Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I joined early childhood educators and the United Workers Union out on the front lawns of parliament to launch the report "Spitting off cash": Where does all the money go in Australia's early learning sector? Anyone would have been shocked by the contents of that report and by the treatment of workers in this essential sector. Private not-for-profit companies now account for half of all early childhood education and care services in the country and that share is growing. It's clear that too many of these corporate operators just don't care about the passionate, skilled educators working in their centres.

G8 Education is just one example, to give this chamber a bit of a sense of what seems to be happening and how big an issue this really is. G8 Education is Australia's largest for-profit provider of long day care. They have 53,000 children enrolled across this country and they are raking in the cash. In 2019, they made $79 million in profit. Last year, with the onset of COVID, G8 still earned $60 million in profit, and that was in no small part assisted by gaining $102 million in JobKeeper payments. So, just to be clear, that's $102 million in taxpayer funding resulting in a $60 million profit to that private company, which paid no tax. This is just one company; there are so many more. The big profits and the executive salaries are really giving staff a raw deal. I am so very proud to stand with United Workers Union members in this sector. They deserve so much better than this. (Time expired)