Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We always have to be concerned about Labor's costings. We know that in MYEFO there was an $11 billion black hole. We saw that in MYEFO with the Public Service, so for the next four years there will be no increase in spending for the Public Service. The only problem with that is the government had agreed to an 11 per cent wage increase for the Public Service, which leaves us with two conclusions: they're either going to cut headcount, or there is an $11 billion black hole.

That's why with every piece of legislation and every commitment from this government we should understand what their costings are. They've estimated that this is going to cost $426.7 million over four years, but the true impact of removing the activity test for three days is not yet fully known. The department is unable to advise how many families are eligible for the childcare subsidy but not enrolling their children. So we've got a situation where Treasury have given an estimate—and I must say that after some of the estimates we've seen from departments in the last few weeks we should question those—but they don't know how many children are eligible. So we would love to know where that costing comes from.

At the same time the Productivity Commission said that removing the activity test would cost $2.3 billion per year—$2.3 billion. So, again, we have a big headline from this government that can't be delivered in my community. They can't guarantee access to child care in my community, because of that childcare desert, and now we see a massive black hole and misalignment in the funding. We do not know how much it's going to cost.

This is all part of the spin of this government, particularly and gallingly when it comes to child care. During question time we had two things happen. The Prime Minister talked about how much childcare prices have gone down and how much he's saved the Australian people, and how lucky families are. The problem for the Prime Minister is, out in the real world, in our communities, prices have not gone down. Childcare prices have increased by 22.3 per cent since the Albanese Labor government came to power in 2022, yet the Prime Minister talks about how he has supposedly reduced prices.

The spin, when it comes to child care, from this government continues even more. The Prime Minister, in question time today and all week, and the Treasurer and those opposite listed off these dot points of things they've supposedly done for the Australian people. They say that they've done all these things and that the opposition has opposed them all. The problem the Prime Minister's got with that line that he spins—and this is the really annoying thing for him—is that all votes are recorded in Hansard. The vote shows that the opposition supported the subsidy that the government brought forward. We raised complaints. I stood here and raised complaints and concerns that it was addressing demand, that it was a subsidy that wasn't increasing supply and that it would lead to—shock horror—higher prices, which we are seeing. We put our counsel forward to the government that it was a mistake, but we still supported it because we knew that the Australian people were struggling under this government, under the mismanagement of this Prime Minister and this Treasurer, and that we should do what we could to support them.

We supported that legislation. Yet member after member, and the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, continue to mislead the Australian people by saying that the opposition didn't support that legislation. The reason they do that, the reason the Prime Minister has to mislead the Australian people and the reason he is obsessed with the opposition and with the opposition leader, is that after 2½ years this Prime Minister has not delivered for the Australian people. There is no-one better off today than when Anthony Albanese was elected Prime Minister in 2022. He's institutionalised to opposition, and he is focused so much on the coalition that he's not actually solving the challenges the Australian people face at the root cause. We're seeing that when it comes to childcare costs—up 22.3 per cent since his government came to power.

You will also hear those opposite crow and talk about the worker retention payment, and how it is going to solve some of the challenges we face when it comes to workers in the childcare sector. This government promised that up to 200,000 early-childhood workers would be over $100 a week better off by Christmas 2024 under its Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers policy. They promised that to the Australian people. The Prime Minister and ministers opposite have crowed about that legislation and how they've helped people. But, again, when you leave the parliament—which the Prime Minister doesn't like to do; he's institutionalised to this House—and when you go to the real world and look at what's actually happening, the Department of Education's own data shows that just 15 per cent of early childhood educators are employed by services that are approved for the payment as of 20 January 2025. It's another example of the spin and the headlines from the Prime Minister and the government, but the reality on the ground is that 200,000 workers are not better off; it is less than that. The reason is that the deal they rushed through was so complex that businesses are not able to apply or understand whether they qualify. Labor have refused to reveal the formula to determine how much services will receive, so they're expecting businesses to apply for a grant with a blindfold on. They've also asked businesses to cap their prices, at a time when energy costs are through the roof, food costs are through the roof and insurance is through the roof for these community organisations in early childhood.

Again, the reason all these things are through the roof is the mismanagement of this Prime Minister and this Treasurer—a Prime Minister who promised 97 times before the last election that he would reduce power bills by $275. Instead, Australians are faced with power bills up over $1,000. So, the reason the Prime Minister has to continue to intervene and offer bandaid solutions is that he is not able to solve these challenges at the core. He's not able to treat the cause. He's focused on the symptoms. He continues to spin lines about worker retention, about child care being cheaper, about the opposition not supporting a subsidy that we clearly voted for.

This is a government that, after 2½ years, has run out of ideas. It didn't have many to start with, this term. Those that it has implemented have failed. There is not one Australian who is better off today than when this government was elected. The real question the Australian people have to ask themselves is, with so much damage done to Australian families after 2½ years, imagine how much worse off you will be if this Prime Minister gets another three years—of indecision, of weakness, of mismanagement of the economy. The Australian people cannot afford that. Australian families cannot afford that.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A world-class education system is the foundation of a strong economy and a strong nation. It is the bedrock upon which we build a more prosperous and fair society. Education empowers individuals, strengthens communities and drives innovation and productivity. That is why the Albanese Labor government has been working since day one to strengthen our education system, starting from the earliest years of a child's life. Early childhood education and care is not just a convenience for working parents; it is essential for our future. Research shows that quality early education leads to better school readiness, higher educational attainment and improved employment outcomes later in life. Children who attend early education are more likely to develop crucial social, emotional and cognitive skills that set them up for lifelong success.

Labor knows that access to high-quality education and care is essential, not just for our children but for our workforce, our economy and our society as a whole. That is why we have already taken major steps to make early education more affordable for families across our nation. Our cheaper childcare reforms have cut the cost of early education for more than one million Australian families. Recent data show that an Australian family with a household income of $120,000 a year that is paying the average quarterly fee for 30 hours of child care per week has saved approximately $2,768 since September 2023. For many families, this relief has made a real difference in balancing work and family life.

But affordability is just one piece of the puzzle. To ensure that every child can access quality early learning, we must also invest in our early education workforce. That is why the Albanese Labor government has delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. For too long, early childhood educators, who play such a crucial role in our children's development, have been undervalued and underpaid. This pay rise will help attract and retain skilled professionals in the sector, ensuring that our children receive the best possible start in life.

I have seen the impact with my own eyes. From Bella Estate to Cranbourne West, when I visit childcare centres, the passionate staff have told me about how they're able to focus and put more energy into the job without having to worry about living pay cheque to pay cheque. Minister Clare has said that after Goodstart, one of the largest childcare providers in Australia, signed onto the agreement, they saw a 35 per cent increase in applications. More passionate early educators are entering the sector, ensuring that children receive the high-quality care and education they deserve.

This is just the beginning. Labor's vision is clear. We're working towards a universal early education system where every child is guaranteed access to at least three days of high-quality early learning per week. From January 2026, we will replace the current activity test with a three-day guarantee, ensuring all families, regardless of their work or study commitments, will be eligible for at least 72 hours of subsidised early education per fortnight. This initiative represents a significant shift towards universal access to early learning.

Currently, too many children who would benefit the most from early education are missing out. The Productivity Commission's final report, A path to universal early childhood education and care, released in September 2024, made it clear that the children and families most likely to benefit from early education are the least likely to attend. Those are children in our outer suburbs, children in communities like mine, in Hampton Park, Cranbourne, Clyde and Narre Warren South. The three-day guarantee will ensure that no child starts school behind simply because their families were unable to access early education.

It will provide certainty for families, helping parents, particularly women, return to work, take on more hours or pursue further education and training. We know that a lack of access to affordable child care is one of the biggest barriers preventing parents from fully participating in the workforce. This is why these reforms are also a crucial part of our plan to strengthen Australia's economy, by ensuring parents have more opportunities to work, study or train. We are unlocking growth across the economy. These reforms will help address crucial skills shortages to ensure that Australia has the workforce it needs for the future. In the first full financial year, the three-day guarantee will benefit around 66,700 families, with more than 100,000 families becoming eligible for additional hours of subsidised care.

Under the new system, families that meet activity requirements or have a valid exemption can still access 100 hours of subsidised early education per fortnight. We know that we can't get more children into the sector without expanding the number of places available. In suburbs like Clyde, Clyde North and Botanic Ridge, there are over seven children for each childcare place—three times the national average. That is why we have announced one of the largest investments in expansion of childcare centres in history, through Labor's $1 billion Building Early Education Fund. We will build and expand early education centres in areas of need across our outer suburbs. This includes areas in my electorate, like Clyde, Clyde North and Botanic Ridge. This fund will provide grants and invest directly in owning and leasing out services. It will also focus on co-locating early education services on school sites where possible.

Our commitment to education does not stop at early childhood learning. Labor will, for the first time in history, fully fund Victorian public schools. Under the new agreement, the Commonwealth will provide an additional five per cent of the schooling resource standard to Victorian public schools. This is an additional $2.5 billion in Victorian public schools over the next decade, bringing them up to the schooling resource standard for the first time in history, ensuring that our public schools are properly funded and that all students have the support they need to succeed. We are also expanding fee-free TAFE and university places, helping more Australians to gain skills they need for the jobs of the future. Through the National Skills Agreement, we are delivering a historic $12.6 billion investment to rebuild TAFE, and we are guaranteeing 100,000 free TAFE courses, permanently. Through our $10,000 apprenticeship support payments, we are encouraging more people to take up apprenticeships in key industries, addressing workforce shortages and ensuring we have the skills to build our nation.

While we are making these transformative investments, we know that the Liberals are not on board. They have voted against these policies, including fee-free TAFE, calling them 'wasteful spending'. It's still unclear what the Liberals plan to slash in their $300 billion budget cuts, but we do know that they do not support these programs. They do not support making child care more affordable, they do not support wage justice for early educators, and they do not support building the future workforce this country needs. When the Liberals were last in government, they halved the Child Care Subsidy. This resulted in the number of low-income families receiving care dropping from 32,000 to 6,500. This is their belief: not child care for everyone, but only child care for those who can afford it. Labor is building a foundation for our nation, ensuring that all children, regardless of their background, have access to high-quality education and care from the very start of their lives. The Liberals—they only want to tear those foundations down.

The benefits couldn't be clearer. The Productivity Commission supports these changes, the Business Council supports these changes, childcare operators support these changes, and parenting groups support these changes. The Albanese Labor government believes that every child deserves access to quality early child care and also education. That is why we are building a universal early childhood education system, one that is simple, affordable and accessible for every family. We are abolishing the activity test, guaranteeing three days a fortnight of child care for every Australian family so that all Australians get the best start in life. We are investing $1 billion to expand childcare places in suburbs like Hampton Park, Clyde, Cranbourne West and Botanic Ridge to make sure that happens. Labor believes every child has the right to go to school and, just as importantly, the right to early education. This is why we are supporting families, strengthening the early education system and laying the groundwork for Australia's future success. We are building Australia's future. We are doing it by investing in our youngest. I want to thank the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and the Minister for Youth, Dr Anne Aly, for driving these reforms and ensuring that all Australians have the best start in life. I commend this bill to the House.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a lot of good in the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025—in particular, getting rid of the childcare activity test, a draconian measure introduced by the Morrison government. To be clear about what it does—it was introduced in 2018 and requires a parent to work, study or volunteer to qualify for the Child Care Subsidy. The effect is to deny around 125,000 kids access to early childhood education—a terrible, terrible measure. While the Greens want it completely abolished, this bill, at the very least, gets rid of it for three days. That's a positive impact on over 100,000 children. That's great.

What is very, very frustrating, deeply frustrating, is that a bill that has been Greens policy for a long time is before this parliament and is being effectively delayed. We have heard from the government—despite the fact that the Greens have come out and said, 'We will pass this measure completely unamended,' instead, what the government have said is that they will not pass it in this sitting week, potentially the last week of parliament before the election.

You might think: 'Maybe there's just so much on the agenda, and we can't get to helping children access early childhood education. We can't help mothers and fathers get back to work or live good lives.' What's actually happened today is that the government has proposed in the Senate to ram through and accelerate the passage of a stitch-up on electoral reform. The effect of what we're seeing right now is that government has prioritised effectively rigging the electoral system and donation laws rather than passing their own bill—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

yes, don't you worry about that!—to help people access early childhood education. It's genuinely extraordinary.

Honourable members interjecting—

Now we see some animation in the parliament. Good! Why is it that, time and again in this parliament, the lowest income people in this society, the people who are often the most downtrodden, are told to wait time and again.

The government has proposed a 20 per cent reduction in student debt but said we have to wait until after the next election. We know the impact of this activity test disproportionately affects not only low-income people but also First Nations people. One of the other really good things about this bill is that it ensures that First Nations children will be eligible for 100 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight. Great! We've just had a Closing the gap report that demonstrates the huge gaps in educational outcomes between First Nations children and other children in this country. So why not accelerate this bill?

To be clear, this is not directed at some of the Labor members in this House, because I know that it was not your decision. But it is deeply frustrating when we have gone privately and publicly to the government and said: 'We will pass this bill unamended as quickly as possible. We will secure its passage through the House and Senate using any means necessary to make this bill law before the election.' That's what we've said. And yet we have seen this government turn around and do a dirty deal with the Liberals on electoral reform instead.

The effect of one of the other bills that's being gagged and shoved through right now in the Senate will be cutting the access to and amount of DSP, or disability support pension, of young people aged 18 to 21. That's apparently a priority, but actually helping people in this country to get access to child care is not. To give the human impact of the decision to delay this bill, I'll quote from the ABC:

Megan Hunt loves being a mum to her two and four-year-old boys but there's been a sting as she's tried to navigate what she feels is best for her children.

Ms Hunt, a nurse, didn't want to return to work immediately after maternity leave and decided to stay home with her sons until they were three.

"Parenting young kids is really full on, it's really intense, it requires pretty much everything you've got—emotionally, physically, financially—which I know I would not trade for the world but any parent will tell you they need a bit of flexibility and you do need support," …

Before her children were born she worked casually as a nurse and picking up work in the in-demand profession wouldn't be a problem.

That's what she thought.

When her eldest son turned three, she hoped to return to casual part-time work while her son attended pre-school.

But the uncertainty around her hours as a casual employee made it impossible to secure the childcare subsidy (CCS) and the doors to childcare were closed

This had devastating impacts on her career.

There are a lot of women in particular around the country whose lives could be improved right now if we accelerated the passage of the bill. It genuinely beggars belief. In what is potentially the last week of this parliament before an election where we do not know the outcome, we could accelerate this. Instead, the government has prioritised a stitch-up on electoral laws that will see their party get more public money from taxpayers and a bill that cuts the DSP for young people aged 18 to 21.

It would be great if we heard someone from the government explain why electoral law reform that won't even be enacted this year—that is a stitch-up for the major parties—is a higher priority than helping people like Megan get access to early childhood education. And you wonder why people are fed up with politics. Their lives are tough right now. They are doing it tough right now, and our childcare system is in crisis. There is a bill before this parliament right now that could help them. Are we seriously going to suggest that we're going to get through this entire week and not do our jobs to get this bill through as quickly as possible? It's genuinely shocking.

Of course, the Greens have a much more expansive childcare policy. We think it should be completely universal and free for everyone because we think that access to early childhood education is just as important as access to primary and secondary school. You wouldn't countenance charging, sometimes, thousands of dollars of fees to prohibit people from accessing primary or secondary school, so why would you do it for early childhood education? Notwithstanding the fact that often when you're trying to get the subsidies under these schemes it's deeply complex, and it almost feels like you need a master's degree to get through it—notwithstanding all of that and our much more expansive policy—we have put that aside and said that we will not demand one single amendment in return for the passage of this bill. We will pass it unamended. I hope that there are ministers and people in charge of the Labor Party watching this right now and understanding that this is our message to the Labor Party here. We will pass it. The choice that the Labor Party has is to take that olive branch and use it to get it through the House and Senate as quickly as possible.

Drop the overprioritisation of stitch-ups on electoral reforms. Drop the overprioritisation of cutting the disability support pension for 18- to 21-year-olds to effectively close the loophole. Instead, let's prioritise getting women, children and parents access to good-quality early childhood education, and get rid of a draconian Morrison-era law that effectively cruelled people's access to early childhood education. Indeed, one of the things that Megan said in this article is:

The activity test is really tied up in what the parents are doing, when the question should really be, 'would this benefit kids?' Because then it really doesn't matter what the parents are doing.

I would argue that the question, 'Does this benefit kids?' applies to everyone in this place, in the Senate and in the Labor Party as well. If they genuinely believe that this bill is important—and certainly the Greens do—then they will roll up and they will accelerate the passage of the bill through the House and through the Senate. It's an easy test that the Government can pass because what I'm about to propose is that we vote on this right now. I move:

That the question be now put.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the question be now put.

The House divided. [17:11]

(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

The division was unavailable at the time of publishing.

Question negatived.

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

I'm so pleased that I get to make a contribution to this debate on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. The reform before us is really important, and I am disappointed by the delaying tactics of the Greens political party to try and put the vote on this issue. There is a difference of opinion by the political parties in this chamber, which is why this debate is important.

I was here, in this parliament, when the previous Liberal-National government introduced the activity test. As the mum of a three-year-old and a five-year-old, I've seen the impact that test has had on families. It has created a complex system in early childhood education with the subsidy and the way in which it interacts. It has disadvantaged children, denying them the opportunity to attend early childhood education for at least three days. It has created complex conversations and challenging situations for families—in particular, for women. And that's what I wish to highlight in my contribution today.

The bill before us today says that all families will be guaranteed three days, 72 hours, of childcare subsidy per fortnight. It will encourage every child to access early childhood education, and it is another step on the way to universal early childhood education. There are multiple different examples of what happens with the activity test and how it interacts. It is all about the parents' activity and not about the children. We know from the resource that access to early childhood education gives children the foundation blocks, from the earliest age that they can interact, to be successful, to have the foundational skills to do well in primary school. We know those who from low socioeconomic and disadvantaged communities and backgrounds benefit the most. We know that children from a non-English-speaking background benefit from having access to early childhood education, and we know that children of First Nations communities benefit from having access to early childhood education.

What we currently have are various situations where directors in centres are having to have tough conversations with families—particularly if it's their second or third child—about if they satisfy the activity test to keep their first child engaged in education. It has an impact on small business when women, who might be returning to work, take extended periods of leave from their employer so that they satisfy the activity test, because that's one of the ways in which you can stay—if you stay on the books somewhere. We also know that it locks people into hours that may not work for their family, meaning parents are having to make tough choices for their family unit at a time when they want less of our regulation and rules and more opportunity and choices for families.

Situations where it may be in the best interest of the family unit for mum or dad to stay at home a little bit longer with their children mean they may not satisfy these arbitrary rules around the activity test. If they don't satisfy them, the older child has to be withdrawn. They have an interruption to their early childhood education, making it harder for them to transition back in, if that's what the family chooses.

I do know of some situations where, when the second child comes along, the first child may come out of early childhood education for the period that mum or dad is at home, but that's not the case for everybody. Most families like to keep their eldest child engaged with their peers, with their teachers and on that path of learning. So the activity test put an arbitrary barrier in place. And I know because I am a kinder mum. I have a three-year-old and I have a five-year-old. Mums and dads try and be creative to satisfy the activity test so they don't have to pull their older child out of early childhood education. We shouldn't put families in this situation. That is why this reform is sensible, that is why this reform is measured, and that is why this reform is needed. It is about putting children at the centre of early childhood education and our childhood subsidy and making sure that every child has access to a guaranteed three days, or 72 hours, a fortnight of childcare subsidy. It gives them the building blocks.

This reform is part of a bigger package of reforms our government has moved in early childhood education, which includes paying educators their value and worth. We've put those reforms in. It means making sure that we are building centres where there are deserts; that's a term in early childhood education for when we don't have enough childcare places for children seeking access to child care. We are lowering fees through our changes on cheaper child care, and we're working with fee-free TAFE and making sure we have that pipeline of skilled workers coming in.

What the Liberals and Nationals are proposing is extraordinary. They want to scrap fee-free TAFE, which is the pathway to getting more people working in early childhood education. They're opposed to our proposal to scrap the activity test, which is about giving younger Australians that access to early childhood education that gives them foundation skills. They had to be dragged to the table on lifting wages for early childhood educators—and I bet they will scrap that fund the first opportunity they get; they did it the last time they got elected, when we as a Labor government put in place the quality fund.

The opposition are not committed to early childhood education. They are not committed to rolling out universal access to early childhood education. They still see the sector as largely about babysitting children while mum returns to work. It is not that. That old, archaic thinking should have been put to bed a long time ago. The research is in, and it's been in for a long time: early childhood education matters. It gives our children the foundation skills they need to do well at kinder and go on to primary school. It allows families to identify early-learning difficulties or to have early intervention to help their young person settle into school and education sooner and quicker. It is transformative in terms of behavioural issues and confidence-building, and it ensures all our young people, if they get access to early childhood education, enter primary school with largely the same skills and the same opportunities.

Being a mum of a little person who has just transitioned from early childhood education to primary school and watching all her peers go through it, it is extraordinary what our educators do. Daisy and her peers, the foundation kids this year at Prep Kids, are so ready; they are so set up. She has had access to good-quality early childhood education every year of her life since nine months of age. Charlie, my son, is going through that journey. Any parent who has seen their little person flourish in early childhood education and has had that success of a good transition knows how important early childhood education is. That is why I stand here today shocked that, despite all the research, despite all the personal experiences that women and families are raising in our electorates, we still have the Liberal and the National parties voting against stepping towards universal early childhood education. And we have the Greens political party trying to gag debate in a debate we need to have. This is a moment to put the youngest children of Australia first by opening up and guaranteeing access to early childhood education. I encourage people to support this bill.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of this legislation, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. Like the member for Bendigo, I was here when the former Liberal government removed universal access and implemented their terrible activity test. And, like the member for Bendigo, I will be incredibly disappointed if and when those opposite do as they say they're going to do and oppose the measures in this bill. I understand the power of education.

I understand how important it is for us to get to universal education and I understand how important this three-day guarantee is for families, and, not just for families, I know how important this three-day guarantee is for our youngest Australians across our country. Being an educator, I understand that sometimes children come from chaotic homes and I understand the power of them having a safe place, a calm environment, that allows them to learn to socialise and prepares them for more education. I understand that for children who are coming from spaces where they feel threatened all the time because of noise, because of chaos, because people are under pressure, that three-day access to early education and child care could set that child up on a different path than the one they would have if this measure did not exist. It really is that simple.

I remember the families who came to see me when the activity test was brought in who were sad that their child was excluded from early education, from that calm environment, from that learning, from that opportunity to socialise with other children, from the preparation that was going to set them up for life. We know, everyone in this place knows—the research has been in for decades—how important early education is. We know it can be the difference between success and failure for children. We know it can be the difference between success and failure for us as a society, so why on earth would we not create a system where our most vulnerable children have universal access as a right, access to learning as early as we can give it to them? Why on earth would we not do that? That is why I stand absolutely and firmly supportive of this bill, and that is why I reject the arguments of those opposite, who so often in this place argue, 'Well, if I can't have the nice things, no-one can.' Put simply, that what they are arguing. They want to suggest that this is about terrible mothers who are off to Pilates. For goodness sake, what year is it? Where are you from? What year is it? Why does it have to be about, 'Well, we only pay for this. Families need it, but only if women are working.' This is not about women; this is about families and this is about children.

This measure is specifically about creating access for vulnerable children from vulnerable homes to ensure that they are getting the early education they need. I have taught in low socioeconomic areas and kids at risk my whole professional life, and, I can tell you, the first thing I as a principal told new teachers in my school was, 'You might find you have some kids in your classroom that are a little bit disruptive. Let me give you a tip: don't raise your voice, because the chances are they hear that all the time and it does not have any impact. Do you know what you do? You lower your voice and you drop to your knees so you can look the child in the eye and be that comforting adult.' That is what happens in early education and child care for kids who need to know that they are safe in the world. I can't tell you the difference this could make to some of the children in my community's lives.

I support this measure. I can't believe those opposite will not support this measure. I could not believe that when they ripped it away from families in my electorate when we came in in in 2013. I can't believe they are going to argue against it now. I can't believe the National Party members can come in here and argue against it. Seriously, if I think about families doing it tough in the regions and the pressures they might be under, and the littlest Australians are in that kitchen when the bills that can't be paid come in and are stuck on the fridge, or pushed to the back of the bridge to be forgotten, and the chaos begins because the pressure is on, because the stresses are on. If you add alcoholism and drug abuse into that family, that child needs this measure. They need to be in a calm environment for some part of their day, and their parents do too.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government believes that every child has the right to access early education, and the member for Lalor, who was just in here, was speaking about how quite often the only place that some children feel safe is at school or in early education. She was spot on about that. We are committed to ensuring that all Australians have access to quality education, from early childhood education and care all the way through to university. We know that early childhood education is crucial to helping children develop the skills that they need to succeed in school and in life.

All of us in this building have a responsibility to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, have access to high-quality education, and this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, will make that a reality for thousands of families across the country, including in the Illawarra. Currently in the Illawarra, many parents are struggling to find available early childhood education places due to long waiting lists. This is putting pressure on families, as one parent, often mothers, are having to delay their return to the workforce because they can't find affordable and available childcare places. This reduces household incomes and limits career progression for the parent who has elected to stay home to care for their child. Businesses also feel the strain, as they struggle to retain skilled workers who are unable to return or are having to leave their job due to caregiving responsibilities.

Addressing these challenges isn't just about supporting families and children. It's also about strengthening our workforce and our economy as a whole. Our government has already started taking steps to build a universal early education and care system that provides quality education. We have delivered cheaper child care, which cut the cost of care for more than one million families. We passed legislation that will see our early childhood education and care workers get a 15 per cent pay rise. We are investing over $1 billion in a Building Early Education Fund to build and expand early education and care centres in areas of need. We are working with the sector to develop an early education service delivery price to better understand the cost of delivering services around the country and to also shape future reform.

The Albanese Labor government believes that every child has the right to early education, to help make sure that they don't start school behind. The three-day guarantee ensures that all children, regardless of their parents' work or study status, have access to that quality early learning. Through this bill we are replacing the Liberals' activity test and introducing this three-day guarantee in early education from 5 January next year. The three-day guarantee will increase entitlements for over 100,000 families, with 66,700 families expected to be better off in the first full financial year of implementation—and no families will be worse off. The bill guarantees that all families will receive 72 hours or three days of childcare subsidy each fortnight. Additionally, families caring for First Nations children will be guaranteed 100 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight.

Those opposite introduced the activity test in July 2018. It promised to enable and encourage greater workforce participation and simplify childcare payments. This, however, was not the case. Instead of making child care more accessible, like they promised, it created new barriers to workforce participation, added complexity to the childcare system and made it harder for families to access early childhood education and care.

I reached out to the early childhood education and care centres in Cunningham to understand just how this would impact them and the families that they serve. Anita Kumar is the CEO of ECTARC Early Childhood Services and Training, who have 11 early education and childcare centres in the Illawarra and the Shoalhaven. Anita is a passionate advocate for the early childhood education and care industry, recognising the vital role that the sector plays in supporting families, fostering child development and strengthening the workforce. She said:

The Albanese Government's 3-Day Guarantee, which replaces the Activity Test and ensures children can access early childhood education and care, is widely welcomed by the sector.

This initiative supports the development and wellbeing of all children while supporting the workforce issues across industries.

She says:

Every child has a right to Education no matters what their parent's circumstances.

She also says,

In Australia, we keep talking about "having a fair go" and the Three Day Guarantee policy epitomises that, giving every child, no matter where they live, or who their parents are, an opportunity to access early childhood education.

Kim Bertino is the CEO of Big Fat Smile, who have 34 centres around New South Wales, with the majority being in the Illawarra region. Kim is another passionate advocate, who said:

At Big Fat Smile, we are excited about the news that legislation to enact the Guarantee will be introduced into Parliament and we urge all parties to work together to get the law passed by Parliament as soon as possible.

She says:

The Three Day Guarantee will remove a significant barrier which has stopped many children experiencing disadvantage accessing early learning and created unnecessary red tape for families.

Families in regional areas and First Nations families have been particularly hard hit, and we can see this in the Illawarra and surrounding areas.

Cassie, who is a very dedicated and passionate early education educator working in my electorate, said:

I think it's super beneficial for children and for families.

Children being in care isn't just about playing with play dough, it's about supporting them to learn the key skills they will use for the rest of their lives.

She says:

Children who don't access care before kindy are more likely to struggle to develop their find motor skills, social skills, emotional regulation and independence.

I also think this will help primary school teachers, children who we can flag as needing more support before they go to school will give teachers a better opportunity at managing behaviours and not being thrown in the deep end from day 1.

She also says:

If we have more days with them to build skills, or support families to seek developmental support, they're already heading down the right track.

These comments highlight the critical importance of this bill, from the experts, which will ensure that every child has access to quality early education. Ensuring that every child has access to early learning isn't just about fairness. It's about investing in our future. We are giving every child, no matter what their background, the opportunity to learn, to grow and to thrive from the earliest years of their life. By guaranteeing a minimum level of subsidised early education, we are not only giving our kids the best possible chance in the future; we are also supporting families and our teachers.

This reform will also help to strengthen our economy. A more accessible and affordable early childhood education system means that more parents can return to work, boosting productivity and easing workforce shortages across our key industries.

The benefits of early learning are clear. Studies show that children who participate in quality early education are more likely to succeed in school, develop strong social skills and achieve better long-term outcomes. That's certainly what we've heard in the comments from our local experts in the Illawarra.

For disadvantaged children, access to early learning is even more critical, helping to close developmental gaps before they widen. The Albanese Labor government is determined to give every child the best start in life. We will continue working with early childhood educators, parents and teachers, and industry leaders to strengthen and expand early learning opportunities. This bill is a step towards a stronger and fairer system—one that works for families, supports businesses and sets our children up for success.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I speak in support of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. I support this bill because it's another step towards an Australia where all children and their parents can access the child care they need, when they want to. Child care is good for kids, and it's good for parents. Wide-ranging benefits come when government supports an accessible and affordable childcare system. For children, it supports their cognitive, social and emotional development and prepares them for the challenges that life throws at all of us.

One of the greatest indicators of success in the first year of school is the quality of the educators and the education in child care. For parents and caregivers, it helps make it easier to balance parenthood and work. This benefits the whole community, because so many mums and dads work in vital jobs in our regions, whether that be nursing, teaching, psychology, running a small business, or so many other jobs and professions.

This bill is going to see more children receive life-changing early education by guaranteeing all families at least three days of subsidised child care each week, regardless of the parents' activity level. Families that undertake work, study or training for more than 48 hours per fortnight will be guaranteed 100 hours of childcare subsidies each fortnight. Over 67,000 families in Australia will have their childcare entitlements increased under this bill. It will benefit low-income families especially, by saving them on average $1,460 per year.

The three-day guarantee of child care under the bill replaces the activity test. The activity test required a parent to work, study or volunteer to qualify for their childcare subsidy. It's been around since 2018 but evidence shows it is simply failing to achieve its objective. The Australian Institute of Family Studies found that it is not increasing parent workforce participation as it intended and, instead, has operated to disproportionately exclude vulnerable children from accessing child care. It's a handbrake on intergenerational equity and it hurts our most vulnerable families. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission—the ACCC—the Productivity Commission, the government's Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce have all recommended the activity test be rethought. The proposed reforms to the activity test to deliver the three-day guarantee also back in calls from Thrive by Five and the Parenthood—two groups that I want to knowledge for their tireless work in advocating for universal child care. I unequivocally support removing the activity test. As an independent member of parliament and conscientious legislator, when I see evidence that shows a policy doesn't stack up, I back legislation that says, 'Well, let us stop this.' Every child must be able to access all the social, cognitive and emotional benefits that come with child care, regardless of their parents' employment situation. Let's remember that providing a childcare subsidy is first and foremost about ensuring a child has the best start to life.

This bill is a positive step towards making child care more affordable to families, but making child care affordable is only one piece of the puzzle and achieves very little if there aren't any childcare places available. Across the country, nearly six million Australians live in a childcare desert, meaning that there are more than three children per available childcare space. This is being felt the most in rural and regional Australia, where we're experiencing childcare deserts at nearly double the rate of major cities. According to the ACCC, in inner-regional areas like Wodonga, Benalla and Wangaratta in my electorate, there are three times the number of waitlist places held by children under two years old than there are places offered. So this is real for us.

Since being elected to the parliament in 2019, I've noticed a substantial increase in constituents contacting my office about their experiences with child care, and their dominant experience is childcare shortage. Again and again, I'm hearing of years-long waitlists and hour-long commutes, forcing parents and particularly mothers to scale back their hours at work or not go back to work at all. I'm hearing of GPs who can't work because they can't find childcare places. This is one of the reasons we have GP shortages right now. The waitlists for a childcare place are ridiculously long. Parents are putting their children's names down for childcare places eight weeks into pregnancies, and, when their children are 12 months old or older, there still aren't places for them. Take Megan from Laceby in my electorate. Megan has been waiting more than two years for a childcare place to become available at her nearest centre in Wangaratta. When my office spoke to her yesterday, she said she's actually given up on finding a spot near home and, instead, is driving her daughter to Benalla—an hour round trip—twice a day. Not having a childcare place for parents, especially women and mothers, has detrimental career and income impacts. Hannah in Wodonga had attained high standing in her profession—and a mortgage. When she and her husband had their first child, they'd prepared as best they could and put themselves on waiting lists in the early stages of pregnancy. So you can imagine their shock when the time came to go back to work and they could only get care three days a week. Keep in mind that in Wodonga there are 2.4 children for every available childcare place. Because extra care could not be found, Hannah had to reduce her work to four days a week. Like with many couples, Hannah earns less than her male partner. Therefore, they made the decision that she will work part time instead of him. So Hannah's income has been reduced by 20 per cent each every week. She is missing out on 20 per cent of her superannuation. This is why we need childcare systems that work for all of us, but especially for mothers.

I hear from mums driving their children 20, 40 or 60 kilometres to neighbouring towns just so they can find a centre with availability. In Wangaratta, Amy is studying to be a nurse. There are not enough childcare places in Wangaratta to accommodate her son. She says:

Twice a week, I drive 50 kilometres—about 40 minutes each way—to Yarrawonga. I study at the library in Yarrawonga while my son is at daycare, as the driving time and cost would add up if I returned to Wangaratta.

Day in, day out, Amy is having to make hard decisions about cost and time versus care and connection, and, like with so many families, Amy is pushed to the brink of burnout because her family cannot access the child care they need.

I'm also hearing from childcare providers who are trying to solve these problems and make child care more available. This includes local governments, which are increasingly taking on the role of providing child care in regional towns because the private market is failing. Local governments are stepping in to fill the gap but are being hamstrung by the increasing cost of providing high-quality care and the cost of building the infrastructure needed to run a childcare centre. Alpine Shire Council in my electorate is currently seeking funding to redevelop the Myrtleford Mountain View Children's Centre, which is currently unfit for purpose with insufficient capacity. They want to redevelop the centre to increase capacity to 160 childcare places, which would have an enormously positive impact for families on the waiting list as this small town and its surrounds continue to grow. Next door to Alpine is Indigo Shire Council, which is also asking for support for the Beechworth Early Years Hub to build a modern kindergarten and childcare facility in Beechworth to address significant service demand and infrastructure challenges.

What all these stories show is that we simply do not have enough supply of childcare places in regional Australia. While I support changes to the childcare subsidy that make care more affordable for families, it simply won't benefit people in my electorate if they can't access care in the first place. Like me, the government recognises there is no silver bullet to fixing our childcare deserts, and that's why we must focus on increasing supply in the regions, growing the workforce and supporting the viability and sustainability of existing services.

I acknowledge the government have made a start in all these areas. Late last year, the parliament passed a 15 per cent wage rise for early educators, and the bill before us is a long-awaited measure to ensure more families can access subsidised child care, making it much more affordable. The government have also started to tackle the infrastructure problem by announcing a $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, the BEEF, to build more than 160 new childcare centres and deliver 12,000 additional places in areas of shortage. The BEEF includes $500 million in grants for not-for-profit childcare providers and state and local governments to establish new services and increase the capacity of existing services. The National Farmers Federation backs the government's Building Early Education Fund because regional towns will need it the most. They are calling on the coalition to support the BEEF, but it's a mystery why they won't. If they truly supported regional Australia, as they claim, the National Party—and I have the minister right here—would be calling for it to be beefed up even further.

The $500 million for the grants to build or expand services will deliver only a 1.7 per cent increase in childcare places nationwide. This is hardly going to shift the dial for Indi, and it won't meaningfully address existing shortages, let alone the increased demand that will result from the bill before us now. I want to see the BEEF deliver more for regional areas, and I urge the government and the coalition, for that matter, to commit to doubling the BEEF grants to $1 billion. This would be an investment in our children's future commensurate to the scale of the challenge before us. If this government are serious about making childcare universal, they cannot do it without regional Australia. Report after report is clear that to grow access to child care in regional Australia, you must invest in supply, and you must invest in the workforce. So, as the government rolls out funds under the BEEF, I will be watching closely to ensure that it is distributed fairly, because this government have a shaky record with previous programs delivering childcare funding.

The Community Child Care Fund supports providers with operational expenses to keep their doors open, particularly areas that are disadvantaged—regional and remote and Indigenous communities. But the fourth round of the Community Child Care Fund saw 75 per cent of funding disappear from my electorate of Indi. This is funding that supports care outside school hours in places like Yackandandah, Whitfield, Greta, Benalla, Moyhu, Mount Beauty and Rutherglen. Some of these services have received this funding for more than a decade, and to lose it so suddenly has come as a shock to principals, families, educators and businesses.

I met with the minister as soon as my office discovered the extent of the issue, and I subsequently asked the minister in question time what the government is doing to ensure that these services in my electorate don't close. I made it absolutely clear that we could not lose the services. It would hurt these rural communities. Fortunately, I've now helped to secure emergency funding for five of these services, and I thank the minister's department for the response to the collapse in funding in my electorate. But I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, and I call on the government to move the program from a competitive grant process to a demand-driven non-competitive system. This would mean all providers that can prove that they require government support should receive government support.

This bill alone is not enough. It's simply one step among many that we must take if we're to truly fix our childcare system in Australia. I urge the government and the coalition to do more when it comes to fixing the childcare deserts in regional communities like mine. Doubling the Building Early Education Fund grants to $1 billion would be a jolly good start. We must also change the Community Child Care Fund to a demand-driven program that means that regional and remote communities don't have to compete in competitive funding rounds just to keep their vital childcare services and centres open.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every child deserves the best possible start in life, but right now too many kids are missing out on early education because of outdated rules that just don't work. The Liberals' activity test has been making it harder for families, especially those who need it most, to access early childhood education. In 2018 their changes meant that kids from low-income families lost access to crucial learning time. That's why we're introducing the three-day guarantee.

This is the critical difference between those opposite and the Albanese Labor government. Those opposite want to test, and we want to guarantee. The coalition want to test families' ability to access and pay for child care, to test whether your child deserves an education and to test whether you deserve to go back to work, and they'll be the judge of whether or not you pass. The Liberals' activity test, introduced in 2018, promised to encourage workforce participation and simplify childcare payments. Instead, it did the opposite. Data shows that thousands of children from low-income families lost access to early education. More than 25,000 families didn't pass the coalition's test of who deserved affordable early childhood education and who did not. The number of children in low-income families in early education dropped from around 32,000 in 2018 to just 6,500 in 2019—an extraordinary drop. These are the children who would benefit most from early learning, yet they were the ones who were left behind. The Liberals won't support kids and families who need good-quality and affordable early childhood education, but they will support free lunches for bosses. We can see the priorities that those opposite have.

Early childhood education is not just about learning letters and numbers; it's about building confidence, curiosity and a lifelong love for learning. That's why our government is introducing the three-day guarantee. We believe government should be here to guarantee your child has access to quality early learning, to guarantee that learning will be high quality and affordable, and to guarantee that if you choose to go back to work you can do so. From January 2026, all families will be guaranteed three days—that's 72 hours—of subsidised early education each fortnight. For First Nations children, we are guaranteeing 100 hours. More than 100,000 families will see increased education hours. More than 66,000 families will be better off in the first full financial year of the implementation of this policy. Let me be clear—no family will be worse off.

But this is just one step. Our commitment to universal early education goes beyond these changes. We've already made child care more affordable for more than one million families. We've secured a 15 per cent pay increase for early educators because they deserve to be paid fairly for the invaluable work they do in nurturing the minds of our very youngest. We are investing an additional $1 billion to build and expand childcare centres in areas where families need them most: our outer suburbs, regions and remote communities. Critics argue that this policy will put pressure on supply, that there aren't enough childcare places, but let me give you the facts. Since we came into government, we have seen the establishment of more than 1,000 new childcare services, including 325 in regional and remote areas. That's 90,000 additional places in early education and care. Still, we know there is more to do. That's why we're not just investing in more places; we're also tackling affordability and quality, and as part of this reform we are introducing an early education service delivery price to ensure funding is sustainable, that services remain accessible and that families aren't priced out of the system.

The experts are backing us. Dr Angela Jackson from Impact Economics found that the current activity test actually discourages parents from entering the workforce. The Australian Institute of Family Studies reviewed the Liberals' childcare reforms from 2021 and found that the so-called simplifications made the system harder to navigate and pushed children from disadvantaged families out of early education. These reforms simply did not work. An independent economic analysis shows that scrapping the activity test will boost Australia's productivity and workforce participation, especially for single mothers, First Nations families, and parents in casual and shift work. This change just makes sense.

We've all heard the argument that we can't afford to get rid of the activity test, but the truth is we can't afford not to. We know that children who start school behind their peers often struggle to catch up. We know that investing in early education reduces inequality and lifts entire communities and families, and we know that when we support families we strengthen our economy. That's why Labor is making these changes; when we invest in our children, we invest in our nation's future. This is about fairness, this is about opportunity, this is about ensuring that no child, no matter their background, is left behind, and this is about the fundamental difference between the government and the opposition. They want to test Australian families, and we want to guarantee that they are supported.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In June 2024 the Mitchell Institute, based in Victoria, did a survey of child care around Australia. I'm not happy to report that my electorate of Grey was declared the biggest childcare desert in Australia. That's not a title that I gladly received. It identified that, for every available space of child care in Grey, there were three children under the age of five. It's a three-to-one ratio. We are desperately short. It is holding my communities back in so many ways, not just for locals but for businesses that want to employ skilled workers.

We have a skilled worker shortage. They want to employ workers from Australia, even from across the world. You do the job interview: 'Oh, great. Yes, we would be very pleased to move to your town, but my partner is a nurse'—or they might be a teacher, a welder, or a shearer. Who knows—'so where do we drop the kids off?' 'Sorry, there's no child care in this town.' 'What are we meant to do? What do the locals do?' They utilise the grandparents. They utilize their mums, dads and uncles, who are, in many cases, getting run into the ground with this child-minding service. I know grandparents who travel hundreds of kilometres a week to babysit their grandchildren. It's not as if they begrudge their time with their grandchildren, but, as you move on in years, it shouldn't be your job to be the first-line carer because your family needs to get back to work for all kinds of reasons. We talk about housing crises and things in this place. You see why people want a two-income family. So many people want to keep their skills up, whatever they are. For the people who come in from outside, it is an absolute barrier.

My own home town has just lost its doctor for exactly this reason—no child care. It really is a multilayered effect. The government is here speaking about improving child care for a section of the community but not for all of the community. Last year I had our shadow minister for child care, Angie Bell, in the electorate. We toured widely through Eyre Peninsula, through the mid north and Yorke Peninsula and ran into a common complaint, that we just don't have enough, or any, local child care. My advice to these groups, where they aren't organised, is to get organised, to get the numbers together and make the case so that, when the opportunity comes up, hopefully in not too long a period, we can actually put the case forward to try to get you over the line.

We have a problem here. The national childcare system is built around subsidies. You provide the service, the subsidy is attached to the client and the money is made available to the childcare centre for the number of clients they have. I think it probably works okay where you have a big enough base. But the evidence is on the board that, if you've got a population of, let's say, 4,000, there is simply not an economic model for a private provider. You will not get a private provider to come in and build the infrastructure and then operate it, because they know they won't break even, even with the significant subsidies that sit within the system at the moment. There's a case to be made in some of those centres that are around the 4,000 mark that, if some capital were provided, that may open the space for a private provider to come in. But, of course, the further you go down the population curve the less and less that becomes viable, which leaves only local councils. I don't blame them for not wanting to take up childcare centres. Roads, rates and rubbish, and then you tack on all the other things that local councils are meant to do at the moment, including, in some cases, aged care—it really isn't a core role for them.

In South Australia we do have a system which I think is pretty successful. It's called Rural Care. It's where the education department has made child care available—on site, normally—for a small number within the community. Those centres have a maximum staff of three. Consequently, if you've got infants, that limits you to 12. In many cases it operates quite well, but in many cases they're too small, so we need those caps lifted.

The education department are anathema to the South Australian government, I must say, and the government are not interested in opening any more centres. There is a pathway forward here, of course. The Commonwealth, as the provider of child care, should be stepping into that space and working with the state government, particularly in South Australia, where this system exists, and saying, 'What do you need to make this work?'

It makes sense to me that in any small country town the best placed organisation to run child care would be one that is already in the industry of child care, and that's education. You can have a common site. You can have staff that may well be interchangeable when one calls in sick. You have a gardener and administration. No-one would be able to run it cheaper than the South Australian education department. That's the pathway forward as far as I'm concerned.

We had this report by the Mitchell Institute. I have been advised by people to get numbers together. I was very pleased that a number of RDA, Regional Development Australia, committees—I have 3½ in my footprint—have worked very hard to get up some local figures, and that's really helpful. Then there are 23 councils—I have 26 on my patch, if someone's short of one or two!—that have come together in common purpose to form a group to lobby for attention to this problem, and I thank them. I think the more squeaking wheels we've got, the more chance we have of getting some attention.

They are all pretty frustrated, and I'm pretty frustrated, because this Labor government is ladling more and more money into the sector where it already operates, and we're getting absolutely no support at all in the country regions where we cannot access child care. I just heard the previous member speaking. He said: 'We guarantee three days a week, 72 hours a fortnight, of subsidised child care.' Well, when I buy a car I get a guarantee for five or seven years, and if the gearbox falls out of it—or the transmission, as it may be—and it's no good, I know where to go and collect on that guarantee: I go back to the bloke who sold it to me, and I go back to the company that manufactured it. I've got a place to go back to. That happens with my hot water jug too.

A guarantee is a guarantee. Would the government please explain to us how we in the country are meant to collect on this guarantee of three days a week when there is no place to put our children into care. Are we expected to transport them 500 kilometres to Adelaide and put them into child care for the day? It is not a guarantee unless there's a guarantee in it, and there's no guarantee in this. It is a complete snubbing of people that live in the country and their needs. They're offering 100 hours a fortnight of subsidised care for Indigenous children. I'm not against that, but it's exactly the same thing: in many of these communities, they won't be able to access it either.

There is no longer any prioritisation for working families. If, in a working family, the mother goes off to have a baby on accouchement leave and then the baby's born—because we're never too sure when they're going to come—they will be jostling for places against people who don't have to go to work to get the baby into a childcare centre so they can go back to work. I understand the reasons why the government would want to move in this direction, but you have to be aware of the global impact of any decision—the reaction, if you like. What gives way for this? I'm very concerned about that.

We've seen a big investment in child care since this government came to power. There was $4 billion for higher subsidies. There was $3.6 billion for the 15 per cent lift in wages for the sector. I'm not saying anything against that in principle. Now they say there's another $426 million to guarantee 72 hours a fortnight. There's a bit of a moot point here. The Productivity Commission says this will cost $2.3 billion, and that's a fair kind of gap, one would have to say. But whichever figure you use, $426 million or $2.3 billion, and you add it to the $7.6 billion spent before, there's a hell of a lot extra going into child care in Australia, and the only way people in my community, in many of my communities, can participate in this largess is they get to pay the bill. They get to pay a bit more tax to make it cheaper for people who already have the service to access the service. It's more for the haves in this particular case and absolutely nothing for the have-nots. It does not recognise in any way the issues we are facing in rural and regional Australia, and, as far as this government is concerned, it virtually doesn't affect anyone who lives in the seats this they represent here in this place, and I think that's absolutely apparent. They do not care for people who don't provide them a seat in the parliament. It's pretty appalling, I'd have to say.

So places like my home town of Kimber, Wudinna, Wilmington, Oaroo—I could go on—have all approached me about trying to get a child care centre in their towns, but they have no infrastructure, they have no private provider, and councils aren't willing to step up into that space and provide a large investment that would probably be loss-making in the long term. I don't blame them, but something has to be done. We have a program that still exists. It's called home care and it's a pretty good idea, really, like somebody living and working in their house, perhaps, going about household chores, or even working in the home office from time to time or whatever fits, can manage to have up to three kids in their house, very much like having school holidays and three children in the house while you are running a house. But it's become increasingly difficult and unattractive to run these programs—regulations. Regulations are driven by government directions, and they are being strangled. The problem is now you can't get anyone to stick their hand up to have a go. In fact, the regulators have been trying to corral these people to provide home care in commercial premises. It's a bit of a nonsensical statement, isn't it—provide home care in a commercial premises where you can combine with someone else providing home care in a commercial premises, to make sure it's safe for the children. It's just not recognising the reality.

Other place like Crystal Brook need to expand. Kadina need to rebuild as they have outgrown the building. They have, I think, 70 people on their books waiting to get in at the moment. Kadina had a bid in for the Growing Regions Program. The Growing Regions Program was announced the other day. I got three projects in Grey. The member for Barker got two projects in Barker. I think that's the extent of the South Australian largess. We managed to snaffle three per cent of the national total that went into this Growing Regions Program. In my case, there's one program in Whyalla, one in Oaroo ,and the other is to build art rooms in the APY lands for the men. Kadina, which has a shovel-ready project, put in for this program—not a razzoo.

People are discouraged and its hurting. We need to get the message through. Alternatively, perhaps we need to change the government, and people will have a chance to do that in the not too distant future. I don't pretend that the solutions are easy, but, until governments recognise that we have a problem, absolutely nothing is going to get fixed, and I bring this problem to the parliament. I'm very hopeful that my successor, because I'm running out of speed, will be bringing this problem back as well. I've been working with Tom Venning around the electorate. He's met with a lot of people. If he comes back in my place, I can guarantee, he will be on this wagon as well.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The evidence is incontrovertible: the earlier a child accesses formal education the much better their chances of a good quality of life. In all of the metrics on quality of life, including learning and development, social skills, level of school attainment, tertiary study and eventually careers, children who access education at an earlier age are better placed to be more successful in those metrics. That comes down to the emphasis that we as a society place on early childhood education for our youngest citizens.

Really the question here in this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, is whether we believe that education is a right or whether we believe that education is a privilege. Having heard some of the speeches delivered by those opposite, it's not hard to see that many on that side believe that education is a privilege and that it should be paid for and not accessible by all. But, in this bill, Labor is saying our belief is that education is a right and that education is a right that every child should be able to access in this country from the earliest ages. And so this bill ensures that all children, regardless of their background, regardless of where they live and regardless of their parents' means and income, have access to a three-day guarantee of early childhood education. That's because we know that the evidence indicates that that child will have a much better chance at life through that earlier formal education. Simply, that is what this bill is all about—providing every child with that right to early education.

Our three-day guarantee, which will begin on 5 January next year, represents a fundamental shift in our belief about early childhood and the philosophy behind it—that every child should have the right to access it. So it represents a shift away from the restrictive activity test that was the hallmark of the previous government's management of early childhood to one of a fundamental right. We are proud of this reform because it will increase the entitlement to early childhood education for over 100,000 families, with more than 66,000 families expected to be better off in the first full financial year. But, importantly, no family and no child will be worse off. That is the crux of this argument. It's not just about numbers. It's about giving parents real choices about work and ensuring their children get the educational foundations that they deserve. The evidence is clear, as I said: quality early education sets children up for success in school and post-school life. It develops social skills, literacy and numeracy and it gives kids the confidence that they need to thrive.

That's why it's concerning that the opposition and the Liberal Party have made their position clear on this. We know that they'll go to the next election with promises to undermine the early childhood education system. There certainly won't be the same support there for early childhood educators that our government have delivered. They made cuts to early childhood in the past, and it's looking like that's another area where they will fulfil cuts in the future if they are going to meet their commitment to cut $300-odd billion from the budget. The impact of that will be devastating for many families. The impact when they were last in government was devastating. Department of Education data shows that the number of children from low-income families accessing care under the previous government plummeted from around 32,000 in 2018 to just 6,500 in 2019. That's not just a statistic; that's thousands of children denied the opportunity to learn and grow and develop alongside their peers.

Our reforms are momentous, groundbreaking and life changing for a generation of younger Australians. They've been described as momentous by groups representing parents and workers. We've delivered cheaper child care. We've implemented a 15 per cent wage rise for early childhood educators, and established the $1 billion early education fund to construct and expand childcare centres in areas of need. These are picking up on the points that were made by the previous speaker of the need in regional areas. On all of those issues, we're answering the call. We've got a solution that will ensure that there are more childcare centres constructed and that more children get access to early childhood education. I can't see how you could oppose that. I can't see how you can say to those families: 'No, early childhood education is not a right. It is only a privilege.' That is the approach that the opposition are taking.

I want to speak a little about early childhood educators. Traditionally, this is an occupation that has been undervalued and not respected in the way that it should be by the Australian community and by governments of the past. We are changing that. We recognise the skills, the training, the experience, and, most importantly, the groundbreaking job that early childhood educators do, and the influence that they can have on the lives and success of young Australians into the future. That is why we were proud to fund and implement the 15 per cent wage rise for early educators to recognise that there needed to be a seismic shift in the value that society placed on the work that they did. Going back to the point that I made earlier, we're recognising that early childhood education is a right, not a privilege. That is why we funded and implemented that 15 per cent wage rise, and I've been very pleased, going around the early childhood education centres in my electorate, hearing the support from early childhood educators for what Labor did, and thanking us for finally recognising and valuing the work that those great Australians do for the next generation.

This reform is really important. It's about recognising education as a right and ensuring that more kids get access to that right, and constructing more early education centres, particularly in the regions, to ensure that that right can be delivered. Unfortunately, those opposite still see early childhood education as a privilege. We intend to change that and make sure that it is a right recognised by Australians and accessible by every Australian child.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When it comes to the legislation before us this evening, the question must be asked: does this bill help working families who are doing it tough in a cost-of-living crisis, trying to make ends meet and put food on their table? And, importantly, does it help working families living in rural and regional parts of the country, who are frequently unable to access the child care that they need? Unsurprisingly, the answer is no.

If this bill passes, families, particularly rural, regional and remote families who need child care so they can work, will be competing against families who will now be eligible for taxpayer subsidised access but may not be working, studying or volunteering at all. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this will increase demand, and increasing demand without increasing supply is a real issue, especially in the regions where the private market is struggling to meet the needs of communities for childcare services at present.

Supply is already an issue in the regions. While the Albanese Labor government crows about increasing wages and subsidies for child care, Mallee families are stranded in a childcare desert, with long waiting lists, and, in some towns, no childcare service at all. There's nothing to crow about in the childcare deserts, just crows squawking with no childcare place in sight.

I have been meeting and listening to families all over Mallee about the challenges they face in childcare deserts. Mallee parents regularly contact me desperately seeking help. So much so that, in October 2024, I invited the shadow minister for early childhood education, Angie Bell, to my electorate to meet with families in the desert, visiting Robinvale, Cohuna, Hopetoun and Beulah.

Parents came to see Angie and me to share their personal grief and struggles at not being able to find childcare places locally or within 100 kilometres driving distance. At Robinvale, for instance, there is just one service run by Murray Valley Aboriginal Co-operative, which takes all children from the community. Robinvale is one of Mallee's worst childcare deserts, which are defined as having 'less than one place for every three children needing it'. In Robinvale, there are 10 children needing each place.

In Hopetoun, mothers told us of the mental health struggles they have endured not being able to obtain child care for their children. The local provider ceased operations recently and the local shires of Yarriambiack and Hindmarsh have been working hard with Wimmera Southern Mallee Development's By Five Early Years Initiative to strengthen child care in the region. I'm working with them at the state and federal levels to cut through the red tape and promote policy that will bring sustainable child care to the region. By Five reports that over 50 per cent of the Wimmera Southern Mallee alone is considered a childcare desert.

Cohuna residents and stakeholders said their No. 1 priority is to have a date to work towards after the Victorian government made an in principle commitment to establishing the town's first childcare centre sometime in 2027 or 2028—a long way off when families need care now. Funnily enough, the very day the shadow minister and I were meeting Cohuna residents about their childcare desert, the Allan Labor government mysteriously finally set a date for when the childcare centre would open there.

Beulah's Heather Sherwell has two young children and says of the lack of child care:

We're essentially killing small towns … we've got to choose between, does one of us stop working, does a farm lose an essential worker … or whether we just have to pack up and forget about everything we've built.

In Gannawarra shire late last year, 86 children were waiting for a place in long day care, with some waiting since January 2023. Meanwhile 42 Cohuna and Leitchville families have been waiting for family day care places since May 2022. In Wimmera Southern Mallee, at one point there were 300 children on local waiting lists and 84 additional staff needed to meet the demand. According to data collected by the By Five Early Years Initiative, in many rural towns with populations of less than 5,000 people, there is no childcare service at all. So waitlists alone do not tell the tale of the huge hole that is hurting families. There is no waitlist for a service that doesn't even exist.

Wimmera families and councils have been left to fend for themselves. Dedicated Rainbow community member 41-year-old Katherine Durant and her farmer husband, Ben, have two boys under six years old. Ben works seven days a week and up to 16 hours a day, leaving Katherine to sole parent. Katherine says:

You just have to look at the faces of the rural women with small children during cropping and harvest. They are doing the best they can and, like me, probably cry every day in frustration. But we do it. We shut up and we do it.

The lack of child care in Rainbow and Jeparit leaves nurses and teachers unable to return to work in a desperately needed workforce.

This is a common issue across regional, rural and remote Australia—gaps in childcare coverage. Left unaddressed, they threatened the future viability of rural, regional and remote towns. Some families tell me they may leave the district if a solution isn't reached soon. Healthcare workers and their professional organisations frequently tell me that a lack of access to child care is a major barrier to getting the doctors, nurses, physios and other professionals we desperately need in rural and regional towns to provide essential health care.

As the shadow assistant minister for regional health, I see childcare access, which relies on childcare supply, as a key strategy in boosting the health workforce in our regions. Let me remind us that the families I described previously across the electorate of Mallee are families who are struggling to buy their own homes or, owing to the high cost of rent, which is now 17 per cent higher than it was before this government came to office, with health costs that have increased by 10 per cent in the same period, electricity prices that have increased 32 per cent and gas prices that have increased by 34 per cent. These are families who need two incomes to survive. They need to work and they need child care to work. They can't get the child care they need, and they need it now.

This bill proposes to make taxpayer-subsidised child care available to a larger pool of families. It proposes to expand eligibility to subsidised care by removing the activity test for three days a week, so that families who need child care so they can work will be competing against families who may not be working, studying or volunteering at all. When the former coalition government introduced the activity test in 2018 it was designed to encourage workforce participation. It was also designed to ensure priority of access was given to vulnerable families alongside working families. Members on this side of the House firmly believe in providing support to those most in need, and that is why when the activity test was introduced it included several exemptions for children and families with increased need for care. This bill will provide all families, up to a combined income of $533,000, with access to 72 hours a fortnight of subsidised child care. For Indigenous families this will be increased to a maximum of 100 hours a fortnight of subsidised child care.

It sticks in the craw of rural families in child care deserts that Australians on a combined income of more than $500,000 get government subsidised childcare support but they cannot access a cracker because they are in a childcare desert. The coalition will oppose this legislation. This bill is flawed in a number of ways. It increases access—or demand—without addressing supply issues. It removes priority access for working families. It disincentivises aspiration to be working, studying or volunteering if not taking care of one's children. It does nothing to increase access or flexibility for families and does not address current cost-of-living pressures. Of particular note is the fact it does nothing to help solve the unique problems faced by rural and regional families like those in my electorate of Mallee.

Over the last three years Labor has failed to meaningfully address supply-side constraints. They argue their $1 billion Building Early Education Fund policy will boost supply, but history tells us they will not be able to deliver, especially outside major cities. This government has a track record of deprioritising the needs of rural and regional Australians by making schemes that were previously targeted at rural and regional issues less targeted, diluting the needs of rural and regional people against all groups with unique or increased need, as if to deny the challenges experienced—or, as I have put multiple times in this place, robbing regions to buy votes in the inner cities. Labor does not have rural and regional Australia's backs when it comes to so many public policy issues, including equitable access to child care.

Let me now discuss flexibility. Families have a right to chose what their work and family life looks like, and the coalition respects this choice. Labor's three-day guarantee does nothing for families who chose to remain at home and raise their children until primary school, or families that use flexible arrangements such as grandparents or nannies by choice, all because centre based care arrangements or family day care don't meet their needs adequately. The bill also does nothing for parents who need flexibility, such as families who do shift work or who work non-standard hours—healthcare workers. Again, these hardworking families will not benefit from this change. The families who aren't working, studying or training will.

Now, to affordability. Some sections of the community have labelled the three-day guarantee a cost-of-living measure, but in reality it is nothing of the sort. Since Labor came to office the cost of child care has increased by 22.3 per cent. The last time Labor was in government, the cost of child care skyrocketed by 53 per cent in six years. Almost one in three services are charging above the fee cap as providers struggle to keep up with the rising regulation and operational costs.

Australia's budget is under immense pressure. The activity test plays an important role in encouraging workforce participation and creates a stronger culture of self-sufficiency among those who can and should support themselves. The activity test is not unfair. Rather, it ensures that the taxpayer funded childcare subsidy is targeted, that government funds are applied in a targeted manner. Yet, this government not only wants to spend taxpayer money to enable additional families to access child care whether or not they are working or have other reasons for benefiting from the care but is not addressing the core issues at hand in rural and regional Australia, of improving access to care in communities where it is just not available.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025 and wholeheartedly endorse the Albanese government's three-day guarantee. I'm proud to be part of a government that truly recognises the value of early education and is taking real steps to support young families across the country. I'm determined to see our little ones better equipped, better educated and better prepared for their schooling journey.

As I said, alongside the Prime Minister in Brisbane last year, when we announced the three-day guarantee, my twins, Oshy and Dash, treasure their early educators, Camilla, Lara and Grace—although for very different reasons. Oshy says he appreciates Camilla and Lara for the cold, hard fact that, if any other kid hurts Oshy, Camilla and Lara always make that kid say sorry. But, when I asked Dash what he values in Grace, he replied, 'Because Grace just loves us.' The Labor Party is working hard to ensure the likes of Grace, Camilla and Lara are better supported, and that commitment is exactly what this bill delivers, with all families guaranteed three days, or 72 hours, of childcare subsidy each fortnight and families caring for First Nations children guaranteed 100 hours each fortnight.

This guarantee will secure an increase in support for over 100,000 young Australian families, with 66,000 expected to be better off in the first full financial year alone. Crucially, this is all to be achieved with no family being left worse off. The Albanese government will hold no-one back and we will leave no-one behind. And it's not just other suburbs that will benefit; this three-day guarantee is part of a larger package that establishes a $1 billion building early education fund to build and expand childcare centres in areas of need, including in the outer suburbs and in the regions.

Opportunity starts with education, and only Labor has a plan to ensure our kids get the start they deserve. The three-day guarantee builds upon Labor's work to untangle a decade of confusion and cuts under the coalition. Their notorious activity test created barriers to workforce participation, made the childcare system more complicated and ultimately made it harder for families to access support. The 2018 childcare package halved the number of subsidised hours of care that low-income families could access, from 48 hours to 24 hours, or just one day a week. This is not just a statistic to be cast aside; these are real outcomes for young families struggling to get by. And data from the Department of Education shows the number of children from low-income families accessing care went from around 32,000 in 2018 to around 6,500 in 2019. Put simply, those opposite let down those most in need.

The Albanese government has taken a very different, positive, practical approach. We have boosted the childcare subsidy. We have delivered cheaper child care. This has already reduced the cost of early education and care for more than a million families in Australia, and almost 9,000 families in my own electorate of Lilley. For a typical family, this measure alone has cut the cost of child care by 17 per cent.

Labor has also delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early educators, to back our workers and ensure that these services are available. In a real sense, this means an educator who is paid at the award rate will receive a pay rise of at least $103 a week, with our early childhood teachers receiving an additional $166 a week.

But the Albanese Labor government will not rest on its laurels or become complacent. We know there is more to be done. That is why we're also developing an early education service delivery price. This effort will allow for a better understanding of early education service delivery. It will underpin future reform.

But as the Albanese government works towards universal early education that is high quality and accessible, the coalition only promise cuts. Whether it's TAFE, university, schooling or early education, the coalition have time and time again shown that they will not prioritise or support education in any form. They're against affordable early education. They're against student debt relief. They're against fee-free TAFE. They believe that education is a privilege that should be paid for. We disagree.

By making this investment in early education, Labor is sending a clear message to young families across the country: we see you, we support you, we back you and we will always work to deliver better outcomes for you and your kids, because that is what Labor governments do. We help people under pressure and we build for the future. I thank the House.

Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for her contribution. I know she's genuinely engaged, as a parent of twins, in the childcare and early education system, as am I, because I have two young daughters who have literally, in the last half an hour, just got home from day care. So, standing in this place I have an appreciation, more than most, for the importance of early childhood care and education.

I want to start by saying a heartfelt thankyou to all those hardworking early childhood educators who look after my daughters and look after many families' children while they're at work. I stand in this place today, and my wife was able to work today, because of a service provided by some very caring individuals. I also think it's important to note the role they play in being part of the fabric of a local suburb or community, and I'll get to some of that a bit later in relation to where there's a lack of child care through parts of Australia, which is regrettable.

In the suburb of Labrador, directly across the road from my office, we've got the Jacaranda Early Education Centre. Last week I visited them because they asked me for a set of three flags, and I was very proud to deliver those. And throughout the suburbs of my electorate there are some amazing childcare centres—for example, Runaway Bay Kindyland, Goodstart Early Learning at Parkwood, Bonny Babes at Hope Island, Harmony Early Education at Hope Island and the Little Scholars School of Early Learning at Ormeau. All are doing an amazing job to make sure that on a day-to-day basis our children are given the best start in life.

But it's not easy to stand in this place and support the approach Labor have taken to child care during this term in government. In the end, people are working—and often have to work—in order to pay the bills, and child care becomes an absolute necessity in order to get yourself to your place of work and apply yourself to that job. The activity test as introduced was to try and incentivise and facilitate parents getting back into the workforce, and that is I think a very worthwhile intention. There are a lot of parents out there, a lot of mums, who are going to say, 'Well, if they're removing the activity test, that is the best news I've had this week, because it means I'm not going to have to spend 45 minutes on the phone to Services Australia.' One of the things that's happened during this term of the Labor government is that they couldn't run a chook raffle let alone a government department giving any kind of level of service. There will be a huge sigh of relief at any reduction in the time that you have to spend dealing with Services Australia, under this government, because, I've got to say, that'll save parents a lot of time.

But where this government has failed Australian families in child care is that they get lost in the concept of creating something that will turn up on a corflute at a polling booth at the federal election this year. Mark my words: as we walk into polling booths, there will be corflutes that say 'Cheaper child care'.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Good idea!

Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister at the table says it's a good idea. Can I tell you that that, in all honesty, would be a fabrication, because we know—and the minister should know this—that the cost of child care in real, tangible, out-of-pocket terms has gone up astronomically. Being in the child care and early education space, as I am, with my two young daughters, I know and talk to a lot of parents about these issues. Very helpfully, these parents provide an amazing level of detail to support their concerns about what's happening in child care under this Labor government. I'll give you one example of an early education centre where, at the start of 2024, the daily rate was $153. On 5 February 2024, it went up by $5 to $158. On 8 July 2024, it went up by a further $17 to $175, and then, on 2 January 2025, it went up by $7.60 to $182.60 per day. Never mind the entire term of this Labor government; this is a real-life example of what's happened in a 12-month period, and—I shudder to say these numbers—the actual rise has been $29.60, or 19.3 per cent, in 12 months.

We, as a coalition, support early educators; we support what they do. Sometimes, on the other side of this place, Labor speakers will try to rewrite history and suggest that we didn't support the pay rises for our early childhood educators, but we did. That's a reflection of the work that they do. But don't think for a minute that that isn't paid for by someone. In fact, do you know who it's paid for by? It's paid for by the parents whose children go to the centres. Again, the living, breathing example of this is where that same early education centre said, on 6 December, that they were signing up for the increase in wages—fantastic—and then what happens only seven days later? Guess what, families? Your fees are going up. Parents can join the dots. It's another bill to pay that's going up. That's what's happening under this Labor government—the cost of everything is going up. What parents tell me is that the barrier to getting into child care is oftentimes just the calculation of the sheer cost. It's not about the activity test; it's actually about the cost.

So we are now seeing a policy which I'm sure probably has some good intentions, if we put the corflute campaign to one side. But this government doesn't, cannot and, historically, has failed to deliver childcare places in this country. They can't control those numbers. We know that when they pump-prime the number of people who require places in child care what's going to happen is there will be more people seeking those places. It will put family against family—working families against those who aren't working families—trying to compete for the same number of places. We've heard our regional representatives in this place talking about the childcare deserts. That's one example of how we know that this particular policy of Labor's will fail, because in our regions there are just not the places to cover this. But, as it is, even in suburban and urbanised areas the childcare places aren't increasing fast enough to cover the needs, so there are waiting lists at many of our local centres.

In the end, what this government are doing yet again is legislating a poorly thought-out and poorly designed quick fix that gives them a headline on the eve of a federal election so that they can have the corflute campaign that they want to run. But Australians will see through this, and they should see through it, because it'll be sold that the three-day guarantee is kind of sounding like it's free—but it's not. If Labor is re-elected and that guarantee turns up next year, there are going to be a lot of families who will be thinking that the three-day guarantee meant that they will be getting three days, guaranteed. Of course, it's nothing like that, because you're still subject to those costs that I talked about earlier. As I said, under this Labor government the cost of everything is going up, and the families who have their children in child care and are working so hard to pay the bills have been on the wrong end of 12 consecutive interest rate rises under this government.

Inflation has stayed too high for too long because the Treasurer has been playing chicken with the Reserve Bank for almost three years. At every available opportunity, the Treasurer makes a decision to poke the bear of the Reserve Bank instead of just maybe reining in what they need to be reining in—just momentarily; just long enough to see inflation get down into the band and then stay there. The Treasurer, with his obsession with a big government that spends so much, is not giving the Reserve Bank the tools that they need. They need to see the data in the right comfort zone, and we haven't seen that. We're now halfway through February 2025. Last year just about every other advanced economy saw a reduction in interest rates. Where's Australia? We're falling behind. Instead of being the great, prosperous nation that we should be, we have people who are struggling, and they're struggling under the weight of this Albanese Labor government.

Child care, as I said, is one of the most significant expenses that a family has. So if you think about the upward pressure on interest rates that has seen them go to extraordinarily high numbers, consecutively, and you think about just that one example of the daycare centre going from $153 to in excess of $180, Australians legitimately should be asking themselves whether or not, in February 2025, they are better off than what they were in May 2022. The truthful answer is that they're not. They know they're not.

But, instead of helping working families and prioritising those that are struggling the most under the pressure of interest rates, with rents going up and mortgages going up, the government are obsessed with a corflute campaign that they'll stick out there whenever the federal election is called. I hope that Australians can see through that. I hope they can see that the pathway to a better nation is with a coalition government. We'll get our country back on track.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Looking at how a nation treats its children, some of the most vulnerable in our society, can be a really proud reflection on us, and that's what I see in this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. It recognises the inherent value and rights of children to have high-quality early childhood education and care to make sure that they can have not just the best start in life but the best life possible in this great country we call Australia.

In this bill, the government wants to ensure that we replace the unfair activity test that left children at a disadvantage and instead guarantee three days of subsidised early childhood education and care for the children who need it. It will mean all families will be eligible for at least 72 hours of subsidised early childhood education and care per fortnight regardless of activity levels. Families can still get 100 hours of subsidised early childhood education and care if they meet the various activity requirements or have a valid exemption. This will provide certainty. For those who know, when households are managing their budgets and planning to get their child into early childhood education and care for the first time, having certainty about what is available to you and also the certainty that you'll get the support that you need makes such a difference.

I've seen in my children's lives, as they've now gone on to kindy and primary school, the huge benefits of having access to early childhood education and care. I don't want to make it harder for anyone to get those benefits. It shouldn't come down to whether or not you or the child's parents are working. It should come down to what the needs of the child are. That's exactly what this does. It supports the idea of universal access to early childhood education and care. When I first came to this place in 2018, I spoke about my belief in universal early childhood education and care. I was standing up the back, and I had a few of my colleagues saying, 'Oh, I don't know if that's going to be the right path,' but now here we are legislating down that path.

We know from the Productivity Commission's report that this will enable us to give more benefits to those who need them the most. In the Productivity Commission's report entitled A path to universal early childhood education and care, released in 2024, they said, very clearly, that the children and families most likely to benefit from early childhood education and care were the least likely to attend. Those who are likely to benefit the most were the least likely to walk through the door of their local childcare centre. This bill makes it much more likely that those children will walk through the door, and we're doing it in a way that makes sure that families really benefit in terms of that certainty but also in terms of the finances of a household as, when you have a new child join your household, you have a few pressures.

Let's take the example of a Perth family who might live in Yokine with an average income of, let's say, $90,000, with one person working full time and the other working a casual job. Under the current system that we've had under the Liberals, they would've been eligible for 18 hours per week or 36 hours per fortnight of subsidised early childhood education and care. Under this change, which I hope every member of this parliament will vote for, they will instead be eligible for 36 hours a week, 72 hours a fortnight, and that means something for their bank balance. That means an extra $230 in their household budget per week, or $11,400 per annum. That's the good news for parents living in Yokine, where you've got one working and the other doing a casual job. It's so much better for the kids. There is what we know from the experts. Jay Weatherill, once a South Australian but these days a proud Western Australian, says: 'Early childhood education is a fundamental building block for children's cognitive, social and emotional development. Together with the care and guidance they get at home, attending child care and kinder supports children's development and gets them school ready. Early childhood education is the great equaliser.' I couldn't agree more.

This bill also delivers on the obligations that many nations, including Australia, have under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I draw members' attention to the explanatory memorandum, which clearly outlines that this delivers on our obligations:

… to ensure that children of working parents have the right to benefit from child care services and facilities.

Further, it notes:

The Bill promotes the rights of parents and children, and the best interest of children, by providing greater subsidisation of the costs of ECEC.

That is something Australia can stand proud of on the world stage.

We then come to the practical things this government has done to make sure we have the workforce that we need to deliver on early childhood education and care objectives and go towards that universal system. I've been fortunate to go to Goodstart Early Learning in East Perth with the President of the Senate to talk to educators about how they've benefited. They said that it has made a serious difference both in retention and recruitment. I heard the same story when I went and read a story to the students at the Marjorie Mann centre in Mount Lawley, a great early childhood education centre that's been a proud part of the Perth electorate for some 40-plus years. I heard the same story when I went with the Minister for Early Childhood Education to Buttercups in Northbridge, where we got to congratulate some of the workers who had recently received awards for their outstanding work in educational leadership through early childhood and to hear about how investing in them had helped with the professionalisation of their profession and enabled people who otherwise might have gone on to do other things because they couldn't afford to stay in the profession to stay in the job that they love. We hear it time and time again.

I'm also proud of being a very strong advocate for the rebuilding of the JHUB in Yokine, in my electorate. JHUB is the centre for the Jewish community in Western Australia. They've had the foresight to include in that JHUB some 120 places in that early childhood education and care centre to make sure we continue to cater for the needs of families in my local community.

I want to go to something that hit my inbox at 6.48 pm, as I was sitting here about to give my speech. It was a media release from Dr Anne Aly, the Minister for Early Childhood Education, the Minister for Youth and the Minister assisting the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I think it's worth putting some of this into Hansard. We saw the shadow spokesperson from the opposition benches say today that replacing the activity test was 'fundamentally unfair and divisive'—that removing the activity test was fundamentally unfair and somehow divisive. I don't think there's anything divisive about making sure that children have access to the care and education they need to have the best start in life. We saw, in that same speech, the member say that this government has 'not delivered any new places'. But that's fundamentally untrue. We know that, since this government came to power, there have been 1,083 additional early childhood education and care services put into the sector, with some 30 per cent of those services located outside a major city.

Since the election of the Albanese Labor government, there's been an additional 97,000 children accessing the benefits of early learning. That's great news. But we should go further. That's what this bill is about. It's about going further. It's also about knowing that when something didn't work you've got an obligation to fix it. When the former government introduced the activity test in July of 2018, they promised the reforms would 'enable and encourage greater workforce participation and simplify childhood payments'. What we actually saw was an increase in the barriers to workforce participation. It made the system more complicated for families. It made it harder for families to access early childhood education and care.

One of the things that makes you proud to be a member of the Australian Labor Party is that our commitment to early childhood education and care isn't just one we have in this place; we also see it in state Labor governments. I want to commend the announcement that was made by Premier Roger Cook of Western Australia just last week. It was a huge commitment to transform early childhood education and care in the great state of Western Australia, which is a nation-leading rollout of free full-time kindergarten for four-year-olds. That is a game changer for parents. It's a game changer for children. It's a game changer introducing more capacity into the early childhood education and care system. It is a trial that will commence, should that government be re-elected, on 8 March this year. It will make an incredible difference. It will also show the way for others. Again, I commend my good friend Roger Cook for making that commitment.

Finally, in concluding my remarks, I want to say that the Commonwealth is stepping up to the plate when it comes to investing in the next generation of Australians. State and territory governments are stepping up to the plate when it comes to delivering, particularly when it comes to kindergarten.

There is also an obligation on local councils. I was deeply disappointed when the City of Perth made the choice—an active decision—to close a childcare centre in the heart of my electorate. They did that purely because they wanted a bit more rent. That was disgraceful. It's something that I think really shows that local governments can sometimes trick themselves into thinking that they are just landlords renting out space. They have an obligation to community service. I'd say to any local government that's thinking of selling off land that's currently used by a childcare centre or closing a childcare centre that they will have strong community opposition to doing that. They can't pass all the responsibility on to the states, the territories and the Commonwealth. Local government has a role to play as well.

I want to commend the work that the City of Vincent does under Mayor Alison Xamon when it comes to leadable early childhood education and care. But, again, I just recognise that the fact that we are putting money in is not an excuse, especially for local governments, to pull money out. We all need to find ways to invest more in this sector, to make sure that every child across the country has opportunity. That's what we're doing as well when it comes to the Commonwealth's investments in building new centres across the country, particularly in regional areas in what are referred to as 'childcare deserts'. I would urge every local government to meet their obligations when it comes to investing in early childhood education and care. I commend the bill to the House.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The topic tonight is early childhood education. It's an area in which I've had quite a bit of experience recently. I've spent the last eight years with kids within early childhood education. This is the first year, with my young son moving off to prep, that I'm not having to go to an early childhood education centre on particular mornings of the week or doing the pick-up. During that time, that eight years or near decade in which I was engaging with the system quite regularly, I really gained an appreciation for the sector that I hadn't had before—the amount of care and dedication of the early childhood educators, the passion that those who work in the sector have for it and the enjoyment that kids get out of it. What they learn is far more than what can I teach them at home. They come home with many different perspectives and new skills, and that demonstrates the strength of the Australian early childhood industry.

Since I was elected to this place in 2022 I've also had great opportunities to visit and be a guest of so many centres across the Redlands, not just the centres that my kids attended. The opportunity to read a book to children or engage with some of the educators across my city is a wonderful treat, and it's a great privilege that I get to have as the member for Bowman. So any time there is any legislation in this area of early childhood education I'm always interested to see what the implications are going to be for my local parents and my local sector. Unfortunately, when I look at this bill, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, while I see a lot of good intentions, when I dive into the detail I don't think it is really what is required to fix the issues the sector is facing or get the parents the support they need in order to get what they need out of early education.

The coalition will be opposing this legislation, and we are doing so for a number of reasons. There are several issues with this bill, including the removal of priority access for working families—and I'll talk a bit more about that later. It also de-incentivises aspiration, it increases access without addressing supply issues, it does nothing to increase the access or flexibility for families and it does not address the current cost-of-living pressures.

Of course supply is a major issue, and I find that that's the major issue relating to early education that comes up when I talk to parents and prospective parents across my electorate. We've had some new investment in some new centres, but it's very difficult at times to actually find a spot for kids. It's alright for those who are already in the system or who have the ability to get younger siblings in through some sort of preference system for those centres that have that sort of process, but it's often very difficult to lock in a spot for your kid, even in my electorate, which is outer-suburban. We're by no means a childcare or early education desert, as some communities are, and I've heard a lot of my colleagues talk about the issues they've been facing with a lack of supply within their electorates, not just in relation to this bill but throughout this term.

It's concerning that this bill will do nothing to assist those communities. It's hard enough to find a spot within outer-suburban communities. I remember the time when my wife and I were trying to find a spot for our children. Many centres don't even bother responding to your requests, emails, or investigations because they've got that big a waiting list. They've got that much demand and so little capacity to actually supply that demand that it's not even worth their while responding to you. I know that's been the experience, when I'm going door to door in my electorate, that has been felt by many parents. Some are lucky enough to snag a position, but often it's a long way away from the homes of these families.

Deputy Speaker Vasta knows well the difficulties for those who work in the inner city of Brisbane and have to commute from Brisbane's bayside—that it can be a great challenge, particularly for those early drop-offs. But thankfully a lot of these early childhood centres are open quite early to allow bayside parents to drop off and head into work. Of course, two-thirds of my electorate head out of my electorate for work each day, and it is a challenge, but it is wonderful to know that you are leaving your children in the care of such dedicated and wonderful professionals. So supply is a major issue, and we're concerned that this bill does not do enough in that area.

Now, it would appear that it's only going to increase access for a small number of families, but it will have wide-ranging effects on all families. Families who need early childhood education so they can work will be competing against families who have extra subsidised access but who may not be working, studying or volunteering at all. That's a challenge for us economically. If we've got a parent or a pair of parents who are working hard and are desperate to get their kids into a centre, they're now going to have to compete, on an equal playing field, against parents who are not working or who may not be working or who may be working less.

I think it just comes down to a question of basic fairness. I think it makes sense for there to be an activity test. I think it makes sense economically, because we want to encourage people to work and we desperately need more people working in our economy. Also, I think it makes sense from a basic government fairness perspective. Why are we offering such generous subsidies to those who may have greater capacity to look after their children at home against those who don't? We know—we've all had this experience within our electorates—of so many Australian families who are having to take on extra shifts and extra jobs. Young mums who may have wanted to take longer maternity leave are going back earlier because they simply can't afford the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis. We've seen 12 rate increases over the course of this government, and it's become increasingly difficult for Australian families—

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Crisis after crisis!

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is crisis after crisis, as the member for Wright interjects. It is crisis after crisis, and we heard a bit of that in question time today.

Unfortunately, Labor has failed to address the supply-side constraints, and in fact I think they've made it worse through this bill. Over the last three years, Labor has failed to meaningfully address supply-side constraints. Modelling from the Productivity Commission shows that most of the children affected by the activity test changes live in major cities. Families in thin markets and childcare deserts, who have little or no access at all to child care, will be the most disadvantaged by this move. That's a concern. When we've got a bill that's going to adversely impact regional and remote communities, of course the coalition are going to be deeply concerned about that. We think it's not thought through properly, and we're hoping that the Senate committee that's looking into these issues will have the opportunity to analyse that properly—to do a proper assessment about what the impacts are really going to be. What does this mean for supply? Particularly, what does it mean for supply in regional and remote communities or areas where there are, for other reasons, childcare deserts?

One of those areas is the islands in my electorate. I'm blessed to have the Southern Moreton Bay Islands and North Stradbroke Island in my electorate. We've got one child care looking after all the Southern Moreton Bay Islands. Petrae McLean and her team do a wonderful job, but, unfortunately, they get very little support from any level of government in the work that they do. They're often dealing with kids with very complex needs from one of the lowest socioeconomic brackets that we have within Queensland. Yes, we are a stone's throw from the centre of Brisbane, but there is some real disadvantage there. I would like to see the federal government provide a lot more support to centres like that, who are operating on the fringes of our major cities, taking on serious challenges, and doing it with such commitment and with such care for our kids.

We also have concern about the lack of flexibility in these changes. Families have a right to choose what their work life and family life look like, and the coalition respects this choice. Labor's three-day guarantee does nothing for families who choose to remain at home and raise their children until primary school or families who use flexible arrangements such as grandparents or nannies, but, of course, all Australians are going to have to pay for the changes. The bill also does nothing for parents who need flexibility, such as families who do shiftwork or work non-standard hours.

We're also very concerned about the discrepancy in the costings on this bill. We believe the figure of $426.7 million over five years is very undercooked and the true impact of removing the activity test may not be fully known. The department has been unable to advise how many families are eligible for the CCS but are not enrolling their children or how many families are completely disengaged from the CCS. So it's total guesswork. It seems that they haven't actually got the understanding of what the impact of this policy is going to be, so it becomes very difficult to actually put a dollar figure on it. It seems that, in the final week of parliament, we're just trying to push these things through without having a proper sense of the cost. And, of course, the costings don't account for the groups that I mentioned earlier.

What we do know is that the Productivity Commission's 2024 A path to universal early childhood education and care report costed the complete removal of the activity test at $2.3 billion per year. That is a long way from $426.7 million over five years, which is the estimated impact—$2.3 billion per year is obviously a lot more than that. The PC's modelling suggested the complete removal of the activity test would increase hours of early childhood education by four per cent. It also estimated it would lead to a 0.9 per cent decrease in hours worked by sole parents and primary-care parents in coupled families. So we've got very serious concerns about what this is going to cost the taxpayers.

We're also concerned about what this is going to mean for parents in terms of affordability. Some sections of the community have labelled the three-day guarantee a cost-of-living measure, but, in reality, it is nothing of the sort. Since Labor came to power, the cost of child care has increased by 22.3 per cent, and this is the lived experience of myself and many other parents of early childhood education students. You get a lovely subsidy increase, and what happens immediately? You get an email from the childcare provider that says, 'We've upped our fees to match that,' and more. The real impact is that it has gone up by 22.3 per cent in this term. The last time Labor was in government, the cost of child care skyrocketed by 53 per cent in six years—my goodness! I'm glad I didn't have kids in child care over that period. Maybe the deputy speaker did. Since Labor's Cheaper Child Care policy came into effect, out-of-pocket costs have increased by 12.7 per cent. That's certainly the message from constituents that I'm hearing loud and clear, particularly from the mums at the various childcare centres that I visit.

The majority of families accessing CCS will not see a reduction in their childcare costs because of this legislation. I think in the final few minutes of my contribution, what I might like to do is just quickly reflect on the LNP's record in this regard, because, really, I think the Australian people are going to have to make an assessment. Potentially, this could be the second-last sitting day of the term—we'll see. Very shortly, the Australian people will have to make an assessment as to who is going to look after their best interests in this area of policy. When we were last in government, we almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23, and locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergarteners. We made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years. More than 1.3 million children had access to the Child Care Subsidy, from about one million families. Under the coalition, 280,000 more children were in early education since the start of the coalition's time in government, and our targeted extra support introduced in March 2022 made a real difference. Childcare costs actually came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022.

Because of that—some would say largely because of this—we saw women's workforce participation reach record highs at 62.3 per cent in May 2022, compared to 58.7 per cent when the coalition came to government. When you consider that record and you consider all the changes that were made over the course of those nine years and the impact that was able to have in that sector, and you look at the cost increases that we've seen since this government has come in, despite its strong rhetoric, I think we can make a clear distinction between these records. We're concerned that this bill won't do anything to get the government where it needs to go in reforming this system.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prior to me speaking on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, there are a few Ts and Cs as far as I'm concerned that come from a very personal perspective. I would first of all like to recognise that I come from the bush, in the electorate of Braddon, in the north-west west coast of King Island in Tasmania, where not only are childcare centres rare but they're sparse. But they've got waiting lists that are in the pages in length. We just don't have the positions available in the bush, unfortunately. We don't have the resources. What I would like to say in this place, very sincerely, very honestly and very openly, is that the experience that I've had with the early childhood education sector has been very positive. I look at the care, at the sincerity and at the real genuine leadership that some of these individuals, some of our early childhood educators, provide our young children, and it's second to none. I am astounded by the level of care that is generally available to our youngest and most needy in their formative years. They love our kids, and those kids love them. When you see a young child wanting to go to day care, that is indicative of a wholesome environment, a good environment. As we argue to-and-fro across the chamber here today, I don't want those good folks in our early childhood education sector to feel that it's an indictment on them, because the work, for the most part, that they do is second to none. I take my hat off, and I mean that most sincerely.

I myself have a three-year-old daughter. Her name is Elsie, and she's a little handful from time to time, but she absolutely loves going to day care. Her little face lights up as she meets her little friends and puts her lunchbox—which is always chock-a-block full—into the fridge. She comes home tired and sometimes a little grumpy, but she always has a story to tell about her day and what she learnt at day care. It's beautiful. That's the future that I want to see for our early childhood education centres right across the board, and I'm seeing it every day.

But, today, we're discussing a different issue. We're discussing what is fundamental to families across Australia—in the bush, in the cities and in between. At first glance, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025 might sound like a positive step, but when you look at the detail, the granularity, it becomes clear that this is not about helping working families. It's about Labor playing politics with early education and care. Anybody would think there was an election looming!

This bill does not guarantee working families priority access, and that's important. This disincentivises aspiration and it fails to address the supply crisis. I mentioned that earlier, in my opening. These positions just don't exist in the bush. They're not available. How can you incentivise something that isn't there in the first place? It can't materialise out of nothing. There's nothing in this bill that allows for new startups. There's nothing there that helps our early childhood educators develop their skills, their knowledge, their training and their application. There's no streamlining of red tape or green tape in order to build or to start up a new centre. That's what I find troubling.

What Labor is proposing is a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't work for all Australian families. The Albanese government has left the coalition with no choice but to oppose this bill, because it does nothing to address the real challenges facing parents and carers alike. Instead of making child care more affordable and accessible for those who need it most, Labor is introducing a politically motivated scheme that will increase competition for places without increasing supply. We all know Economics 101: supply and demand is indicative of price and service.

This legislation amends A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 and removes the childcare-subsidy activity test, replacing it with a three-day guarantee. What does that mean? Let's look at this in more detail. Starting in January 2026, all families earning up to $533,000 per annum will have access to 72 hours of subsidised childcare per fortnight, regardless and irrespective of whether they are working, studying, volunteering or not engaged in any workforce activity whatsoever. For Indigenous families, this access increases to 100 hours per fortnight. There is no prioritisation for working families, those that want to go about their business or build their own business, for instance. I come from a place where small business is prolific right across the electorate. Often, this is a sole trader business or maybe a partnership. We've got a lot of farmers that work in partnerships, so it's important for them not only for the education of their child but for that child's safety. If that child isn't at day care, that means that child is on the farm, with dangerous equipment. So we also have a safety issue. There is no prioritisation for working families like the ones I'm talking about.

This means that those who need early education and care in order to work or to study will be competing for places with families who are not required to work at all. That's what I have issue with. The government estimates that this policy will cost $426.7 million over five years, but this figure doesn't add up.

Debate interrupted.