Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health, Homelessness and Social Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The week before last, I had the pleasure of visiting Smileys Child Care centre, in White Gum Valley, with my colleague and friend the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, the Hon. Peter Garrett, to congratulate the centre and its staff on winning the 2012 Australian Child Care Week Award for providing the best program involving families. This accolade gives well-deserved recognition to the expertise and creativity of the early childhood education staff and management at Smileys, and I again congratulate Lisa Godwin and the whole Smileys team for their winning program, which involved a thoughtfully designed and shared production of a beautiful picture book. The images in the book were a compilation of the children's colourings of the Smileys logo mascots, Sam and Sophie, which were sent to the children's friends and relatives around the world to be photographed and arranged in relatively exotic locations and then returned to the centre. Needless to say, the book was a hit, providing a rich learning experience for the kids and also acting as a wonderful community building initiative.

The first couple of weeks of this parliamentary year coincide with the first fortnight of the school year in Western Australia, and I am very conscious that this is a time when many families get back into the rhythm and challenges of the work-school-childcare balance. That balance can be a difficult one, especially in the area of child care, and that is why this Labor government has worked hard to make the choices easier and more affordable, the services better and the whole framework of school and early childhood education more responsive to the needs of Australian families.

I know that in my electorate of Fremantle there have been few more important reforms when it comes to supporting young families than the increase in the childcare rebate, from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs, and the almost doubling of the rebate, from $4,350 to $7,500. And, of course, the new National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care, introduced a year ago, is now operating to improve educator-to-child ratios, lift and support education and training for childcare educators, cut red tape for centre operators and provide more information and transparency for parents.

This is a sector that relies to a great extent on the work and expertise of thousands of caring talented educators, many of whom are women. As with other sectors in which women are strongly represented, their vocational commitment tends not to be properly rewarded but, instead, leaned upon as a cost component that can be suppressed. This is not fair and it cannot continue. Educators, particularly in WA, cannot afford to live on the wages they receive and are being forced to leave the jobs they love and for which they are highly valued by parents who entrust their children to their care.

As a supporter of the Big Steps campaign and as a person who knows that affordable, available, high-quality early childhood education is necessary if we are to liberate the productive energy and capacity in Australian families, with all the individual and community benefits this will bring, I know how important it is that there are professional wages and fair conditions for early childhood educators. I want to finish by acknowledging the role played by all the childcare centres in my electorate and by paying tribute to the operators and the early childhood educators who are giving so many kids such a caring and high-quality start to their learning journeys.