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

Ms SCRYMGOUR (Lingiari) (18:55): It is hard to think of a more important job than that of looking after and educating our young people. Early childhood educators play such a critical role in the early development of our young ones. We know that this period is formative.

It impacts how a child learns for many years to come. We also know that early childhood educators are persistent, patient and diligent workers. It is hard work and it is work that deserves to be rewarded.

They deserve fair wages. When we first came to government, childhood educators were underpaid and they did not feel valued by the system they were giving so much to. They were leaving the sector en masse.

Through consistent work and policy support from our government, this has now changed. The 15 per cent pay rise as well as an increase to the minimum wage are seeing a typical full-time educator earning $250 more per week. This has benefited more than 200,000 educators across the country.

Job vacancies due to our 15 per cent increase are now down 31 per cent. There are now 20,000 more childcare workers doing critical work across the country. The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 seeks to lock in this pay rise over the next two years through a $3.6 billion investment.

We do this because we are the party of working people. Unlike the Liberal-National-One Nation parties, we believe in supporting our workers. We believe in fair wages for hard work.

What this government also knows is that, without early childhood educators, mums and dads across the country cannot get to work. Early childhood education is fantastic for childhood development, but it is also important for working families. We also know that this legislation will also help uplift our women.

Women shoulder a huge amount of caring responsibility for our children. They also make up a majority of the early childhood workforce. I want to see our men stepping up in some of these metrics—and I know that this is a big issue, particularly in areas in my electorate and especially out in the bush—but I also acknowledge how important early childhood education is to our women.

It is often the difference between returning to work and not returning. That is why this piece of legislation is so important. It will ensure that the special account, which funds higher wages for workers, remains in place until 2029.

All childcare subsidy approved services will be eligible for funding if they meet grant requirements. Part of meeting these requirements is ensuring that services limit fee increases. This is really important cost-of-living relief for our working families, who are already stretched thin.

This measure will save families about $1,500 over the next two years. In my electorate of Lingiari, costs are usually even higher than in cities—and there are probably a lot of members from regional areas who could relate to that. If you live outside of our major capital cities, often the cost impact is greater.

So all of the savings and subsidisation are certainly hugely welcomed in my electorate. Another key measure in this legislation is around safety. To receive this funding, services are required to meet quality area 2, relating to children's health and safety, under the national quality standard.

Parents expect—I know this from talking to many parents in my Lingiari electorate—that when they drop their children off and go to work, their children will be safe. And we all expect that is the case. Our government takes this extremely seriously, and we will use all measures available to ensure that our young ones are safe.

We are beefing up our compliance actions, and we will—we already have—cut services off when they're not meeting our requirements. While we take firm action on those who do the wrong thing, the vast majority of childcare centres do incredible work. In my electorate, we have brilliant and dedicated staff who give so much to our young ones.

In our remote communities, many of these services are delivered by local organisations and by our regional councils. I have been working with some of these services to make sure that the national child safety requirements are met and delivered, and that our remote communities are engaged in this process. In our bush communities, early childhood education is essential.

It is often the first experience of children and families with the formal education system. I just want to talk about a program that is in the bush in the Northern Territory, and I want to acknowledge that, certainly, this program has continued under the CLP government. It was first established under a Labor government and continued under the Liberal government because it is an important program, and that program is called Families as First Teachers.

This is a program that helps parents and carers support their children's learning and development. The core elements of the FAFT program are parent capacity building, quality child and family centred learning, and community engagement. The Families as First Teachers program operates around 38 remote and urban early learning sites across the Northern Territory to support children from birth to five years old and their families.

As I said, there are 38 operational program sites embedded within regional and remote Northern Territory communities. The program focuses on play based learning, storytelling and language development—which are really important, particularly for First Nations children where English is probably a second or third language. It also looks at building parents' confidence and skills to act as their child's primary educator.

Using parents as an important conduit for the early development of those children is critical. There's cultural and community, with the program combining the local language of the community in which they're operating. When we're talking about wage justice for early childhood educators—there are many Aboriginal educators that haven't been recognised or given a full-time wage.

Through this bill and through the program that Minister Malarndirri McCarthy has brought in, the Remote Jobs and Economic Development program, we can finally see wage justice and also employment for Aboriginal workers. For a long time, for a lot of that work, there was no compensation or payment for the work that they were doing. The FAFT program looks at engaging those Aboriginal workers so that the local language, cultural activities and learning-on-country concepts are combined in terms of building, making the young ones that are part of that program really strong in their identity and also making sure that their education pathway is one that can be enjoyed, engaging those families as part of that.

All of the centres in the 38 locations across the Northern Territory are near or in all of the schools to give easy access to families connecting with government and non-government services that provide support, including early childhood education and development, health and wellbeing, family and parenting support, community and cultural engagement, and referrals to other services.

Child and family centres support families and communities so every child can grow up safe, strong and healthy, and be kept safe with the best possible start in life. In our bush communities, the importance of these early childhood education teams in these FaFT programs is essential because its often the first experience of children and families with the formal education system.

That is critical to make sure that pathway is supported for that little one and for their families, and we can see a greater engagement as that child goes through from those early years to years 5 and 6. We see the decline in our education system where a lot of Aboriginal kids, particularly in remote communities who, as soon as they get to year 5, start to have some disengagement happening.

There are places like in eastern Arnhem Land—I acknowledge the Gumatj as well as Barker College. There are parts of my electorate that are now joining and doing these agreements with mainstream school systems to try and get better outcomes for young Aboriginal people. If we don't start at those early years, we know that we would fail.

We know that people's experiences in early childhood shape their lives and their broader education journey. Being in early childhood education is hard work; being an educator is hard work. Doing it in a remote environment is even harder.

When I go around my vast electorate, I take my hat off to every single teacher. They do it tough. I remember talking to the member for Bass.

She was a young educator in the community of Ramingining. If anyone knows the community of Ramingining in western Arnhem Land, it is tough. There are many young educators like the member for Bass that you've just got to sit down and admire, but we also have to support them and make sure that we can keep them in our communities.

Once they go, that knowledge and the way they care for those communities is lost. Our remote staff go above and beyond to care for our little ones. I've gone into schools in the bush where they have been in tears because they are stretched.

Their resources are stretched, but they make it work. For me, locking in this pay rise for our workers will mean a huge amount to people who are giving so much to their work. I'm not saying that educators in our capital cities or our major towns aren't worthy.

I think any educator who works in our school system deserves a pay rise, and they should be given that. I think about all of those dedicated workers because one of the key challenges that we face in our remote jurisdictions like the Northern Territory is a lack of early childhood services and recruiting a workforce that we can keep in there. As I travel the Northern Territory as the member for Lingiari, I meet with many community members facing difficult and enduring challenges.

Many of these problems are generational, and they are structural. We're seeing young people disenfranchised, we are seeing generational unemployment and we are seeing people lose hope. The most powerful tool that we have is our education system.

That is one of the most powerful tools. I'm one of 12 children, and I remember my father saying, 'I can't give youse much, but what I can give you is an education.' I and my 11 siblings will be forever grateful for that discipline—the push from my father to make sure that we went to school and got access to a quality education. One of the things in my role as member for Lingiari is that I go around the electorate talking to young people, to try and get them engaged and back in a system that we need them to be in, because, without that education, their life is pretty meaningless.

We need to give them hope that an education can turn their life around. I support this bill.