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

Ms MASCARENHAS (Swan) (16:29): I want everyone to think about their earliest childhood memory, and, for many people, that might be a favourite teddy bear or a favourite blanket, which was definitely the case for me, but I'm going to say that I also remember my favourite potty. I think that it was the best potty on the block. The reason why I share this is that what people don't recognise is how young you are when you form some of your earliest childhood memories, and some of those lasting memories happen from the age of three.

The other thing that's interesting is understanding the brain development of children. They say that 90 per cent of a human's brain has been developed by the age of five, so the things that happen during those early years are really important. They are the building blocks for how a person thinks, feels and reasons, and they are largely laid down before they even set foot in a primary school classroom.

I have an aunty-in-law, Aunty Bev. She has been a primary school teacher for, I think, three or four decades. One of the things that she said to me, which was a real surprise to me, was, 'Zaneta, I do what I can with what is given to me,' and I'm like, 'But it's only year 1; there should be so much that you can do.' But what she was referring to was those really important early childhood years.

The environment in which a child spends their days during these formative years has a direct bearing on their development, and that environment is shaped by the people who spend their days in it—and whether those people are treated well enough to stay. So today I speak in support of wage justice for early childhood education and care workers and the extension of their 15 per cent pay rise, to create positive working and learning environments for both workers and children.

My children have attended a number of childcare centres in the electorate of Swan—Billabong, Goodstart and also Gowrie Early Learning Karawara, which has an amazing history. Gowrie traces its history back to 1940, when the original Lady Gowrie centre opened in Victoria Park. In fact, it opened on 5 September—so 86 years ago last Saturday.

It was one of six centres that the Commonwealth government built in capital cities around the country at the time. They were deliberately built close to industrial areas to reach working families and help address issues like poverty, poor health outcomes and overcrowding for children in those communities. Then, during the war years, these centres gave women who were drawn into the workforce to support the war effort somewhere safe to leave their children while they worked.

The centres were built because the government recognised that where a family lived and worked should not determine whether a child had access to a safe, healthy start in life. So, more than 80 years later, Gowrie was caring for my children. I'd say that they provided quality care, and that same principle of quality care should be within the reach of all working families.

That's exactly what this bill continues to build on. It's interesting to think of my own daughter's experience in one of her favourite childcare centres, Billabong. Felicity has developed some really sweet besties—Bella, Ada, Anise and Caitlin—and the friendships that they form are very thick.

I remember speaking with one of the educators, and she's like: 'Caitlin and Felicity don't actually have language, but they were sitting in the corner chatting with each other without words and then they were asked to pack away. They turned around and almost glared at the educators and were like, "But wait; I'm in the middle of a chat."' They were speaking in their own language.

It's fascinating to see how thick friendships can grow even when you don't have language. What I saw had developed at that childcare centre was a rich, stimulating environment, which happens when staff are valued, supported and paid fairly to make sure that they keep on doing the work that they love. That's what this bill helps make possible more broadly.

In August 2024, the Albanese government announced $3.6 billion to fund a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood educators. Before that, the sector was in crisis. Some centres had staff turnover as high as 40 per cent a year.

Centres were delaying expansion plans and limiting enrolments simply because they could not find the staff to run their rooms. Today, more than 215,000 early educators from across almost 12,000 centres are benefiting from that pay rise. Combined with the government's support for minimum wage increases, a typical full-time educator is now $255 a week better off and an early childhood teacher is now $410 better off compared to December 2024.

An educator in my electorate told me what it has meant for her. She said that it's a hard and tiresome job, but having a fair wage gives her more encouragement to sustain the job that she loves. The payment helped her pay her mortgage and helped her ease cost-of-living pressures like fuel and groceries.

This bill extends the 2024 commitment that we made to early childhood education and to care workers, and it extends funding to 2028 so that this pay rise is not a temporary fix but a lasting one that gives time for the sector to adjust. For the first time, employees in family day care and in-home care will also be eligible for this payment. That matters because these workers care for children in some of the most personal and demanding settings in this sector, and they deserve to be included.

The second reason this bill matters is retention. The Productivity Commission's 2024 report into this sector found that low pay and unattractive working conditions were a major factor preventing centres from attracting and keeping staff. Since the worker retention payment began, job vacancies in the sector are now down by over 30 per cent.

There are 20,000 more people working in early childhood education and care than there were before, and the fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at about half of the rate of centres that are not signed up. As the Minister for Education stated, if this bill does not pass, these could rise as much as 17 per cent. This matters because affordable child care is what gives a parent the ability to return to part-time or full-time work.

Whether that is to keep building a career or to help cover the costs of raising a family, all parents in this country deserve to have that choice. I think about, after I had my first child, deciding on which childcare centre my son, Lincoln, would go to. It's interesting that I didn't realise how challenging it is just to get into a childcare centre.

I remember trying to work out what was the right centre and who I would trust with my child. It's funny because I remember that time and it being very emotional and for me. That journey of deciding on where my son would go to was more emotional than going through IVF.

For IVF, the worst outcome was that I wouldn't fall pregnant. The worst outcome of picking the wrong childcare centre, for me, was too difficult to fathom. I ended up speaking to a child who was in primary school at the time.

I knew his mum—I used to work with her—and he was like: 'This is the childcare centre I went to. It was excellent.' And I was like: 'Great! I can't pick a better advocate than a graduate of a childcare centre.' So that's the childcare centre that my children went to.

Following on from that, knowing how important that decision is, we need to make sure that we invest in the workers and give them the right pay and the right structures to make sure that we value them. What we see when the structures aren't there, such as when a centre closes or fees climb out of reach, is that choice disappears for a lot of families, particularly for a parent who does not have family nearby to fall back on.

Keeping quality childcare centres open, staffed and affordable is what keeps options open for working parents. Early childhood education and care is a workforce that's dominated by women, and, like many female dominated industries, it has historically been undervalued. Unsurprisingly, this is not an isolated finding.

Since 2024, the Fair Work Commission has been running a broader review into gender based undervaluation across a number of priority awards in sectors where women make up the overwhelming majority of the workforce. These include aged care, disability and community care, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers. The Minister for Women has spoken directly to this issue, pointing out that over 85 per cent of both the aged-care and early childhood education workforces are women, and that, as a country, we need to keep challenging the attitudes and stereotypes that have allowed this work to be undervalued for so long.

This government takes that responsibility seriously. For the first time in Australian history, women make up the majority of not only the government caucus seats but also the cabinet. That matters, because a parliament and a government that reflect the community they serve are more likely to properly value the work that the community relies on, including the work of the educators that this bill supports.

In December 2025, the Fair Work Commission handed down its final determination of the Children's Services Award, finding that the work of these employees had been undervalued because of assumptions based on gender and that increases to minimum rates were justified on work value grounds alone, confirming what educators in this sector have known for years: an eight-hour shift caring for children who are not yet old enough to be independent, who need constant attention and care, is demanding work, and it deserves to be recognised as such.

One educator who works in my electorate put it simply; she said: 'Early educators deserve the same recognition as schoolteachers.' Extending this pay rise is one part of closing the gap. It supports higher wages in a workforce that has been asked to do some of the most important work in the country, for too long for too little, and it does so while making care more affordable for the families who rely upon it.

When a parent drops their child at an early learning centre, they are trusting that the centre is going to keep their child safe. Now, for the first time, funding under this scheme is directly tied to safety. A service has to meet the national health and safety standard Quality Area 2 to keep on receiving it.

If a service falls short, their funding agreement can be suspended. Not every service in the sector is assessed in the same way. Family day care and in-home care providers aren't rated under the same framework.

So the bill allows the secretary to apply an equivalent safety condition for them too. And the government has been acting. Over 100 centres—119 of them, in fact—had let their safety standards slip for half a decade or more before the department stepped in.

Once funding was actually at risk, half of them fixed what they had been avoiding for years. One of the centres lost its funding outright this year. Seven more shut down rather than lift their game.

Unannounced inspections are up, too—well over a thousand since November last year. State and state and territory regulators have more than doubled their own compliance activity over the same stretch. Every person in a centre now has to be on the national worker register, so we know who is caring for our children, wherever they move on to.

Everyone on site, right up to the board, has to make sure they complete important training. This bill establishes recognition for the people who do this work, and it protects the children in their care. A well-paid, stable, experienced workforce is a safer workforce, because children are looked after by people who know them and have been trained properly and paid properly.

This is what this bill delivers. I commend the bill to the House.