Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Mr BURNELL (Spence) (12:45): Every parent knows how important the first years of a child's life are. Long before a child walks through the school gates for the first time, they are already learning, developing and discovering the world around them. Early childhood education and care plays an enormous role in that development.
It helps children build their confidence, develop their social skills and establish the foundations they will carry with them into school and later life. At the centre of that system are our early childhood educators. Every day, educators across Australia help children learn, grow and get ready for school.
Early educators help children discover new skills and build confidence. Through encouragement and support, educators help young children navigate challenges and important developmental milestones. Just as importantly, educators provide comfort and stability, creating an environment where children feel safe, supported and included.
Strong relationships with families are also central to their work, helping ensure every child receives the care and support they need to thrive. That work requires patience, skill, professionalism and an enormous amount of responsibility. For too long, however, the importance of this work was not properly reflected in the wages early educators received.
This is one of the most important jobs in our country, and the people doing it deserve to be paid fairly. That is why on 8 August 2024 the Albanese government announced that we would fund a historic 15 per cent pay rise for eligible ECEC workers. It was recognition of the value of their work, but it was also about addressing a very real workforce challenge facing the early childhood education and care sector.
Across Australia, early learning services were struggling to attract and retain the educators they needed. Staff shortages meant some rooms could not open, enrolments had to be limited and plans to expand services were put on hold. For families, that meant fewer places available and longer waits to access the early learning and care they relied on.
At the same time, experienced educators were leaving a profession they loved, because they could earn more elsewhere. We could not expect a vital sector to continue operating under that pressure and, without properly valuing the work they do, we could not expect educators to stay. It was not sustainable for services.
Most importantly, it was not delivering the stable early learning system that Australian children and families deserve. The worker retention payment was designed to help turn that around. Today, through this bill, the government is taking the next step.
We are locking in that pay rise for another two years. The bill provides an additional $3.6 billion to continue supporting higher wages for early childhood education and care workers. It extends the special account so that funding can continue through the worker retention payment.
This is significant because the evidence shows that this policy is working. Since the worker retention payment was announced in 2024, around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers have entered the workforce. That represents an increase of around eight per cent.
At the same time, job vacancies across the sector have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The proportion of services operating with a staffing waiver has almost halved, falling from 8.9 to 4.3 per cent. Those numbers tell an important story.
More people are choosing to work in early childhood education and care. More experienced educators are being encouraged to stay. Services are finding it easier to fill positions.
That means greater stability for children, families and the educators themselves. Stability is one of the most important factors in early learning. Children benefit when they are surrounded by educators they learn to know and trust.
Parents benefit from knowing that the people caring for their children will be there tomorrow, the next week and next year. Educators benefit when they are part of a stable team where experience is valued and workloads can be better shared. Strong relationships between children and educators cannot simply be replaced every few months.
They take time to develop. That consistency helps children feel safe and supported and allows educators to understand each child's individual strengths, needs and development. So when we talk about workforce retention, we're not simply talking about an employment statistic.
A stable workforce means children receive consistent, high-quality early learning from educators they know and trust. It gives parents confidence when they drop their children off each morning that they are being supported by experienced and dedicated professionals. Most importantly, it helps give every child the strong start in life they deserve.
That is why continuing to invest in our early childhood education workforce matters so much. When combined with this government's support for minimum wage increases, a typical full-time educator will be around $255 better off each week compared to December 2024. For an early childhood teacher, that figure is around $410 a week.
That is a meaningful difference. For workers paying the rent or mortgage, buying groceries and managing household bills, an extra $255 or $410 each week is substantial. It also sends an important message about how we value this profession.
People who dedicate their careers to educating and caring for our youngest Australians should not have to choose between the work they love and earning enough to support themselves and their families. Fair wages are fundamental to building a strong and sustainable early childhood education workforce. Better pay helps attract new educators to the sector while giving experienced workers more reason to build a long-term career in early learning.
Importantly, it also recognises the skills, responsibility and professionalism that educators bring to their work every single day. But this government also understands that increasing wages cannot simply mean increasing costs for families. That is why funding under the worker retention payment is tied to a commitment from participating services to limit fee increases.
The results so far show that approach is working. Fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at around half the rate of centres that have not signed up. Through this extension, the average family is expected to save around $1,500 over the next two years.
We want educators to be paid properly without families being handed the bill. At a time when household budgets remain under pressure, families should not have to choose between fair wages for educators and affordable early learning. For the first time, employees in all childcare subsidy approved services will be eligible for the payment.
That broadens the reach of this support and ensures more workers can benefit from the wage increases this government is funding. The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account)(Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 is also about something even more fundamental. It's about the health and safety of our children.
Parents have every right to expect that when they leave their child at an early learning service, that child will be safe. There can be no compromise on that. The overwhelming majority of services and educators take the responsibility extremely seriously every single day.
Around 95 per cent of services currently meet the required standard for children's health and safety. But, when we are talking about the safety of children, 95 per cent is not enough. We should always be striving for better.
That is why this bill establishes a new objective and condition for funding through the wage justice special account. From July 2027, services receiving this funding will be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard relating specifically to children's health and safety. Where a service does not meet that standard, its funding may be suspended or reduced.
This is a reasonable expectation. The Commonwealth is making a significant investment in the future of early childhood education and care. That investment means better support for the workforce, greater certainty for services trying to retain experienced educators and more help for families to keep early learning affordable.
Ultimately, it is about building a stronger and more sustainable early learning system that works for educators, families and children. In return, services receiving that support must meet appropriate standards when it comes to the health and safety of the children in their care. Quality and safety must sit at the heart of our early childhood education and care system, because early learning is not simply somewhere children go while their parents are at work.
For many children, their early educator is one of the first trusted adults they build a relationship with outside of their immediate family. Early educators are there for so many of the important milestones in a child's early years. From learning new words and forming their first friendships to developing confidence, curiosity and creativity, educators help children through these important stages.
They also help children develop the social skills that are so important in everyday life, including how to communicate, share and work alongside others. These experiences help prepare children for the transition to school, but their importance reaches well beyond the classroom. The skills and relationships developed during these early years can provide a foundation that children carry with them throughout their lives.
Quality early learning helps establish foundations that can last a lifetime. That is why Labor has always understood that investing in early childhood education is an investment in Australia's future. Investing in early childhood education delivers benefits well beyond the doors of an early learning centre.
Children get a stronger start in life, parents have greater opportunities to participate in the workforce and educators are better supported to build rewarding careers. The benefits are felt across families, workplaces and communities, making early learning an investment in both our children and Australia's future. The measures contained in this bill build on that commitment.
An additional $3.6 billion will ensure the worker retention payment can continue supporting higher wages. The extension will help services retain the skilled educators they need. Fee controls will continue protecting families from excessive increases.
Expanded eligibility will allow more educators to benefit. New safety requirements will ensure Commonwealth funding supports services that meet the standards Australian families rightly expect. We have already seen what happens when the early childhood workforce is stretched too thin.
Services struggle to operate at capacity, centres close, waiting lists grow, families struggle to find care and, ultimately, children miss out. The figures since the introduction of the worker retention payment demonstrate that we can change that trajectory. Around 20,000 additional workers in the sector is significant.
A reduction of almost 31 per cent in job vacancies is significant. A fall in services operating with staffing waivers from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent is significant. These are real improvements occurring across the sector.
Now is not the time to walk away from that progress. It's time to build on it. This bill provides certainty to workers who deserve to know that their pay rise will continue.
It provides certainty to services planning their workforce for the years ahead. It provides greater certainty to parents who depend on early learning to participate in work, study and their communities. Most importantly, it provides greater stability for children.
The Albanese Labor government believes that the people who educate and care for our youngest Australians deserve recognition, not just through our words but through our actions. That was the principle behind the historic 15 per cent pay rise announced in 2024. This bill locks in that progress for another two years.
Above all, it recognises that the strength of our early learning system depends on the people who make it work every day: the professionals helping our youngest Australians develop the skills and confidence they need for the next stage of their lives. They deserve a government that values their contribution. Australian families deserve an early learning system that is affordable, reliable and safe.
Every child deserves the opportunity to get the best possible start in life. In closing, I want to give a huge shout-out to a local professional in the ECEC space, Rebecca Stiles from the Hillbank Community Children's Centre, who is a long-time advocate of ensuring that wage justice is delivered, alongside all of her colleagues that put their hands up to be delegates in their workplaces across South Australia.
The work that the United Workers Union has done in this space is absolutely commendable because it is delivering real, substantive change in communities like mine and others across this country, and that is so, so important. To people like Rebecca, who have put up their hand and gone from an early childhood educator in the formative stages of their career to becoming a shop steward, often a facility manager, but now commenced work with the union itself—it takes special people to put their hand up, raise their voice and fight on behalf of a whole cohort of workers across this country.
To be able to deliver substantial changes like this that give the recognition that they so deservedly need is something that I'm extremely proud to be able to stand in this place and be a small part of that journey for. To Rebecca and all of your colleagues in South Australia: thank you for all the work you've done over the numerous years in the lead-up to this decision.
I thank the House.