Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026

Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (12:47): I rise to speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. At the outset, I want to recognise the early childhood educators and teachers, those ECEs and ECTs that I spent quite a lot of time with last term when I was the shadow minister for early childhood education and care—those around the country who are in the sector simply because they love it.

They love their work; they love caring and educating the children and they love being in the sector. I want to thank them for their tireless efforts with our littlest learners—those that spend all of those hours on their knees playing with the children but also educating the older ones in early childhood education and care. Their work matters, because it matters to children and it matters to parents—to working parents.

It matters to communities and it matters to our economy because, without a strong and stable early childhood workforce, many parents simply cannot go to work. They can't study. They can't run their businesses.

In a cost-of-living crisis of this government's making, parents are forced to go back to work. Both parents have to go and earn a wage in order to pay the bills, with rising electricity costs, rising mortgages and rising grocery costs across the economy. The coalition does support better pay for good educators.

We support certainty for the sector, and we will support the continuation of the worker retention payment, as we did in the last term. But support for this bill does not mean giving the government a another blank cheque. It does not mean ignoring flaws in the design, and it certainly does not mean pretending that another temporary extension amounts to a long-term plan by this government.

Quality child care is ultimately about people. It's about people and relationships and the safety of children, which I'll get to, but buildings matter, regulations matter and qualifications matter. Ratios in early childhood settings matter.

But at the centre of a good early childhood experience is the relationship between a child and, of course, that educator who is caring for them and educating them. Every day, early childhood educators comfort children when they are upset. They help our littlest learners to learn the skills of communication and fine motor skills.

They encourage them to try something new. They notice when something's wrong. They celebrate their milestones, and over time they come to understand the individual child who is in front of them and where they're up to in their personal development.

That work is enormously important. Young children need the opportunity to build trust with the adults who are caring for them, and that takes time. A child should not constantly be confronted with a revolving door of unfamiliar faces.

We've all had those moments when we've left our young children, or in my case grandchildren, in early childhood education and care settings and seen their little faces cave in when we walk away and we feel the guilt of leaving them in somebody else's care. So they do need those educators who know them, educators who understand their little personalities, their routines, their strengths and where they might need some extra support.

I can remember going into an early childcare setting last term. I washed my hands before lunch, and I had a little learner next to me. She was probably only three years old; it was a three-year-olds room.

We washed our hands, and I took two paper hand towels, and she said, 'Oh no; you're only allowed to take one!' She was absolutely across the rules and trying to conserve the environment, which was to her credit. Indeed, the consistency of having the same educators helps children to feel secure and confident in their care environment. The continuation of educators is recognised within our national quality standard for exactly that reason.

This is where workforce retention becomes a question of quality, not simply a question of pay or wages. If we want children to have the opportunity to form strong, secure relationships with their educators, we need good educators to stay in the sector. We need experienced educators to see early childhood education and care as a profession in which they can build their careers.

And we need services to be able to attract and retain the people families trust with their children. There are thousands upon thousands of educators around Australia doing extraordinary work every day, and the overwhelming majority care deeply about the children entrusted to them by their parents and carers. They know the responsibility that comes with being one of the adults that a young child may spend a significant part of their week alongside.

That contribution deserves recognition. That's why I am, some would say, gushing over all those educators and teachers in the sector. So, when we talk about supporting better pay and retaining educators, we should not lose sight of the child who is at the centre of it, that little being.

Retention means greater continuity. Greater continuity gives that little being, that little learner more opportunity to build trusting relationships, and those relationships are an important part of delivering genuinely high-quality care. That's one of the reasons the coalition supports continuing wage support and avoiding a sudden funding cliff in November, which would have been the case.

The question before us is not whether retention matters. I've just outlined that plainly it does. The question is whether the government has designed this $3.6 billion extension in the fairest, most effective and most sustainable way possible.

That is where scrutiny is indeed required. As I said, we have been here before. When this parliament debated the original wage justice legislation—the worker retention payment—in 2024, the coalition supported it.

We made clear then that we would not stand in the way of a pay rise for early childhood educators. But we also warned that the government had not answered the long-term question. We asked what would happen when the temporary fund ended.

We raised concerns about the administrative burden on providers, the workplace instrument requirements, the fee restrictions and the financial uncertainty being created for small and medium services. We said that a temporary taxpayer funded payment could not become a substitute for a sustainable workforce plan. Two years later, we stand by what we said then.

When I spoke on the original bill in this House in October 2024, I put the concern plainly. I said that, when the two years of grant funding ended, providers would be left to pick up the tab for the increased wages and that there was uncertainty for providers about what came next. That indeed has been the case.

That was not an argument against educators receiving the increase. It was an argument that a government creating a multibillion dollar wage program had a responsibility to explain the destination, not just the first two years of that journey. The government had two years to resolve that uncertainty.

Instead, the answer now before the House is another two years. That history matters because this is not a new policy being assessed on a blank sheet of paper. We can look at the concerns raised in 2024, look at what's happened since and ask whether those concerns have actually been resolved.

The government has returned to this House asking for another $3.6 billion and another extension of the same temporary scheme. It's rinse and repeat from this government. The worker retention payment was originally due to finish on 30 November this year, and this bill extends the funding to 30 June 2028 and extends the wage justice special account itself to 31 December 2029.

The original payment was established as an interim measure while the Fair Work Commission considered gender based undervaluation in the sector and while the government considered longer term funding arrangements. Since then, the Fair Work Commission has acted. It found that children's services work has been subject to gender based undervaluation, and new classifications and minimum award rates commenced from 1 March this year.

Yet the long-term funding question remains unanswered. There is an important difference between the circumstances in 2024 and the circumstances of today. In 2024, the payment was expressly presented as a bridge while the Fair Work Commission dealt with gender based undervaluation.

That was the position then. That Fair Work Commission process has occurred already. The award has changed.

Providers are now operating in an environment where those higher minimum wage obligations are part of the industrial landscape, and that makes a sudden end to Commonwealth support in November a very, very real concern. The wage obligations do not simply disappear because a grant expires. All of those educators and teachers and people that work in the sector expect the wages to continue.

If the payments stopped abruptly, providers would still face their wage costs. Many would have little choice but to absorb those costs, reduce other expenditure or ultimately pass those increases on to families. These are families who simply can't afford for their childcare expenses to go up—they have, by the way, under this government, by around 14 per cent.

That is one reason we support continuity rather than a cliff. But it's also the reason the government must stop treating the long-term funding question as something that can simply be deferred. The problem becomes harder, not easier, every time a temporary scheme is extended without a clear destination.

The government has not replaced its temporary model with a permanent model, a permanent solution. Each time we want to keep this going, it's going to have to be another $3.6 billion fund created by the government. It's only extended a temporary model.

Sure, that gives the sector more certainty today, and we welcome that certainty, but what about tomorrow? Moving the expiry date from 2026 to 2028 does not answer what happens in 2028. A temporary bridge can be extended, but it's still a temporary bridge.

It's like a temporary root canal. It still has to be attended to at some place and time. Providers need to know how they are expected to plan their businesses.

Educators need to know whether the wage support they're receiving is indeed sustainable. Parents need to know whether the costs will ultimately flow through to the fees that they themselves have to fork out. Those questions matter because the consequences of uncertainty in child care do not stay on a government spreadsheet.

They show up in family budgets, in service viability, in workforce decisions and in whether a parent can actually find care. That's a whole other problem under this government—finding a childcare place. So our position is straightforward.

We support better pay, we support workforce retention, we support avoiding a sudden funding cliff in November that could place pressure on providers and especially families, but we will continue to scrutinise the design of the scheme and will continue to argue for changes where the government has got it wrong. There is one area where the gap between the government's announcement and the reality of its policy is particularly stark, and that is FDC, known as family day care, and in-home care.

When the government announced this extension in June, it also announced that family day care and in-home care would finally be included in the worker retention payment. It fixed one of its own mistakes, as it seems to do a lot around this place with all its amendments to its own legislation. The coalition welcomed that announcement.

We welcomed it because those services matter. Child care is not just centre based day care. For some families, family day care is the model that works best for their family and for their child.

It can offer a small setting, local care and flexibility that a large centre cannot always provide. For some families, in-home care is simply not a preference and is simply not available with the numbers. It exists specifically for families who cannot access other approved forms of care because of circumstances such as non-standard or variable working hours—shift workers, for example—geographic isolation or indeed complex needs children.

These are exactly the same families for whom a one-size-fits-all childcare system can fail, and many families still do not have access to early childhood education and care. When the government said family day care and in-home care would be included, that sounded like a positive change, but headline inclusion is not the same thing as genuine eligibility. Under the grant settings, family day care and in-home care services are only eligible where educators are engaged as employees.

Services using lawful independent contractor models are—surprise, surprise—excluded. That is not a minor technical issue. Independent contractor arrangements are used across both family day care and in-home care, yet, under the government's grant rules, services operating under those models cannot access those payments.

So while the government says family day care and in-home care are now included, it has designed the scheme in a way that excludes part of the very workforce it claims to be bringing in. The government has not demonstrated how many educators will actually qualify. That's not meaningful inclusion.

The government was asked to provide the number of family day care and in-home care workers broken down by employment type, including employees and independent contractors. Neither the minister's office nor the department held documents within the scope of that request. Instead, the government pointed to published workforce census data.

That matters—employment status is the gateway to this payment—yet the government could not produce the basic employee versus contractor numbers needed to show how many newly included educators will actually receive it. Before the government congratulates itself on expanding this scheme, it should be able to answer a simple question, and that simple question is: how many additional educators will actually get the payment?

A $3.6 billion announcement should be backed by basic evidence about who can access and who qualifies for it. That's why scrutiny matters. The coalition will continue to pursue changes so otherwise eligible approved services are not excluded simply because they use a lawful contractor model.

Government policy should reflect the childcare workforce that actually exists. We support better pay for educators. We do not support eligibility rules that unnecessarily lock parts of that workforce out.

If the objective is workforce retention, the scheme should not exclude workers simply because they do not fit the government's preferred employment model. Think about what that means. The government has made employment status the gateway to accessing this payment.

It has announced the expansion of a multibillion-dollar scheme to new forms of care, yet it could not produce the basic employee versus contractor numbers needed to show how many of the people it says are newly included will actually qualify. Before the government congratulates itself for expanding this scheme, it should be able to answer another very simple question.

How many additional educators will actually receive the payment? This announcement does not have the evidence behind it that the government should be able to answer. That's why scrutiny matters.

It's also why the coalition will again continue to pursue the changes and continue to uncover what the government is doing here when it comes to this worker retention payment. This bill is about wages, but childcare policy cannot be considered in isolation from what families are paying. Families were promised cheaper child care.

Do you remember that? Australians remember that—'Cheaper child care, cheaper child care, cheaper child care.' Then, suddenly, the Prime Minister stopped talking about it. He dropped it from his rhetoric.

Why? Because it's another broken promise from Labor. The latest figures show out-of-pocket childcare costs increased by 7.6 per cent in the year to June 2026, twice the headline inflation rate of 3.8 per cent.

Average centre based day-care fees rose from $11.35 an hour in the June quarter of 2022 to $14.50 an hour in the March quarter of 2026. That's an increase of around 28 per cent. Certainly it's increased.

What happened to cheaper child care? That would mean it had decreased. But, frankly, the numbers say it's increased.

At the current average hourly fee, 50 hours of care a week for 50 weeks amounts to around $36,250 a year before subsidies. In the March quarter of this year, 40.9 per cent of centre based day-care services were charging an average hourly fee above the childcare subsidy hourly rate cap. For family day care, it was 52.9 per cent.

So, when the government asks this parliament to commit billions more, it's reasonable to ask a basic question: what is the long-term outcome for families? Affordability is not an abstract concern. For a family deciding whether a second parent can increase their hours, whether mum or dad can return to work after parental leave, whether they can take an extra shift or whether they can afford—goodness me!—another child, childcare costs are part of that calculation.

The system can receive more Commonwealth funding and still leave a family feeling worse off if those fees continue to rise. That's why the coalition rejects the idea that the amount appropriated is itself the achievement. The objective cannot be to build an ever-larger stack of subsidies, grants and special accounts while families keep asking why their weekly bill is going up.

Public funding should purchase better outcomes—stable workforce, safer services, more reliable access and genuine affordability. More government spending is not by itself a measure of success. The measure of success is whether children are safe and receiving quality care, whether families can afford the care they need, whether they can actually access it, whether they have genuine choice and whether services can attract and retain good educators.

This bill also broadens the wage justice special account to include quality and safety. Of course, the coalition always supports stronger child safety. The safety of children must be paramount in every early childhood education and care setting and service.

But we should also be clear about what this bill actually does. The bill allows worker retention payment grant agreements to include conditions linked to quality area 2, and that is children's health and safety. That provides the Commonwealth with another level of services receiving this funding, but it's not by itself a comprehensive child safety reform.

The provisions are discretionary and they apply through a wage grant. So there remain legitimate questions about how these conditions will operate, how they'll interact with existing state and territory regulation and what will happen to services outside of the worker retention payment. If a safety requirement is necessary to protect a child, we should also ask whether it should apply consistently across the sector rather than depending on participation in a particular Commonwealth program.

The coalition will continue to scrutinise those provisions as this bill proceeds because strengthening safety requires more than putting the word 'safety' in the title of a bill. It requires clear standards, effective enforcement, strong workforce screening, good information sharing and governments acting quickly when risks to children are identified. On child safety, the test must always be simple: does the reform actually make children safer?

What the sector needs is a long-term plan, not another announcement followed by another expiry date, not a system in which family day care is included in the headline and excluded in the fine print, not an approach that treats every service as though it operates like a large centre based provider and not a childcare debate in which success is measured only by how much money Canberra spends.

The coalition believes families should have genuine choice and flexibility. For many families, centre based day care is the right option—that's true—and it should be high quality, safe, accessible and affordable. For others, family day care works better.

For some, in-home care is essential. Families work different hours. They live in different communities.

Children have, indeed, different needs. Parents make different choices, and they should be able to make those choices. Government policy should respect that reality.

The coalition will support this bill because we support better pay for educators. We support workforce retention, and we do not want families or providers facing a sudden price shock when the current arrangements expire in November. But our support comes with clear expectations.

The government must fix the eligibility settings that risk excluding family day care and in-home care. It must justify the industrial requirements attached to the scheme and remove unnecessary barriers. It must explain how the new safety provisions will operate in practice and what they will achieve for children's safety.

And it must finally provide the sector with a credible answer to the question we asked in this place just two years ago: what is the long-term plan? Extending a temporary payment is not a long-term plan. Educators deserve better than an uncertainty from one funding deadline to the next.

Providers deserve rules that are workable and fair. Parents deserve child care that is safe, affordable, accessible and flexible. Taxpayers deserve confidence that billions of dollars are being spent in a way that delivers lasting results.

We supported better pay in 2024. We support it now. We raised concerns about the design in 2024.

Where those concerns remain, we will raise them again now. That is not inconsistency. It is very consistent.

That is exactly what a responsible opposition should do—support what is right, scrutinise what is not and keep pushing for a childcare system that puts children and families absolutely first.