Press conference - Devonport, TAS
ANNE URQUHART, MEMBER FOR BRADDON: Here we are at Malangenna child care centre in Devonport. It's a fantastic day. We're here with Jess Walsh, the Minister for Early Childhood, not Aged Care, that's the other end. And Jilly, the CEO, and Josh, our Senator based here in Devonport. It's a fantastic day to be here. We've announced $4 million dollars for Malangenna to expand this beautiful facility so that we can have more child care places right here in Devonport. Jess, it's fantastic for you to be here. Thank you so much for coming. Over to you.
JESS WALSH, MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: Great. Thank you so much Anne and wonderful to be here with you, Anne, with Jilly who's the CEO here at Malangenna Children's Centre and with Senator Josh Dolega as well. Anne Urquhart has been an amazing advocate for more early childhood education and care places here in Devonport. And that is why the Commonwealth, the Albanese Labor Government, has committed $4 million dollars to expand this fantastic not-for-profit service which does such a great job already giving children an excellent start in life. With this $4 million dollar commitment, we'll be expanding the service here to add another 70 places. That's up to 150 early learning places for children and families in Devonport, because we want more children to get the benefits of quality early childhood education and care. That includes right here in Devonport. This is part of the Albanese Labor Government's $1 billion Building Early Education Fund. And this is the seventh project that we've announced here in Tasmania. We have six projects across the country in addition to Malangenna, all of which are co-located with schools. Overall, it's a $30 million Commonwealth investment in building more early education and care places for the children and families here in Tasmania so they get a great start in life. I think we're going straight to questions.
JOURNALIST: Look, 70 places today is great, but, of course, early childhood education is a big problem in the north-west. People are struggling to get their kids there. So, what are we doing to make sure that this is an ongoing commitment we're still improving?
WALSH: Yeah, absolutely. So, another 70 places here at Malangenna is a really important investment in this community here in Devonport. It basically almost doubles the number of places here to 150 places that will support hundreds of families, and over the years this is a long-term investment that will end up supporting thousands of families for years to come in this community. At the same time, our Building Early Education Fund is also building another six services across Tasmania because we know that there are parts of the state that are underserved, where there are more young families than there are child care places. And that's why, for the first time ever, the Commonwealth Government is committing funds, working with communities, working with the state government as well, to actually build early learning services in the places where they're needed.
URQUHART: And I might just add to that too is that the Albanese Labor Government supported the Lady Gowrie facility in Latrobe earlier this year when St Pat's closed their doors in December. We supported that through Jess' office and with $330,000 dollars to put in a temporary measure while they were building their other one, which made sure that the 50-plus children that were being cared for at the Latrobe St Pat's Centre had somewhere to go during that sort of time lapse in between the new building and the existing one closing. So, you know, not just here in Devonport but also in Latrobe, we've assisted that as well.
JOURNALIST: And looking further along the coast, because I think a lot of coasters would argue we are underserved in this area, is this a specific focus for you, this region?
WALSH: The Building Early Education Fund focuses on regions that are underserved by early learning places and also areas that are disadvantaged. So, we're making sure that we target the investment to where it's needed the most. Places that are underserved, places that may be disadvantaged, that really get a benefit out of quality, affordable early childhood education and care. There are six other places where we are partnering with the Tasmanian Government to build new services co-located with schools and they range as far south as Bruny Island, right through up to here in Malangenna.
JOURNALIST: Yep. So, great. And a couple days ago the United Workers Union has been working on a bargaining claim to try and get better pay, better conditions for 65,000 educators. Of course, a lot of those are early childhood educators. Is there a concern at all for you guys that there might be trouble to attract talent to facilitate these new places that you're working on?
WALSH: Investing in a strong and stable workforce is a huge priority for our Government. It's why we've invested in a historic 15 per cent pay rise for our nation's early childhood educators. It's about $255 dollars a week extra for the average early childhood educator. And the evidence is really in that the pay rise is working to stabilise the workforce. There's around 20,000 additional educators around the country who've come into the sector, and job vacancies are down by about 30 per cent. What that means is that the pay rise is stabilising the workforce. And here in Tasmania, there's around 200 services employing around 2,000 educators who are getting the pay rise. And what we have seen here in Tasmania as well, is that the stabilisation is happening here too. So, before we did the pay rise, around 12 per cent of services in Tasmania had some form of staffing waiver, meaning that they couldn't attract a staff member that they needed. And after the pay rise, that's now down to 3.5 per cent of services. So, it's a really important investment in attracting, retaining, dedicated, committed, quality early childhood educators to do this incredible work that we're seeing today.