Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (18:40): I rise today in strong support of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. This bill is about something very simple. It's about valuing the people who educate and care for our youngest Australians, who educate and care for our kids.
It's about supporting parents who rely on early childhood education and care so they can go to work. It's about strengthening the early childhood workforce. It's about economic growth, and, importantly, it's ensuring that every child who walks through the doors of an early learning centre does so safely, is supported and is properly cared for.
For too long in this country, we've spoken about the importance of early childhood educators while failing to properly recognise the importance they have in our society. We have asked these workers to take on enormous responsibility, and, every morning, parents across Brisbane and across Australia drop their kids at early learning centres, and they place an enormous amount of trust in those who care for them, the educators who work there.
These educators comfort children when they're upset. They teach them to communicate. They help them learn to share, and they encourage curiosity.
They support children as they develop their friendships, their confidence and their independence. They identify when a child may need additional developmental support, and they manage the allergies and the health conditions, what they eat and the nuts—everything—so that our children are safe. They also maintain safe environments, and they provide the foundations on which learning is built.
This isn't babysitting. It is education. It is skilled work.
We heard the member for Dickson mention, just earlier, One Nation's perspective, or at least the leader of One Nation's perspective, questioning why people who educate our young children and care for them in these centres need a qualification. It really is enormously important work, yet, historically, the wages paid to many of the people doing this work simply haven't reflected that responsibility.
When the Albanese Labor government came to office, the consequences were becoming increasingly obvious. Educators were leaving, services were struggling to find staff, rooms were unable to open, and parents were struggling to find places for their children. At some centres, workforce attrition had reached extraordinarily high levels.
People weren't necessarily leaving because they didn't love the work; people were leaving because they couldn't afford to stay. That's why our government has stepped in, and that's why this Labor government has acted. This Labor government delivered a historic 15 per cent wage increase for eligible early childhood education and care workers, and that decision has made a real difference.
More than 215,000 educators across more than 11,600 services are now benefiting from that wage increase. When combined with the government's support for increases in the minimum wages, a typical full-time educator is now around $255 a week better off compared to December 2024. For early childhood educators, that figure is $410 a week.
That's real money. It's money for groceries. It's money for electricity bills.
It's money for clothes. It's money for books. It's money for rent and mortgages.
It's money that recognises that someone who dedicates their working life to educating our children should be able to afford to build a life of their own. Importantly, we are seeing evidence that this investment is working. Job vacancies in the sector have fallen around 31 per cent.
Job applications have increased significantly in some areas, and there are around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers in the sector. That matters enormously because workforce stability isn't just good for educators; it's good for our kids, and it's good for our families. Anyone who's had a child in early learning understands how important the relationships can become between an early childhood educator and their children.
Children know their educators. They trust them. They look forward to seeing them.
For a young child, particularly one attending care several days each week, the educator can become the most important and trusted adult in their lives next to their parents. Constant workforce turnover disrupts these relationships. A stable workforce allows educators to get to know the children in their care.
They understand their little personalities. They understand their routines. They recognise when that behaviour and what's normal for them changes.
They know their families. That continuity helps create an environment where children can feel secure enough to learn, to explore and to develop. This is why wage justice and quality early childhood education are not separate issues.
They are connected, and this bill recognises that connection. I want to acknowledge the United Workers Union, the delegates and the members who've spent more than a decade leading the Big Steps campaign and advocating for the recognition and fair remuneration that early childhood educators deserve. We've committed an additional $3.6 billion over two years to continue supporting historic wage increases for this sector, and this bill gives effect to that commitment by crediting the wage justice special account and extending the operation of the legislation to 31 December 2029.
The special account supports early childhood education and care worker retention payments, providing funding to eligible services so that higher wages can flow directly to eligible workers. Under this legislation, eligibility will be expanded. For the first time, workers in childcare subsidy approved services will be capable of benefiting from this funding where the service meets the relevant grant requirements, and that includes an important requirement that educators are engaged under a workplace instrument.
Why does this matter? It matters because public money provided for higher wages should actually reach workers. This is taxpayers' money we are talking about.
If the Commonwealth is investing billions of dollars to improve wages in early education to ensure more qualified workers are available to care for and teach our youngest children, Australians have every right to expect that funding will reach the educators it is intended to support. That's exactly what these safeguards are designed to achieve. But the legislation isn't just about educators; it's also about families.
One of the biggest challenges governments face when improving wages in a labour intensive sector like early childhood education is ensuring that the cost isn't simply passed straight through to parents. That's why the services receiving the worker retention payment are required to limit fee increases. That requirement is making a difference.
In the first year of the program, fee increases at participating services were around half of those that had not signed up. This means something. The government estimates that continuing these arrangements will save the average family about $1,500 over the next two years.
Again, that is significant at a time when families are managing household budgets, cost-of-living pressures and increases in food costs, $1,500 goes a long way. Without the continuation of this support, the departmental advice indicates that childcare fees could increase by around 17 per cent, and we certainly do not want that to happen. This Labor government has made huge strides when it comes to helping support the provision of early childhood education to families across our country, and we don't need huge increases to start having doors closing and families walking away.
Parents shouldn't have to choose between educators receiving a decent wage and affordable early childhood education. There's another critical element of this legislation that deserves particular attention, and that is safety. Nothing is more important in early education and care than safety.
Parents have an absolute right to expect that, when they leave their child at a centre or an early learning service, that child will be safe. There can be no qualification around that principle, no excuses, no shortcuts and no tolerance for providers that repeatedly fail to meet the appropriate safety standards. This is why this legislation establishes a new object and condition of funding that places service quality and child safety at the heart of the wage justice special account.
Services receiving this Commonwealth funding will be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, which relates specifically to children's health and safety. If a service doesn't meet the standard, its funding can be suspended or it can be cut. Around 95 per cent of services already meet the standard, and that's encouraging.
But, when we're talking about the safety of children, we need 100 per cent. Our ambition needs to be higher. We should be working towards every service meeting the standard Australia expects.
The legislation also enables equivalent conditions to apply to services outside the National Quality Framework, including in-home care services. These measures form part of a much broader program of reform undertaken by this Labor government to strengthen safety across early childhood education centres. The Commonwealth now has the strongest power to act against operators that fail to meet quality standards or safety and compliance requirements.
The department has already taken compliance action against almost 120 services that failed to meet safety standards for at least five years. And what happened when meaningful consequences were introduced? Services started responding.
More than 50 of those services subsequently addressed longstanding issues and problems, and that demonstrates something important: regulation needs consequences. Standards mean very little if persistent failure to meet them carries no meaningful response. Commonwealth officers have also conducted more than 1,300 unannounced visits across centres.
States and territories have increased compliance activity. The National Early Childhood Worker Register has also been established. Mandatory child safety training has been introduced across the sector, and that training isn't restricted to educators on the floor.
It extends through organisations, including senior executives and boards. More than 350,000 people have already undertaken foundation and child safety training. We've seen personal mobile phones being banned in centres.
We see a national CCTV trial underway across more than 300 services, supported by expert advice, including from the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Centre for Child Protection and the National Office for Child Safety. The Commonwealth is investing $226 million in child safety reforms, with states and territories committing another $270 million. Combined, our governments are investing around half a billion dollars to strengthen quality and safety across early childhood education and care.
And this bill adds another important piece to that reform agenda. It establishes an important principle: if you receive Commonwealth funding, the Commonwealth has every right to expect appropriate standards in return. Taxpayers should not be subsidising persistent low performers, and they certainly should not subsidise services that fail to provide a safe environment for our children.
There is a broader economic argument for this legislation: early childhood education and care is essential economic infrastructure. When parents can't access reliable care, their ability to participate in the workforce falls, shifts get turned down, hours get reduced, people delay returning to work, businesses lose experienced workers and families lose income.
This particularly affects women, who continue to carry a disproportionate share of caring responsibilities in Australian families. So, when we strengthen early childhood education, we are also strengthening workforce participation. When we help a childcare centre retain enough educators to keep its rooms open, there's an impact that goes far beyond that centre.
It means a nurse at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in my electorate can take a shift, a teacher can return to a classroom, a small business can open its doors, a parent can work additional hours and a family can earn more income. That's why good early childhood education policy is good economic policy. It's good workforce policy, productivity policy and equality policy.
For generations, occupations dominated by women have too often been undervalued, and early education has been one of them. The historic attitude of seeing caring professions as requiring fewer skills, as has been said by others, because people don't really need that sort of care is just wrong. That attitude has contributed to lower wages across the sector.
Labor rejects that approach. Our early childhood education centres develop the skills that our kids need as foundations in their early years—language skills, confidence, social skills, curiosity, emotional intelligence and a love of learning. Behind those outcomes are people who turn up to work every day as qualified childhood educators.
They are the people who answer the endless questions and comfort our frightened children. Importantly, our government is backing them because we need a strong workforce and we need more affordable care for our young people.