Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. What has been the reaction to the Albanese Labor government's decision to increase early educator wages? And why is it important to support our early educator workforce?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the sensational member for Dunkley for her question. Our early educators deserve a gold medal—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

do you like that?—and silver and bronze. They also deserve a pay rise, and that's what this government is delivering: a 15 per cent pay rise. That means an extra 100 bucks a week from December. We've already cut the cost of child care for more than a million Australian families, and this is the next step, lifting up the pay of the people who make all of this possible—some of the lowest paid workers in this country and some of our most important, the people who help ensure that our kids start school ready to learn.

The US president often makes the point that children who go to preschool are 50 per cent more likely to then go on to college or to university. So this isn't 'baby city'; this is early education. It's not about changing nappies; it's about changing lives. And what we announced last week is not just a 15 per cent pay rise. We announced two things: a 15 per cent pay rise for workers and also a 4.4 per cent fee cap to keep prices down for parents. It's a pay rise for more than 200,000 workers, and we're keeping prices down for more than a million Australian families. It's a win for workers and it's a win for parents. That's why everyone has backed it—except for the Liberal Party, which has attacked it.

There's no better example of that than the ramblings of that policy heavyweight Senator Gerard Rennick, who, on Saturday, hopped onto Twitter and said that child care destroys the family unit. The truth is that it's units like that who destroy the Liberal Party's credibility. It's comments like that that make you think that the modern Liberal Party thinks that women who have little kids shouldn't go back to work, shouldn't have a paid job. If awards were handed out for cookers, this bloke would win a Michelin star. If the opposition leader had any ticker, he would pull this bloke into line—maybe he would pull the plug on his computer—and then he would back this pay rise for some of the lowest paid and most important workers in this country. We want more kids to start school ready to learn. We want more kids to finish high school and then go on to TAFE and to university. We want a better and a fairer education system, and this is where it starts.