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

I rise this evening as a proud member of the United Workers Union, the union for early childhood educators and the union for the Big Steps Campaign. And what a result we've seen in this last week when the Albanese Labor government announced that it's going to fund a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. It's such an amazing result, and so many people have worked so hard to achieve this.

But it's not just a body of work that began this year or last year. This is a body of work that has been brewing for a very, very long time. There are generations of unionists, of early childhood educators, of families who have been working towards this for a very, very long time. In fact, you'll find there are people in their 20s now who were actually the children in those childcare centres when this campaign started. But it didn't start out directly on a pay rise pathway.

When this campaign kicked off in 2008, the first thing to do was to solve a very clear problem, and that was of quality and standards in early childhood education. That was their first big move, and they fought hard. They set a minimum level of qualifications, and educator-to-child ratios was one of the core elements of that. The child ratios were important to ensure (1) the educators had the time to invest in those children but also so (2) those children had the best possible starts in their lives. That's what these educators focused their lives on. This is what they are so passionate about and what they've worked so hard to do. After quite the fight, they managed to achieve this. In 2012, delivered by the then Labor government, funnily enough, the National Quality Framework was launched. It was a great leap forward. It was not just a big step but a great leap forward for the early childhood education sector.

But that wasn't the end of it. No pathway is particularly linear when we're talking about change of this sort, and unfortunately Big Steps was no exception. So 2013 saw the new Liberal government do what Liberal governments do and—surprise, surprise!—seek to make things worse for workers. While it seems unbelievable today, those quality standards that we see now in our early childhood education sector were under threat when Tony Abbott's Liberal government at that point in time tried to scrap them. He tried to scrap those standards, but those dedicated educators, those dedicated union members, those dedicated families wouldn't stand for it. They stood their ground and they won—again. They had their standards.

Next, they would start the fight for professional fair pay. In 2016, on Equal Pay Day, the educators took to the streets across Australia for their first ever walk-off. They walked off the job with the full support in many, many places of those families and those communities to help them build that sector into a professional sector that educates our children. In those first five years, those most important imprinting years, this sector is critical and vital to the economy of our country. The future of those children is in the hands of those educators, and they need to be recognised. And they have fought so hard over that long, long period of time.

Labor committed to it while in opposition. It committed to support them, understanding the importance of that sector and the importance of making sure that the children of this country are nurtured and educated in the best way possible. That's what we saw last week. We saw them win a 15 per cent pay rise, which is going to make a big difference. It's going to make a big difference to those workers. I have delightfully been able to go out to a couple of centres that I know and talk to people about what it means to them and talk to the families about what it means to them, and we cannot underestimate the importance of building the early childhood education sector to be a professional, well-respected, well-resourced sector for the future.