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

Dr GARLAND (Chisholm) (19:22): I'm so pleased to rise and speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 today. This is essential legislation that will lock in the Albanese Labor government's 15 per cent pay rise for early educators while strengthening safety requirements for services.

This bill will deliver more than $3.6 billion to fund this pay rise and put into law the requirement that services meet national safety standards to receive the payment. Every day, both in my electorate of Chisholm and all around Australia, early educators and care workers help children learn, grow and get ready for school. We know that work as an early years educator and carer is one of the most important jobs in the country.

All of us on this side of the House believe that these critical workers should be paid fairly for their work. In my electorate of Chisholm, a community which places an extraordinarily high value on education, we are home to well over 1,000 early childhood education and care workers. I reflect now on the many visits that I have had the opportunity to make to the early childhood education centres in my electorate.

I always love having the opportunity to visit these centres in my community. They are some of my most favourite visits that I get to make. Observing and interacting with the children and hearing directly from their educators and care workers about their work always inspires me.

When we were first elected, the workforce in this sector had been undervalued and underpaid for far too long. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of being undervalued and underpaid was that early educators and care workers were leaving the job that they loved in droves, not because they wanted to but because they felt they had to. However, as the Minister for Early Childhood Education has recently highlighted, we are now hearing about the enormous difference our pay rise is making every week since the introduction of the wage guarantee.

Indeed, that is what I'm hearing in my community. I'm also hearing that our changes are helping early childhood educators and care workers to stay in the jobs that they love and really commit to the sector. Our commitment to fund educators and the sector through better pay has made such a meaningful difference.

I hear this from families all the time, too. There are 80 childcare services accessing the worker retention payments in my electorate of Chisholm, with at least a thousand early childhood education and care workers benefiting from those payments. The purpose of this amendment here before the House is to lock in that funding.

These changes, when combined with our support for minimum wage rises, will mean that a typical full-time educator will be $255 better off per week. Early childhood teachers will be $410 better off per week compared to before this program started. Importantly, over 80 per cent of eligible services are now receiving the payment.

We know that since we announced our pay rises—this is incredibly encouraging—there are now more than 20,000 early educators in employment. That's an increase. That's about an eight per cent increase on the total workforce.

I think we really need to highlight that as a significant achievement. As many of my colleagues have already highlighted throughout this debate, if you pay people more and pay them what they deserve, people want to do the job, and they want to stay in the job. We've seen that job vacancies have decreased now by over 31 per cent.

Goodstart Early Learning, Australia's largest childcare provider—I've visited a number of their centres in my community—has seen the need to engage agency staff decrease by 69 per cent in the first year of the program alone. Part of the arrangement of this package was to tie funding to a commitment from services receiving the payment to limit fee increases for parents, which is an arrangement that will continue.

I know that is really important to people in my community and right across Australia. Through this legislation, we are making sure that workers can be fairly paid without costs being passed on to families. That's only fair.

This is a win for workers, a win for families and, of course, a win for children. It's worth noting that since our government announced these pay rises, fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at around half the rate of centres that haven't taken up this payment. This is really a clear demonstration that the policy was well constructed, well consulted and is working as intended.

We on this side of the House will always support Australian workers and their families. This is another example of us doing that. This is policy that is practical and policy that helps people.

One of the practical realities is that, over the next two years, the average family will save around $1,500. This is real help with the cost of living. This legislation, importantly, will also put into law the requirement that early childhood education and care services meet the national safety standard as a condition of the payment that they receive.

I know safety is a really important consideration, as it should be, in early childhood education centres. Today, 95 per cent of early learning services are meeting the safety standard. This is more than ever before, but we do want that number to be higher.

From July 2027, if services don't meet that national quality standard when it comes to safety, their funding can be cut or it can be suspended. Every parent deserves the confidence that their child is safe in care. This is one way that we're providing that assurance.

Our government also believes that this is essential work and one of the most important jobs in the country and that people in the sector should be paid fairly for that work. Before our government announced that we would fund a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care, the sector was doing it really tough. Services were delaying expansion plans.

They were closing rooms, and they were limiting enrolments because they couldn't find staff. Workforce retention was an uphill battle. Every family, of course, deserves to have access to quality, affordable education, and this is such a significant issue in my community.

I speak all the time to people in my electorate about the importance of early childhood education and care. I've previously undertaken a survey with my electorate on the importance of early education and care for children. Debate interrupted.