Early Childhood Australia National Conference

I start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are meeting and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

I also want to acknowledge Sam and Trevor and the team at ECA.

The incredible Minister for Early Childhood Education, Jess Walsh.

And I want to acknowledge you. All of you.

This is the third time I have had the privilege to speak at this Conference.

The first time I told you about the moment my wife and I told my little boy Jack that he was going to be a big brother.

We showed him an ultrasound photo of his little brother, Atticus.

The first thing he said was “What’s that?”

The second thing he said was “I can’t wait to tell Kellie”.

You can guess who Kellie is.

Kellie is the woman who looked after him in child care.

That was when I got it.

What you know.

That this is no ordinary job.

The bond between a child and an early educator is something very special.  

It’s not baby-sitting.

A lot’s changed in my family over the last few years.

That little face in the ultrasound is just about to graduate from his early education centre.

Last week he got the obligatory photo in his cap and gown.

Next year he is off to school.

He’s ready. He’s more than ready. And the reason for that is Kellie and people like her.

That’s what you do.

The evidence is pretty clear.

A recent study here in Victoria shows kids who get two years of preschool are about five months ahead in their language development.

And about three months ahead in their memory and problem solving skills.

It also improves concentration, independence, pre-reading and social skills.

Ask any primary school teacher and they will tell you that.

It’s obvious.

They can pick them out.

Every moment in early education and care means you are more likely to be ready to start school.

And I want all kids to be ready.

The second time I spoke at this Conference I didn’t come with a story.

I came with a report.

A report I asked Professor Deborah Brennan and the Productivity Commission to write.

It’s an important report.  

It’s a blueprint for the sort of changes we need to make.

How to build a universal early education system over the next 10 years.  

I often get asked what does universal early education mean.

This report tells us what it means.

It doesn’t mean it’s free.

It doesn’t mean it’s ten dollars a day.

It means it’s available and it’s affordable for everyone - three days a week.

That’s what that report says.

And it plots out a path to get there.

The first thing it says we have to do is pay the people who work in our centres more.

The truth is you can’t have a system that’s affordable and accessible three days a week if you don’t have a workforce.

And when I released that report two years ago educators were leaving the job in droves.

Not because they didn't love the job, but because love doesn’t pay the bills.

In some centres the attrition rate was 40 per cent.

That's 40 per cent of the workforce out the door every year.

That’s a crisis.

That’s now changed and it's changed for a reason.

The 15 per cent pay rise we have delivered.

It means an extra $13,000 a year for educators.

And $21,000 more a year for early childhood teachers.

And it’s worked.

Job vacancies are down around 30 per cent.

Job applications in some places are up 30 per cent.

And there are now 20,000 more early educators right across the country.

It shows if you pay people more, more people want to do the job.

That’s why we’ve just passed legislation through the Parliament to lock it in.

It’s not just a pay rise though.

To get this money, to pay you more, services have to do something - they have to agree to limit their fee increases.

And that will save the average family $1,500 over the next two years.

So it does two things.

It means you’re paid more.

And it keeps prices down for parents.

The second thing the Productivity Commission Report said we need to do is get rid of something called the Activity Test.

The Activity Test was put in place by the Liberal Party.

It means if you are not working or studying you don’t get the Child Care Subsidy.

The real world impact of that is that kids from the poorest and most disadvantaged families miss out.

Now that might be okay if what you do is just babysitting, but I just told you it’s not.

The truth is it’s these kids who need you the most. Who get the biggest benefit from early education and care.

Who need you and everything you have to give if they have any chance of starting school ready to learn.

That Activity Test is now gone.  

We’ve replaced it with a 3 Day Guarantee.

Guaranteed access to the Child Care Subsidy three days a week.

What that means is about 23 per cent more kids from poor families can now get access to subsidised care three days a week.

That’s big.

It’s potentially life changing.

One of those kids is a little boy called Jason.

He lives here in Melbourne.

Last year he wasn’t talking, he wasn’t making eye contact, and he wasn’t playing with other kids.

Now he’s in a child care centre in Broadmeadows and he’s doing it all.

He’s talking, he’s pointing, and he’s socialising with other kids.

He’s there because we got rid of the Activity Test and because we created the 3 Day Guarantee.

That tells me what we are doing here is right.

The next thing the Productivity Commission Report said we had to do is build more centres where they don’t exist.

To respond to that we have set up a $1 billion Building Early Education Fund.

It’s the single biggest investment by an Australian Government in new child care services ever.

We have already announced the locations of 46 centres we are going to build. And there is more to come.

A lot of them are on school grounds.

A lot are in regional and remote areas.

And next year you will start to see them come out of the ground.

Jess will talk a bit more about this tomorrow.

They’re the first three recommendations of the Productivity Commission Report.

•    A pay rise.

•    Get rid of the Activity Test.

•    And build more centres where they are needed.

The fourth thing they recommended is an Early Education and Care Commission.

It said we need something to help drive long term reform.

To help bridge the governance gaps between state and federal governments and help fix service gaps.

Provide the data and information we need to deal with oversupply in some suburbs and undersupply in others.

Help us build a system that works better than it does today.

We are working on this right now.

We have set up a Working Group to look at what sort of structure a Commission like this might take.

Whether we incorporate ACECQA into it or not.

We are working on this with people in this room, and Ministers will make a final decision on this next year.

Since the last time I spoke at this Conference something else has happened that I have to talk about today.

You know what I am going to talk about.

And I know that you are just as angry and just as hurt, just as broken and sickened as the rest of us by the allegations of abuse in early learning centres over the last 12 months or so.

You didn’t sign up for that.

And I have been pretty blunt.

Not enough had been done by governments, state or federal, Labor or Liberal to keep our kids safe.

That’s now changing.

As you know, phones are now banned in every centre.

It’s not the only thing we have done, but when I asked the Australian Federal Police recently what’s the most important thing we have done, they said this is it.

It’s not hard to understand why.

CCTV is also being trialled in hundreds of centres across the country.

A national register of everyone who works in early education has been set up.

Mandatory safety training is being rolled out. For everyone. From the CEO to the Board, to the staff in the kitchen, to the staff on the floor.

State and territory regulators are also acting. Compliance actions have doubled in the last year.

And we’ve passed laws that give my department the power to cut off the Child Care Subsidy to services that aren’t up to scratch.

And we are using it.

Since that legislation passed, 119 centres have been put on notice that they have to fix the problems in their centres or the Child Care Subsidy funding they get will be cut off.

Just so you know what I am talking about, these are centres that haven’t met safety standards for more than five years.

In the last few months, 59 of them have suddenly fixed the problems they had failed to fix for all that time.

The threat of funding being cut meant suddenly things that couldn’t be fixed were fixed.

12 more have shut. They have either closed voluntarily or their funding has been cut.

In the last few months we have also done one more thing.

I talked about the 15 per cent pay rise a minute ago.

And I said to get the funding centres have to limit fee increases for parents.

It also includes another condition.

And that’s this.

To get the funding they also have to meet the National Safety Standard.

95 per cent of centres meet that Standard today.

I want it to be 100 per cent.

I know you want it to be 100 per cent too.

It’s what parents expect. It’s what our children deserve.

95 per cent means there are about 400 centres out there that don’t meet the expected standard today.

If they want taxpayers to pay that 15 per cent they will have to meet that standard by 1 July next year.

That’s a big incentive.

I just want to say one last thing on this.

I know you’re the best asset we’ve got here to keep our kids safe.

That’s why mandatory safety training is so important.

To help identify kids at risk and the predators that might be hiding in plain sight. 

Someone who might be grooming a child or trying to groom you.

What surprised me though is how quickly you did that training.  

We gave you six months to do the first round.  

About 80 per cent of educators did it in the first two months.

95 per cent did it in the first four.

That tells me something.

That tells me how seriously you take this.

And I want to thank you for it.

As a dad about to attend my little guy’s graduation ceremony I also want to say thank you to all the Kellies out there.

He said to me the other day “my body my rules”.

I said “that’s right but you still have to have a bath”.

But what it told me is he is being taught something important. About safety.

There are more than a million mums and dads just like me who rely on you for that and so much more.

What you do is one of the most important jobs in the world.

It really is.

And it’s only going to get more important, and the challenges we face are only going to get bigger, in the years ahead.

My job is to make sure the system rises up to meet them.

That’s no easy task.

And I know I can’t do it without you.

Thank you very much.