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

[by video link] Like everyone who's spoken before me, or at least everyone on my side of the chamber who's spoken before me, I find this piece of legislation, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Subsidy) Bill 2021, both important and disappointing. It's important because any reform to the childcare subsidy system, which, under the Morrison government, is flawed and is one of the most expensive in the OECD, is welcome. It's disappointing because it just doesn't go far enough. Of course it's not as good as the policy that was announced by the Leader of the Opposition, and I join with my colleagues in urging the government to put aside petty partisanship and look to improve this legislation and the system in the way that federal Labor has proposed.

But it's not just that lack in this legislation that is disappointing. It's the lack of any vision of what early childhood education and care really is about. The disappointment is the lack of any vision for how to better the working lives of the frontline workers, who are predominantly women, without whom we could not have gotten through the lockdowns last year in Victoria and without whom we will not be able to get through the current lockdown or any that we may have in the future. There is no vision for how to improve their pay, no vision for how to improve their working conditions, no vision for how to say, 'Early childhood educators and carers are crucial because they are looking after and educating our children and our future.'

There is no vision for how to make early childhood education and care an integrated part of the education system so that it can be one of the tools we have to address socioeconomic and systemic disadvantage between communities across the country. That's what education should do, and early education and early childhood education should be a part of that. The disappointment in this legislation is the lack of vision of a culture in this country where the care of children isn't a women's issue, where the care of children is a human issue and a family issue and we acknowledge that child care is a responsibility of both men and women.

There is a lack of understanding of how workforce participation in early childhood education and care is an economic driver in this country, not only bringing about economic growth but also bringing about equality in economic opportunity. To have an economy that grows for all, not just for some, we need to be assisting all to participate as much as they want to and to their full capacity.

This legislation, which, it's worth noting, came about despite the fact that the Prime Minister, his ministers and his government derided Labor for saying that the childcare system needed to be fixed, while it makes some changes, doesn't go far enough. Not every child in our country can access the quality early learning they need, and we can't accept that. That should not be good enough for a prosperous and successful country like ours. Systems that are based just on the workforce participation of parents exclude some children from the early learning system, and they often exclude children that need it more than others because they aren't getting the same level of early education and care at home as other children. The cost of accessing early learning for those extra days—the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day—is not only preventing predominantly Australian women from going back to work. It's preventing their children from getting the early education and care that they deserve and that they should be entitled to.

The gender pay gap in this country is unacceptably high and stubbornly high, and any reductions that we have seen in the last few years can be attributed predominantly—not entirely, but predominantly—to general wage stagnation and issues with men's pay in areas like mining not going up. It's linked to occupations like early education and care that are seen to be gendered, are gendered and have traditionally been undervalued because they're seen to be women's work and care. We have to change the way we view early education and care in this country: to value it for itself, to value it for what it gives our children, to value it for what it gives parents who want to work, to value it for what it gives to the economy. We also have to change a view that is embedded in our industrial relations system, and how pay is often set, that somehow work that is predominantly done by women is worth less than work that is predominantly done by men. We have to change that. That is a role for government as much as it is a role for society. It's a role for government with its industrial relations policies, with things like equal remuneration orders, with getting in there and saying, 'This industry needs to be paid more, and the workers there need to be paid more,' because that is in part the way we value that the work they do.

Labor's policy is to give this work—early education and care—the value that it deserves. Labor's policy is to take the pressure off almost every working family in this country in terms of the affordability of child care. It's to allow parents to get back that fourth and that fifth day and it's to remove structural barriers that prevent it. Labor will scrap the $10,560 childcare subsidy cap, which is the barrier that I just spoke of. A Labor government would lift the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent and a Labor government would increase childcare subsidy rates for every family earning less than $530,000. More than 100,000 families are locked out of child care because they can't afford it—100,000 families across this country—and that's not acceptable. Under Labor, the Productivity Commission would be asked to conduct a comprehensive review of child care, with the aim of implementing a universal 90 per cent subsidy for all families. It should be seen as part of our education system. In this country, from the start of your life to the end of your life you should be able to be continuously learning. You should be able to access education and training, no matter where you live, who your parents are or what your background is. You cannot do that at the moment in this country. We need a public education system that allows that. It is something that my community absolutely understands.

I want to finish my contribution like many others before me by acknowledging the amazing work of the early childhood educators and carers across my electorate. Just recently, since the most recent lockdown that we've had in Victoria—and here's hoping we don't another one for quite some time—I've had the opportunity to visit Monique, at the Early Learning Sanctuary in Frankston; Kylie; at Genius Early Learning Centre in Seaford; Ruby, at the Veronica Street Children's Centre in Langwarrin; and Jodie, at Kidding Around Childcare Centre, just across from John Paul College in Frankston. What these centres have in common is that they are run by people who are absolutely passionately dedicated to the future of the children that they are entrusted to care for for one to five days a week.

I've spoken to parents at many of those centres, predominantly women, who understand the value of the people who work at those centres. They are handing over their most precious loved ones, their children, for hours and days of the week, and they want their carers and early educators to be paid properly and to have wages and conditions that reflect the work that they do. They also want to be able to afford to give their children the opportunity for that early learning on as many days as possible without essentially having to work for free two days a week to have them go there.

I want to say to Monique, Kylie, Ruby, Jodie and all of the childcare workers and centre owners across Dunkley: we see you, we hear you, we value you and we know that we couldn't have got through 2020 and the first half of 2021 without you, and I will continue to dedicate my time in this chamber to making sure that you get paid properly and that your wages and conditions are at the standard that you deserve and that parents across this community can send their kids to early learning and child care without wondering how they're going to pay for it or having to give up work because they just can't.

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