Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pay and conditions in the early-childhood education sector, in an industry overwhelmingly made up of committed female educators, are manifestly inadequate and have been held down through the kinds of factors that create the gender pay gap in Australian society as a whole. The Labor government took the first step to addressing this inequity in recognising that early childhood educators have absolutely earned a modest but important increase in their remuneration for performing one of the most important roles in our society. Only last week the Prime Minister said in question time that he would honour the provision of $300 million by the Labor government for the purpose of improving pay and conditions for childhood educators. I know that at that point many workers in my electorate breathed a sigh of relief that common sense and fairness had won out. This week, unfortunately, that commitment by the Prime Minister has gone onto the pile of broken promises that includes Gonski. The coalition is asking those hardworking women to take the coins back out of their pockets and purses. At the same time as the Abbott government is giving back the fair contribution of mining profits to the massively profitable mining companies and at the same time as the Abbott government is giving back the contribution big polluters pay to help address the climate effects of their pollution, the Abbott government is asking poorly paid childhood educators to hand back a small pay increase in the shadows of Christmas. I pay tribute to the Big Steps campaign, and we will continue the effort to achieve professional wages and conditions for early childhood educators.