Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to bring to the attention of the House the issue of childcare workers in Greenway and the sector itself. In the last 24 hours we have become bogged down due to a certain type of ideology on this issue that is getting tried on in this place. But I think it is important to return to first principles. What we are actually talking about in reality, especially in Greenway, is a special obligation, as I have said on a number of occasions in this place. It is a special obligation in Greenway because about 8.2 per cent of the population in Greenway is aged zero to five years. So it is one of the youngest electorates in Australia. There were about 13,080 children from 9,930 families in child care during 2011-12. That makes early childhood education and the childcare sector absolutely critical to the residents whom I represent.

As I said, in the last 24 hours we have had a lot of discussion in this place and in the media, but I think we should return to first principles—that is, costs for parents and caregivers, and quality of care.

These are things you come to appreciate when, as a new parent, you start turning your mind to childcare arrangements and going back to work—the sheer logistics of child care. There is an unspoken understanding when you do the drop-off in the morning and it feels as though the second shift of the day is starting. You have had your first shift at home and the second shift is about to start. Then the third shift is when you turn up to the centre at the end of the day for the pick-up. Sometimes you have an opportunity to chat to other parents or to some of the carers and you realise a couple of things: the importance of continuity of care in your child's life and the trust you put in the people with whom you are willing to leave your child.

Too many people in the sector are leaving. They cannot make it a career any more. I have visited a lot of schools and childcare centres in my electorate—especially in my first term, because I thought it was very important to stay in touch with this sector. There were a number of people working in the childcare sector, often as directors, having to take second jobs because they could not make a go of it as a career. Our immediate concern is that pay rises should be honoured, and in the longer term we have to give people a reason to make this a career. I would not be surprised if in the immediate term we have a lot of people studying child care who just decide to change their course options and give it away. We are going to have a huge problem in Australia in the next decade in the childcare and aged-care sectors because we are not giving lower-income people, whom we should value, proper incomes and career choices. (Time expired)