Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Early Childhood Education. How is the Albanese Labor government helping to alleviate the cost-of-living pressures for the critical early childhood workforce, and what has been the response?

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

I thank the member for Wills for the question. He is someone who brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this House and who, like all of us on this side of the House, understands the transformative benefits of early childhood education for children and families.

We've already made early childhood education and care more affordable, decreasing the out-of-pocket fees by around 11 per cent. That's good for families. It's real cost-of-living relief for families. Now we're delivering an historic 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood workers. This means that, by the end of this year, early childhood workers—around 200,000 of them—will get a pay rise of at least $100. By the end of next year, that'll be over $150. This isn't just about giving them the fair and decent wage that they deserve and it's not just about recognising their professionalism, their qualifications and the quality of care and education that they provide; it's also about ensuring that we don't lose those dedicated professionals and about undertaking the ambitious task that we've set for ourselves—the ambitious task of achieving our vision of a universal early learning system that is affordable, accessible and inclusive.

This $3.6 billion dollar investment towards a wage increase will make a real difference. It will help ease the cost-of-living pressures for early childhood workers. But you don't have to take it from me. You don't have to listen to me on that; you can actually listen to what educators have said about this. Bec, who's an educator in South Australia, says that she will be able to buy actual, proper groceries and not live off sausages and bread. That's what this means to her. Gemma, who's an educator from Victoria, said, 'This increase will enable me to live comfortably and not stress financially pay cheque to pay cheque.'

That's what our educators are saying about this increase. That stands in stark contrast to what those opposite are saying about it. Those opposite want to make this all about outdated ideas of what modern Australia is. They want to talk about 'the Australian way of life'. I don't even know what they mean when they reference 'the Australian way of life', as if paying workers a decent wage is somehow un-Australian. They want to continue to undermine and ignore the important contribution that our early childhood workers make to child development, to Australian families and, importantly, to the economy. What they don't want to do is listen to the workers. What they don't want to do is talk about real cost-of-living relief for the important workers in this sector. Instead, they want to focus on ideology. We want to focus on cost-of-living relief. (Time expired)