Wage Justice For Early Childhood Education And Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024 - Second Reading Speech

Every day, parents trust early educators with the most important people in their world.

And every day, Australia asks early educators to do one of the most important jobs imaginable.

And they deserve a pay rise.

That’s what this bill delivers.

A 15 per cent pay rise for up to 200,000 early educators across the country.

A 10 per cent pay rise from December this year and then a further 5 per cent pay rise from December of next year.

This is important.

Because what happens in early education and care is important. It’s not babysitting. It’s early education.

90 per cent of brain development occurs in the first five years of life.

Everything that you see, everything you read, every meal, every smile, shapes and makes the people that we become.

The US President often makes the point that if a child goes to preschool, they’re 50 per cent more likely to go to college or university.

That’s why this is so important.

It’s about this. But it’s also about something else. It’s about respect.

Early educators have been asking for this for decades.

And the Productivity Commission has told us that if we’re going to build a universal early education system which makes early education and care affordable and available for more families, the first thing that we need to do is this.

There are 30,000 more early educators working in the sector today than when we came to office.

But we need more.

And this pay rise, we hope, will help encourage more people to stay, more people to come back and more people to think about becoming an early educator.

And more educators means more children and more parents can benefit from the life-changing work they do.

This bill sets up the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers Special Account.

This Account allows us to deliver a 15 per cent pay rise over two years through the ECEC Worker Retention Payment Program.

Let me put that in real terms.

It means a typical early educator, paid at the award rate, will receive a pay rise of at least $103 per week, in December this year, increasing to at least $155 per week from next year.

That’s around $7,800 a year.

And for a typical early childhood teacher, they’ll receive an additional $166 a week from December this year, increasing to $249 from December of next year.

For people who are thinking ‘I love this job, but I can't afford to do it’ will hopefully think ‘well, now I can.’

And people who've left the job to go and work at, maybe the local supermarket will hopefully think ‘I can go back to doing the job I love.’

And, hopefully, it will encourage more people to want to be an early educator.

The Chief Executive Officer of Australia’s largest early education provider, Goodstart, Ros Baxter said:

“We expect that [this] announcement will see qualified early learning educators return to our sector, while encouraging others to establish a career in early learning. This in turn will help make more quality child-care places available for families who need it.”

Community Early Learning CEO, Michele Carnegie:

“We expect this announcement will entice many qualified staff back into the sector. Families will see more places available and children will benefit from greater consistency of care.”

Early Childhood Australia CEO, Sam Page said:

“This is a well overdue pay increase, and I am thrilled that the Government has acknowledged the professionalism of our educators... Early childhood educators play a crucial role in the learning and development of young children, and this recognition is a significant step towards valuing their contributions appropriately.”

Early educator, Karen Moran, who I had the privilege of meeting a few weeks ago, said this:

“this decision…will change people’s lives. It means that early childhood educators who've been relying on Foodbank to feed their own families won't have to do that anymore. And those that work two and three jobs just to make ends meet will be able to spend more time with their families. It's also about the recognition, which is so well deserved.”

This legislation doesn’t just deliver a pay rise for early educators though. It also delivers cost of living relief for parents and carers.

Because as a condition of funding the wage increase, early education and care centres will not be allowed to increase their fees by a set amount over the grant period, with that amount set at 4.4 per cent up until August 2025.

That’s informed by the work of the ACCC. The work that they have been doing with us – a combination of the wage price index and the consumer price index.

That condition will be set out in a legally enforceable agreement between the Department of Education and providers.

We will also set a cap for the following 12 months, based on the work the ABS will do.

Capping fee increases provides certainty to families and will keep a lid on fee growth.

It also builds on our Cheaper Child Care changes.

The changes that we have already made have cut the cost of childcare for more than 1 million families.

Those changes that began in July last year means that a family on a combined income of $120,000 today is now paying about $2,000 less in childcare fees than they otherwise would have had to.

This is also the next step in building the universal early education system that we want to create.

Making it more accessible and more affordable for more children and more families.

We need to reform our entire education system – to make it better and make it fairer.

To help more people finish school and go to TAFE or university.

But that reform doesn’t just need to happen in our schools or our TAFEs or our universities. It has to happen here as well.

And this is a big part of that.

Helping build a bigger early education and care workforce to help build a bigger and better early education system.

In introducing this bill to the House, I want to thank the Prime Minister, I want to thank the Treasurer, I want to thank the Minister for Finance. Their leadership has made this possible.

I also want to especially acknowledge my dear friend, Anne Aly, the Minister for Early Childhood Education for her unyielding work here and for everything she is doing to help build a better and a fairer early education system in Australia.

And finally, I want to thank all the early educators in the gallery. But not just in the gallery. And little Archie too who’s reminded us all he’s here as well. I want to thank the more than 200,000 early educators across the country for everything you do for us.

You deserve wage justice. You deserve this pay rise. And you deserve this bill.

I commend it to the House.