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

Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (13:19): The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 locks in the historic 15 per cent pay rise the Albanese government provided to early childhood educators two years ago. It also ensures that fees remain affordable for families already doing it tough and enshrines quality standards for the health and safety of children using early childhood education and care.

I want to begin by putting this bill in context, because it did not come out of nowhere. For years, successive governments talked about the importance of early childhood education, while the workforce underpinning the sector was allowed to go backwards in real terms. Educators were told again and again that their work mattered—that the first five years of a child's life shapes everything that follows; that quality early childhood learning narrows the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers; and that educators were, in fact, nation-builders.

And yet, for all of this, their pay packet told a different story. This bill is our government's answer to that contradiction. It says that if we genuinely believe that this work matters then we will be willing to fund it properly, not just talk about it.

As a parent with young children, I have seen firsthand the great value of early childhood education and care. I've watched my own children attend their local centre and have seen the incredible work that their educators do each and every day. It is an incredible job, which takes a mixture of very important skills in teaching those youngest children.

As I've said and as we know, children's brain development in those first five years is so important and sets them up for lifelong learning and everything that follows. But they're also very chaotic, unpredictable little humans, who need a lot of very special and dedicated care. It takes a really special person to be an early childhood educator and to be able to master that room of children while making each one feel that they have that personal attention.

It is skilled, demanding, emotionally-taxing work, and anyone who has spent time at an early education centre knows it. I've also seen just how hard it has been for educators to stay in those roles, when the pay was so low it was increasingly impossible to cover rent and bills. I've seen, including at my children's centre, that high turnover of staff, who really actually wanted to stay in the work they were doing, and were passionate about that work, but just couldn't make it add up for their families.

I recall conversations with educators who'd been in the profession, sometimes, for decades, and had built real expertise and relationships with families, who were very sad to have to leave in search of other work or qualifications because they could not earn enough in that sector. It was an extraordinary indictment of how poorly we valued this incredibly important workforce, and it's exactly the kind of outcome that this bill is designed to prevent.

Up to 40 per cent of educators were leaving the profession each year. Think about what that churn actually meant in practice. It meant centres constantly recruiting and retraining.

It meant children losing the continuity of care that matters so much in their early years. It meant directors spending their time juggling rosters instead of focusing on the quality of the programs they delivered. A workforce crisis of that scale does not stay contained to the sector.

It flows through to every family that relies on that sector to be able to go to work each day. Now that has changed. Thanks to the 15 per cent pay rise the Albanese government delivered two years ago, job vacancies are now down 31 per cent; job applications are up 30 per cent, in some places; and there are now 20,000 more childcare workers doing this life-changing work right across the country.

These are not abstract statistics. Behind each one of those 20,000 additional educators is a centre that can now open the rooms it needs to open; a family that can now secure a place, instead of sitting on a waiting list; and an educator who has chosen to stay in, or return to, a profession that they are passionate about because it has finally started to pay a wage that they can live on.

When combined with the government's support for minimum wage rises, full-time educators are now getting $255 more per week in their pay packets, while pay for early childhood teachers has increased by $410 per week, compared to December 2024 when the Albanese Labor government first implemented this pay rise. For a sector that is overwhelmingly staffed by women, this is not just a wages measure.

This is a significant contribution to closing the gender pay gap in one of the most feminised professions in the country. At least 1,200 educators at 71 centres in my electorate have received a pay rise, thanks to our government's concrete action to address the historic underpayment of workers in this sector. I have spoken with many of them directly, and the change in their circumstances has been real and immediate—the difference between constantly juggling bills and having a bit of breathing room, and feeling like their work is finally recognised in a meaningful way.

Across Australia, over 215,000 early educators at more than 11,600 centres are now benefiting from our government's work to increase pay and conditions. This is a workforce reform of genuinely national scale, reaching almost every community, metropolitan and regional alike. The $3.6 billion investment the government made in 2024 to support a wage increase for early childhood educators was originally scheduled to run until 30 November this year.

With this bill, a further $3.6 billion will now fund higher wages for eligible workers to 30 December 2029. This provides certainty for the sector, certainty for the workforce and certainty for families who have come to rely on the stability that this funding has brought. Importantly, to access this funding, early education centres have to meet child health and safety standards under the National Quality Standard.

This is a crucial point because this bill does not simply hand out funding with no strings attached. It ties public investment directly to the outcomes the public expects—safe, high-quality care for our children. All educators must be employed under a workplace instrument, an important protection for workers to ensure the government's investment is passed on in the form of higher wages rather than being absorbed elsewhere and never reaching the people that it is intended for.

Child safety training is now mandatory not just for early childhood educators but everyone up to the CEO and board of directors. This is a deliberate and important design choice. Child safety cannot be treated as something that only concerns frontline staff.

It has to be the responsibility that runs through an entire organisation, from the educator in the room with the children through to the people making the decisions in the boardroom. We have allowed six months for that training to be completed, and more than 350,000 people have taken it up so far—a genuinely significant shift in the culture of an entire sector in a short period of time.

The government has also banned the use of personal mobile phones in early childhood centres, and there is a national CCTV trial underway in more than 300 services. These are practical, commonsense measures that respond directly to the community concern around child safety in care settings, and they sit alongside the broader cultural and training reforms this bill supports.

This is being overseen by an advisory group that includes the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Centre for Child Protection, the National Office for Child Safety and other leading experts. Having that level of specialist oversight matters. It means that these reforms are being designed and monitored by people with genuine expertise in child protection.

In total, the Albanese Labor government is investing an additional $226 million in child safety reforms which, when combined with the more than $270 million committed by the states and territories, means that around half a billion dollars is being invested into strengthening the safety and quality of early childhood education and care. This is a substantial, coordinated national commitment—proof that, when governments at every level decide child safety is a genuine priority, they can move quickly and put real resources behind it.

The states and territories have also agreed to explore the development of an early education and care commission to further strengthen safety and quality across the system. This signals that today's reforms are not the endpoint but part of an ongoing process of strengthening oversight of a sector that looks after some of the youngest and most vulnerable members of our community.

I, like all parents, have been absolutely horrified at what we've seen in the media of some of the examples where children have not been kept safe, and I'm proud that our government is acting in this comprehensive way to address this and ensure that, when our children go to early childhood education and care, we know that the best mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that they are safe and cared for and that the culture of the entire sector is focused around that safety.

It's not just workers who benefit from this legislation. To receive the funding, early education centres must limit their fee increases, providing direct cost-of-living relief for families at a time when household budgets are under real pressure. Over the first year of the program, fees at centres that have received the payment have increased by about half the amount of centres that didn't sign up.

That is a clear, measurable benefit flowing directly to parents. Without this legislation, the Department of Education estimates that childcare fees would skyrocket by about 17 per cent. This is a great action that our government is taking for this very important sector.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): Given that we are so close to time, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.