Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Ms COMER (Petrie) (19:11): 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. There are some jobs in this country that we have always said are important, and then there are some jobs that we have actually treated as important. For too long, early childhood education and care has fallen in the gap between those two things.
We have told early educators that their work matters: that they're helping children learn and grow, preparing them for school and giving parents the confidence to go to work knowing their children are being cared for. Yet, for far too long, their pay packets have not reflected the importance of that work. This government believes that has to change.
There is a simple principle at the heart of this bill. If we believe the work is valuable, then we should value the people doing it. Every morning, across Australia, early educators walk through the doors of childcare centres and early learning services and take responsibility for something extraordinarily precious: our children.
They help children learn, develop friendships, understand their emotions and discover the world around them. Little by little they help build the people those children will become. That is education.
It is skilled work, and it is nation-building. In my community of Petrie—from Redcliffe and Deception Bay to North Lakes, Mango Hill, Bald Hills and Bracken Ridge—thousands of parents begin their working day by entrusting their children to an early childhood educator. Importantly, there are more than 1,600 early childhood educators and care workers in the electorate of Petrie who will benefit from this.
That is 1,600 local workers who are going to see a real difference in their household budgets because this government has decided that the importance of their work should be reflected in the wages they receive. I know what this means locally because early learning services in my electorate have told me. Expeditions Early Learning Journey North Lakes do some amazing work in our community, which I saw firsthand when I visited them on an open day a few months ago.
They reached out to my office about this pay rise and told us how much of a difference it will make to their workers. These are the educators that will benefit directly from this investment. They are not just numbers on a spreadsheet here in Canberra; they are people working in North Lakes, educating local children and supporting local families.
When a local service contacts my office and tells us that this will make a difference to its workforce, that is what we should be listening to as a government. This is exactly why I fully support this bill and the hard work Minister Clare has done—not to get praise for it, but to make a substantive difference in the lives of some of the hardest-working people in our community.
I also want to acknowledge Sesame Lane, who have been major supporters of my Welcoming the Babies event in Petrie. Through that event, I've seen just how important strong early childhood education services are to young families in our community. Welcoming a new baby into a family is one of the most exciting moments in life, but every parent knows that it also brings enormous change.
As those babies grow, services like Sesame Lane and the educators who work there become an important part in the lives of many local families. Those educators will also benefit from this pay rise. That connection matters to me because, when we debate legislation in this place, it can be easy for everything to become abstract.
We talk about billions of dollars, workforce figures and vacancy rates, but, when I think about this bill, I think about the families who are welcoming a new baby into our community. I think about the educators at places like Expeditions Early Learning Journey and Sesame Lane, who will teach and care for many of those children as they grow. This bill is about making sure those educators can keep doing the work that our community relies on.
I've also had the privilege of visiting some of the fantastic C&K services across Petrie, and those visits have reminded me just how special the work of early childhood education is. At C&K Aspley East Community Kindergarten, I had the chance to sit down with some children and read books together. Anyone who's ever read to a room full of children knows that it's pretty hard work to keep their attention, but seeing their enthusiasm, their questions and their excitement was a wonderful reminder of how important those early learning experiences are.
I also visited Griffin Early Learning, where I got to see the fantastic petting zoo they had organised for the children. Watching the kids interact with the animals and ask questions and learn through something that's simply fun showed exactly what great early childhood education can look like. At Griffin Early Learning, they also have some chickens, and the chickens have got the eggs, and the kids go collect the eggs, and then the eggs are gathered, and any of the families coming in to pick up their kids can take some eggs home.
It just shows you how early childhood educators and their centres can actually become part of the community. I thought that was really special, and the goats were really cute as well. At a C&K in North Lakes, I got to sit with the children during some activities.
We sat in a circle and played some games, and, through the activities, they were so engaged, and that's truly a credit to the educators. As I was leaving, some of the kids, I would say, crash tackled me. About 15 of them crash tackled me into a big group hug saying goodbye, and that moment is something that I'll always cherish, and it's something I also still chuckle about.
It was very fun. Learning at that age happens through play, curiosity and new experiences, and it takes skilled educators to create those opportunities. These are the kinds of services we are talking about in this debate.
They are places where children in Petrie are learning, growing and building confidence every day. The educators making those experiences possible deserve to be valued, and, importantly, they deserve to be paid fairly for the work that they do. Behind each of the more than 1,600 local workers who will benefit is a person paying rent or a mortgage, filling up their car, buying groceries and dealing with the same cost-of-living pressures as everyone else.
It may be someone who absolutely loves the profession but has wondered whether they can actually afford to stay in it. For those workers, this debate is not theoretical. It is about their weekly pay packet and whether they can continue to do the work they love without sacrificing their own financial security.
For years, one of the great challenges facing the early childhood education and care sector has been attracting and retaining enough workers. Services across the country were struggling to find qualified educators and putting pressure on enrolments and on the workers who remained. We were asking highly skilled people to stay in a demanding profession while their wages failed to properly reflect the responsibility we had placed upon them.
The truth is loving your job does not pay the electricity bill. Commitment does not cover the rent, and dedication does not fill the shopping trolley. Nobody should have to choose between doing the work they deeply care about and being able to afford their own life.
That is why, in August 2024, the Albanese Labor government announced that it would fund a historic 15 per cent wage increase for eligible early childhood education and care workers through the worker retention payment. That decision was about fairness, but it was also about recognising the practical problem and doing something about it. Since the payment was announced, there have been around 2,000 more people working in early childhood education and care, and job vacancies have fallen by almost 31 per cent, and services participating in the payment have seen fees grow at around half the rate of services that are not participating.
Those numbers tell an important story. More workers mean more educators available to teach and care for children. Fewer vacancies mean more stability for services and more certainty for parents.
They also mean children are more likely to have continuity, which is so important in their early years. Children develop strong relationships with their educators. A familiar face in the morning can be the difference between a child feeling anxious and a child feeling safe.
Parents rely on educators who understand their child's personality, their routines and where they might need extra support. That is why fair wages are not separate from the question of quality in early education; they are part of delivering it. The evidence tells us that the worker retention payment is working, so this government is extending it for another two years and providing an additional $3.6 billion through the wage justice special account.
When combined with the government's support for increases to minimum wages, the typical full-time early educator will be around $255 a week better off compared to December 2024. For an early childhood teacher, the difference will be around $410 a week. For educators at places like Expeditions Early Learning, Sesame Lane and the amazing C&Ks around the electorate, and all the other fantastic services in our electorate, that additional money can make a substantial difference.
It can mean groceries, petrol and an electricity bill, or being able to put something away for an unexpected expense. Most importantly, it gives people greater confidence that early childhood education can be a career they can afford to remain in. It also sends an important message: we see you.
We see the skills involved in your work. We understand the responsibility you carry and we recognise the contribution you make to Australian families every single day. The people educating the next generation deserve more than our thanks.
They deserve decent wages and a government prepared to back them. This policy also recognises the pressures on families. Services receiving the funding must limit their fee increases.
The extension is expected to save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years. For a young family in North Lakes, Deception Bay, Redcliffe or Bracken Ridge, $1,500 matters. These are families raising young children, paying rent or a mortgage, buying nappies and groceries, and balancing work and family responsibilities.
We should not have to choose between fair wages for educators and affordability for families. We can deliver both. If we pay educators properly, we retain more educators.
If we retain educators, services are more stable and children have more consistent relationships. If we place sensible conditions on government funding, families benefit as well. There's another important part of this bill.
When the Commonwealth invests billions of dollars into early childhood education and care, we also have a responsibility to make sure services meet the standards families expect. Above everything else, that means keeping children safe. From July 2027, services receiving funding through the wage justice special account will be required to meet quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard, relating directly to children's health and safety.
Around 95 per cent of services already meet the standard, but, when we're talking about children's safety, we should be far more ambitious than 95 per cent. Every parent I meet expects the same fundamental thing when they leave their child at early at an early learning service: they expect their child to come home safe. Whether that centre is in North Lakes, in Redcliffe or anywhere else in the country, parents are placing enormous trust in those services.
Government has a responsibility to make sure that trust is backed by strong standards. This bill recognises that supporting educators and demanding high standards are not competing ideas. We can raise wages and raise standards at the same time.
We can invest more public money while expecting greater accountability. A strong early childhood education system should respect its workforce, support families and put the safety and wellbeing of children at the centre of every decision. There's also the broader issue of fairness.
For generations, Australians have undervalued the work that has been traditionally performed by women, including early childhood education, nursing, aged care and community services. Those jobs require skill, patience, judgement, qualifications and enormous responsibility. Yet, too often, we have expected people's commitment to make up for wages that did not properly recognise those skills.
That attitude has to change. Commitment is not a substitute for fair wages, and care should never be used as an excuse for low pay. A fair economy recognises value and rewards skill.
The person educating a three-year-old is performing work of enormous consequence. For me, one of the things I love most about being the member for Petrie is seeing how all the different parts of the community fit together. At Welcoming the Babies, we'll be celebrating some of the newest members of our community and their families.
Organisations like Sesame Lane get behind events like this because they understand that supporting children means also supporting parents and building strong communities around them. Then, as those babies grow, educators step into their lives and become another part of that community of support. That is what I think about when I talk about the more than 1,600 early childhood workers receiving the pay rise in Petrie.
I think about the educators at Expeditions early learning who reached out to tell us what this will mean. I think about Sesame Lane and the contributions they will make to local families. I think about all the educators across our community who quietly turn up every day and do the work that matters enormously.
It's important to focus on what's important here, and it is that children are the future. That's a fact; that's not just a slogan. The teachers, the educators, raising those children, in conjunction with their parents, need to be supported.
I commend this bill.