Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to associate myself with the remarks of the earlier contributions of the members for Macquarie and Cowper in relation to the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiries into domestic and family violence. This legislation before the House, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, goes to the core of families. Families mean a lot. The meaning of family is vastly different in 2025 than it was just 10 short years ago and certainly back in the sixties and seventies, when I was being raised in a family situation where my late father, Lance, worked the farm at Brucedale between Wagga Wagga and Junee and, prior to that, at Marrar. My late mother, Eileen, stayed at home, and looked after the children—five children. That was pretty much the norm: dads went out and worked and mums stayed at home. But, today, it's very different. It's very much changed. Mothers are now, in fact, in some cases, the sole breadwinner. In other cases, they're the highest-wage earner. Society has become very, very different.

I noted the previous standing committee reports and listened very carefully to the member for Cowper talking about men being the problem and men also being very much at the heart of the solution to domestic and family violence. Being a former police officer and having prosecuted cases of family violence as a lawyer, I can say the member for Cowper is very much right.

Late last year, the director of the Wagga Women's Health Centre, Johanna Elms, who I have a lot of respect for for her vision of what society could look like and certainly how Wagga Wagga could improve, organised, conducted and led a men's forum. It was held at a venue out on the Oura Road. It was to see what community leaders could do about domestic and family violence and how we could be achieving zero violent crimes against women. Ninety to 100 community leaders gathered. It was a men's-only affair. There were no women present. But Ms Elms arranged that particular forum. Everything was on the table.

I have supported the Wagga Women's Health Centre very much. My mother-in-law, Beverley Shaw, worked there for many years. I have supported that centre in my 14 years in the parliament because it has women's issues at the forefront. They were ahead of their time. They began in the 1970s, trying to get access to the pill when it was difficult to do so in Wagga Wagga. It was a very conservative city. They formed that centre. They didn't receive any funding but for some philanthropic donations. They did it on their own. I appreciate there are now calls for a similar type of arrangement for a men's centre and demands that there be state and federal funding for that. But the women, to their credit, did it on their own. This was in an era where we were just starting to have more women in the workforce.

When we were in coalition, I was very proud of the fact there were so many women in the workforce. In fact, the coalition saw women's workforce participation reach record highs, at 62.3 per cent. That was in May 2022, just before this Labor government took office. It was a big lift from when Labor had previously left office in 2013, when it was at 58.7 per cent. So it was quite a sizable and significant jump.

With this particular legislation before the House, it is interesting to read the May 2024 report of GrainGrowers. They placed as one of their main, if not top, items of importance early childhood education and care. This is an agricultural group. In that report—and I will read from it because it is fascinating to hear—they said:

Access to quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) services promotes children's cognitive and socio-emotional development, laying the foundation for academic success and fostering important life skills such as communication, problem-solving, and collaboration.

Mind you, I'm reading from an agriculture report. That's the thing here. They said:

Grain growing takes place in rural, regional and remote areas of Australia, where children and families experience more limited access to a range of quality ECEC services relative to those living in metropolitan centres, and in some instances, have no access at all.

The report continues:

Access to ECEC supports working parents living within grain growing regions by enabling them to pursue employment and education opportunities, thereby helping to alleviate workforce shortages in the grains industry and broader supply chain, and allows for greater economic productivity for our communities.

That's from GrainGrowers. You would think that a report from an organisation which has at its very heart the growing of grain would be talking about, perhaps, the instant asset write-off for harvesters, augers and silos—that happened under the coalition government—but they're talking about an early childhood education and care policy. You can see how society has shifted. You can see the concerns in rural and regional Australia about this very important policy area.

I've said so often—and you do get sneered at by those opposite, who are quick to crow about the fact that they've got cheaper, more affordable child care—that the rub in regional Australia and especially in remote Australia is not affordability; it's availability and accessibility, because in some areas you can't find child care to save yourself. Families, often led by women, and sometimes single-parent families where the mother has custody, can't get access to child care, and they are expected to put food on the table and to earn the money. Some of them are seriously super mums, and we pay credit to them.

We had a situation in Lockhart not that long ago. In the 2021 census—and the minister at the table and I have experience with the census, don't we, Member for Fenner?

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Absolutely,' he says. He'd be interested to know that Lockhart's population was 3,319. There was no childcare centre in that town, in that shire. It is a huge grain-growing area—one of the very best in Australia—which was once represented in this place by the late great Tim Fisher. It's not far from Boree Creek, a town that Tim put on the map. Of course, the Lockhart council came in to see what it could do to fill the void left by the closure of the childcare centre.

Councils have to do more and more of the heavy lifting when it comes to not just child care but the other end of the scale. Coolamon Shire has a population of 4,385. For some years, its council has provided the aged-care services in that shire, which is only three-quarters of an hour's drive north-west of Wagga Wagga, with a population of more than 70,000. But unless the shire council, which runs the Allawah Lodge, did the aged-care services, there wouldn't be any aged-care services at all. The sad reality is that, unless local government steps up to fill the void in child care, there won't be any child care at all in some of these centres the size of Lockhart. It's not right. Yet we have a government spruiking the affordability of child care. It can be as cheap as anything—it can have a zero cost—but if you don't have a childcare centre then it's of no use at all. That is the point when coalition members argue about the childcare desert.

I hear so often about the childcare desert from the member for Mallee, who represents the largest electorate in Victoria. I've heard her eloquently describe the lack of childcare services in that sprawling Victorian electorate. Then there's the retiring member for Parkes. His electorate makes up half of the landmass of New South Wales, and one of the biggest issues in that electorate is childcare access. It's not affordability. It's access and availability. When you have families desperately needing services, desperately seeking places for the ability for them to go out and work, put food on the table and contribute to the economic wealth of this nation, but they can't find placements for their children, then it is something. There is market failure, that somebody, somewhere, somehow has to address.

There are several issues with this bill, including the removal of priority access for working families. It disincentivises aspiration, it increases access without addressing supply issues—something that I was talking about earlier—and it does nothing to increase access or flexibility for families. This is the issue. It's all well and good for Labor government members to talk about affordability. Again, if you don't have the infrastructure, if you don't have the service and if you don't have the people running the childcare centres, that issue of affordability is a moot point. It doesn't address current cost-of-living pressures.

I know that yesterday Labor finally, finally, finally—I harp on that point—lifted the biosecurity tax. Some might ask, 'What's that got to do with this particular childcare policy?' The biosecurity tax was forcing our farmers, many of whom often need childcare access, to pay the biosecurity measures of competitors who were coming in from foreign countries to sit on the supermarket shelves in opposition to ours. We have been banging on about this for months, and I know that Colin Bettles from Grain Producers sat in all the second reading speeches in the Federation Chamber about this. I didn't hear a jot from too many other stakeholders—disappointingly so, I have to say—but it's the same sort of people who were yesterday praising the agriculture minister for lifting it. About time, because our farmers need every bit of help.

And they need every bit of help when it comes to matters such as this—childcare support, childcare access and childcare availability. That's the issue, that's the rub. We talk—and I listened to the member for Macquarie and the member for Cowper—about the pressures on strained families. We don't need our families to be under any more pressure, and we need to absolutely support our families as best we can, so that local government areas such as Lockhart don't have to then try to fill the void left by a centre closure, so that local governments can get on with the job of filling potholes, fixing the roads, repairing the roads, putting bitumen down, picking up the bins and organising what they do, and do very, very well. They shouldn't have to be in this space.

The bill has been referred to a Senate inquiry, with a reporting date of 21 March 2025. Let's hope it's not too late to get something positive and meaningful done in this space, particularly about accessibility and availability of childcare services in regional and remote Australia.

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

Just before I give the call to the minister, I see the member for Nicholls was seeking the call.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To make a contribution to this debate, Deputy Speaker.

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

Absolutely. I'll come to you straight after I come to the minister.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My three boys are now in secondary school or graduated, but this bill certainly brings back memories of the great benefits that they got from their time in early childhood, attending the Acton Early Childhood Centre. I would sometimes cycle, with one of my boys on the back of the bike, to the campus at ANU. It's a lovely spot, surrounded by areas where the kids could walk and where they could enjoy playing. They had little carts and so they could be out and active in the play spaces. There were chickens for the kids to engage with, and there were educators who were dedicated to spending time with the kids—reading to them, singing to them, nurturing them.

Later, we moved our youngest to the Wiradjuri Preschool and Child Care Centre on the campus of the University of Canberra. Their motto is: 'We care, we share, we love to learn.' Wiradjuri had a smaller outdoor space, but they made terrific use of it. They enjoyed taking the kids for walks across the University of Canberra campus. I'm not quite sure what the young students made of these little tackers being taken across the campus, but the educators used the space to their best abilities.

What we really appreciated about Wiradjuri was the way it operated as a kind of teaching hospital model, where those students who were studying early childhood would come in and be mentored by experienced early childhood educators. They had two pictures on the wall, one of Gough Whitlam and one of Vincent Lingiari. They would tell the kids about that wonderful moment when, in the land handback, Whitlam poured a handful of sand into Vincent Lingiari's hand and Vincent so generously, so extraordinarily, said, 'We're all mates now.'

They played at the piano and gave the kids a love of learning and a love of friendship as well. The times at those centres are ones that shaped all three of our boys. As it happened, we drove by the Acton Early Childhood Centre on the weekend and the kids were immediately telling stories about how it influenced them more than a decade ago.

Today 1.4 million Australian children went off to an early learning centre, enjoying the benefits of a quality early learning education. We've gotten well past the notion that early learning is simply babysitting. Yes, there are huge benefits to workforce participation, particularly for women who've traditionally done the lion's share of the caring duties, but there's also a key education benefit, which is why it's so important to ensure that the early learning sector attracts and retains great educators.

The early learning reforms in this country really kicked off in 2007 when the Rudd government committed to a series of significant early childhood reforms, and I pay tribute to the work of Maxine McKew in this reform journey. The Starting strong II report acknowledged that Australia performed relatively poorly on early learning and committed to a national quality framework which would see all early learning centres in the country properly assessed. That national quality framework reflected the fact that the Labor government recognised it was important to have quality as well as affordability at the heart of what was done.

We have seen an increase in the number of children attending early childhood centres, but we have also seen challenges placed on the take-up of early learning as a result of the activity test. That was one of the factors that led the government to commission a key Productivity Commission report titled A path to universal early childhood education and care.

The three commissioners of that report were Martin Stokie, Lisa Gropp and Professor Deborah Brennan. I would particularly like to acknowledge the work of Professor Brennan, who I've known for a very long time—since I was eligible for early child care myself and then at the University of Sydney when I took her course on social policy. She has been an extraordinary advocate for a better early learning system in this country. I would like to thank Professor Brennan, as so many of the members the government have, for the important insights she brought to that Productivity Commission report. She is truly a national treasure. Her expertise and deep understanding of the history of reform in this sector, as well as the international experience, really made this a landmark report.

The Productivity Commission report noted that nearly half of one-year-olds and around 90 per cent of four-year-olds attend some form of early child care. Also, around one in seven children aged five to 12 attend outside school care. The report noted that the expansion of early learning has enabled an increase in parents' labour force participation, particularly of mothers of children aged zero to four. It noted that, in 2023, three in four mothers with children aged zero to four were in paid employment. But the report noted, too, that not all families benefit from early child care. The report reads:

In parts of the country, services are scarce and for some families, ECEC may be unaffordable or not inclusive of all children. Children experiencing disadvantage and vulnerability, while most likely to benefit from ECEC, are less likely to attend.

That has led the government to put in place this bill, which builds on our prior reforms.

When we came to office, we brought in our cheaper childcare package, which cut the cost of early education and care for more than a million families. We implemented a 15 per cent pay rise for early educators. This is part of a package that establishes the billion-dollar Building Early Education Fund to build and expand childcare centres in areas of need. We have understood, as part of our reforms, the importance of ensuring that we're raising quality while also tackling affordability. That is why, in our reforms, which saw the 15 per cent pay rise, we linked that wage rise to caps on fees. For providers to be eligible, they must not increase their fees by more than 4.4 per cent in the first year and 4.2 per cent in the second. That is putting wages up for workers and keeping costs down for families. We've seen vacancies in the early childhood education and care sector plummeting over the last 12 months. According to Jobs and Skills Australia, internet vacancy rates are down 22 per cent in that sector, since December 2023. It is good that we are seeing an increase in the workforce in that sector.

We know that a universal early learning system will require a significant journey. One of the things that strikes you, when you read the Productivity Commission's doorstopper report on early learning, is that it lays out a pathway for reform. The bill that is before the House today is part of that journey, but it's not the end of the journey. I'd encourage members to look at the way in which that journey is set out, going right out to 2036, acknowledging the importance of steadily building up the workforce and the number of available early childcare centres—we're going to have to build more early childcare centres in order to expand accessibility—and the importance of ensuring that early childhood care remains affordable.

Recent data shows an Australian family on an income of $120,000 a year, paying an average quarterly fee for 30 hours of child care per week, has saved approximately $2,768 since September 2023. Our cheaper childcare policy is delivering for Australian families, as our Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act is delivering for the early childhood educators. This reform journey is absolutely critical if we are to improve the accessibility of the sector. The Productivity Commission has noted that ensuring that all children aged zero to five years have access to some form of high-quality, subsidised early childhood education and care—at least three days a week, 30 hours a fortnight, for 48 weeks a year—would accommodate the needs of families and the benefits to children from ECEC participation.

This three-day guarantee is about making sure that every child can have the best start in life. It's about ensuring that we get rid of the Liberals' activity test, which locked out children and families. Instead, we have put in Labor's three-day guarantee. It's a crucial step in delivering on the commitment to universal early learning.

The activity test has been at the centre of the debate over this bill, and I want to take a moment to talk about our rationale for scrapping the activity test, which was introduced by the Liberals in 2018. As Jay Weatherill from Thrive by Five states:

The Activity test was intended to encourage parents into work but in fact it has done the opposite. It has limited choices and made it harder for parents—especially single parents—to make an income.

An evaluation by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found no evidence that the introduction of the activity test caused any increase in workforce participation. The Productivity Commission found that the effects of the activity test on workforce participation were ambiguous.

We do know that the activity test has made early learning harder to access for many families, including disproportionately affecting those families that may be experiencing disadvantage. The Parenthood's Georgie Dent said the activity test is 'a barrier that disproportionately locks out children who stand to benefit the most from participating in quality early childhood education and care'. In 2021, only 54 per cent of children from the most disadvantaged areas were enrolled in early childhood education and care, compared with 76 per cent of children in the highest socioeconomic areas, and that is despite the fact that the most disadvantaged children are those who are most likely to benefit from early education and care.

We know this through a series of important randomised trials conducted in the 1960s: the Perry Preschool Project, the Abecedarian Project and the Early Training Project. These studies were critical because they used random assignment to assign children to high-quality early learning or to a control group. That meant that, as in a medical trial, we could be sure that we were seeing causal impacts of early learning. Those causal impacts didn't just show up in social skills and school readiness. They carried through until the children were in teenage years, at which point the girls were less likely to become teenage mums and the boys less likely to commit crimes, and they carried through to participation in university and higher earnings. Those randomised trials showed very clearly the benefits of early childhood education for the extremely disadvantaged cohorts who were targeted by them.

A similar randomised trial was conducted by Yi-Ping Tseng and Jeff Borland and a range of other researchers at the University of Melbourne. They set up a centre in Heidelberg West, providing high-quality early childhood services to children who had been exposed to domestic and family violence. Like the US randomised trials, the Melbourne randomised trial focused on a group of extremely disadvantaged children, and the Early Years Education Program, as it's known, is producing results as those children are tracked through into older years. Through randomised trials of this kind, we are learning about the impact of early childhood education and the importance of extremely high-quality early childhood education for extremely disadvantaged children. It's another area in which randomised trials are shedding insight on how to shape better public policy in Australia.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. I'll set out the legislation and what it is replacing, and then I'll talk a bit about our view of this and what the consequences would be on the ground. This is another piece of flawed legislation by this government that will have consequences. They may be intended or unintended, but they'll be detrimental for our country as a whole. That's the way we view this.

Firstly, the bill amends the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, removing reference to the childcare subsidy activity test and replacing it with the new three-day guarantee. It gives effect to the announcement made by the Prime Minister.

What was the activity test and why was it there? Firstly, what did the activity test do? It meant that parents and carers needed to be working or looking for work, studying or volunteering to be eligible for the finite—and I use that word 'finite'—subsidised care places. I note that volunteering and looking for work only counted towards the first 16 hours of your activity level. There was a whole formula: less than eight hours, zero hours; if you earn above $83,280, 24 hours; and the more hours you worked, the more hours of subsidised care you got each fortnight.

There were exemptions to that. They were carefully thought out and put into place by the previous coalition government. They were that parents and carers would be eligible for 36 hours a fortnight if they identified as Indigenous, were Parent Pathways participants and received an eligible income support payment. There were mutual obligations if you were receiving one of these payments, whether it be JobSeeker, parenting payment or special benefit, or if you had a child who attended preschool. They were designed to assuage some of the things that I think the member for Fenner was talking about and to try to get child care to the people who needed it.

To go back to first principles: why do we have child care/early childhood education? It is certainly a finite resource. In fact, the demand significantly outstrips the supply—particularly in regional and rural electorates, like the one I represent, Nicholls, where we have what are referred to as childcare deserts, and I'll talk a bit about that later. The first principles are that child care for a certain age enables working families to get back into the workforce sooner than they otherwise would, and that gives us a productivity boost in Australia. We certainly need productivity increases at the moment—perhaps now more than ever, while we've got a productivity crisis that is a causal factor of our inflation situation, which then impacts the cost-of-living crisis. Productivity is so important to us addressing that.

The childcare focus was about improving productivity—and not making a judgement as to what people want to do, but making sure that choice was respected. So if you chose that you didn't want to go back to work and you had the resources or that that was what you wanted to do, then you could do that. But, if you did want to get back into the workforce, for the variety of reasons that people have—for the extra income, or because you liked being in the workplace, as some people do more than others—then, again, there was no judgement as to that. Some people don't want to continue on with their career development as well as having children. Basically, this respected the choice of all Australians.

So the childcare arrangements that existed tried to prioritise the people who wanted to get back into the workforce—we wanted them to be in the workforce, and I'll give you some examples of that—by making sure that they were able to get their children into the finite childcare places that existed, and it has had a positive effect. When you see the childcare desert situation get worse, you can see the negative effect that has.

I sat in a park in a place called Seymour, in my electorate, having advertised, 'Anyone who wants to discuss this childcare issue and the lack of childcare places, come and see me in the park,' and I had a number of parents come and see me in that park, and we sat down and talked about things. I remember one mother speaking to me about just not being able to get the hospital shifts she wanted—she was a nurse in an already worker depleted health system in regional Victoria—and not being able to get a childcare place. She couldn't go back and do the work that she wanted to do and we needed her to do. She spoke to me about her frustration at that, and the frustration with the hospital that she worked at because they're short of workers. That's the problem that we encounter with the lack of investment in new childcare places.

What we're worried about in relation to the three-day guarantee is that, because everyone's guaranteed a place in child care, whether you're working or studying or you're not working—again, I want to emphasise that we on this side and, I think, everyone place no judgement on that. Everyone's free to live their life as they want, and we want them to have the choice to do that. But if those finite places are taken up by people who are putting their children into child care and not working, then, logically, there are going to be fewer places in child care for people who do want to work. Those people are doing jobs that need to be done.

In my own experience—we had our daughter just over 16 years ago, and then we had a son over 14 years ago—my wife and I each had careers in our own professions. I was working in agricultural science; she was working in animal nutrition. We wanted to spend as much time as we could with our daughter, when she was a baby, and there was some good maternity leave, as it was called then; we hadn't quite moved on to paternity leave, but we were able to have some good time. But she wanted to go back to work, I wanted to be at work and we faced the struggles that young families face—mortgage repayments, wanting to get ahead in the world, wanting to pay our house down and also wanting to keep moving in career progression, and wanting to balance that out with the joy and the benefit to Australia of having children, like so many families want to do. We want to make sure that choice and that balance is there for them. So we put our daughter into child care, very successfully, and then we did the same with our son. My wife and I were in the workforce, doing jobs that were incredibly important to the agricultural industries of the Goulburn Valley. Agriculture is, of course, what makes the Goulburn Valley tick.

One of the first principles is that child care is finite. I would love for everyone to have access to child care. I'd love for everyone to be given a million bucks. I'd love for this parliament to be able to give everyone in Australia everything they want. The idealists and the activists who come to this place, some of whom will never govern, often say those things. They want to give everything to everyone because it feels great. But the trouble is that we have finite resources in this country. We have finite workers. We have finite tax dollars. We've got to make difficult decisions about priorities. This piece of legislation skews the priorities in a way that, I think, will mean that people who would like to get back into the workforce, particularly in rural and regional areas, will find it more difficult because the already limited childcare industry—when I say limited, I mean limited in terms of places—will become even more difficult to access because of the three-day guarantee. I worry about the unintended consequences for regional economies like mine, where we are begging for workers. We're begging for workers to come and live in the regions.

We've got professional jobs. We've got trade jobs. We've got all sorts of jobs that are not being filled in our burgeoning economy—in places like Greater Shepparton, Seymour, along the Murray in Echuca, Cobram and Yarrawonga—and, because we've got these limited childcare places, parents are not able to go and participate in the workforce in the way they want to. I just worry this is going to make it worse. I worry this is going to make it worse, and then we're going to get a productivity hit. We can't afford another productivity hit.

People from regional Australia often talk about childcare deserts, and we don't seem to get much buy-in. Although I do acknowledge that there does appear to be some funding for new childcare facilities, I'll be interested to see how that works and whether that is focused on regional areas. I think it's been referred to a Senate inquiry and I'll be interested to see what that comes up with. I note that previous Labor governments have promised to build a lot of new facilities but have fallen short in those areas. I'll say this to the government: I would have been much more likely to support this sort of legislation had you sorted out the supply side first.

If the supply side gets sorted out, and if you can guarantee that this three-day guarantee is not going to keep any working family from being able to access child care and enable them to get back into the workforce—and I saw it on the ground. There are a range of different options, and sometimes those options require flexibility. Family day care seems to be getting harder to do. A lot of families in my electorate have been so successful with that family day care. People who had run those businesses are no longer doing it. They say that the current government regulation just makes it impossible to do that. That makes it harder.

I also think that there's a lot of opportunity around large employers in regional areas being able to set up their own childcare facilities. But, again, I'm told that that's very difficult. This place, this building, has a childcare facility, and that's fantastic. We want more parents to be able to work in this place, and I think the fact that they can drop the kids off at the creche here is great. Wouldn't it be great to have that in more locations in regional Australia?

The principle of this is that the activity test was good. People want to give everything to everyone, and I do understand that. But, when you're governing, you've got to make difficult decisions to try and prioritise resources where you get the most bang for buck. In this case, from my perspective, it's a productivity bang for buck. Do we get more productivity out of prioritising working families for child care or the three-day guarantee? I certainly think it's the former.

Again, I just want to emphasise that I don't make any judgement. I think it's fantastic if people want to stay home and look after their children. If they make the decision that the finances don't work for them to get back into work and do that, I understand that. This is about respecting everyone and their choice. But the most important thing is Australia has never needed its productivity to be increased further than now. Limiting child care for working families is a productivity-sapping measure, and I think we should oppose it.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on this important piece of legislation, the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, because few things are more important to my constituents in Werriwa than access to child care. Let me commence by thanking all those wonderful early childhood teachers and workers in the electorate for the wonderful work they do and the care that they have for our children. It is much appreciated, I'm sure, by their parents and caregivers but also by the rest of society, giving children opportunities for education into the future.

I have made many visits to childcare centres in my electorate. One such centre is Organic Seedlings. I've visited them a number of times. I know the staff. They are my friends. I know how much they care about their children and the work that they do every day to give them interesting experiences. They are high-quality staff that are making sure that our littlies get the best start in life. I have a really wonderful and fun piece of artwork that was completed by the children at that childcare centre. It's a butterfly and it has all the children's names on it. it was part of their curriculum looking at the life cycle of a butterfly. I joined their class for a couple of hours one afternoon. It is amazing how these really experienced childcare workers and educators can make that complex scientific information available to littlies, from eight months old to five years old, and they were able to explain to me just exactly what was happening.

That is what is happening in childcare centres all over the country all the time. That's why we need to make sure that all of our children have access to that. We know that the first five years of life is the best time to give them the educational foundation they need. So I very much thank all the childcare workers in my electorate but particularly those who have welcomed me, like Organic Seedlings.

I clearly believe in access and opportunity. Specifically but not exclusively this includes access to good-quality health care, access to quality education, access to good jobs and training, and access to quality government support and help if it's needed. On top of that and especially relevant today, I believe in access to child care. Labor fundamentally believes that every child in Australia deserves the best possible start in life. It is what every parent wants for their child as well. Essential to getting the best start in life is access to early education. That's because we know how important the first few years of learning are. When a child starts kindy, it's vital they don't start behind. This bill will work towards making sure they don't.

Those opposite claim to champion accessible early education and care, but their track record says differently. When the former coalition government introduced the activity test in July 2018, they promised it would simplify childcare payments and encourage greater workforce participation. Instead, the activity test hopelessly failed. It created new barriers to workforce participation and made the childcare system even more complicated. Jay Weatherill of the Minderoo Foundation perhaps summed up the failed activity test best when he said the activity test has always been 'punitive and unfair'. The facts and figures attest to Mr Weatherill's quote. Data from the Department of Education shows the number of children from low-income families accessing child care went down from 32,000 in 2018 to 6,500 in 2019. This is just shameful.

The bill before us thankfully replaces the former coalition government's disastrous activity test with a new three-day guarantee to early education from 5 January 2026. All families will be guaranteed three days or 72 hours of childcare subsidy each fortnight. For families caring for First Nations children, there will be a guaranteed 100 hours of childcare subsidy per fortnight. Families who work, study or train will continue to be eligible for the 100 hours of the childcare subsidy each fortnight. This reform will increase entitlements for over 100,000 families, with 66,700 families expected to be better off in the first full financial year of operation. For example, families earning between $50,000 and $100,000 will save, on average, $1,460 per year. This provides genuine cost-of-living relief for those families, on top of Labor's tax cuts and energy bill assistance.

Crucially, no family will be worse off because of this legislation. The three-day guarantee adds to Labor's impressive record in the area of child care and early education. It builds on cheaper child care, which has cut the cost of early education and care for more than a million families, and builds on our 15 per cent pay rise for early educators. It forms part of a package that establishes a billion-dollar Building Early Education Fund to build and expand early education and care centres in areas of need. Specifically, the fund will build and expand around 160 childhood education and care centres. As a result, there will be around an additional 12,000 ECEC places for Australians in need.

Labor is building a universal early education system. We're improving affordability, boosting supply, increasing accessibility, and recognising and rewarding the vital early childhood education workforce sector. Reforms such as this one are very much in my DNA, and they are in Labor's DNA, and they make me proud to be a member of this Albanese government. We are the party of opportunity, we are the party of access, we're the party that helps out and we're the party committed to making sure that no Australian child is left behind. I commend the bill to the House and thank the minister for all the work they've done, in all sectors of education, making sure that every Australian has the opportunities that they deserve and that the country really needs.

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, which removes the activity test for early childhood education and care. Child care is important for children and for families. The activity test, which requires that parents are working or studying in order to get subsidised child care, is based on an assumption that early childhood education and care is a benefit for parents but not for kids. But quality care actually benefits kids, especially those from lower socioeconomic families. Quality early childhood education is linked to improved academic achievement, reduced delinquency, increased school completion, higher earnings in adulthood, and improved social and emotional wellbeing. This benefits everyone.

I remember, after having each of my three children, the challenge of looking for a job while still caring for kids full time. It feels like a chicken-and-egg situation: you can't afford to pay for the care unless you have a job, and you can't search for a job, go to interviews or even know how much you'll be able to work until you've secured child care. Thrive by Five's Jay Weatherill points out that the activity test has particularly punished single mothers, casual workers and those looking for work. They get trapped in a cycle where they can't get child care if they don't have a job lined up but can't get a job if they don't have child care lined up.

It's fantastic to have the option of staying home with your kids. But I know how much my kids gained from the stimulation of being in centre based care and how important the workers there were to their development. Educators at my kids' childcare centres taught them things that kept surprising me as a parent. They came home with new knowledge and new ways of resolving conflict—as well as the inevitable new viruses building up their immune systems.

This bill provides a guaranteed minimum of 72 hours of subsidised early childhood education and care per fortnight for all families, regardless of whether mums are working or studying. All households with a total income of $530,000 or less will be able to access some level of subsidised care. This will provide much needed cost-of-living relief for nearly 67,000 families in the first year alone, and lower-income families will save an average of $1,460 per year. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, that guarantee is 100 hours per fortnight, which is aimed at closing the gap in school readiness.

Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC, which is the national voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children, calls it a 'game changer' for First Nations babies, meaning that more children will be ready for school and set up for a thriving future. Ms Liddle also refers to wider impacts in the community, with recent studies showing that interventions in early childhood education and care settings with vulnerable children and their families may be the key to reducing youth crime.

I understand that in the short term this will put pressure on the sector, but short-term transitional issues should not prevent good long-term reform like this. We need to be bold and have ambition, rather than only seeing the transitional problems. The transition will need to be managed, but paying early childcare workers more under the laws passed in November will definitely help. It's always a chicken-and-egg situation with supply and demand—if you change one, the other one needs to catch up. But, unless we actually make these bold decisions, then nothing will improve.

This change is supported by the Productivity Commission, the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, the ACCC, Thrive by Five and Early Childhood Australia—all of whom have made important policy contributions to improving outcomes for both families and the economy over the long term. WA's own Minderoo Foundation has pointed out that this could lead to almost 40,000 parents being able to return to work or to increase their hours if they want to. So I join the Parenthood CEO, Georgie Dent, in commending this bill. She says dropping the test is 'a profound win for children, equity and the nation', and I commend this bill to the House.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I started preparing myself for this speech on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, I had a look at what I'd said in a previous bill, and I looked at some of the speeches that people had made on some of the reforms we were doing in relation to the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill back in 2022. Under that particular bill, the government had a really forward agenda by lifting the childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families with a combined income of under $80,000 for the first child in care, increasing subsidies for families earning less than $530,000 with one child in care and keeping higher CCS rates with families with multiple children in care aged five and under. That plan was about making child care more affordable. About 1.26 million Australian families, about 8,900 families in my electorate, benefited. About 96 per cent of families who used child care were better off. In fact, no family was worse off. It delivered real benefits to Australian families, and it meant that a family on a combined income of about $120,000 with one child in care would save about $1,780 in the first year of the plan.

I remember those opposite railing against this particular bill, policy and plan when it came up, engaging in all forms of political gymnastics when we brought the bill in and constantly attacking us for the policy, the settings that we were doing and the reforms we were making. It's sort of deja vu. In last 24 hours, we've had Liberal and National Party people in this place saying, 'Oh, child care's not affordable; it's not accessible,' after about nine or 10 years in government doing nothing. We brought in a massive change back in 2022-23 to help Australians right across the board, which they railed against. We then announced a policy in December last year, supported by stakeholder after stakeholder—as the member for Curtin said, even the National Farmers Federation, who are not exactly an affiliated member of the Australian Labor Party, came out and said how wonderful the policy was—and you've got Liberal and National Party people from rural and regional Queensland and elsewhere saying, 'We can't get access to child care, and it's not affordable.' They haven't got a policy; there's nothing from them.

They're whingeing, moaning, carping and going on. That's all they've served for the last 24 hours—constantly whingeing, carping and moaning. Come up with something constructive! They've got the free lunches for bosses and $600 billion on nuclear power plants that won't deliver any benefits in terms of energy security and cheaper energy for the country. They've also got golden visas that they inadvertently announced by virtue of having a mic over their head. They're bereft of policies, and yet they come in here and criticise us about this, when, in practical terms, this policy will benefit so many Australians. The degree of contortion is like those old games of Twister. It's political Twister. They've got their body here and there, trying to avoid certain things.

The reality is that we've got an incredible need for child care to be affordable and accessible in Australia. About 1.4 million Australian families are going to benefit from it.

This is not just an equity issue; it's a productivity issue and it's an economic development issue. Many women caring for young children want to return to work and want to make sure that they can get access to more money, more hours and more financial security for their families. Families often lose family payments and childcare subsidies as their income rises. This is all a disincentive for parents, and especially mums, to do more paid work. According to the ABS data, in 2022-23, about 73,000 people who wanted to work didn't look for work, because they couldn't make childcare costs work for them.

That's why the first tranche of our reforms was done. Those opposite were railing against them, and they've railed against the second lot. It's quite extraordinary from the Liberal and National members opposite. The Grattan Institute research has consistently shown that supporting women's workforce participation through cheaper child care is one of the best things you can do to grow the country's GDP. The Liberal and National parties claim that they're in favour of economic development—the parties of capitalism and free enterprise—but, when you give them an opportunity to support the growth of the economy and support participation of women in the workforce to grow businesses small and large, they vote against it; they oppose it. It's total inconsistency.

We've announced this policy. We did it last year, in December. We're taking steps to make sure that early education and the care system is expanded. We want quality early education around the country. For a long time, people in our country thought that early education was simply child care. It's not. It's giving kids the best start in life. We all know. I'm a parent and a grandparent. I know how important those early years are for kids to learn and socialise: social inclusion, cooperating with one another, learning new concepts—numbers, the alphabet, reading and writing. Most kids, if they're getting a good education, can learn these basic concepts really, really well. It's about education.

We're establishing a $1 billion building early education fund to roll out from July 2025. We're building more centres. Those opposite criticise us, because they can't find enough centres. But we're doing a policy that's building more centres—and building and expanding them in areas of need. I mention the Liberal and National parties in rural and regional Australia. We're doing this in outer suburbs and regional Australia. We're doing the very thing they're saying we're not doing! It's the very thing that they can't come up with a policy to do.

We want to make sure there's universal child care in this country and that it's simple, affordable, accessible and high quality. That's what we want to do. We want to make sure that kids can get guaranteed three-day high-quality early education and care, because it will change their lives. It will change their lives and give them the best start in life. This particular fund is going to deliver grants to providers, and the government will explore options to invest in owning and leasing out services. But those opposite say we haven't got enough childcare centres. The government's building a fund to do it, and yet they're railing against it. We're focusing on co-locating those services at school sites to prevent the double drop off. We're going to support the growth of high-quality, not-for-profit providers. We want to make sure that's the case.

Now, what are we going to do here? It's really important. What we're going to do specifically in this bill is guarantee three days of high-quality early education. The three-day guarantee is going to replace the current activity test, which is the bane of parents, by the way, with guaranteed eligibility for three days a week of subsidised early education for children who need it.

We know that every child has the right to go to school, and it's a tragedy that parents don't facilitate and support that. Truancy is a terrible detriment to kids' education. Going to school, going to classrooms and learning in the classrooms are so, so important. But we want to make sure that that guarantee—that right, I might add—to go to school is extended for kids in their early years. We want to make sure that the right is not just to go to school but to go to early education too. We're going to make sure that, when they start school, they're not left behind, and we're doing this.

As part of the Building Early Education Fund package I described earlier, we're developing the early education service delivery price to make sure that we have a better understanding of the cost of delivery around the country and where the services are needed, to make sure that we can underpin future reform that needs to happen in the country. You can't set and forget. That's what those opposite did—'set and forget' for nine years. In fact, they didn't even set; they just let it go, for nine years. So we're doing this.

The package that this legislation is part of is really important. It represents a $1.47 billion investment, over five years, in our future. That's a big commitment. Those opposite are opposing it. There's $1.03 billion for the Building Early Education Fund that I referred to in the business case; $427 million for the three-day guarantee, which I described earlier; and $10 million to develop the early education service delivery price. As previous speakers have talked about, this, of course, has come about because of the Productivity Commission's and the ACCC's reports on early education. I thought those opposite liked the Productivity Commission, because they've quoted it plenty of times in the past in this chamber. The Productivity Commission knows that it's good economic sense to invest in early education. They know how important it is. It's really critical.

The fund that I referred to before is going to build on and expand around 160 of the early childhood education and care centres. We're going to focus on those. I think those opposite should listen to the Labor MPs who've been making speeches here, because many centres are going to be located in regional and rural areas. I have the honour and privilege of representing a regional and rural electorate in South-East Queensland. I've got plenty of country areas in my electorate. I've got booming suburbs like Springfield, Ripley and South Ripley. The average age of the people in those suburbs is in the mid-20s. They're just booming. Ipswich's population hit 260,000 in the last quarter of last year; it's probably close to 270,000 now. All those suburbs around Ipswich and country towns like Lowood and Fernvale are growing so rapidly. The development around Walloon and Rosewood in rural Ipswich is phenomenal, as is the number of childcare centres that are being built in these areas.

Goodstart has done a lot of good work in that area, and I've seen so many community kindergartens. We have fantastic community kindergartens in my electorate in places like Cribb Street and Milford Street, where I grew up. I went to that particular kindergarten near Queens Park; it's my old kindy. Recently, they celebrated about 85 years in operation. They're a fantastic community run kindy. These places are so important. The number of prominent citizens in our community who come from these places is important. I've been to these centres. They understand how important a universal early education and care system is.

I want the other side to know that the Productivity Commission inquiry into the ECEC system found that we had an undersupply of places and that there was a barrier to access for families across the country. The Productivity Commission, which is usually quite libertarian or neoliberal in its perspective, recommended the Australian government invest in addressing the gaps through grant funding and, indeed, by retaining ownership of services. The Productivity Commission recommended this, yet those opposite can't even bring themselves to support it. We have the National Farmers Federation supporting it. The coalition have said they're going to get rid of it. They've railed against it; in December 2024, the shadow Treasurer railed against it. They claim that it's something the country can't afford. The shadow Treasurer should listen to his backbenchers, who say we should be doing something like this—just not what we're doing. They've criticised our commitment, yet, if you listen to their speeches closely, they are saying exactly the opposite.

Now, I mentioned Goodstart before. We have some tremendous Goodstart centres in my area. The CEO, Dr Ros Baxter, said it would change lives and boost our productivity, ensuring Australian children don't fall behind. We've seen respected people like the BCA executive director of policy, Wendy Black, saying, 'Affordable, accessible quality child care will lead to long-term economic benefits and improve outcomes.' The Parenthood CEO, Georgie Dent, said, 'Today is the day I've been hanging out professionally for the last four years and seven months.' We have so many people. The National Party should be supporting this. I can't believe they are not supporting it in Queensland. I can't believe they're not supporting this stuff. We've got the National Farmers Federation. They should have a talk to their friends in the National Farmers Federation. On 5 February 2025, the National Farmers Federation, in a statement, said:

We implore the Coalition to match Labor's $1bn 'building early education fund' to build more than 160 new childcare centres.

Well, I say: how about the National Party listen to the National Farmers Federation for once.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

CHESTER () (): I do take great pleasure in joining the debate this morning. I want to focus my remarks very much along the three key themes of accessibility, affordability and choice. Across this chamber, I have no doubt whatsoever that there is universal recognition of the value of access to child care. There would not be a member in this place who doesn't see the value in having better access to early childhood education to give our young people the best possible start in life. But the question around access is an important one. I fail to see how those opposite can come in here after almost three years and feel confident in lecturing people on this side of the House about the question of accessibility, when not one of them has bothered to listen to the repeated feedback they've received from rural and regional families, from rural and regional members of this place on this side of the House. I see the member for Nicholls here nodding his head and the member for Braddon nodding his head. So to come into this place and have the member for Blair claiming to be a rural and regional member of parliament, when his seat is at best suburban—it is on the periurban interface with Brisbane in South-East Queensland—and lecturing us about rural and regional accessibility to child care after 2½ years is completely ignoring the fundamental question for a lot of our families.

The problem with the direction taken by the government in this legislation is that allowing, or providing for, a minimum of 72 hours a fortnight access to subsidised child care doesn't mean anything if you can't get one day's access to child care. If there is no childcare centre, having three days provided in the suburbs, I'm sorry, doesn't help you at all. That is the fundamental problem—the disconnect in this place. We have members opposite who come in here and yell abuse at this side of the chamber, telling us how we don't know anything. But they never stop to listen to the lived experience of people in rural and regional communities.

One of our biggest challenges in our rural and regional communities is attracting and retaining a workforce for critical areas like health, education, child care, police, paramedics, nurses—you name it. We can't get them to come to regional areas if there isn't access to affordable child care in the towns where they want to be posted to. I can't tell you the number of times I have had conversations with small-town community leaders in my electorate about the paramedic they tried to attract to the region, or the teacher or the nurse, and the stumbling block was the fact there was no child care available to them.

The reason why this access issue has become even more critical is because, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, we all need to understand that the vast majority of families need at least 1½ incomes, possibly two full-time incomes, to be able to pay their bills. So how can those opposite come into this place and lecture members on this side of the chamber who represent rural and regional communities, who live in childcare deserts, who have not seen a single improvement in the last three years addressing this problem, while the Labor Party has continued to inflame the cost-of-living crisis for families in our regions?

On the issue of accessibility, those opposite have failed to address the fundamental problem for a lot of rural and regional families. On the question of affordability, another key theme in child care, we need to ensure that families, right across Australia, are in a position to have their child go to a good-quality childcare centre, if required, but also to be able to afford to pay the bills. I do accept those opposite have worked in relation to increasing the wages for childcare workers, which has been a benefit to a large number of workers in the sector. But one of our problems in that regard is that the centres, where they do exist in regional communities, simply can't operate at full capacity because they can't attract the workforce. Again, there are accessibility issues. I say to those opposite that, with the cost of child care increasing by 22.3 per cent since Labor came to power, this is a piece of public policy that still requires an enormous amount of work. I urge those opposite to work in a bipartisan manner with the coalition to address issues of accessibility and affordability.

Finally, I want to refer to choice. What those opposite don't seem to understand is that individual families, particularly in our regional and rural communities, have different requirements for the early childhood education sector than, perhaps, many of our suburban cousins. I don't pretend to come in here and lecture the member for Jagajaga on the needs of Heidelberg or Ivanhoe, because I don't have a lived experience of those suburban areas. But I will come in here and talk about the needs of my community, where we have people working on farms, sometimes in quite remote locations. We have a disproportionate number of small-business owners in our communities, where you may have a husband-and-wife or family team working together in a small business. We need choice when it comes to child care. We need choice in this sector where it may be more appropriate for some of our rural and regional families to access in-home care, which is subsidised to some extent. We need more support for kinship care. A lot of families in rural and regional communities are relying on other family members to take up the care burden.

Why is there only one government sanctioned form of raising a child in Australia—that being institutionalised child care? What about the families who would prefer to be in a position to care for their own child for longer in their own home? Why have we got ourselves in a position as a nation where we seem to discriminate against those families who would prefer, with a little bit of help from the government, to look after their own children in their own home for longer. It'd be a lot cheaper than subsidising their child care. I don't come in here lecturing those opposite if it's their choice to have their children in long day care, nor should anyone come in here and lecture this side of the House if we represent families in our communities who would prefer to have the option, where possible, to look after their own children for longer. They are both reasonable choices with the best interests of the child at heart. That's a fundamental issue of the debate that we should be having today: where are we placing the best interests of the child in this debate? Surely, if we're talking about early childhood education and care, we have to be fundamentally addressing the needs of the children throughout Australia, whether they live in the suburbs, the inner cities, or in rural, regional or remote communities.

I appeal to those opposite to start taking the time to listen to members on this side with a lived experience of rural, regional and remote communities, because our needs are different when it comes to early childhood education and care. We're fundamentally focused on accessibility. We need access to more and a greater variety of services. In many of our communities, the corporate care for-profit model of 120 kids in a childcare centre just doesn't work. There are going to have to be models in regional communities where we work with local councils, hospitals and big industry, and support childcare facilities being built to support maybe only 20 or 30 children at a time. The accessibility question is fundamental. Again, the affordability question, I see the minister opposite nodding her head in agreement, but the choice question is one that this place has not grappled with, they refuse to respect the different choices Australian families want to make in the interests of their own children.

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

Come and talk to me, Darren.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take the minister's offer to come and talk to her, and I will. I've always found the minister to be a very reasonable person, but I've sat in here in recent hours and listened to some misinformed lectures from suburban MPs who have no appreciation of life in rural and regional communities, telling us how we have failed to support families in regional areas. So I will take up the minister's offer of a meeting, and I look forward to that.

It is deceptive for the government to parade in this place and claim that it has solved all problems in relation to early childhood care and education across Australia.

I welcome the interjection by my good friend, the member for Spence. He's suggesting that it's misleading for me to claim that the government is making spectacular claims in relation to early childhood care and education. He obviously hasn't been in the chamber for the last hour to hear those opposite sprouting their achievements but failing to acknowledge the very real challenges that still exist in regional areas and communities in relation to accessibility, affordability and choice.

The Prime Minister is interjecting that we're against funding for regional child care. Prime Minister, I invite you to join me in the meeting with the minister. I would love to meet with the Prime Minister to talk about early childhood education and care in my community. I would love him to join us in that meeting, and we could exchange ideas on rural and regional areas. Prime Minister, I found when dealing with the vast number of your frontbenchers that they're not interested in hearing about rural and regional Australia. They're not interested in having conversations about how your policies have hurt rural and regional families. Your frontbenchers aren't interested in hearing about the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on regional people. So I do welcome the Prime Minister's invitation.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I came in here to hear you speak!

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the Prime Minister's continued interjections. He's come in here to hear me speak— well, I'll speak more, Prime Minister! I was about to sit down, but since you've come here, I better let you have the benefit of hearing more about rural and regional Australia and how your frontbench has refused to engage with rural and regional communities on critical issues affecting our community. I'd suggest to the Prime Minister that, in relation to infrastructure and transport, he has a minister who takes up to 10 months to respond to correspondence from rural and regional members for information in relation to regional highways and other infrastructure. I do encourage the Prime Minister to urge his frontbench to at least pay some respect to members who have a lived experience in our rural and regional areas to understand the very real challenges that we face in dealing with issues which are both complex and require a different approach to the Canberra one-size-fits-all one which has been the hallmark of this government.

I will conclude with a few more remarks from where I started in relation to the fundamental areas where I think there is agreement on this issue. As I said at the outset, I believe that across the chamber there is enormous goodwill towards achieving the best possible outcome for young people and giving them the best possible start through access to early childhood education and care. Where I think we are failing today is in relation to those three key areas of accessibility, affordability and choice. The accessibility question can be resolved only when we have governments and bureaucrats here in Canberra prepared to listen to the lived experience of people in country areas who will come up with different models that aren't the corporate care models. They won't involve 120 children in one centre, will have smaller centres and may involve a greater investment in small-scale infrastructure, perhaps even for family day care, to support the growth in that sector.

The final point is about choice. We have got ourselves into a position in this nation where we seem to be promoting a government sanctioned model of raising children that doesn't recognise that families are individual and want to make their own choices. That should be respected. The choice to send your child to a childcare centre if required—sometimes through necessity; sometimes by choice—is a legitimate one, as is the choice of raising your child as much as possible in your own home.

This is where the member is taking insult where no insult is intended. The member is seeking to have an argument where no insult is intended. I'm saying there are opportunities for people to choose what works for their family or what incentive is forced upon them. When we have a single parent who requires access to early childhood education, of course it should be respected by the government—just as the family looking to have more opportunity to look after their own children in their own home for longer should be respected by government. If those opposite can't support that choice, they should come out and say it.

On my side of the chamber, due to the necessity of rural and remote locations, many families are in a situation where they want to spend more time looking after their own children in their own homes and not access formalised care, because it's not available to them. All I'm asking is that those opposite take the time to understand the lived experience of a lot of families in rural and regional communities around accessibility, affordability and choice, just as those on this side of the House respect the fact that, in a suburban or inner-urban environment, a lot of people with cost-of-living pressures, which are enormous, are faced with no other choice than to have two full-time incomes. That flexibility is so important for a lot of our rural and regional families.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In our first term, our government has brought down the cost of child care for over one million families by an average of around $2,700. That's additional money they have in their pockets. In addition to that, we're boosting the wages of up to 200,000 early educators by some 15 per cent—10 per cent from 1 December last year and five per cent from 1 December this year. More than 1,000 new childcare centres have opened since we came to government three years ago, and nearly 100,000 more childcare places are available since we came to government. There are 42,000 more early educators at work and 125,000 more in training. This is what reform looks like and this is what change looks like—making sure we are making a difference.

Of course, it is about choice for families. Families will make their own decisions, but the truth is that many families can't make the choice they would like to either because the childcare places aren't available or because child care is unaffordable and it doesn't make sense to work that extra day or two days. That's why early childhood education is not just about families or children; it's also about our economy. The three Ps of growth—participation, productivity and population—are all boosted by having a childcare system that works for people and enables people to take up their choice in life.

The announcement I made in Brisbane on behalf of the government was twofold. First, there is the three-day guarantee, abolishing the activity test and making sure that makes a difference. All the assessments that had been made showed that the activity test was a barrier for the most disadvantaged—those who were missing out. Second, we recognise that infrastructure is also important, which is why we announced a billion dollar fund to build new childcare centres in our regions and our outer suburbs, cooperating with state and territory governments. Co-location is a great example to stop that double drop-off as we move forward.

Back in the days when oppositions announced policies that were fully costed and set out, I announced this in my first budget reply, and the changes that we've implemented this term have made a real difference—an additional $2,700, increased wages for early educators, 1,000 new childcare centres, 100,000 more childcare places and 42,000 more early educators. It is a substantial record of achievement. It's consistent with what Labor governments do. A Labor government created universal Medicare because every Australian has the right to quality, affordable health care. A Labor government created universal superannuation because every worker has the right to retire in dignity and security. A Labor government created the National Disability Insurance Scheme because every Australian with disability has the right to choice and control over their life. We did all of that to help people, but it also helped build our society and our economy. And the Labor government wants to build a universal childcare system, one that's simple, affordable and accessible for every family. This legislation is the next step towards that, and I'm pleased that it will pass the House and the Senate today, to make that step towards reality and to make sure that every child can access at least three days of subsidy for high-quality early education and care.

Of course, universal and accessible don't mean compulsory or mandatory. The choice, as always, belongs to parents. But we want parents to have a real choice, not limited by where they live or what they earn. We want parents to make their decision on the basis of one thing only: what they want for their child. This is the big difference between the two approaches in this House. Every Australian accepts that, when a child reaches the age of four or five, they get to go to school and that public schools should be available to everyone, regardless of the income of their parents, regardless of everything, because it's about the child. Indeed, one of the benefits of schools that are diverse in the people and the background of those who come to them is that it enriches their experience in life. Child care is the same. We believe that a right to that should be available to all.

We know that more than 90 per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years. That's why early education is so enriching. When I go into these centres—as I have, now, around the country, particularly over the last five or six years—I am inspired by the largely female, but also male, workforce, who are so enthusiastic at imparting knowledge in literacy and in numeracy, and in engaging those social skills that are so important for our youngest Australians at a time, as well, where there is too much conflict and hatred indeed around. One of the things that you learn is that hatred and distinction is learned behaviour, because those little kids don't see colour or faith or gender or anything else. What they see is other little fellow human beings, and they engage in a way which is absolutely delightful and wonderful, with each other.

So we think this is so important. More than a million families, of course, access child care. That's why there's more than a million reasons to invest in early education. It makes such an important difference to those young people. And it makes them ready for school—to step up to that next level—as well.

Part of what we are doing is the Building Early Education Fund, the single biggest investment by a Commonwealth government in new childcare services ever, building and expanding over 160 new centres where they're needed most—especially in regional communities, that have missed out for too long. These are places that have been left behind because the private sector didn't see an opportunity for profit. When the market lets people down, our government steps in. Building new childcare centres is about breaking down the barriers of distance.

We also need to break down barriers the previous government deliberately put up, starting with the Liberals' activity test. The activity test makes life harder for parents doing the hard yards of looking for work, locking their children out of early education. Parents do not need to go through a bureaucracy or work a certain number of hours to want the best possible education for their child. The aspiration to give your child the best chance in life drives every parent, whoever you are and wherever you live. This legislation will replace the Liberals' activity test with the three-day guarantee in early childhood education, meaning that every family earning up to $530,000 will have access to the childcare subsidy guaranteed for three days a week. That's our commitment. It's three days of early education, affordable for every family, funded for every child and building a better education system for our nation.

Of course, on the day that we outlined these policies, the Liberals and Nationals opposed them. They mocked our pay rise for early educators, even though all of the evidence was not only people not wanting to go into early education but that many of the workers there, in spite of their passion for their vocation of helping our littlest Australians get the best start in life, couldn't afford to stay in the system and so they were leaving. So that was placing a real constraint. But we fixed it. They called it wasteful spending. It's on the chopping block as part of their $350 billion of cuts they have foreshadowed. They'll tell us what's in them after the election, not before. That's before they have to find $600 billion to pay for their nuclear fantasy sometime in the 2040s.

Those opposite talk about child care as a luxury that parents have to prove they need. We know child care is an essential service for families. We know early education is an opportunity that every child deserves to have access to. The whole of the 20th century it was understood that every child has the right to go to school and government has the responsibility to make that possible. In the 21st century, every child has the right to have access to early education and government has the responsibility to make that possible. My government is determined to do just that. Those opposite, in their opposition to this plan, like their opposition to everything else, just reinforce how reactionary they have become. Anyone who wants to look forward to a better Australia is not welcome in the modern Liberal Party. The modern Liberal Party is more and more right-wing by the day. It sees Simon Birmingham and Paul Fletcher checking out, following Christopher Pyne and others as well. Will the last moderate in the Liberal Party turn the lights out before they leave the building? That is what they are like.

We know that this reform reinforces my view that it is only Labor governments that do the big nation-changing reforms. Off the back of universal health care, universal superannuation, universal provision of the National Disability Insurance Scheme will be universal provision of child care. That is something we're determined to do step by step to make sure that we get it right. That is how you build Australia's future, something that my government is determined to do.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow the PM's contribution on the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025 and good to see that a few of my colleagues across the chamber are here for my contribution to this debate, in particular the member for Spence, who's made some important contributions during my debates this week, which is greatly appreciated.

I appreciate the Prime Minister's attempt to defend the validity and rationale of this policy. And I agree with some of what the Prime Minister has had to say, as well as other colleagues in this debate. We do want to see a high-quality, robust early childhood sector, with high education standards, to ensure that our young Australians get the best start in life that they can. And I want to take this opportunity to thank the early childhood educators across my electorate of Forde for the wonderful job they do each and every day trying to do exactly that. For many kids in my community, the fact that they have access to child care makes an enormous difference to their lives given the situation that some of them, sadly, find themselves in on the home front.

But when I look at this bill I see a bill that doesn't address what I see as the fundamental issues facing many in my community: lack of access and lack of affordability. Any number of centres I've spoken to over the past 12 months do not have spare places; they have waiting lists. I have also spoken to many people whose out-of-pocket costs have grown, despite increased childcare subsidies.

As I look at the structure of this bill, I see that it is only going to make the situation worse. At least now the situation is that the places in the childcare centres that are available are available to families who, for whatever reason, need two incomes—and increasingly that is largely as a result of the government's failure to deal with the cost-of-living issues that we've spoken about in other debates in this House over the course of this and previous weeks. Removing the activity test is going to see families who are working and trying to make ends meet compete with those who aren't, in a situation where there is already limited space, as we're seeing—and I know our regional members have even larger problems with available space, let alone having childcare centres at all in some cases.

So I don't see how this is going to help a significant number of people across my electorate. The government estimates that more than 100,000 families will have access to more subsidised care and that more than 66,000 families will be better off overall. That represents only about six per cent of all families who are currently engaged in the childcare subsidy system.

I note that the Prime Minister also referred to their wage subsidy. But, interestingly, that's funded by the government for only two years. What happens after two years? Who is going to pay the cost of those increased wages? I have no issue with those wages, because our childcare workers do a terrific job. At some point somebody has to pay for it, and it is going to be the families across my electorate of Forde who are going to pay for it through higher fees than they are already paying. Despite the government's protestations to the contrary, we are seeing a government that has failed to address the supply-side constraints in the system.

The modelling from the Productivity Commission shows that most of the children affected by the activity test changes live in major cities, but there is no point having access to three days of child care if there is no child care available. Once again we are finding that the real issues at the heart of the system are not being addressed. We want to have families who 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 for families who use flexible arrangements such as grandparents or nannies. The bill also does nothing for families who need flexibility, such as families who do shiftwork or work non-standard hours. Again, these hardworking families will not benefit from this change, but families who aren't working, studying or training will. Similar to Labor's other policies, this rewards families who access child care at the expense of families who are unable to or choose not to.

We also believe there is a discrepancy in the policy costings and that the figures in the policy costings of $426 million over five years are undercooked and don't reflect the true impact of removing the activity cost. The department has also been unable to advise how many families are eligible for CCS but not enrolling their children or how many families are completely disengaged with CCS. The government's costings do not account for these groups.

Interestingly, the Productivity Commission's 2024 report A path to universal early childhood education and care costed the complete removal of the activity test at $2.3 billion a year. The PC's modelling suggested the complete removal of the activity test would increase the hours of early childhood education by four per cent. They also estimated this will lead to a 0.9 per cent decrease in hours worked by sole parents and primary carer parents in couple families. Again, this appears to be a policy that doesn't take into account the full range of factors, but that's nothing unusual for this government. They have a habit of saying one thing and actually delivering something completely different, so I find their failure to deal with the detail in the policy nothing unusual.

We've also heard it said that the three-day guarantee is a cost-of-living measure, but in reality it's nothing of the sort. Since Labor came to power the cost of child care has increased by 22.3 per cent. At this rate, childcare costs will have soared by over 124 per cent by March 2032. The last time Labor was in government, the cost of child care skyrocketed by 53 per cent in six years. So, once again, the Labor government has form in saying it's attempting to reduce the cost of something, but in reality all it does is significantly increase the cost. And, since the Labor government's cheaper childcare policy came into effect, out-of-pocket costs have increased by some 12.7 per cent, with almost one in three services charging above the fee cap as providers struggle to keep up with rising regulation and red tape.

I know that some providers in my electorate I have spoken to, who will remain nameless, have been going through the process of trying to apply for the subsidy for the wage rise, and, given that they've found it too hard, too burdensome, too bureaucratic, they have decided to pay the pay rise anyway. But the way they have funded that is by increasing their fees, so families are worse off. The majority of families accessing CCS will not see a reduction in their childcare costs because of this legislation.

Let's contrast that with the coalition's record. In our time in government, we almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion, in 2022-23, and locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergartens. We also made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years. More than 1.3 million children have access to the childcare subsidy, from around one million families. Under the coalition, 280,000 more children are in early childhood education, and our targeted extra support, introduced in March of 2022, made a real difference, as childcare costs came down by 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022. We saw women's workforce participation reach record highs of 62.3 per cent in May of 2022, compared to 58.7 per cent when Labor left office in 2013.

Once again, it demonstrates that a coalition government can deliver real and tangible results for families right across this country, and it's only through a coalition government being elected next election that we'll get Australia back on track. For all the reasons I've outlined above, we oppose this bill.

Debate adjourned.