Interview - ABC Melbourne Mornings

RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: The Federal Labor Government today is providing billions more to make sure that child care centres can pay those child care workers. Jess Walsh joins you—she's Minister for Early Childhood Education in Anthony Albanese's Government and she also happens to be one of the Labor Senators for the great state of Victoria. Jess Walsh, good morning.

JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND MINISTER FOR YOUTH: G'day, Raf.

EPSTEIN: Let's get into politics in a moment. What's the billions for? What's the money for?

WALSH: So, the money, Raf, is to invest in our nation's early childhood educators. We know that the work that they do is absolutely essential. They do a great job of delivering quality early learning to our nation's children, which gives them a great start in life. But for too long they were underpaid and undervalued. We're backing our nation's educators in with a 15 per cent pay rise. And today's announcement is that we're providing $3.6 billion to lock in that pay rise - it's an extra $255 a week more for educators. I've been speaking to educators, they've told me that it's a real game changer for them, that it's helping them stay in the jobs that they love. So, it's great for them, but it's great for our nation's children too, because the foundation of quality early education is our nation's educators.

EPSTEIN: How do I know that the child care centre fees won't just go up? If you're tipping billions in, can't they just raise the fees?

WALSH: So, we have linked this funding, Raf, to capping fees and we have been doing that for the last couple of years. And what we've been able to do is cap fee growth at around 3.5 per cent. So, we want to make sure that the funding goes to educators’ wages, that it supports quality early childhood education in centres around the country. And that in doing that, we're putting downward pressure on families costs as well, which is why we will continue to cap fee growth in the sector as part of this plan.

EPSTEIN: Do they lose the funding if they put up their prices too much?

WALSH: The funding is attached to capping fees, yes. So, in order to get the funding to pass on the pay rise, providers have to cap fees. And this time, Raf, we're also making sure that they show us that they're meeting national safety standards as well. We know that safety and quality has to come first in early childhood education and that's why we're saying to providers, you must all meet the national safety standard to get this funding. Now, 95 per cent of services do meet that standard, but we know that can be higher. So, what we're saying is, we want to support you to pay your educators this 15 per cent pay rise, which is paying dividends in the sector. We want you to control costs for families with ongoing fee capping. And also, we want you to meet national safety standards as well.

EPSTEIN: So, standards and capping are really important. But as the Minister responsible for this stuff in the Federal Labor Government, I'm just curious, has anyone been pinged? Has anyone been found to – OK, your standards are no good, you're not safe enough, or your fees are too much, we're taking away this extra funding? Has that happened to a child care centre?

WALSH: So, we passed legislation last year, Raf, in the Parliament, as part of our big package of reforms to make early learning safer and higher quality. And at that time, what we said is we will remove funding if you put profit ahead of child safety.

EPSTEIN: But has that happened? Do you know if anyone's been pinged?

WALSH: We are working with 100 providers who we've put on notice that they need to raise their standards or risk losing funding. Our preference is always that providers do lift their standards, and that is what we are seeing. We're seeing the vast majority of providers who we've put on notice raise their standards. And that's what we would expect to see with this measure as well. There's about five per cent of services who are not meeting that national safety standard. They must meet it. And so, we are saying we'll extend this funding to you, but if you don't meet the standard within 12 months, you will not be able to receive that funding. And that is appropriate because quality and safety for children comes first.

EPSTEIN: Ok, that's the policy, I want to jump onto politics. Jess Walsh is the Minister for Early Childhood Education, one of the Labor Senators for Victoria. Jess Walsh, I've already got a number of texts, people saying, look, we're paying $8000 a year for child care, someone else saying it's $178 dollars per day, it's not worth it for me. I'm not sure if child care fees are a reason for the rise of One Nation, but there are a lot of people, they hear you talking on the radio or see the PM on TV and they go, yeah, but actually, what you're doing, or what you say you are doing, I'm not feeling it in my life. What do you say to people when they tell you that?

WALSH: I say to people who tell me that, Raf, that we see the pressure that families are under. We see that pressure. We know that a lot of that pressure is coming from global uncertainty, that is putting pressure on households. And our top priority each and every day is providing cost of living relief to families. We are doing that with our tax cuts in the Budget.

EPSTEIN: Do you think you get any credit for that?

WALSH: Well, we'll keep talking about those tax cuts, Raf, and we'll keep talking about the work that we're doing to try to give first home buyers a leg up – building more homes, changing those tax settings for housing, extending five per cent home deposits.

EPSTEIN: It's just none of those policies, or none of the benefits of those policies, appear to be reflected in the polls. Or am I misreading that?

WALSH: Well, I think you're right, Raf, and we see that families are under pressure – we definitely see that. We see the polls that you described in your question to me, and what I see from One Nation is a lot of anger in response to the pressure that households are under, but what they don't have is any policies. I mean what we're announcing today is that we're backing workers with a $3.6 billion pay rise. And we're announcing also that we're putting downward pressure on fees by continuing to cap them in early learning. Those are real policies that will have real benefits from people. And all we're seeing from One Nation is anger and no answers.

EPSTEIN: Thanks for your time today.

WALSH: Thanks, Raf.