Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Early Childhood Education. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to make early childhood education more affordable, providing cost-of-living relief to families and boosting the economy through workforce participation?

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for his question. I know that he's very committed to relieving the cost of living for Australians by reducing the cost of early childhood education and care and making sure that children in the electorate of Solomon, particularly First Nations children in the electorate of Solomon, get the very best possible start to life.

Access to affordable early childhood education and care is a vital part of a child's early years of development, but it's also critical to our economy, and that' s why a Labor budget will deliver on our commitment, the commitment that we went to the election with, to make early childhood education and care more affordable for 1.26 million Australian families.

Our reforms come after years of inaction from those opposite, with fees going through the roof by 41 per cent over the past eight years. We've listened. We've listened to Australian families. We've listened to parents. We've listened to the mothers who want to go back to work, who want to take on extra hours, who want to have career progression, who want to go back to study, and we are delivering on cost-of-living relief directly in this family-friendly budget. This is not welfare. It is meaningful economic relief that gives families greater choice. In the words of former South Australian premier and the director of Thrive By Five, Jay Weatherill, 'For our economy, more affordable child care will help unlock the power of parents' workforce participation, particularly mothers, which would in turn help address the labour shortages we're currently experiencing across the country.' And that includes workforce issues in early childhood education and care. Treasury estimates that these measures will increase the hours worked by women with young children up to 1.4 million hours per week in 2023-24. That's the equivalent of around 37,000 full-time workers, and that's going to make a real difference to our economy.

We know that these reforms will only be possible if we are retaining, recruiting and training a high-quality early childhood education workforce. The Albanese government is committed to wage growth, including for the critical early childhood education and care workforce. That's why we successfully argued for a rise for the lowest-paid workers in Australia—and I remind the House that those opposite opposed that; they didn't want that. That's why we're committed to addressing the gender pay gap and we'll strengthen the ability of the Fair Work Commission to order pay rises for underpaid women workers. But Australians understand this. They understand that we didn't create the challenges ahead of us, but they elected us to take responsibility for addressing them, and that's exactly what we're doing.