Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025

Mr PIKE (Bowman) (19:08): The topic tonight is early childhood education. It's an area in which I've had quite a bit of experience recently. I've spent the last eight years with kids within early childhood education.

This is the first year, with my young son moving off to prep, that I'm not having to go to an early childhood education centre on particular mornings of the week or doing the pick-up. During that time, that eight years or near decade in which I was engaging with the system quite regularly, I really gained an appreciation for the sector that I hadn't had before—the amount of care and dedication of the early childhood educators, the passion that those who work in the sector have for it and the enjoyment that kids get out of it.

What they learn is far more than what can I teach them at home. They come home with many different perspectives and new skills, and that demonstrates the strength of the Australian early childhood industry. Since I was elected to this place in 2022 I've also had great opportunities to visit and be a guest of so many centres across the Redlands, not just the centres that my kids attended.

The opportunity to read a book to children or engage with some of the educators across my city is a wonderful treat, and it's a great privilege that I get to have as the member for Bowman. So any time there is any legislation in this area of early childhood education I'm always interested to see what the implications are going to be for my local parents and my local sector.

Unfortunately, when I look at the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, and while I see a lot of good intentions, when I dive into the detail I don't think it is really what is required to fix the issues the sector is facing or get the parents the support they need in order to get what they need out of early education. The coalition will be opposing this legislation, and we are doing so for a number of reasons.

There are several issues with this bill, including the removal of priority access for working families—and I'll talk a bit more about that later. It also de-incentivises aspiration, it increases access without addressing supply issues, it does nothing to increase the access or flexibility for families and it does not address the current cost-of-living pressures.

Of course supply is a major issue, and I find that that's the major issue relating to early education that comes up when I talk to parents and prospective parents across my electorate. We've had some new investment in some new centres, but it's very difficult at times to actually find a spot for kids. It's alright for those who are already in the system or who have the ability to get younger siblings in through some sort of preference system for those centres that have that sort of process, but it's often very difficult to lock in a spot for your kid, even in my electorate, which is outer-suburban.

We're by no means a childcare or early education desert, as some communities are, and I've heard a lot of my colleagues talk about the issues they've been facing with a lack of supply within their electorates, not just in relation to this bill but throughout this term. It's concerning that this bill will do nothing to assist those communities. It's hard enough to find a spot within outer-suburban communities.

I remember the time when my wife and I were trying to find a spot for our children. Many centres don't even bother responding to your requests, emails or investigations, because they've got that big a waiting list. They've got that much demand and so little capacity to supply that demand that it's not even worth their while responding to you.

When I'm going door to door in my electorate, I'm hearing that that has been the experience of many parents. Some are lucky enough to snag a position, but often it's a long way away from the homes of these families. Deputy Speaker Vasta knows well the difficulties for those who work in the inner city of Brisbane and have to commute from Brisbane's bayside—that it can be a great challenge, particularly for those early drop-offs.

But thankfully a lot of these early childhood centres are open quite early to allow bayside parents to drop off and head into work. Of course, two-thirds of my electorate head out of my electorate for work each day, and it is a challenge, but it is wonderful to know that you are leaving your children in the care of such dedicated and wonderful professionals. So supply is a major issue, and we're concerned that this bill does not do enough in that area.

Now, it would appear that it's going to increase access for only a small number of families, but it will have wide-ranging effects on all families. Families who need early childhood education so they can work will be competing against families who have extra subsidised access but who may not be working, studying or volunteering at all. That's a challenge for us economically.

If we've got a parent or a pair of parents who are working hard and are desperate to get their kids into a centre, they're now going to have to compete, on an equal playing field, against parents who may not be working or who may be working less. I think it just comes down to a question of basic fairness. I think it makes sense for there to be an activity test.

I think it makes sense economically, because we want to encourage people to work and we desperately need more people working in our economy. Also, I think it makes sense from a basic government fairness perspective. Why are we offering such generous subsidies to those who may have greater capacity to look after their children at home against those who don't?

We know—we've all had this experience within our electorates—of so many Australian families who are having to take on extra shifts and extra jobs. Young mums who may have wanted to take longer maternity leave are going back earlier because they simply can't afford the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis. We've seen 12 rate increases over the course of this government, and it's become increasingly difficult for Australian families— Mr Buchholz: Crisis after crisis!

Mr PIKE: It is crisis after crisis, as the member for Wright interjects. It is crisis after crisis, and we heard a bit of that in question time today. Unfortunately, Labor has failed to address the supply-side constraints, and in fact I think they've made it worse through this bill.

Over the last three years, Labor has failed to meaningfully address supply-side constraints. Modelling from the Productivity Commission shows that most of the children affected by the activity test changes live in major cities. Families in thin markets and childcare deserts, who have little or no access at all to child care, will be the most disadvantaged by this move.

That's a concern. When we've got a bill that's going to adversely impact regional and remote communities, of course the coalition are going to be deeply concerned about that. We think it's not thought through properly, and we're hoping that the Senate committee that's looking into these issues will have the opportunity to analyse that properly—to do a proper assessment about what the impacts are really going to be.

What does this mean for supply? Particularly, what does it mean for supply in regional and remote communities or areas where there are, for other reasons, childcare deserts? One of those areas is the islands in my electorate.

I'm blessed to have the Southern Moreton Bay Islands and North Stradbroke Island in my electorate. We've got one child care looking after all the Southern Moreton Bay Islands. Petrae McLean and her team do a wonderful job, but, unfortunately, they get very little support from any level of government in the work that they do.

They're often dealing with kids with very complex needs from one of the lowest socioeconomic brackets that we have within Queensland. Yes, we are a stone's throw from the centre of Brisbane, but there is some real disadvantage there. I would like to see the federal government provide a lot more support to centres like that, who are operating on the fringes of our major cities, taking on serious challenges, and doing it with such commitment and with such care for our kids.

We also have concern about the lack of flexibility in these changes. Families have a right to choose what their work life and family life look like, and the coalition respects this choice. Labor's three-day guarantee does nothing for families who choose to remain at home and raise their children until primary school or families who use flexible arrangements such as grandparents or nannies, but, of course, all Australians are going to have to pay for the changes.

The bill also does nothing for parents who need flexibility, such as families who do shiftwork or work non-standard hours. We're also very concerned about the discrepancy in the costings on this bill. We believe the figure of $426.7 million over five years is very undercooked and the true impact of removing the activity test may not be fully known.

The department has been unable to advise how many families are eligible for the CCS but are not enrolling their children or how many families are completely disengaged from the CCS. So it's total guesswork. It seems that they haven't actually got the understanding of what the impact of this policy is going to be, so it becomes very difficult to actually put a dollar figure on it.

It seems that, in the final week of parliament, we're just trying to push these things through without having a proper sense of the cost. And, of course, the costings don't account for the groups that I mentioned earlier. What we do know is that the Productivity Commission's 2024 A path to universal early childhood education and care report costed the complete removal of the activity test at $2.3 billion per year.

That is a long way from $426.7 million over five years, which is the estimated impact—$2.3 billion per year is obviously a lot more than that. The PC's modelling suggested the complete removal of the activity test would increase hours of early childhood education by four per cent. It also estimated it would lead to a 0.9 per cent decrease in hours worked by sole parents and primary-care parents in coupled families.

So we've got very serious concerns about what this is going to cost the taxpayers. We're also concerned about what this is going to mean for parents in terms of affordability. Some sections of the community have labelled the three-day guarantee a cost-of-living measure, but, in reality, it is nothing of the sort.

Since Labor came to power, the cost of child care has increased by 22.3 per cent, and this is the lived experience of myself and many other parents of early childhood education students. You get a lovely subsidy increase, and what happens immediately? You get an email from the childcare provider that says, 'We've upped our fees to match that,' and more.

The real impact is that it has gone up by 22.3 per cent in this term. The last time Labor was in government, the cost of child care skyrocketed by 53 per cent in six years—my goodness! I'm glad I didn't have kids in child care over that period.

Maybe the Deputy Speaker did. Since Labor's Cheaper Child Care policy came into effect, out-of-pocket costs have increased by 12.7 per cent. That's certainly the message from constituents that I'm hearing loud and clear, particularly from the mums at the various childcare centres that I visit.

The majority of families accessing CCS will not see a reduction in their childcare costs because of this legislation. I think in the final few minutes of my contribution, what I might like to do is just quickly reflect on the LNP's record in this regard, because, really, I think the Australian people are going to have to make an assessment. Potentially, this could be the second-last sitting day of the term—we'll see.

Very shortly, the Australian people will have to make an assessment as to who is going to look after their best interests in this area of policy. When we were last in government, we almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23, and locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergarteners. We made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years.

More than 1.3 million children had access to the Child Care Subsidy, from about one million families. Under the coalition, 280,000 more children were in early education since the start of the coalition's time in government, and our targeted extra support introduced in March 2022 made a real difference. Childcare costs actually came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022.

Because of that—some would say largely because of this—we saw women's workforce participation reach record highs at 62.3 per cent in May 2022, compared to 58.7 per cent when the coalition came to government. When you consider that record and you consider all the changes that were made over the course of those nine years and the impact that was able to have in that sector, and you look at the cost increases that we've seen since this government has come in, despite its strong rhetoric, I think we can make a clear distinction between these records.

We're concerned that this bill won't do anything to get the government where it needs to go in reforming this system.