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

Ms KARA COOK (Bonner) (16:01): The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 matters enormously to my community. Across Bonner, we have 101 childcare centres and more than 8,000 local families who receive the childcare subsidy. I want to start by acknowledging that just last week we celebrated Early Childhood Educators' Day and saying a big thank you to the 829 childhood educators in my local community.

The work they do is incredibly important to me as a mum of three. I've had all three of my children attend early childhood education. But it's also important to the tens of thousands of families in my local community who utilise early childhood education each and every day.

Those workers deserve to be valued, they deserve to be paid fairly, and they deserve a safe and supportive work environment. My mum was an early childhood educator teacher at TAFE, and I remember as a child, particularly on school holidays, visiting her at work and seeing the development of our next generation of early childhood educators over the more than 40 years that she was in that role.

Their commitment to their profession and their love of our kids was just inspiring. Can I say a massive thank you to each and every one of the 829 educators in Bonner and, of course, to all of the educators right across Australia for what you do each and every day supporting our communities. At its heart, this bill does two really important things.

It locks in better pay for early childhood educators while protecting families from excessive fee increases. It strengthens the link between Commonwealth funding and quality and safety of the care that our children receive. When Labor came to government, educators were leaving the sector in droves—not because they didn't love the work but because too many simply couldn't afford to stay.

In some centres right across Australia workforce attrition was at a high of 40 per cent—that's 40 per cent of the workforce leaving the job they love in any given year. And it did reach a crisis point. Labor has acted.

We delivered a historic 15 per cent pay rise for eligible early childhood educators combined with our support for minimum wage increases. A typical full-time childhood educator is now earning more than $400 extra each and every week. More than 215,000 educators at more than 11½ thousand services right across Australia are now benefiting.

Job vacancies are down 31 per cent. Job applications, in some places, are up 30 per cent, and there are now 20,000 more childhood educators doing this important work right across our country. In Bonner, over the last 18 months, we've welcomed the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Deputy Prime Minister to centres right across my electorate.

More than once, and at every centre, we have thanked our educators for the important work that they do and we have spoken about Labor's 15 per cent pay rise and why it was so important to properly value those educating and caring for some of our youngest and most vulnerable kids. This is a priority for the Albanese Labor government, and Labor today is again acting to back in our educators.

The Prime Minister has announced a further $3.6 billion over the next two years to lock in our historic pay rise, and this bill delivers on that commitment. It amends the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act 2024, credits the special account used to administer the worker retention payment and extends the act's sunset date from 30 June 2028 to 31 December 2029.

For the first time, all childcare subsidy approved centres will be eligible for funding provided they meet the grant guidelines. This includes a requirement that educators are engaged under a workforce instrument, helping to ensure this investment actually reaches the workers it is intended to support because this is an investment in educators. It is about retaining experienced people in the sector and it's about building the workforce we need as more Australian families access early learning.

We also can't talk about wage justice in this sector without talking about gender. Nine in 10 early childhood educators are women. For too long, the low wages in this sector were treated as just the way things were.

Labor does not accept that. This bill locks in a 15 per cent pay rise for a workforce overwhelmingly made up of women, and that makes it an important part of Labor's work to close the gender pay gap. A pay rise doesn't just make a difference on payday, it compounds over a career through higher wages, higher super and greater economic security.

When we properly value the work of early childhood educators, we are also challenging the outdated idea that caring work should somehow be worth less. The other side of this is affordability. For more than 8,000 families in my community of Bonner who receive the childcare subsidy, the cost of early learning isn't an abstract policy discussion, it's part of the family budget each and every week.

It affects whether a parent can return to work, increase their hours or take on another shift. Last year, when I welcomed the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to Goodstart Early Learning in Wishart, we talked about making childcare more affordable, expanding access and delivering better pay for educators. All of those things are connected, and there is no point expanding access to early learning if we don't have the educators to staff our services.

We can't retain great educators if we don't pay them properly, but we also shouldn't improve wages by simply passing the cost onto parents. That is why services receiving the worker retention payment are required to limit fee increases. Over the first year of the program, fees at participating services increased by around half as much as fees at services that didn't sign up.

This bill continues that protection. It is expected to save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years. That's money back in the pockets of local families.

The Department of Education has warned us that, without this legislation, childcare fees could increase by around 17 per cent. Families shouldn't have to choose between fair wages for the people educating their children and affordable early education and care. We can do both, and this bill does do both those things.

There is another critical part to this legislation, and that is safety. I recently visited Active Kids Early Learning Centre at Mount Gravatt East. Whenever I visit an early learning service, I am reminded of the enormous trust parents place in these services and their educators.

When you drop your child off in the morning, you expect them to learn; you expect them to be nurtured and cared for; but, above everything else, you expect them to be safe—and that, of course, is a non-negotiable. This bill puts that principle into practice. It establishes a new object and condition of funding under the act that puts service quality and children's safety at the heart of the act.

To receive this Commonwealth funding, services will be required to meet Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standard, which relates to children's health and safety. If a centre doesn't meet that standard, their funding can be cut. Around 95 per cent of services already meet the standard.

But when we are talking about the safety of children, of course we want that number to be 100 per cent. Parents have a right to expect it, and children, of course, deserve it. This builds on the significant work our government is already doing to strengthen safety across early childhood education and care.

Last year, we gave the Department of Education the power to cut off funding to operators that fail to meet quality, safety or compliance requirements. Since then, compliance action has been taken against 119 centres that had failed to meet safety standards for at least five years. Fifty-five of those centres have now fixed problems that they had previously failed to address; seven others have voluntarily closed; and, in June, for the first time ever, Commonwealth funding was cut off to a service.

That sends a very clear message: if you receive taxpayer funding to educate and care for Australian children, meeting appropriate safety and quality standards is absolutely not optional. We have also strengthened oversight. Since November, Australian government authorised officers have conducted more than 1,300 unannounced visits to services right across the country.

The National Early Childhood Worker Register came into effect in February, giving us a stronger ability to know who is working in our services and track workers moving between centres and across state and territory borders. Mandatory child safety training is now required throughout organisations, from educators right through to CEOs and board members as well.

More than 350,000 people have already completed the foundation training. Personal mobile phones have, of course, been banned in centres, and a national CCTV trial is underway in more than 300 services—informed by experts, including the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Centre for Child Protection and the National Office for Child Safety. All up, this Labor government is investing an additional $226 million in child safety reforms, because expanding early childhood education and care must go hand in hand with strengthening confidence in the system.

Labor knows that paying educators properly isn't separate from building a high-quality early education system; it is absolutely fundamental to it. And making sure our children are safe isn't negotiable. This bill locks in better pay, it protects families from excessive fee increases and it strengthens quality and safety requirements for services receiving Commonwealth funding.

I'm proud to support this bill, and I commend the bill to the House.