Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

During this pandemic, we've heard a lot about how we're all in this together. We've heard a lot about governments supporting people in times of need. We haven't heard so much about supporting the predominantly women who work in the childcare and early education sector. What we have heard is that they were the first industry to have JobKeeper ripped away from them by the Morrison government. This has had significant consequences for the women who work in the early childhood care and education sector, for the children who are not getting their early education and for the women who are no longer going to their workplace, because they can't get child care. It's not the way women in my community deserve to be treated.

Today's piece of legislation is about improving the new system set up by this government to help vulnerable and disadvantaged families. Of course Labor is going to support it. Fundamentally, our reason for being is to help families when they need help. The COVID pandemic and this recession have taught us that vulnerable and disadvantaged families are a much wider cohort than perhaps we thought. In Victoria we're experiencing stage 4 restrictions, and we know that many people are experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage that they've never experienced before as a result of the social restrictions and being at home. It is a sad indictment of the Morrison government that, while they've got legislation that is said to be helping vulnerable and disadvantaged families access child care, their policies are stopping many families across Victoria, and in my electorate of Dunkley, from accessing child care.

On Friday I held a Zoom forum with Labor's shadow minister for early education and the state Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education, the wonderful Sonya Kilkenny, the member for Carrum. We invited people from across the electorate who are early educators, childcare workers, parents with children that need to be or are in early education and providers of family day care. There were a number of really strong themes that came out of that fascinating, informative and interesting conversation. The first one was that, to a woman—because they were all women—the people on that Zoom forum felt that child care and early educators were undervalued. They felt that, as we've been going through this pandemic, in particular, when there has been a lot of talk about the sacrifices of people working at the front line, too often they haven't been acknowledged by this federal government as people at the front line. They are workers that have continued to work, to look after children, so that our health workers, our emergency services workers, our essential workers, can also continue to go to work. They've been at the front line. They've been looking after children in circumstances where, for many of them, they have been quite frightened about the spread of COVID.

In my small way, I want to rectify that lack of acknowledgement and say here today, to the women that were on the Zoom meeting with me and to everyone who is a childcare worker, an early educator or runs a child care facility: you are seen, you are heard and you are valued. The work you have done—always, but particularly during this pandemic—has been fundamentally important. But it's not enough, is it, for those of us with the privilege of representing you in this place to simply say that you are seen, you are heard and you are valued? We need to put policies where our words are. We need to make sure that early educators and childcare workers are paid in a way that reflects the value that you provide to the community. We know that those early years of learning are fundamentally important for all children, for their chances of success and for their education levels later in life. And we know that those early years are even more important to children who are vulnerable or from disadvantage. We need to value people like you who work in our social support services for what you do for the rest of us, not just with our words but with appropriate pay and conditions which reflect the contribution that you make.

We also need to acknowledge those of us here who have the capacity to make policies and acknowledge that early education and child care are an important economic stimulus—in fact, one of the most important economic stimuluses—that we can look at investing in for the future years. It ticks the boxes. It's an investment which is an economic stimulus because it increases jobs. It increases jobs predominantly for women. It increases productivity, and women are in the workforce. It also provides the opportunity for women who work in other industries, in other sectors, to go back to work, which is good for women, good for their families and good for the economy. Child care and early education are fundamentally important. Women having the opportunity to work is fundamentally important. Children having the opportunity to get early education is fundamentally important. And yet we have a federal government who chose early education and child care as the first industry to take the wage subsidy away from. It doesn't make sense, and the transition funding has not delivered for people who need it in my community.

We've heard from Julie, whose daughter is a childcare worker who was on maternity leave just as the pandemic hit. She was supposed to go back to work and wants to go back to work, but because JobKeeper has been ripped away from her workplace she can't go back from maternity leave, and her leave has just been extended and extended.

Caitlin from Langwarrin is a single mother who owns and operates her own not-for-profit childcare centre. She's the shining light of what we want women to be able to do, particularly when they're in a circumstance of raising children on their own. She is working to support her children and to care for other people's children but, since JobKeeper was taken away, she's had to close her business, and she's now applying for JobSeeker. She wants to work, but she hasn't received any extra funding as a not-for-profit. She loves the families that send their children to her centre and she understands why many of them are scared to send their children to early education and child care at the moment. She understands why many of them aren't sending their children, because they have lost their jobs or they can't go to work. She doesn't blame them, but she clearly stated to me that if JobKeeper hadn't been ripped away her business would have been able to survive and she wouldn't be nearing the poverty line.

Our childcare workers have been working harder than ever during this pandemic. At Jo's centre in Frankston South her workers have been doing double the work, learning how to provide education online. We heard at our forum about education being provided online for children who are 12 months and younger. Jo's biggest gripe is, again, this lack of appreciation of the importance of valuing child care and early education. Because this federal government won't go beyond one-year funding cycles, Jo is always having to say to her staff: 'I want to employ you next year. I value you. I want to keep you on, but I just don't know until I find out whether or not this funding for three-year-old kinder is going to be extended'. She's always saying to the parents: 'We want to have places for your children, but I just can't tell you whether they'll be there or not until I know whether there's going to be funding.' There needs to be more than one-year funding. It's just not good enough. This government needs to commit and actually put in place three-year funding cycles for early education.

Linda is an early childhood educator who has two bachelor degrees and has been working twice as hard during lockdowns. She doesn't understand how a 75 per cent approach was reached and why JobKeeper was ripped away from a sector that is vital for parents to get back to work. She's also proud of the fact that she provides nurturing and care for the children she looks after as well as education. She had a message for me to bring to this parliament: 'The government's so-called triple guarantee has not worked for Victorian parents and childcare providers. In fact, between families and centres it's caused some tensions that just don't need to exist at a time when stress levels are at their highest.'

Bernadette is a terrific parent who attended my forum because she just wanted to know whether there was an answer. It seemed crazy to her that the government could have used this time to redesign the childcare scheme but in fact hasn't. She's one of many women who want to go back to work but has done the financial calculations and says that if she returns from maternity leave she's going to have to pay more for child care than she will receive from her income. That is the opposite of the kinds of policies we need to have in place for women and the workforce—for the women, for the work that's done, for their children and for the economy.

We're in a special position, a unique position, in Victoria because of the difficulties we're going through now with stage 4 lockdown. That is absolutely correct, and the Prime Minister should be fleet-footed and innovative enough to acknowledge that there's a special case to return JobKeeper to early education and childcare workers in Victoria. It is absolutely essential. As the shadow minister for early education has said, there is nothing in the government's measures that protects casual or part-time educators from being stood down, and it's a serious problem because only 32 per cent of the sector is full time. That's what we are hearing.

Kerry told me about her centre, which she loves. The management are terrific. She loves working there. But full-time staff are now essentially on day-to-day calls to see whether they're going to get shifts, because there's not enough work. That translates, without JobKeeper, to working women being without income, and it's not good enough. JobKeeper should be returned to the early education and childcare sector in Victoria.

This is our chance, with this COVID recession, to say not that we're going to snap back to where we were in 2019 but that we want to build an Australia which is based on the fundamental beliefs of our community. It's about a good quality of life and a standard of living that everyone can attain, not just a privileged few. When a federal government makes decisions about investment and budget it should look at three factors: at the economy and the stimulation of jobs that are part of growing an economy; at a better future that guarantees the environment and the climate; and at whether the investment also builds on social capital, on community connectedness and on a society where everyone feels valued and everyone feels that they can contribute. Investment in early education and child care so that the workers are valued and can contribute and so that every family can send their child to get the early education they need—can you think of a better way of not just stimulating the economy and jobs but also building social capital and connectedness? It's about equity. It's about fairness. On behalf of the community of Dunkley, I'm asking the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to invest in our community, to return JobKeeper to child care and to use this opportunity to build a better system.

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