Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise this afternoon in the House to make a contribution to this debate on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 and to lend my support to the amendment moved by the shadow minister for early childhood education, Amanda Rishworth, the member for Kingston.

Early childhood education has been one of the worst-managed portfolios under this government. Even before the pandemic, it was a disaster area. It was complex. It was slow. It was smashing families' budgets. Indeed, out-of-pocket costs soared by 7.2 per cent in one year alone before the pandemic hit. So I certainly knew—and I'm sure my electorate is not unique in this respect—that families were already struggling with childcare expenses prior to COVID-19. In the face of the pandemic, enrolments plummeted in all of our early childhood learning centres, and the government announced its so-called free childcare plan. It may have removed the gap payment for parents, but let's be very clear here: 'free' it most certainly was not. Indeed, early childhood centres paid a very heavy price for the government's cynical marketing exercise, as they saw their income capped at 50 per cent of the usual fee. So childcare centres were actually being forced to cover the cost of the Prime Minister's promise. It was pushing many of those centres to the brink. This is the secret the government doesn't want you to know.

In my electorate of Newcastle I was contacted by a number of centres that were on the edge of closure as a result of the government's disingenuous policy. I cannot convey to the House the level of distress that both parents and childcare centre operators conveyed to me during those very, very anxious months and days. They told me that staffing each of the centres was also something of a nightmare because, as children returned to care, centres needed to employ more staff to be able to comply with ratios. But, of course, they couldn't do this, because of their newly reduced income and the fact that many of their staff were simply not eligible for JobKeeper. Many early childhood educators lost hours or were stood down at centres they worked for, and they struggled enormously during that time to keep their heads above water—both the providers and the staff who either were losing hours or, indeed, were stood down. Let's not forget that many of them were not eligible for JobKeeper at that time.

At the same time, I had families contacting me, and families also contacted many of my colleagues—certainly on this side of the House. Families were telling us that, because childcare centres had had their income capped, they weren't able to take children for any extra days. Parents who wanted to take up additional child care when their children weren't already enrolled found it virtually impossible to find a place. I know that the calls I was taking were replicated across the nation. I had calls from young mothers who'd had their names down at childcare centres since before the birth of their children. They were working in essential services.

Among the many examples were frontline health workers who got calls from their respective hospitals saying: 'We are desperate at this hospital. We need to get as many of our staff as possible back onto the floor for work. Can you possibly cut your parental leave short and come back to work early?' These are women who are extraordinarily professional in their approach to providing healthcare services in Australia, and of course they wanted to meet that call. They wanted to be able to return to work to do their bit to help prepare and ensure our health services were ready for whatever might be coming. Nobody quite knew at that stage what the demand was going to be, of course. So they did exactly what their employers had asked and tried to return to work early. The only trouble was that they simply couldn't go back to work unless they had some child care put in place, and that's when these women would make call after call to centres trying to get a placement, only to be told, 'Sorry.' Despite the fact that those early learning centres had very few children, they weren't taking new kids, because they had had their income capped and it was economically unviable to take on additional children at the time. I think that example is a very good illustration of just how dependent the productivity of this nation is on the participation of women in the workforce. Not only are we at least 50 per cent of the population but we're important contributors to the economic productivity of this nation, and, if you cannot access quality, affordable child care, it is very difficult for you to make that contribution to the economic productivity of Australia.

So parents, as I said, were telling me that they wanted to take up child care but they simply couldn't. Their children had not already been enrolled. They were trying to get them enrolled but found it virtually impossible to find a place, and this left many of my constituents stuck, unable to take on extra work when their workplaces desperately needed them to do so. So childcare centres were pushed to the edge and parents couldn't get the care they needed. That was the situation. Then, with the pandemic nowhere near over and without warning, the government declared that everything was fixed and fees would just snap back to what they were before, and suddenly Australian families again had to try to find the extra money in severely cash-strapped budgets. You can imagine the distress that caused Australian families.

The Parenthood campaign director Georgie Dent summed it perfectly when she said:

The idea that in four weeks time all of the households that are dealing with job and income losses will be in a position to 'return to normal' is fantasy.

Well, well said, Ms Dent. But, of course, it gets worse because in its wisdom the Morrison government also announced that early childhood educators would no longer be receiving JobKeeper payments. In the middle of what was an understood agreement, they'd been told—and indeed there'd been an earlier promise—that JobKeeper would stay in place until the end of September. But here we are ripping the rug from underneath early education and early educators in Australia, telling them: 'No, from now on JobKeeper payments are stopping. We're going to be pulling them up early.' And every thinking person in Australia at the time asked: how utterly senseless is this policy move from the government—cutting off the wages of the very people we rely on to look after our children in the middle of a pandemic?

I mean, seriously? Did the government take no advice? Did the government not listen to Australian women as to what was happening in their everyday lives at that time? Truly, this was reckless, indeed, bordering on insanity when we heard that policy announcement, that flip-flop change in policy, for early childhood educators. If there is any service that should be declared essential and protected at this time, it is child care.

Now, let's be clear: no other sector has had JobKeeper ripped away early. It strikes me as worth noting in this House that this is a sector that has an overwhelming number of women in its workforce. It is remarkable that this government has been so deaf to the concerns of Australian women and their families throughout this pandemic. It is remarkable that the government seems oblivious to the pink recession that is underway in this nation. It is remarkable that this government thinks that the very first cohort of workers that you should pull the wage subsidy from in the height of the pandemic would be the women, and they are predominantly women, who are educating the zero to five-year-olds, our children, in this nation. They're the people you think it is okay to chop off at the knees in the height of a pandemic when they had no idea as to how they were going to actually keep going either in the workplace with reduced hours or indeed having lost their jobs altogether.

So, despite the government saying how important child care is during these terrible times, it was the childcare workers who were the first, and indeed only, group to have been cut off from this important wage subsidy. Little wonder that Australian women were sitting up and taking note at that point, trying to figure out how this government could be so profoundly deaf and oblivious to the lived experiences and realities for them at home. It is not surprising that the educators and the centres they worked for felt utterly betrayed and abandoned by this government. In making these choices the government has displayed wanton disregard for the critical importance of early childhood education and the key role it has played in laying the foundations for our children to lead happy and successful lives. Of course, things were nowhere near fixed, which anyone from even the most casual of observations could see.

The future for the sector is still enormously uncertain. In Victoria, the situation is particularly bad. With average centre attendance levels of between 25 and 30 per cent, many educators are having their hours reduced or cut entirely, and, because the majority of educators are casual or part-time workers, they have no protections against being stood down. Many of these workers are now wondering how they will continue to pay the mortgage or the rent and keep their bills up to date. What a shoddy way to treat your so-called essential workers, Mr Morrison. At this point, it is also important to note that, as with so many things during this pandemic, this pain is disproportionately felt by women. As I mentioned earlier, 95 per cent of the early childhood education workforce is women. Throughout this crisis, Australia has relied on women to care for us and protect us from COVID-19, but now women are bearing the brunt of government decisions that have left them out in the cold again and again and again.

In summary, this government continues to make a mess of early childhood education. Australian families need quality, affordable care, and Australian early childhood education centres and their staff need certainty that they will be viable into the future. It's well past time for the Morrison government to deliver.

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