Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is Early Learning Matters Week. I begin my remarks by giving a shout-out to all of our amazing early childhood educators and teachers and the extraordinary work that they do in giving our younger generation the best start in life. The science is in. We know that ages nought to five are the most critical years for all of us in terms of our development. That is when we learn the foundation skills to set us up for primary school and beyond. Unfortunately, at the moment, in early childhood education, there is a slight staffing crisis. So, in the lead-up to the week, I reached out to all of our centres just to find out how challenging it has been. We also need more spaces, more centres. I had a few parents reach out to me to say, 'We're really keen for our children to start early childhood education, but we simply can't find a space.' In my electorate, there are 32 long-daycare providers. Of those, two are local government, nine are not for profit—mainly Goodstart—and the rest are for profit.

Of the 28 centres that responded to us, 27 said that they had waitlists—that they could take more children but they just didn't have the space. The staff shortage was the greatest issue when it came to occupancy and capacity. In other words, they had the physical room, but not enough educators or teachers to be able to open more rooms. If we could solve this staffing shortage just imagine how many more children would have an opportunity to access early childhood education. One centre said that, whilst they couldn't employ kindergarten teachers, they actually had enough children to fill their three-to-five room and still have a waitlist. On the days these children didn't go to formal kinder they went to long day care and accessed the program at this centre.

The biggest reason that came through for why they had staffing shortages was wages. We must do more to lift the wages of our early childhood educators. All of them are excited to know that this government is acting. This is the first sector to engage in multi-employer bargaining. They are looking forward to the outcome of that case.

Our early childhood educators, like our aged-care workers and our disability support staff, are the salt of our earth. They do an amazing job. Like them, our early childhood educators deserve a decent pay rise. It is one way we can help fix the capacity issues we are all currently experiencing in our centres. I thank the early childhood educators. This is a week to recognise the great work that you do.