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

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (18:56): Minister, you talk about what's on the tin and that it's titled the 'worker retention payment'. I put to you that the parent who deeply values the work that's provided by their family day care operator or their in-home care provider and what they get from that doesn't, frankly, particularly mind whether they're an employee or an independent contractor.

What's valuable is the service that they deliver. So why is the government differentiating on the status of employment rather than on the quality of service that's delivered and the need that's actually been met by that provider? That's the first question.

The second question is this. When you read the submissions—hopefully, you've had the chance to look at those submissions that came through, with the short inquiry that we had—and you hear from, for example, Family Day Care Australia, who told the Senate inquiry that virtually all of Australia's approximately 8,500 family day care operators operate as self-employed sole traders and independent contractors, what consideration and concern do you have for their viability going forward, given that they may not be eligible unless they change their model?

Again, evidence that we got from the inquiry was that they consider it too onerous and too significant to be able to upend their whole model and change how they operate.