Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Ms MILLER-FROST (Boothby) (16:17): As I was saying, the Paid Parental Leave scheme will now also mean that governments will pay a 12 per cent contribution into the parent's superannuation, which is something that had been campaigned for for many years. It's a huge step in closing the gender gap when it comes to retirement savings, because it is still women who are disproportionately impacted when there's a new baby in the family in what is often called the motherhood penalty.
Women who tend to be the primary caregivers are forced to give up or hold back their careers in order to take up long-term caring duties for the new baby. These changes will mean that families can be financially secure now and into the future. It's about protecting mothers who want to be mothers rather than penalising them.
For many families, perhaps for the majority of families, early childhood education services are an important part of their experience. Families choose early childhood education for many reasons. For some, it's about ensuring their children get the best possible start to education through access to a professional teacher.
For some, particularly where the child is an only child, it might be about ensuring the child has the opportunity to socialise with other children. And, of course, for many, it's about ensuring that parents are able to return to work to continue their careers or to provide for their family. No matter why families choose to access early childhood education, it's important that it is quality education with quality providers and teachers.
The AIHW data consistently shows that early childhood education and care significantly improves a child's cognitive, social and emotional outcomes as they enter school and progress through life, and that is what we want for Australian children. We want the best possible cognitive, social and emotional start to life for them. That only happens when we have quality providers, quality workers and quality teachers.
This bill is about creating an early childhood education and care environment that further supports families with children. It recognises that the first few years of a child's life are perhaps the most critical in terms of their intellectual and emotional development. You wouldn't know it, given our historic treatment of this sector, but early childhood workers are some of the most important people in a family's life.
For too long, early childhood education was seen as babysitting, and the workers were paid what used to be called, somewhat derisively, pin money—a pittance because the assumption was that it was women and they didn't really need the money. But early childhood education is a profession, and we want to attract and retain the very best people who have a passion for teaching our next generation.
We want early childhood education to be a profession of choice. We want people with a passion for early childhood education to be able to choose it as a career, to train and qualify and to know that they have a rewarding and valued career ahead of them. We want them to stay in the sector.
It makes sense that the professionals with the skills to provide this education and care are given the support they need, and by support I mean wages appropriate to their professional qualifications and the importance of the work, and work conditions that support their retention in the sector and the best outcomes for the children in their care. I've spoken a bit in this House about my rather unusual experience of family life.
Having triplets is not a common experience, and it does bring its own challenges—specifically, being completely outnumbered from the start. I returned to work on a very part-time basis when my babies were four months old, and I can assure you it wasn't for the money, as I was bringing home about $20 a month after expenses. It was very much for my sanity.
As a new mum who, frankly, didn't know what I was doing and was outnumbered by my children, it was very comforting to know that my children were being cared for, socialised and educated by professionals who were dedicated to the education of the next generation. I know my children had a lot of different play equipment, educational toys, social experiences with other children and early learning experiences that were as a result of the quality early childhood education centre that they attended.
As a result, when they started school they already had a head start on language and maths, with an understanding of the world around them which set them up for schooling. This bill is about higher pay for workers, lower fees for families and stronger standards in the early childhood education and care sector. It is about relieving cost-of-living pressures and providing predictability and stability to families.
This bill builds on the government's record in providing more affordable, flexible and high-quality early childhood education and care. We have built more early education and care centres. Since 2022, this has meant 1,200 more services, 95,000 more children in early education and 48,000 more early childhood workers.
With our $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, we are committed to expanding these services to in-need areas such as outer suburbs and regional Australia. We have consolidated the childcare subsidy. More than 100,000 families are now guaranteed at least three days of access to subsidised education and care, meaning that, if your family is earning between $50,000 and $100,000, you will save on average $1,460 every year.
The Albanese Labor government's cheaper child care is overall benefiting more than one million Australian families and helping relieve cost-of-living pressures. The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 strengthens the government's support for the early education and care sector and for families who use these services every single day, because wage justice for early education and care workers is about ensuring that these essential workers, trained professionals, are paid the wages they deserve.
It's about ensuring that the people who have been entrusted with the heavy responsibility of overseeing our children's growth and ability to thrive are appropriately valued for the work they do. Historically, early childhood workers have been paid less compared to workers in similar sectors and with similar qualifications. Early childhood teachers, for example, received a median wage that was 20 per cent lower than their primary school counterparts.
The early childhood sector became trapped in its own vicious cycle. Because the sector was undervalued—in large part because it was considered a woman's profession—workers were underpaid, forcing them to rely on partners, family or second jobs to be able to sustain a basic living, and the work itself became an unattractive proposition. Early childhood workers departed the workforce in their multitudes.
The attrition rate was as high as 40 per cent, and the flow-on effects were predictable. Services were forced to delay extension plans, close rooms and limit enrolments because of staff shortages, and families and children were directly impacted. That is why, in 2024, the Albanese Labor government invested $3.6 billion to support a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care workers.
This bill cements the government's commitment to ensuring that our early childhood workers are paid fairly and squarely for the essential work that they do. Currently, over 80 per cent of eligible services are now receiving the payment. That's 215,000 workers and 11,600 centres across the country.
In my electorate of Boothby, that's 68 services and a thousand workers. The bill invests another $3.6 billion to extend the pay rise for early childhood workers until 2028. That means full-time educators can expect $255 more in their pay packet every week, and early childhood teachers can expect $410 more every week.
Since the government legislated the first pay rise in 2024, we have seen job vacancies go down by 31 per cent, job applications go up by as much as 30 per cent and the early education and care workforce increase by eight per cent. That's 20,000 additional workers. The Albanese Labor government is changing the narrative around early childhood education and care, making it more valued, more paid and more attractive.
I'd like to really recognise the excellent work of the United Workers Union for their long-term campaign, which has made such a difference to these workers, to the sector and to Australian families. The funds that will be distributed to services will be conditional on two things. The first is that services and providers will have to commit to limiting fee increases for families, because while early childhood workers rightly deserve the higher pay for the work they do, families should not have to bear the financial costs of that.
Services will not be allowed to increase their fees if they want to receive this payment. With this condition, families will save around $1,500 over the next two years. The second is that services must meet the national quality standard or risk termination or suspension of their payment.
Currently, a record 95 per cent of early learning services meet this safety standard, but there is still room for improvement. This obligation will now also be extended to other services like in-home care. This is part of the Albanese Labor government's comprehensive $226 million suite of safety reforms.
Since last year, the Department of Education has taken compliance action against 119 centres that have failed to meet the standards for at least five years. Fifty-five of these centres have now fixed their problems. Seven centres have decided to voluntarily close, and in June the department cut off the funding to a service for the first time.
With its ability to now make unannounced visits to childcare services since November, the department has made 1,300 cold-call visits. Earlier this year, the government established the National Early Childhood Worker Register, collating workforce information into a central database, including working-with-children checks, qualifications and identifying information, and facilitating the tracking of workers across centres and state jurisdictions.
The government has introduced mandatory child safety training for early educators from staff all the way up the chain of command to CEOs and other executives. This training provides workers with the necessary skills to detect, stop and report abuse. We have also banned personal mobile phones in centres.
The government is now currently trialling CCTV in more than 300 services in collaboration with the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Centre for Child Protection and the National Office of Safety. This year, education ministers around Australia began discussing the formation of an early childhood and care commission to further strengthen and improve quality and safety in the sector.
When a parent decides on an early education care centre for their precious child or children, they should be able to expect that their child will receive a high quality of service and care. This daunting stage in a parent's life should not be compounded by the worry that their child's experience at a centre may be fraught with risks. By giving early educators and carers the pay rise they deserve, we are supporting them to be able to stay in these essential roles and ensuring that families and children can be confident that their local early provider is safe and up to the job.
This bill is about higher pay for workers, lower fees for families and stronger standards in the early childhood education sector. It is about relieving cost-of-living pressures and providing predictability and stability to families. Early childhood educators and carers play a crucial role in what is arguably the most critical time in a child's life.
They play a crucial role in fostering a child's curiosity, emotional intelligence and intellectual development. The fact that this area has been historically neglected is an indictment on governments across the decades. With this bill and previously legislative measures, the Albanese Labor government has decided to take a lead on this.
As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and, by recognising the importance and value of early childhood educators and workers, we are determined not to take this for granted. I commend the bill to the House.