Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of government document No. 4, Productivity Commission Report No. 106, A path to universal early childhood education and care, dated 28 June 2024, in three volumes. I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

Today the Productivity Commission released their final report on the future of Australia's early childhood education and care, or ECEC, system. At over a thousand pages, the report makes 56 recommendations and is the culmination of 16 months' worth of work. This document considers how to build an affordable, accessible, inclusive, high-quality education and care system.

The report also highlights that ECEC can improve the outcomes for children, particularly those experiencing disadvantage and vulnerability. As a former early childhood educator, this is something that I and everyone else who has worked and works in the sector knows all too well. Children who experience vulnerability and disadvantage actually benefit the most from quality early childhood education and care, but they are currently the least likely to attend, unfortunately.

A strong early childhood education and care industry is good for workers, good for parents, good for children and good for the economy, and we know from research that quality early childhood education is critical for a child's social, physical, emotional and cognitive development. It prepares children to start school, lays the foundations for lifelong development and learning and directly leads to better health, education and employment outcomes later in life. There is no doubt that the long-term benefits of investment in children's early years far outweigh any cost.

As highlighted in the report, early childhood education is not reaching those who need it most, and this is something that the Labor Party recognises as being a priority. The cognitive benefits for children who receive quality early childhood education can be linked to $1.06 billion in higher earnings over their lifetimes, and a further $495 million in higher taxes paid to government—just a thought for people to consider.

Since coming into government, we've already made a significant number of reforms to the sector, but we know that there is more work to do to ensure the ECEC sector works for all families across Australia. As confirmed in the report, we need to prioritise the ECEC workforce, making it bigger and better, and that's why we have already acted to increase wages by 15 per cent for the ECEC workforce, which the report suggests will be effective in relieving recruitment and retention challenges.

What this means in reality for an early childhood educator is an extra $100 a week from this December and an extra $155 per week from next December, or around $7,800 per year. For an early childhood teacher, the increase is even more, adding up to an increase of around $13,000 a year from next December. We know that this has already had an impact on retaining early childhood and education care workers. I also hope that anyone who might have left the industry because of low wages can make the decision to come back, in the knowledge that this government values your work and experience and will continue to fight for better wages and conditions for you.

Yet another way we are growing the workforce is through better training opportunities. This includes more university places for early childhood education teachers and fee-free TAFE, such that, already, there are about 30,000 more early educators working today than there were two years ago when we were elected. But the truth is that we do have to do even more if we're going to build the bigger, better and fairer early childhood education system that our children deserve.

We also want to ensure that having a fairly paid ECEC workforce does not come at a higher cost for families, which is why we tied the wage increase to workers with a commitment from childcare centres to limit fee increases to 4.4 per cent in the 12 months from August this year. This will keep prices down for the more than one million families who place their children in early childhood care, and it comes on top of other savings we've delivered in the last 12 months. Access to affordable early childhood education means that parents can work, train, study and volunteer, boosting not only our economy but our social equity as well. The changes we made in the last 12 months mean that a family on a combined income of $120,000 today, with one child in care three days a week, is now paying about $2,000 less than they otherwise would have been.

I thank the Productivity Commission for this important report that will help inform and shape our strategies on achieving a high-quality, truly universal ECEC system for all Australians. As the government that has done more for the early childhood education and care sector than any other government, we welcome the release of this report today. (Time expired)