Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Mr ABDO (Calwell) (17:59): There is no greater responsibility we have as a society than giving our children the best possible start in life, and there is no workforce more essential to that responsibility than our early childhood educators and carers. That's why I'm pleased to make a contribution to the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 and support the bill's important objective of advancing wage justice for early childhood education and care workers.
When the Albanese Labor government first came to office, our early childhood education and care workforce was in crisis. It was a crisis that had reached early childhood education centres right across the country. We were confronting a situation where some early childhood education centres had attrition rates as high as 40 per cent.
No sector dedicated to care and education can function as it is intended with attrition rates that high, and even more so when we are talking about early childhood educators and carers—the workers who do one of the most important jobs in our community supporting children during the most formative years of their lives. The work they do has a profound positive impact on the development of young children.
Early childhood educators and carers help children develop language skills, including talking and reading; numeracy skills; emotional wellbeing; and the confidence to engage with the world around them. The importance of the work our early childhood educators and carers do can be seen in what we know about early childhood development. Babies are born ready to learn, with more than a million new brain connections being formed every second during their early years.
A child's vocabulary can grow fourfold between the ages of two and four. Every day, we see children learning, developing, building relationships and gaining the confidence they need to take their next steps in life. We know these skills are not just important in the here and now.
They also provide the foundation children carry with them as they transition into the schooling and throughout their lives. I've spoken about the significance of our early childhood educators and carers and the role they play in developing what is this country's most important investment, something families across our communities know too well. It begs the question: why was the early childhood education and care sector losing educators and carers in such large numbers?
A key driver of attrition rates that reached as high as 40 per cent across the country was not that educators had stopped loving the work they were doing. It was that they were being paid too little to afford to stay in that sector. Early childhood educators are trained and skilled professionals, yet many found themselves leaving the field and pursuing roles outside early childhood education, including roles where their skills remained relevant, because they simply could no longer afford to stay.
The Albanese Labor government did not stand still and watch a critical industry and skilled workforce fall apart. While those opposite may dismiss the need for early childhood educators to have qualifications, skills and fair pay, this side of the House understands the value of their work, and we have taken real action to back in our early childhood educators and carers.
Two years ago, the Albanese Labor government delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. This was on top of the Albanese Labor government's support for several minimum wage increases. Thanks to the efforts of the Labor government, a typical early childhood educator is now taking home an additional $255 per week while early childhood teachers are taking home an additional $410 per week compared with pre December 2024 pay levels.
These pay rises are already having a positive impact on the early childhood education and care workforce. More than 200,000 early childhood educators across more than 11,000 centres around the country are benefiting from this much-needed uplift in pay. In my community alone, 71 childcare services are receiving a worker retention payment, with at least 1,000 educators in my community currently benefiting from these policies.
These reforms are working. We have turned the tide on attrition in the early childhood education and care workforce. We have gone from workers leaving the sector in droves to having an additional 20,000 early childhood educators in the workforce.
Job vacancies are down by 31 per cent, while applications for jobs at early childhood education centres are up by 30 per cent. It is clear that these reforms to the pay of early childhood educators and carers are having a profound effect on addressing workforce attrition. That is why we cannot risk allowing these much needed and timely reforms to wither away, only to see the same conditions that drove workers out of the sector return.
The Albanese Labor government understands the risk, and we're doing something about it. That is why in June this year, the Prime Minister announced a commitment to an investment package of $3.6 billion over the next two years to continue the pay increases and support this critical workforce. This early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant will continue to go to early childhood education and care centres to fund increased wages for their workers.
The amendments in this bill will also provide the opportunity for all centres approved to receive the childcare subsidy to access this funding for higher wages provided they meet the grant requirements. This will ensure more eligible workers and centres are able to benefit from this important package. Workers are not the only people benefiting from the Albanese Labor government's reforms to the early childhood education and care workforce.
Working families are benefiting too. As a condition of receiving the early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant, centres must limit fee increases. This is already providing cost-of-living relief for families.
In the first year of the reforms, fees at centres that took up the payment scheme increased at around half the rate of centres that did not take up the grant. The Minister for Education has advised that if this bill fails to pass and these reforms are not extended childcare fees could be at risk of increasing by 17 per cent. These reforms, therefore, do more than support the household budgets of the workers in these sectors.
They also support the household budgets of the working families who depend on the work of these educators. Working families are expected to save an average of $1,500 over the next two years. That is real cost-of-living relief for families in my community as well as families right across the country.
Families need certainty that they can continue to send their children to an early childhood education centre that is affordable, well staffed and able to provide high-quality education and care without the costs simply being passed on to parents. This bill provides that certainty by ensuring wage increases are funded directly to eligible early childhood education and care providers, offsetting wage costs that might otherwise have been passed on to families.
This goes hand in hand with the Albanese Labor government's three-day guarantee, which ensures that Australian children are eligible for three days of subsidised early education and care each week under our government. This is good for families, and it is good for children. It is one of several cost-of-living initiatives which replace the Liberal's punitive activity test.
Previously, children who needed early learning the most were blocked from the system because of their parents' work or study activity. Under our government, every child who needs it is eligible for three days of subsidised early learning each week no matter what their parents do. All children have a right to go to school no matter what their parents do, and now all children will also have guaranteed access to three days a week of subsidised care.
Working families are not only concerned about whether early childhood education and care is affordable or whether their centre will be adequately staffed. They are also concerned about whether the centre they send their children to is a safe one. There is no greater act of trust than placing your child in the care of another person.
Early childhood educators are entrusted with our children during some of the most important and formative years of their lives. The bill before the House today takes further action on the reforms the Albanese Labor government introduced last year to keep our kids safe. Those reforms included giving the Department of Education greater powers to revoke funding from operators that fail to satisfy quality, safety and compliance requirements under federal law.
The ability to revoke funding from operators that fail to meet these requirements has been instrumental in lifting standards right across the country. Since these new powers came into effect last year, 119 centres have had action taken against them, with 55 of those centres now complying with the relevant safety standards. In June this year, the department took action to cut off funding to a centre altogether for the first time.
These funding powers work in conjunction with another reform from last year's package—the ability for the department to undertake unannounced visits to child care services. Since November last year, we have seen more than 1,300 unannounced visits to centres across Australia. More reforms came into effect at the beginning of this year, including the National Early Childhood Worker Register.
This provides much-needed certainty and clarity about who is working in the sector and where they are working across the country. The register is even able to track workers as they move from centre to centre and from state to state. Furthermore, mandatory child safety training has been introduced, with an additional requirement that it be completed within six months.
Importantly, this training is not just a requirement for the staff working directly with children. It also extends to those working on the corporate side of operators, all the way up to CEOs and boards of directors. That matters because it helps ensure that decision-makers understand what is required to keep children safe at these centres, rather than leaving the responsibility solely with frontline staff.
We have also enacted a ban on personal mobile phones in centres and rolled out a nationwide CCTV trial at more than 300 centres across the country. The bill before us today will take further steps to keep our children safe. The amendments will introduce new funding conditions that put children's safety and quality of service front and centre.
For operators to obtain grant payments, they will now be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, which relates to children's health and safety. If operators and service providers fail to meet these standards, their funding may be cut. Parents have a right to know that the centre they send their child to will be a safe place that provides quality education and quality care.
While 95 per cent of services are currently meeting this standard, we want that number to be higher. An important amendment in this bill is the implementation of equivalent conditions for services that are not regulated by the National Quality Framework, particularly in-home-care services. I meet with local early childhood educators in my electorate, and some of these workers have shared with me the pressures early childhood educators and carers face, particularly when it comes to pay and conditions and child safety.
They speak of the importance of the wage increases in helping them stay in the sector and in helping centres attract and retain high-quality educators. They also tell me about the importance of properly staffed centres in maintaining child safety and delivering a high standard of education and care. Calwell is a young and growing electorate, and these reforms are important to families in my community.
They are critical to ensuring that children in my community get the best possible start in life. They also bring certainty and dignity to the many early childhood educators and carers who work and live in my community. This is a workforce that, historically, has been overlooked and neglected.
This bill changes that. It recognises the value of early childhood educators and carers; it supports fairer wages; it supports working families; it puts productivity back in our economy by allowing parents to return to work; and, importantly, it puts the safety and wellbeing of our children at the centre of our early childhood education and care system. I commend the bill to the House.