ADJOURNMENT

Ms BOELE (Bradfield) (19:30): This government has set affordable and high-quality child care as a key policy goal, and I fully support these efforts. Good child care involves our children getting the best possible start to life, our essential workers being supported and well paid, and more parents having the choice to re-enter the workforce. We know that good child care generates benefits well beyond the individual child and the family.

It's often described as one of the highest return forms of public investment because it delivers social, educational and economic benefits simultaneously. I commend the government for reforms made to date, including establishing a minimum entitlement to three days per week of subsidised care; safety reforms, including mandatory child safety training for educators; directly investing $1 billion in expanding childcare capacity; and improving childcare worker salaries to address systemic workforce shortages through the worker retention payment.

I welcome, too, the government's decision to extend the worker retention payment to 30 June 2028 with another $3.6 billion behind it and by opening it up to more family day care and in-home care services. I acknowledge the work being done to work out what safe quality child care actually costs to deliver. This is an unglamorous but necessary task, and the government has commissioned Deloitte to undertake it.

All of this represents progress at a high level. I look forward to the government providing an update on this project delivery timeline. All of this represents progress.

But in my electorate of Bradfield, things look a little bit different on the ground. Much loved non-profit and community providers are struggling to stay afloat, and some have already closed despite being at capacity with extensive waitlists. These centres have been squeezed between increasing fixed costs, such as rent and insurance, and the need to meet strict conditions around fee growth to receive the worker retention payment.

At the same time, plenty of for-profit providers haven't signed up to the worker retention payment at all, so workers aren't benefiting from higher wages and Bradfield families are facing higher fees. Or they've signed up, but the changes haven't improved their workforce shortages because, even with higher wages, workers simply can't afford to live and therefore work in the Bradfield electorate.

Bradfield is one of the most expensive electorates in which to rent or buy a home and has some of the highest child care fees anywhere across the country. Constituents contact me regularly to say that, even if spots are available, they simply cannot find one that they can afford. For a lot of families, it comes down to one parent, usually the mum, deciding to work essentially for free once they take out the childcare gap fee or just not work at all.

To repeat, that means all of one parent's income sometimes just goes to childcare. If you're in that position, hearing that a worker retention payment is lowering your cost of living or that the government is waiting for Deloitte to finish a report before they can increase the child care subsidy just doesn't hold up. When costly child care locks parents out of work, we lose valuable skills, and productivity slows.

Businesses miss out on experienced employees, and our tax base shrinks. Paradoxically, this contributes to a glut of expensive childcare places in Bradfield that nobody's filling. So local planning that prioritises for-profit over non-profit providers, workforce shortages and high out-of-pocket fees mean supply and need just aren't lining up, and that points to a market in need of proper stewardship through a national early childhood education and care commission.

This is something I wrote to the minister about in November last year. A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry backed this idea last month, and so did the Productivity Commission. Thrive by Five, the Parenthood and Early Childhood Australia are all calling for it.

The commission would oversee national data and systems performance; drive consistent safety regulation, including a national working-for-children check; and manage government payments incentives. This commission could be established alongside the Deloitte project and existing investments in childcare capacity. I call on the government to keep the momentum going and work with the states and territories to establish a national commission now.