the sector are also an important aspect of discussion with this bill. One of our first acts as a new government was to make a submission to the Fair Work Commission to increase the minimum wage. This increased wages for over 2½ million Australians. Among them were 113,000 early childhood educators who were on the Children's Services Award, which went up by 4.6 per cent. But the work doesn't end here, because the job is not yet finished. Our government is endeavouring to make gender pay equity an objective of the Fair Work Act and embed a statutory equal remuneration principle which will help guide the Fair Work Commission on equal remuneration and work value cases. Why is this important? This is important because the workforce in early childhood education and care is over 90 per cent female.

Education is one of the core reforms that we are making as a new government, with a dedicated Minister for Early Childhood Education, an early-years strategy for children aged zero to five, and a Productivity Commission review that will commence next year with the aim of implementing a universal 90 per cent subsidy for all Australian families. This is what we do, this is what progressive governments do and this is what Labor governments do: economic reform, forward thinking and nation building. I commend this bill to the House and I thank Jason Clare, the Minister for Education, and Anne Aly, the Minister for Early Education, for their tireless work and tireless efforts.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour this day.