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

Mr SOON (Banks) (17:04): High-quality early childhood education is transformational, and at the core of this are early childhood workers. I'm raising my own family in the same community where I grew up, and in my first speech to the House I spoke about how the schools and early childhood centres that local parents in my electorate of Banks enrol their children in are the same ones my own daughter, Dorothy, and nieces Eleanor and Abigail attend.

I want to see early childhood education thrive in my community and across the country, because it is one of the most important sectors. Every day, thousands of early childhood educators help children learn, grow and get ready for school. Up to 90 per cent of human brain development happens before children reach primary school age.

It is critical in the first five years when children are developing their fine motor skills, social and emotional skills, and cognitive skills. Like all parents, I've seen this firsthand. During this time, our children are in the care of highly skilled early educators who not only help them learn and grow but also can spot children who might need some extra support as they go through school.

It is undeniably a critical service, even before considering how it impacts parents, giving them more flexibility and more choice around if and when they re-enter the workforce. But for too long, the people who do this work were recognised in rhetoric but not in their pay packets. It must be said that when this Labor government came to office, we inherited an early education system in a state of flux after 10 years of neglect by the coalition.

Early educators were leaving the sector in droves not because they wanted to leave but because they couldn't afford to stay, with some centres reporting an annual attrition rate as high as 40 per cent. When attrition is that high, centres eventually just can't find the staff, and while the demand for services remained high, centres were delaying expansion plans, closing rooms and limiting their enrolments, because they couldn't reliably provide the services they wanted to anymore.

Indeed, some early educators reported that, despite their training, they were able to earn more stacking shelves in a supermarket. This is no way to reward the highly skilled, tertiary qualified people who work in our important early education and care sector. When presented with this situation, this government chose to act, and we have made a big difference.

In 2024 we announced that we would fund a landmark 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood educators and care workers. When combining both the 15 per cent wage rise and the government support for minimum and award wage rises, the typical full-time educator is earning $255 a week more, and the typical full-time teacher is earning an extra $410 a week. This works out to over $13,000 a year and over $21,000 a year, respectively.

At long last, early educators and teachers are being compensated fairly for the important work that they do for our families and communities. In my electorate of Banks alone, more than 700 workers across 85 early childhood services are being supported by this very program, alongside more than 130,000 of their colleagues nationwide. While the impact on our early childhood workforce has been incredible, even more profound is how this has affected the sector as a whole.

Today there are around 20,000 more early childhood workers than there were in August 2024—equivalent to an eight per cent increase. As a result, job vacancies in the sector have fallen by 31 per cent, job applications have risen by 30 per cent, and the number of services operating without a staffing waiver has been halved. The winners are not just in the sector; they are parents and families as well.

As a result of the deliberate design of the previous legislation, fees at centres receiving this support grew at half the rate of centres that are not. This wage rise has worked to bolster our early educator workforce and kept costs down for our families, and this is why we are extending it. This brings me to the legislation before the House, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026.

In June this year, the Labor government announced that we would be locking in the pay rise for another two years, to retain and grow these benefits. The bill before the House fulfils this commitment. With a $3.6 billion investment in the special account that is providing this funding, this bill locks in the pay rise over the next two years.

Additionally, all centres approved for childcare subsidy will be eligible for funding if they meet grant requirements—including that all educators are engaged under a workplace instrument, ensuring that the government investment is passed on to the workers. Importantly, in order to receive this investment, services have to limit their fee increases. This is incredibly important for the hardworking families in my community.

Over the first year of this program, fees at centres that have received the payment have increased at half the rate of those that haven't, and, over the next two years, the average family will save about $1½ thousand. It means early childhood workers get the pay rise they deserve, without parents having to wear the costs. It is important to note that, should this legislation not pass and funding be allowed to lapse, early childhood fees could skyrocket by 17 per cent.

Finally, this legislation has one more incredibly important element: it ties funding to services meeting requirements around safety. If services do not meet Quality Area 2, relating to children's health and safety, under the National Quality Standard, their funding will be cut. Parents have a right to expect that the early childhood services they entrust with their children's education and care meet certain standards.

While about 95 per cent of services already meet this requirement, the government is determined to drive that figure higher, through this and other measures already in place, as well as working together with state and territory governments to increase compliance and keep our children safe. Since being elected, I've made the effort to visit a number of early childhood education services in my electorate, meeting local early childhood workers and seeing the impact that they have every day.

In October last year, I had the opportunity to visit SDN Milperra with Minister Walsh and see their work: setting the standard as a centre, exceeding the NQS across all seven quality areas, and serving nearly 60 local families in the surrounding area. I was pleased to return, early this year, to deliver a new set of flags, alongside the state member for East Hills, Kylie Wilkinson, to make sure those flags were flying high in Milperra.

Following that visit, I was able to visit another SDN site, at Riverwood, which also exceeds the NQS across all seven areas. The team at Riverwood do a tremendous job serving the community, with many in social housing, and I am pleased to be able to support them as they manage change related to redevelopment in the area. Further, in February this year, when the national register and mandatory training came into effect, I was able to welcome Minister Walsh again to Banks, and the Minister for Education to Goodstart Early Learning, who serve more than 50 families in the Narwee area.

I was also able to visit Koorana's Phillip Street Preschool with the member for Barton, and see how they are helping prepare their young learners in the suburb of Roselands for school. And just last Wednesday, I was able to visit St Mark's preschool in South Hurstville, to attend their Father's Day breakfast along with other local dads. It was a great time, and it was important to see that education happening in practice.

At each of the early childhood centres I've been able to visit in my time as a parliamentarian, two things have always struck me: first, the complexity and challenging nature of the work we ask our early childhood educators to do; and, second, the passionate dedication with which they do their job. That is why legislation like this is so important. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the educators and teachers who do this incredible work and who campaigned so strongly for this change alongside the incredible union representatives in the mighty United Workers Union, through their Big Steps campaign to secure professional pay, recognition and respect.

While our commitment to grow our early childhood workforce and improve the quality of education is built on the 15 per cent pay rise for workers, our agenda in this space is much broader. Every parent expects that their children will be safe when they attend their early childhood education service, but, unfortunately, some truly awful occurrences have rattled that confidence.

It is a shocking scenario that demands government response. That is why this government has passed legislation to cut off funding to operators that do not meet quality, safety or compliance requirements. Since then, the education department has taken action against 119 centres who were failing to meet the expectations of parents or the requirements of the legislation.

The threat to cut off funding has worked, with 55 centres taking action to raise their quality and others voluntarily closing. Since November last year, the department has also utilised its power to undertake 1,300 unannounced visits, alongside a substantial increase in state and territory regulatory actions. Further, the National Early Childhood Worker Register is now active, making sure that both centres and regulators have full visibility of a person's work history in the sector.

The mandatory child safety training has now been completed by more than 350,000 people. Mobile phones have also been banned, and a CCTV trial is underway in 300 locations across our country. These reforms are backed by an extra $226 million investment from the federal government, alongside contributions from state and territory counterparts.

Further, while this legislation is about valuing the people in the sector, we also know that we need to invest in the education and training of future early childhood educators. Many of our early childhood workers got their qualifications from TAFE, and, as a result of this government's fee-free TAFE program, more people with a passion for this work are able to get their qualifications without having to carry the burden of student debt.

Ensuring that every child, every parent and every family has access to high-quality, safe early childhood education is so important. While there is always more work to do, this Labor government, through the delivery of significant reform, is making progress and delivering real change for this sector. I am, as a parent with a child in early childhood education, seeing the benefits of these reforms on a daily and weekly basis.

I see it through the advancement in learning of my little girl Dorothy. I see it in the skills being developed by my nieces Eleanor and Abigail and the social confidence they're getting through participating in early childhood education. I also see it in the conversations I have with early childhood workers, who share their passion and their love for educating the next generation and ensuring we're laying the foundation for a highly educated community and society and a more productive economy for many years to come.