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

Mr FRENCH (Moore) (11:36): There are some jobs which, if you've never done them, it is very easy to underestimate just how hard they are. Early childhood education is one of them. Looking after a room full of three-year-olds is not just about putting out some crayons, singing a few songs and making sure nobody eats the glue.

Although, to be fair, making sure nobody eats the glue is probably part of the job. Early educators teach children to communicate, regulate their emotions, play with other kids, follow routines, become independent and get ready for school. They comfort children when they are upset.

They deal with scraped knees, tantrums, allergies, illnesses and the occasional spectacular disagreement over the ownership of a plastic dinosaur. They keep children safe and they do all of this while communicating with parents, documenting children's development and meeting professional and regulatory requirements. It is skilled work, it is demanding work and it is enormously important work.

However, for far too long, the pay did not reflect that. That is why I rise to support the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. This bill does three important things: it locks in higher wages for early educators for another two years, it continues protections against excessive fee increases for families and it strengthens the connection between Commonwealth funding and the safety of children.

That is a pretty good day's work for one bill. I have spent most of my working life around wages. I was an electrician before becoming an industrial lawyer.

One thing you learn pretty quickly in workplaces is that people eventually get tired of being told how valuable they are when their pay packet tells them something completely different. You cannot pay a mortgage with a thank you. You cannot buy groceries with applause.

Your bank is generally reluctant to accept 'You're doing incredibly important work' as payment on a home loan. For years, that is effectively what we were asking early childhood educators to do. We told them their work was essential.

We told them that the first five years of a child's life were incredibly important. We told parents that access to early learning was essential. Then we tolerated a system where many of the people doing that work could earn more somewhere else.

Unsurprisingly, many left. Services struggled to recruit workers, rooms closed, expansion plans were put on hold and enrolments were capped. Some services had space for more children but could not take them because they could not find enough educators.

That is what a workforce shortage looks like. It is a parent being told that there is no place for their child. It is an educator working in a service that is constantly short-staffed.

It is a centre director desperately trying to fill another roster, and it is another trained worker deciding they cannot afford to stay in an occupation they love. In August 2024, the Albanese Labor government announced funding for a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education care workers, and then something remarkable happened. When you pay people properly, more of them want to do the job.

Who could have possibly predicted that? I suspect not those opposite, who were too busy fighting over a pot of clag. Since the worker retention payment was announced, there have been about 20,000 more workers in early childhood education and care.

Vacancies have fallen by almost a third. The proportion of services operating with staffing waivers has fallen substantially. More than 215,000 educators at more than 11,600 services are benefiting from the payment.

This is not complicated economics. If an industry cannot attract enough workers, wages are part of the equation. If governments believe a service is important to the country, sometimes a government has a role in fixing the problem.

That is what Labor did, and it worked. The next question was obvious: what happens when the original funding ends? There would not be much point spending two years rebuilding the workforce and then saying: 'Great work, everyone.

Now back you go.' So, in June this year, the Albanese government announced another $3.6 billion to lock in the pay rise for a further two years. This bill gives effect to that commitment. It credits more than $3.6 billion to the early childhood education and care workers special account.

It extends the operation of the 2024 act until 31 December 2029, which allows the extended grants to be properly administered. For the first time, employees at childcare subsidy approved services will be able to access the payment provided their service meets the grant requirements. That means greater certainty for educators, providers and families.

When combined with this government's support for increases to the minimum wage, the typical full-time educator will be about $255 a week better off compared with December 2024. For an early childhood teacher, it is about $410 a week. That is real money.

That is groceries. That is fuel. That is electricity.

That is a child's sport registration. That is money going into the household budgets of people who go to work every day and do one of the most socially useful jobs imaginable. I am a Labor member and I happen to believe that the people who work for a living should be able to make a decent living.

This is radical stuff, I know! This policy was deliberately designed so that the benefit did not simply disappear into higher fees. Services receiving the payment have been required to limit fee increases, and that requirement will continue.

The result is that fees at participating centres have been growing at about half the rate of services that have not signed up. Over the next two years, the extension is expected to save the average family about $1,500. That is important because we cannot have a serious discussion about early childhood education without talking about affordability.

Parents know exactly what child care costs. You do not need to produce a Treasury graph for them. They see the direct debit, and for a family with two young children those numbers can get serious very quickly.

The policy does two things at once. It increases wages for workers without simply handing the cost to parents. Workers should not have to choose between fair wages and affordable services.

Parents should not be told that the only way their child's educator can earn a decent income is if their childcare bill goes through the roof. The Commonwealth is stepping in to help with the transition. That supports workers, families and services trying to recruit and retain staff.

There is another reason retention is so important. Children need consistency. Early education is built on relationships.

Children develop trust with the people caring for them. Educators learn how individual children communicate. They learn routines.

They recognise when something is wrong. They build relationships with families. Constant staff turnover damages all of that.

Anyone with young children knows how important familiarity can be. A four-year-old does not particularly care that an organisation has successfully completed its workforce restructuring strategy. They care that Sarah is there in the morning, they care that the person they know is at the door and they care that when their mum or dad leaves there is someone familiar there to greet them.

That continuity helps children feel safe, and a stable workforce therefore does more than improve staffing numbers. It improves the quality of care. That brings me to another important part of this legislation.

This bill strengthens the relationship between Commonwealth wage funding and child safety. Services will be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, which deals with children's health and safety. About 95 per cent of services already meet that standard.

That is encouraging, but, when we are talking about the safety of children, 95 per cent is not where we should stop. The goal should be a hundred per cent. The Commonwealth is putting billions of dollars of public money into this sector, and it is entirely reasonable to say that if a provider receives that funding the provider must meet basic safety standards for children's health and safety.

Where those standards are not met, consequences under grant agreements can include suspension or cessation of funding. This is not a punishment for educators. It's quite the opposite.

Good educators want strong safety standards. Parents expect strong safety standards. Good providers already comply with them, and there is a simple principle here: government funding comes with responsibilities.

We're investing in higher wages because we want a professional, stable and respected early childhood workforce, and professionalism must sit alongside quality and safety. The two reinforce each other. A service constantly losing experienced educators will find it harder to maintain quality.

A service that retains experienced staff builds knowledge, relationships and stronger workplace cultures. Wage justice and safety are not competing objectives. They are connected.

There is also a broader point about how Australia has historically valued different kinds of work. Early childhood education remains a heavily female dominated workforce. For generations, occupations associated with caring have too often been treated as though the work is somehow less skilled because women traditionally performed it.

We should reject that thinking. There is nothing unskilled about teaching a young child, there is nothing unskilled about managing the developmental needs of a room full of children and there is nothing unskilled about recognising behavioural changes, managing allergies, responding to emergencies, communicating with families and providing education at one of the most important stages of human development.

If anything, I suspect there are quite a few members of this House who would last approximately 45 minutes in a room full of toddlers before requesting urgent assistance from the Sergeant-at-Arms. I include myself in that assessment. We should value the work accordingly, and wage justice is part of that.

Early childhood education also makes the rest of the economy work. If parents cannot access care, they cannot work the hours they want to work. Businesses lose workers, families lose income, and workforce participation suffers.

Early childhood education is not simply a service provided to children; it is economic infrastructure. A mine needs roads and power. A business needs telecommunications.

Working families need childhood education. If a nurse cannot care for her child, the hospital loses a nurse. If a teacher cannot care for his child, the school loses a teacher.

If a sparky cannot care for their child, the job loses a sparky. And, if the childcare centre cannot find enough educators, all three families have the same problem at once. That is why fixing workforce shortages in early learning has effects far beyond the sector itself.

When Labor came to government, we inherited major workforce shortages in early education. One option would've been to shrug our shoulders and wait for the market to sort itself out. Eventually, I suppose, something would've happened.

That is often the great promise of doing nothing. Give it enough time, and something will occur. Instead the government acted.

We funded higher wages, we put conditions on fee increases, we expanded access to payment and we measured what happened: 20,000 more workers, vacancies down nearly a third, fewer services relying on staffing waivers and lower fee growth at participating centres. Now the policy is delivering results, and we are extending it. That is how government should work.

Identify the problem, do something practical about it, measure the result, and if it works build on it. I have never had much patience for talking endlessly about problems when there is something practical we can do to fix the problem—and this bill is practical. The title of this legislation is quite a mouthful, and I suspect no toddler will be successful in saying it before lunchtime, but what it does is straightforward.

It says to early educators, 'We value your work, and that should be reflected in your wages.' It says to providers, 'We will help fund those wages, but public funding comes with responsibilities.' It says to parents, 'We are going to continue putting downward pressure on fee increases.' And it says to families, 'When you leave your child at an early learning service, their health and safety must come first.' This government has delivered the 15 per cent increase because Australia's early educators deserved it and because the sector needed it.

The evidence shows it is working. More workers are joining the sector, vacancies are falling, staffing pressures are easing and families at participating services are seeing slower fee growth. This bill locks in those gains for another two years.

It also makes clear that higher public investment must go hand in hand with higher expectation for child safety, fair wages, affordable care, a stronger workforce, safer services and a better education for Australian kids. I commend the bill to the House.