Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026
Mr MONCRIEFF (Hughes) (16:38): Every morning across southern Sydney, from Menai to Moorebank, from Bundeena to Bardia, parents kiss their kids goodbye for the day and place them into the care of early childhood educators. Every day these dedicated workers help our children learn and grow at one of the most critical stages of development in their lives. It is one of the most crucial and consequential jobs in our country.
For decades early childhood education and care workers were treated as though they were merely providing babysitting services instead of being the skilled educators that they are. They were underpaid, undervalued and expected to deliver high-quality early learning on a pay that barely enabled them to keep up with the rent or the mortgage. The nature of their work meant it was difficult to collectively bargain for a pay rise, as these workers could not pursue the fundamental right of withdrawing their labour to bargain for better outcomes due to the nature of the care that they provide.
They were told that their work was of critical importance while their pay cheques told a different story. This bill, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026, treats early childhood education and care workers like the skilled professionals that they are. Our government recognises that pay is a function of respect and that, if we want high-quality care for our kids, we must pay the educators who teach and care for them what they are truly worth.
This legislation locks in a funded pay rise for early educators for another two years. It amends the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act 2024. It credits the special account used to administer the early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant program with an additional $3.6 billion.
It also extends the act's sunset date from 30 June 2028 out to the end of 2029. The funding extension will remain tied to a commitment from services receiving the payment to limit fee increases, ensuring that subsidies do not feed through to higher fees for families. This framework couples wage justice for early childhood and care workers with cost-of-living relief for parents, limiting fee increases as a condition of receiving grant funding, saving the average family around $1,500 over the next two years.
Women make up over 90 per cent of early childhood educators. For decades, their contribution went largely without the requisite respect or recognition that they deserved. That's why this bill is also an important step in our mission of promoting gender pay equity.
When our government announced an initial 15 per cent wage increase in August of 2024, there was no shortage of cynics on the other side of this chamber. While they managed to drag themselves into supporting the bill, their additional comments shrieked that the Albanese Labor government was covertly attempting by stealth to unionise the early childhood sector in an effort to appease the unions—the usual chatter from the three right-wing parties opposite who cry that the sky will fall in with every moderate increase to the minimum wage.
Now the results are in. The worker retention payment has delivered 20,000 more educators since its introduction, an unprecedented eight per cent increase in the early childhood workforce. Vacancies have dropped by almost 31 per cent nationwide.
The percentage of services forced to operate under emergency staffing waivers due to worker shortages has plummeted from 8.9 per cent down to 4.3 per cent. Agency dependency has declined, with agency staff usage at Goodstart Early Learning having dropped by 69 per cent in the first year following the program's implementation. Fees at early learning centres receiving the worker retention payment grew at roughly half the rate of centres that were not signed up to the program, as our policy intended.
The picture of the early childhood education and care sector prior to the introduction of this reform was not encouraging. Centres across the shire and south-west Sydney were delaying expansion plans, turning away families, closing rooms and capping enrolments because they couldn't find the staff. In many communities, parents can find it exceedingly difficult to access early childhood services affordably or at all.
For such a labour-intensive service, the availability of educators and care workers is a critical bottleneck. Worker retention is directly linked to educational outcomes, the quality of care and child safety. When talented educators stay in their jobs, children form consistent bonds of trust with adults who understand their emotional and learning needs.
To date, the measures introduced in 2024 have been overwhelmingly beneficial. They have stabilised the workforce, reduced fee pressure for those providers who subscribed to the grant and enabled the delivery of high-quality care. That's why this bill is not just about wage justice for early educators; it's a supply-side measure to attract and retain more carers in the sector and expand access to early childhood education.
It's not just about the economics of quality care; the bill includes further measures to protect the safety and wellbeing of kids in these services. Under this legislation, from July of next year, services will be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, the benchmark governing child health and safety established under the Education and Care Services National Law.
Providers failing to meet these standards of care will have their access to the worker retention payment suspended or terminated. Around 95 per cent of early childhood services meet or exceed quality area 2. But, as the minister has said, while 95 per cent is good, parents deserve 100 per cent confidence in the safety and wellbeing of their kids.
By establishing a statutory link between grant funding and high standards of child health and safety, every parent deserves the peace of mind that their child is in an environment that meets every health, hygiene, physical safety and child protection requirement. This condition complements a series of strong measures that this government has already introduced.
Our reforms to ensure safety in the sector include statutory powers allowing the Commonwealth department to immediately freeze funding to operators who breach compliance or safety requirements. They include the rollout of mandatory foundation training across the sector, from casual educators up to directors, CEOs and board members. Over 350,000 care workers and leaders have already completed this training, and we have worked with the National Cabinet and education ministers across Australia to establish an independent commission aimed at institutionalising safety oversight and sector integrity.
This bill is one brick in our government's comprehensive reform program to build a better early learning and care sector right across the country. Early childhood education is essential social and economic infrastructure that is a core service for so many working families. It drives workforce participation, enables mums and dads to return to work or take on more hours, and gives children the best start in life at a crucial stage in their development.
We have boosted the childcare subsidy for over a million Australian families, slashing out-of-pocket costs for typical households by thousands of dollars a year. We have abolished the punitive coalition activity test that locked some families out of early education, and we have guaranteed three days of subsidised care per week for all eligible children, regardless of their parents' working status.
We are building the pipeline of early educators by funding fee-free TAFE places across Australia. Over 65,000 educators have enrolled in fee-free early childhood education and care TAFE courses since 2023. We are making it easier for care workers to get a pay rise through our secure jobs, better pay legislation, reforming the multi-employer bargaining framework to give workers in female dominated industries the support they need to negotiate structural wage increases.
Whether through training pathways, subsidised fees, safety regulations or wage grants, our government is backing our educators to build a world-class early childhood education system. We contrast this with the record of those opposite. Under the former coalition government, childcare fees rose by almost 50 per cent, bolting past wage growth and driving working families to the financial brink.
There was year after year of wage stagnation, leading to a workforce exodus that forced centres to close and left parents stranded on months long waiting lists. There were punitive activity tests that stripped early learning access away from the kids who needed it the most. When early educators asked for fair pay, the coalition told them to find a better job or trust the market to deliver it.
What else would you expect from a party that cited low-wage growth as a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. The coalition and One Nation pay lip service to early educators, but only this government puts its money where its mouth is. Those opposite offer no constructive solutions for modern families in electorates like mine.
For the quiet Australians in southern Sydney, they offer only nostalgia and neglect. Early childhood education is the foundation upon which the future of our country is built. Safe and dynamic childhood and care environments stem from the work of the early childhood educators and care workers who millions of Australians entrust their children with every day.
Backing in our early childhood educators and care workers and limiting fee increases isn't just good for these workers and the families whose kids they look after; it's a down payment on the success of the next generation of Australians. This bill delivers $3.6 billion to extend wage justice for early childhood educators out to 2029. It delivers an average saving of $1,500 for families over the next two years.
It establishes high health and safety standards so that every parent can have confidence that their child is safe, and it delivers dignity to a historically undervalued and predominantly female workforce. Failure to pass this bill by the end of the September sitting period would mean a failure to ensure sufficient funds to continue delivering higher wages through the worker retention payment grant.
Early childhood educators across my community in Hughes have waited long enough for the respect, the recognition and the remuneration that they deserve. This bill is supported by peak bodies, service providers and parent organisations. Treating early childhood educators like the well-paid professionals that they should be is good for workers, it's good for kids, it's good for families and it's good for the future of Australia.
I'm so proud to stand as part of an Albanese Labor government that values care and carers, that values education, that values safety and that is acting on these values by delivering real relief for educators and for working families. I commend this bill to the House.