Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the member for Bendigo for her question and for her continued and ongoing advocacy for early-childhood workers in her electorate of Bendigo. Labor know that people are under pressure and are doing it tough, and that's why our No. 1 priority is delivering real cost-of-living relief for Australians without adding to inflation. This is not just something that we say. We've already delivered affordable early learning for more than a million families across the nation, and we're ensuring that early-childhood workers can earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Since coming into government, and since our Prime Minister stood up and said he absolutely supports an increase to the minimum wage, this government has supported not one, not two but three wage increases for low-paid workers, and that includes workers in feminised industries like early-childhood education and care. The latest increase from the annual wage review will see 2.6 million workers right across Australia better off.

Early-childhood workers who do really highly skilled and important work—as everybody here, I'm sure, knows—will receive a 3.75 per cent pay rise from next week. That's because, on this side of the chamber, we see decent wages as part of the solution to the cost-of-living challenge, not as part of the problem. From next week, we're also delivering a tax cut for every single Australian taxpayer. What does that mean for an early childhood educator? Labor's tax cuts, along with the wage increases, mean this. They mean an extra $109 per week back into their pockets. We know that's going to make a huge difference to them.

But we also know that that's how you deliver cost-of-living relief. That's how you do it—not by pushing up power prices with nuclear reactors. And we know that what we've done is making a real difference, but we know there's more to be done. I'm proud to say that this government has made an historic commitment to contribute funding towards a wage increase for early-childhood workers. Properly valuing our early-childhood education workers means that we can retain and attract the workforce that we need to deliver our vision for a universal early-childhood education and care sector. Let me be very clear here: only Labor have a vision for early-childhood education and care—one that's good for parents, good for children and good for our economy.