I rise to speak in respect of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. Before I came into this place, I spent a over a decade in the employment and industrial relations space as a solicitor. I stood in the Fair Work Commission and the Federal Circuit Court representing workers and, just as often, the small businesses and family enterprises that employed them. If there's one thing that decade in particular taught me, it is that fair pay is not charity. It is not a good-to-have line item to be traded away when budgets get tight. Fair pay is the foundation for a functioning workforce. It's how a functioning economy is built. When you get it wrong, people leave the profession. When you get it right, they stay, they grow, and the whole system around them gets so much stronger. That is exactly what this bill is about.

This bill amends the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act 2024 to credit the special account with an additional $3.6 billion and to extend the act's sunset date to 31 December 2029. In doing so, it locks in for another two years the 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care workers that this government announced in August 2024—a commitment the Prime Minister earlier this year confirmed would be extended. It also, for the first time, opens up eligibility for the payment to employees in all childcare subsidy approved services, and it ties continued funding to new safety and quality conditions under the National Quality Standard.

This is a bill about wages, but it is also a bill addressing trust—the trust families place in the hands that care for their children every single day. Let me tell the House what this actually looks like on the ground. You have to talk about the rooms it happens in and the people who show up to do the job. Between now and the previous sitting week, I visited a number of early learning centres in Barton and also phoned a number of the small early learning centres just to check in and connect with them. I visited Goodstart Early Learning on Millett Street in Hurstville, which is in the centre of the electorate of Barton. The centre director, Emily, and her staff took me around the service room by room, introducing me to other educators and to the children in their care. I will confess I did not expect to leave that visit holding a little hand-painted cup and saucer and a small stack of drawings which, I am informed, were meant to be portraits of me. They now sit proudly in my electorate office. I was also very impressed to learn that at this Good Start there's a very close connection with the local primary schools and their relevant principals, who have a very close interest in the collaboration to ensure that children at the centre are school ready when they transition into primary school.

But behind that warmth and that impact was something much more serious. Educators talked to me quite candidly about the pressures of the sector and about what stability in their pay and their teams actually means for the children they teach. This is not a minor thing. Consistency of care is not a nice-to-have in early childhood education. It's the whole model. Children learn and settle through relationships, and relationships take time to build. Every educator who leaves because the pay does not stack up means a relationship broken and a service that has to start again. I saw the same story told a little differently at another early learning centre, Learn Bright Early Learning Centre in Kingsgrove. I met the early childhood educators working in a really beautiful, purpose-built facility run by the centre director, Vicki. What struck me there was the professionalism, the qualifications in the room and how much the children radiated confidence and a strong bond with the educators. These are genuine, qualified early childhood teachers doing work that shapes children's brain development in the first five years of life, for wages that have historically lagged well behind comparable professions. This bill, combined with the government's support for minimum wage increases, will mean $255 more per week for a typical full-time educator and $410 more per week for early childhood teachers compared with December 2024. For workers in Kingsgrove, this is really the difference between staying in the job they trained for and leaving it for something that pays the bills more reliably.

I also visited Goodstart Early Learning centre in South Hurstville, where I met centre director Verna and her team during Book Week. It was a small thing, perhaps, to sit on a tiny little chair while children told me about their favourite books and their favourite foods, but it reminded me of why the sector matters so much. This is where curiosity gets its first real encouragement.

While I was there, I also spoke with Kelly, a local and an education leader at the centre, who spoke so powerfully about the importance of educators reflecting the diversity of the community they serve. Barton is one of the most multicultural electorates in the country, and Kelly's point from my conversation with her really stayed with me. She really described her Chinese heritage and the importance of language while she is working at that particular centre and supporting these children. If we want children to grow up seeing themselves reflected and valued, that starts with who is standing at the front of the room. Retaining a diverse educator workforce is not possible if that workforce cannot afford to stay in that sector.

And there is Whizzkidzz Early Childhood Centre in Beverly Hills, run by Fiona. It is a smaller service than some of the others I have mentioned, but no less vital to the families who really rely on the service. This early learning centre supports many families in the surrounding area, and Fiona's centre is a reminder that this sector is not only made up of large national providers but also includes small, community rooted operators, not-for-profit and for-profit alike, who are just as squeezed by workforce shortages and just as committed to the children in their care. Any policy in this space has to work for services like Fiona's, not just for the biggest players, and I'm glad that this bill's expansion of eligibility to all provided services does exactly that.

These four recent visits in Hurstville, Kingsgrove, South Hurstville and Beverly Hills are just a small sample of a much bigger picture, but they tell a very consistent story. Early childhood educators are showing up every single day to do some of the most significant work in this country for wages that have not always reflected that. The data bears this out. Since the worker retention payment was announced in 2024, the sector has added around 20,000 more workers, an increase of about eight per cent. Job vacancies have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The proportion of services operating under a staffing waiver—a polite term for services that could not find enough qualified staff to meet ratios—has dropped from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent, and fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at around half the rate of centres that are not signed up. That is what a functioning labour market intervention looks like: it does not just lift wages, it stabilises an entire workforce and in turn stabilises the cost of living for families.

My last point matters enormously in an electorate that's very diverse, like Barton, where families in Rockdale Kingsgrove, Kogarah, Bexley and Carlton are also juggling mortgages or rent stress along with the cost-of-living pressures of raising a kid. This funding extension is forecast to save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years, because continued funding remains conditional on services limiting fee increases. That is a government using public investment as leverage for public good—better pay for workers and lower costs for families achieved through the same mechanism rather than pitting them against one another.

I want to speak briefly to the safety provisions in the bill, because they matter just as much as the wage setting. From July 2027 standards will be required to meet quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard relating to children's health and safety as a condition of continued funding under this special account. Around 95 per cent of services already meet this standard, which speaks very well of the sector, but 95 per cent is not good enough when we are talking about children's safety. Binding continued wage-funding to safety compliance sends the right signal that this government values the people who do the work and that it expects, in return, that every service meets the standard that families are entitled to assume is already in place.

As a former employment lawyer, I want to make one further point on the structure, the architecture, of this bill. It includes a technical but important amendment that clarifies that, where an approved provider is not a legal person, such as a partnership, the worker retention payment grant agreement can be made between the Commonwealth and a person acting on behalf of that provider. This is necessary work and good legislation that makes sure a policy designed to help real people in real workplaces does not get tripped up by a technicality in how a small business happens to be structured. I've seen too many well-intentioned schemes falter on exactly this kind of gap, and I'm pleased to see it addressed here.

Passage of this bill is required by the end of the September sitting period to ensure that sufficient funds remain in that special account to continue the work of the retention payment without interruption. I don't think anyone in this House wants to be the reason why an early childhood educator or teacher in Kingsgrove or South Hurstville opens their pay slip in October to find that their pay has gone backwards because we didn't have enough time. So I say to Emily, who has an amazing team at Goodstart in Hurstville; to Vicki and the educators at Learn Bright in Kingsgrove; to Verner at Goodstart in South Hurstville; to Fiona at Whizz Kidzz in Beverly Hills; and to every single educator across the electorate of Barton and across this country who shows up for our children this bill says very clearly that this parliament sees your work, it absolutely values the work that you do and this Labor Albanese government is prepared to back it with real money and a real ongoing commitment to the sector.

Anyone in this place who has spent five minutes talking to a childcare worker knows they deserve wage justice. That is not a controversial statement. These workers spend their days teaching, feeding, comforting and caring for the next generations of Australians. But I cannot sit here and listen to the government congratulate itself while regional families are again abandoned by this Labor government. This debate paints a picture of a thriving, well-supported early education system. If others in this place would step outside of the major cities and into my electorate of Grey, they would see a very different reality.

I want to preface this by saying that the childcare workers in regional South Australia do a fantastic job and I applaud our childcare workers for the thankless work that they do. However, in 2024, according to the Mitchell Institute, the electorate of Grey, which covers more than 90 per cent of South Australia, was named the worst electorate for childcare access in the entire nation, and it shows. More than one-third of families simply do not have access to child care, and if you do the waitlists are enormous. You have to plan your child care before you plan to have a child. Worker retention is a serious issue. If we cannot pay early childhood workers properly, we will not keep them.

I want to remind this House that family day care was not part of this bill initially. Of course, family day care supports regional communities, and I'm glad that it was brought back in. But this isn't even the first problem for us. Before you can retain a childcare worker and before you can pay a childcare worker for the work they do, you need a centre for them to work in. Across large parts of regional South Australia, that simply does not exist. This is not a new issue. In 2024, 23 councils across South Australia in my electorate formed a group called the Regional Childcare Desert Advocacy Project to highlight this exact crisis.

People with the skills and qualifications to teach, to grow our communities and to work in our hospitals are not staying in Grey, because there is nowhere for their child to go. I have countless nurses, doctors, aged-care workers and teachers who want to go back to work, but they have no choice but to stay at home, and this includes dads as well. Housing, health and child care are three of the biggest issues crippling our regions. They're three areas this Labor government says it's doing a fantastic job on delivering for. This shortage is holding back regional growth and damaging our state economy.

I want to raise the work of Remote & Isolated Children's Exercise, or RICE, which does an amazing job of supporting families in the outback and in regional communities. Even RICE struggles to attract staff, because finding and retaining qualified staff is impossible. They are advertising a position right now and struggling to fill it. What hope do our regional providers have if an organisation as respected as RICE cannot find staff?

This leads me to TAFE. This government continues to push fee-free TAFE, but it has absolutely gutted TAFE in regional South Australia, including cert IIIs in early childhood education. It's so emblematic of this government—provide services, and provide them for free, but only if you can access them, and that access never exists out in the bush.

Then there is outside school hours care, or OSHC. In the very same week the South Australian Labor government was in Adelaide championing new OSHC services, Stirling North and Quorn closed. They closed that very same week, and it was because of staff challenges. This is not one unfortunate incident. Crystal Brook and Laura OSHC services have also closed in recent years. This is a pattern playing out across my electorate while the government spruiks new announcements in the cities. When an OSHC service closes in a town, it does not just remove an after-school program; it removes the only thing standing between a parent and having to leave their job because there is no-one to collect their child from school and hold them until the end of a shift.

I want to be precise about why these services are closing, because the government keeps announcing funding as if money alone solves this. There are two distinct problems facing OSHC and child care in regional areas: access to qualified staff and financial viability. A centre's ability to pay wages is based on enrolment numbers, and, in thin regional markets, those numbers are too often too low to sustain a service at all. This is made harder as South Australia has very specific qualification requirements for childcare services, with primary contact educators requiring a diploma. This is particularly the case in government preschool and rural care programs, and this is higher than the general national minimum of a certificate III for educators working in centre based child care.

In the cities, providers can draw on a steady pipeline of university students working toward these qualifications while they learn. In the regions, we simply do not have that option. At the same time, there are simply not enough people studying these qualifications in the first place. Regional TAFE training continues to be underfunded, and registered training organisations, or RTOs, have been progressively withdrawing from country South Australia, shrinking the pipeline of qualified educators even further. Providers in the city can draw on university students and a larger labour market. Regional communities like Moonta, Orroroo, Tumby Bay, Crystal Brook or Port Broughton do not have that advantage and do not have access to these services.

No amount of new funding announcements will change that until this government addresses workforce availability directly. There is a practical fix worth this government's attention, and that is family day care. Families and operators in Grey want to see more targeted funding to help communities and educators get buildings up to code for in-venue family day care. That's one of the barriers for family day care at the moment. Targeted funding would make family day care a more attractive career option in our regions. It would also increase the number of childcare places available without requiring a new centre to be built from scratch.

Then there is the problem of communities trying to build a childcare service to fix their childcare access issues. They want to solve the problem. They go to this government for funding, yet it doesn't work for them in the regions. The Building Early Education Fund, or BEEF, which this government says will deliver universal child care, does not. In regional South Australia, it is failing badly.

Take Crystal Brook as an example. This is a community that has been advocating for a childcare service for decades. Some of the volunteers started when their kids were young, and now those kids are adults. The Crystal Brook Community Childcare Working Group obtained conditional approval for a site at the local primary school. They commissioned architectural plans. They found an experienced not-for-profit operator ready to go. This is not a community that sat on its hands. This is a community that did everything it was asked to do. When the BEEF funding was announced, you would think Crystal Brook was exactly who this funding was designed for. Instead, they were locked out. The rules required applicants to already operate an existing childcare centre. They prohibit community consortiums from applying. They restrict eligibility to providers already running between one and nine facilities. It is absurd that a community group cannot even own an asset and lease it to an operator. Expecting volunteers to fund shovel-ready business plans within a two-month application window is an unrealistic burden for a community group with no capital to bring in consultants at short notice.

Think about what that actually means. A community starting from zero cannot apply, because they are not yet an eligible provider, but they cannot become an eligible provider without support to establish the service in the first place. It does not make sense. It is a closed loop, and these restrictive conditions heavily favour existing providers—you guessed it—in the cities, while making it nearly impossible for new regional operators to enter the market at all.

I want this place to hear what this actually looks like for families in regional South Australia, because behind every one of these gaps is somebody trying to hold a job, a business or a family together without any support. Bek, from Crystal Brook, owns a hairdressing salon that employs two staff members. Since she had her first child over four years ago, trying to keep her small business running has been an exhausting and emotional battle, and this is simply because of the lack of child care available. Bek said the lack of childcare in Crystal Brook isn't just an issue for families. She said it's an economic issue, a workforce issue and a regional community issue. I'll quote Bek:

Families want to work. Parents want to contribute. Small businesses want to grow.

But without access to reliable childcare, we are being held back.

Tasmin, from Wilmington, wanted to open a family day care to support her community. She was restricted by the copious amounts of red tape and hoops set up by this Albanese Labor government. She said that, with the cost-of-living pressures and workforce issues, all she wants to do is contribute, but she can't. Luke, a school principal in Yorketown, says he's watched teachers and families leave the area entirely. Schools are losing critical staff simply because child care is not available. Courtney, a station owner at Manners Well, has no access to child care at all. She said continued funding to regional and remote services like RICE is critical for families living on stations. Kara, from Appila, put her son on a waitlist when she was 15 weeks pregnant. She said, 'I thought people were joking when they said to put them down that early.' This is common across regional South Australia.

Isabella, a midwife from Port Lincoln, has been on the waitlist since she was six weeks pregnant. Her baby is now three months old, and she still has over a year to wait until she'll be able to access child care. Isabella said:

How am I meant to help mums bring their babies into this world if no one can safely look after mine?

Jessica from Port Broughton put it very plainly. In her community, women are being told they have to choose between having a family or a career. She said:

If you want a career and a family, you can't live here.

Erin, formerly of Booleroo Centre, made the decision most families are considering. Her partner's family had lived in Booleroo Centre for four generations. They put their name down on two waitlists when Erin was six weeks pregnant. By the time their child was 16 months old, they had not been offered a place. They left the town permanently, taking two working professionals out of a small community that could not afford to lose them.

These are just some of the responses I've received from my childcare survey, and they are not isolated stories. Across Grey, families are waiting years for a place. In some towns, waitlists run past 100 children, and every single one of those families is being told 'no'. With wage justice for workers in centres that don't exist in my electorate, or centres with staff shortages that no pay rise alone will fix, this bill does nothing for the families I represent. Families in Grey know what works for them. We need to listen to what they are saying.

Strong early childhood education helps build strong families, strong communities and, of course, a stronger Australia. Every day across Australia, early childhood educators help children to learn, to grow and to develop the skills they will carry through life. These are the people who support children's development and wellbeing at one of the most important stages of their lives. They help children build confidence, form relationships and develop the foundations that prepare them for school and for life.

They support families. They give parents confidence that their children are learning, thriving and being cared for. They help families to balance work and caring responsibilities. They help create opportunities for parents to participate in the workforce, to get an education and to contribute to their communities. This is work that matters. It matters to children. It matters to families. It matters to communities, and it matters to our economy.

It's also something that I understand firsthand. Before my two children started school—the youngest just started school this year—my family very much relied on local early childhood educators. Like so many parents, I know the trust families place in the people who help to care for and educate our children. I know the relationships that our children build with their educators, and I have seen firsthand the difference those educators make not only to children but to entire families.

The work these educators do is skilled. It is important. It is hard, and it deserves to be valued accordingly. Yet for too long it has not been. Before this government, for too long, early childhood educators—a workforce which is made up overwhelmingly of women—were underpaid despite the enormous contribution they make to Australian children, to families and to communities.

This matters because it's about how we value things. It's about how we talk about what we value in our society. If we say that children deserve the best possible start in life, we must value the people who help to provide that. If we say that families deserve support, we must value the people families rely upon every day. If we say that quality early childhood education matters, we must value the workforce that makes it possible.

That is why our government funded a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators and care workers, and it's why this bill is so important. This bill provides an additional $3.6 billion to the wage justice special account, and it extends that account through until 31 December 2029. It locks in support for higher wages for another two years and continues reforms that are already making a difference across the sector and across communities.

I have absolutely seen the importance of this reform throughout my electorate. Across Jagajaga, more than 100 early learning services support thousands of local children and families. I've personally visited many of these centres in Heidelberg, Watsonia, Ivanhoe, Eltham and right across the electorate. I've spoken and I speak with educators, with centre directors and with families about the challenges facing the sector and about the importance of retaining experienced staff. Again and again, I've been hearing the same message: workforce stability matters. Children benefit from having consistent relationships with educators who know them, who understand their needs and who can support their development. Families benefit when services can recruit and retain staff. Services benefit when experienced educators choose to stay in the profession. Educators deserve the confidence that they can build a long-term career doing work that they care deeply about.

When the worker retention payment was announced in 2024, the sector was facing significant workforce shortages. Services were struggling to recruit staff. Some were limiting enrolments, some were delaying expansion and many were finding it increasingly difficult to retain experienced educators. Since the changes we've made, there have been around 20,000 more people working in early childhood education and care. Job vacancies have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The proportion of services operating with a staff waiver has fallen from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. Behind those numbers are real people—people who've chosen to stay in a profession that they value and love, people who can now see a future for themselves in this sector, people whose experience is delivering better outcomes for our children and for families every single day. This bill will ensure that that progress continues.

For the first time, employees in all childcare subsidy approved services will be eligible for the payment. That extends the reach of this support across the sector, and it continues the work of recognising and valuing the workforce at the heart of early childhood education. This reform is about supporting educators and families. Services receiving the payment must commit to limiting fee increases. That is an important safeguard. It will make sure that the support that we are providing for higher wages is not simply passed on through higher costs for families. It will help to make sure that early learning continues to be affordable.

I am very aware that this reform is also about women's economic security because, for generations, work that has been traditionally undertaken by women has been undervalued by our communities and our society. Care work has been undervalued. Education work has been undervalued. Too often, the women who have undertaken this important work have been expected to accept lower pay despite how essential it is to our society and to our economy. I really do think that early childhood education is one of the clearest examples in this space. This is a highly skilled workforce. It requires expertise, responsibility and professionalism. On top of all of that, it requires care and a great deal of patience. Higher wages help recognise that reality. They provide greater economic security for the women working in the sector every day.

The benefits do not stop there. Affordable and accessible early childhood education also supports workforce participation across the economy. As I said, it gives families greater flexibility and it gives parents greater choice. It supports people, particularly women, who are often the primary carers, to participate more fully in the workforce if that's what they choose to do. That's why this reform is good policy—good social policy, good economic policy, good policy for Australian families and communities. It values care work while supporting workforce participation. It supports educators while supporting families. It recognises that these goals are not competing objectives; they actually reinforce each other.

We are also making it clear that quality and safety are fundamental. Every family deserves confidence that the place caring for and educating their child is safe. Every family deserves confidence that high standards are being maintained. Every family deserves confidence that public investment is supporting quality outcomes. This bill strengthens the conditions attached to Commonwealth funding. From July 2027, services receiving funding will be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, relating specifically to children's health and safety. Around 95 per cent of services already meet this standard. This reform will help to ensure quality and safety remain at the heart of the system.

There is a genuine difference in values at the heart of this debate. Our government believes early childhood education is essential social and economic infrastructure, and we believe that families should be supported to make the choices that work best for them, but not everyone shares those views. Recently at the National Press Club, Senator Pauline Hanson questioned why early childhood educators need qualifications and questioned whether they deserved higher pay. Those comments reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of both the work educators do and the contribution they make. Early childhood educators are not simply supervising children. They're helping children learn. They're supporting children's development. They are preparing children for school. They are identifying challenges early, supporting families and undertaking work that requires skill, training and professionalism. So when people like Senator Hanson question whether these workers deserve fair pay, they're really questioning whether we value the work itself. Labor's answer on this is clear: we absolutely do. We value the people educating and caring for Australia's children. We believe their wages should reflect the value of the contribution they make.

We've also heard criticism of support for early childhood education, more broadly. Senator Matt Canavan has argued that government support encourages parents to go to work and let someone else look after their children. I think that characteristic does not reflect the reality of modern Australian families. Families do make different choices, and many families rely on early childhood education so they can work, study, run a business and have the income that allows them to take care of their family. Those choices should be respected, not judged.

As I said, I am someone who absolutely relied on local early childhood educators when my own children were young. I know the confidence that those services give families. I know the skills and the best start in life that they give to our young children. I know the opportunities they create, and I know the difference they make in people's lives. That should be respected by this parliament, and that is what this government is doing.

More broadly, I think this bill helps us shape what kind of country we want to be—a country where we value the people who educate and care for our children, a country where we support families to participate in work and community life and a country where we recognise that care work is skilled work and is deserving of fair pay. It helps us to become a country where children benefit from experienced educators who are supported to stay in the profession and to contribute. Labor is very clear that this is the kind of country we are building and will continue to build. By extending support for higher wages, by strengthening the quality and safety conditions, by continuing the requirement that participating services in this scheme limit fee increases, we are making sure that these services are providing the best start for our young people while also providing broader support for families and communities.

The educators I meet across Jagajaga care deeply every day about the children and families they support. They work hard. As I said, they do long hours. They require great patience and great skill. It is important, skilled, valuable work. These educators deserve to know that their contribution is recognised. They deserve to know that their work is respected, and they deserve a government that backs them. This bill and this government does exactly that, and I commend it to the House.

I rise to speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account)(Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. This bill extends $3.6 billion in funding to keep the worker retention payment running to June 2028. The worker retention payment provides a 15 per cent wage increase for eligible early childhood education and care workers. It's an important commitment to ensure that ECEC workers are valued for the important role that they play in our children's lives and in the economy of our country.

Importantly, this legislation attaches safety and quality conditions to that funding. Grant agreements can require services to maintain ratings under the National Quality Standard in children's health and safety, with consequences for breaches including the potential suspension or termination of funding. After the events documented on many occasions in the last two years in this sector—after the horrifying cases that have shocked the country and have led so many of us in this place to call for additional measures, such as mandatory CCTV, tighter working-with-children-check enforcement, and genuine accountability for ECEC providers—this funding mechanism will make safety a condition of public funding, not an optional extra.

But a wage rise and safety standards are not the only reforms that are necessary to deliver the early childhood education and care workforce that Australia so desperately needs. This bill relates to people who are already working in the sector, but Australia has big issues in the pipeline—the pipeline that is meant to bring us the next generation of educators.

Migration has long been part of how this country staffs the early childhood education sector. Chronic structural shortages of qualified educators mean that overseas workers are, for many providers, the only way to keep rooms open while building that domestic workforce. Any tightening of the visa system needs to treat that reality deliberately, not sweep it up as collateral damage in a broader crackdown on migration.

Let me turn first to how the government is not prioritising early childhood education and care, in terms of skilled visas. This government has dropped early childhood and pre-school teachers from the list of invited occupations in the most recent skilled independent visa invitation round. At the same time that this parliament is funding another two years of wage justice for the workforce, the occupation itself was quietly taken off the list of skills that the government says that it prioritises and wants.

Migration shouldn't be a substitute for training and paying Australian educators properly, and this bill's wage measures are the right way to build and attract a growing domestic workforce. But, when 400,000 additional aged-care workers are also needed by 2050, and net zero alone will require 240,000 more workers within the next seven years, training pipelines alone won't close gaps in the workforce in the short to medium term for those sectors which are already in crisis.

I want to read to the House what migration-tightening in early childhood education and care looks like on the streets of the community that I represent—Kooyong. I have received correspondence from the chief operating officer of a day-care provider who operates centres in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. She described nine recent refusals of subclass 407 training visa nominations for her educators; she expects more refusals to come. These nominations or applications are not from people who are trying to game the system. As the provider has put to me directly, these applications relate to qualified, hardworking, ethical employees, who she had hoped to support through workforce training and ongoing professional development to improve their knowledge of the sector and to increase their competencies related to their position within those services.

These are people—overwhelmingly, young women—who are still early in their careers, and they don't yet have the experience which is required for roles that attract a salary above the income threshold for a subclass 482 skills-in-demand visa. Without another suitable pathway for those employees, that provider expects to lose them. She told me that the time and the skills that she has invested in developing those workers' competencies, along with the time and the cost and the dedication that those workers have demonstrated in acquiring those qualifications here in Australia, will end up benefiting other employers overseas instead. It's a crazy waste of time and of effort.

This provider told me that sponsoring overseas workers isn't always or even ever her first or easiest option, but that it's something that she has to pursue because there are simply not enough qualified, competent and experienced Australian educators available to meet the sector's needs—because she cannot otherwise fill critical vacancies in childcare centres. That provider told me that they expect to spend more than $90,000 on visa related costs in the next 12 months alone, while still turning away a significant number of job applicants, and that childcare rooms have already closed and that enrolments have already declined in the centres that she administers because they cannot recruit enough staff.

Every closed room in a childcare centre represents parents who can't yet return to work, and that reflects productivity lost from our economy. The recent announcement that Edge Early Learning has entered voluntary administration is another concerning indication of the widespread challenges facing the sector. It's not an issue that can be solved purely by extending a 15 per cent wage rise, which is, after all, already in place. This is a supply issue that the domestic labour market simply cannot meet. The figures bear this out. Home Affairs' own data shows that 55 per cent of subclass 407 applications were refused or withdrawn in the year to April 2026. That makes it now the most commonly refused visa program in the country.

Since March, sponsors have reported that delegates have been refusing nominations on the basis that a nominee is 'too experienced' for the training to be considered genuine, which is precisely the bind which faces early-career educators who have grown competent enough to be useful but not yet experienced enough to clear that income threshold for a subclass 482 visa. All of this is happening against the backdrop of a wider immigration crackdown that the government has publicly flagged but not yet rolled out and not yet fully explained.

The Minister for Home Affairs is understood to be finalising a package intended to bring net overseas migration down to Treasury's forecasts of 245,000 this year and 225,000 the year after. That is projected to occur through measures which will include partner visas, working holiday-makers, student visas and more. It is clear that public confidence in the migration system in this country needs rebuilding. That reform is long overdue, and that transparency is much needed, but an across-the-board tightening of visa numbers delivered without transparency and without sector-specific carve-outs risks treating early childhood education, which is, as we've established, a generally and chronically understaffed feminised essential workforce at risk, the same as visa categories that the public rightly wants restrained. Care work does not fit neatly into a blunt occupation list or a single wage floor. Even proposals to replace occupation lists with a recalibrated wage threshold acknowledge that care workers are hard cases and will need to be dealt with separately. The government has not yet told the sector what 'separately' means for it.

My ask of the government is this: I support the passage of this bill because the wage justice and safety measures that it includes are critical, but I ask the cabinet not to allow it to stand in isolation. I ask the Minister for Education to work with the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to establish a genuine pathway for early-career ECEC workers to build experience in Australia, to progress towards permanent residency and to avoid them being caught in an unfair trap between a 407 they can't renew and a 482 that they cannot yet afford or qualify for. I ask the ministers to review the cost of employer sponsorship for critical and undersupplied sectors, like early learning and childhood education, so that responsible providers aren't pricing themselves out of the workforce that they need to meet this bill's own new safety conditions. I ask the ministers to commit to publishing, before any further net migration reduction measures take effect, an assessment of the impact specifically on the care economy workforces. These are sectors that parliament has already recognised, through legislation like this, as facing a workforce crisis that the House cannot afford to worsen by accident.

Families in Kooyong and across this country deserve a childcare system that is both safe and available. This bill will make it safer. It's up to this government to make sure that it is not making it less available. I commend the bill to the House, and I commend my questions to the cabinet.

High-quality early childhood education is transformational, and at the core of this are early childhood workers. I'm raising my own family in the same community where I grew up, and in my first speech to the House I spoke about how the schools and early childhood centres that local parents in my electorate of Banks enrol their children in are the same ones my own daughter, Dorothy, and nieces Eleanor and Abigail attend. I want to see early childhood education thrive in my community and across the country, because it is one of the most important sectors. Every day, thousands of early childhood educators help children learn, grow and get ready for school. Up to 90 per cent of human brain development happens before children reach primary school age. It is critical in the first five years when children are developing their fine motor skills, social and emotional skills, and cognitive skills. Like all parents, I've seen this firsthand.

During this time, our children are in the care of highly skilled early educators who not only help them learn and grow but also can spot children who might need some extra support as they go through school. It is undeniably a critical service, even before considering how it impacts parents, giving them more flexibility and more choice around if and when they re-enter the workforce. But for too long, the people who do this work were recognised in rhetoric but not in their pay packets. It must be said that when this Labor government came to office, we inherited an early education system in a state of flux after 10 years of neglect by the coalition. Early educators were leaving the sector in droves not because they wanted to leave but because they couldn't afford to stay, with some centres reporting an annual attrition rate as high as 40 per cent. When attrition is that high, centres eventually just can't find the staff, and while the demand for services remained high, centres were delaying expansion plans, closing rooms and limiting their enrolments, because they couldn't reliably provide the services they wanted to anymore. Indeed, some early educators reported that, despite their training, they were able to earn more stacking shelves in a supermarket. This is no way to reward the highly skilled, tertiary qualified people who work in our important early education and care sector.

When presented with this situation, this government chose to act, and we have made a big difference. In 2024 we announced that we would fund a landmark 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood educators and care workers. When combining both the 15 per cent wage rise and the government support for minimum and award wage rises, the typical full-time educator is earning $255 a week more, and the typical full-time teacher is earning an extra $410 a week. This works out to over $13,000 a year and over $21,000 a year, respectively. At long last, early educators and teachers are being compensated fairly for the important work that they do for our families and communities. In my electorate of Banks alone, more than 700 workers across 85 early childhood services are being supported by this very program, alongside more than 130,000 of their colleagues nationwide.

While the impact on our early childhood workforce has been incredible, even more profound is how this has affected the sector as a whole. Today there are around 20,000 more early childhood workers than there were in August 2024—equivalent to an eight per cent increase. As a result, job vacancies in the sector have fallen by 31 per cent, job applications have risen by 30 per cent, and the number of services operating without a staffing waiver has been halved. The winners are not just in the sector; they are parents and families as well. As a result of the deliberate design of the previous legislation, fees at centres receiving this support grew at half the rate of centres that are not. This wage rise has worked to bolster our early educator workforce and kept costs down for our families, and this is why we are extending it.

This brings me to the legislation before the House, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. In June this year, the Labor government announced that we would be locking in the pay rise for another two years, to retain and grow these benefits. The bill before the House fulfils this commitment. With a $3.6 billion investment in the special account that is providing this funding, this bill locks in the pay rise over the next two years. Additionally, all centres approved for childcare subsidy will be eligible for funding if they meet grant requirements—including that all educators are engaged under a workplace instrument, ensuring that the government investment is passed on to the workers.

Importantly, in order to receive this investment, services have to limit their fee increases. This is incredibly important for the hardworking families in my community. Over the first year of this program, fees at centres that have received the payment have increased at half the rate of those that haven't, and, over the next two years, the average family will save about $1½ thousand. It means early childhood workers get the pay rise they deserve, without parents having to wear the costs. It is important to note that, should this legislation not pass and funding be allowed to lapse, early childhood fees could skyrocket by 17 per cent.

Finally, this legislation has one more incredibly important element: it ties funding to services meeting requirements around safety. If services do not meet Quality Area 2, relating to children's health and safety, under the National Quality Standard, their funding will be cut. Parents have a right to expect that the early childhood services they entrust with their children's education and care meet certain standards. While about 95 per cent of services already meet this requirement, the government is determined to drive that figure higher, through this and other measures already in place, as well as working together with state and territory governments to increase compliance and keep our children safe.

Since being elected, I've made the effort to visit a number of early childhood education services in my electorate, meeting local early childhood workers and seeing the impact that they have every day. In October last year, I had the opportunity to visit SDN Milperra with Minister Walsh and see their work: setting the standard as a centre, exceeding the NQS across all seven quality areas, and serving nearly 60 local families in the surrounding area. I was pleased to return, early this year, to deliver a new set of flags, alongside the state member for East Hills, Kylie Wilkinson, to make sure those flags were flying high in Milperra. Following that visit, I was able to visit another SDN site, at Riverwood, which also exceeds the NQS across all seven areas. The team at Riverwood do a tremendous job serving the community, with many in social housing, and I am pleased to be able to support them as they manage change related to redevelopment in the area.

Further, in February this year, when the national register and mandatory training came into effect, I was able to welcome Minister Walsh again to Banks, and the Minister for Education to Goodstart Early Learning, who serve more than 50 families in the Narwee area. I was also able to visit Koorana's Phillip Street Preschool with the member for Barton, and see how they are helping prepare their young learners in the suburb of Roselands for school. And just last Wednesday, I was able to visit St Mark's preschool in South Hurstville, to attend their Father's Day breakfast along with other local dads. It was a great time, and it was important to see that education happening in practice.

At each of the early childhood centres I've been able to visit in my time as a parliamentarian, two things have always struck me: first, the complexity and challenging nature of the work we ask our early childhood educators to do; and, second, the passionate dedication with which they do their job. That is why legislation like this is so important. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the educators and teachers who do this incredible work and who campaigned so strongly for this change alongside the incredible union representatives in the mighty United Workers Union, through their Big Steps campaign to secure professional pay, recognition and respect.

While our commitment to grow our early childhood workforce and improve the quality of education is built on the 15 per cent pay rise for workers, our agenda in this space is much broader. Every parent expects that their children will be safe when they attend their early childhood education service, but, unfortunately, some truly awful occurrences have rattled that confidence. It is a shocking scenario that demands government response.

That is why this government has passed legislation to cut off funding to operators that do not meet quality, safety or compliance requirements. Since then, the education department has taken action against 119 centres who were failing to meet the expectations of parents or the requirements of the legislation. The threat to cut off funding has worked, with 55 centres taking action to raise their quality and others voluntarily closing. Since November last year, the department has also utilised its power to undertake 1,300 unannounced visits, alongside a substantial increase in state and territory regulatory actions. Further, the National Early Childhood Worker Register is now active, making sure that both centres and regulators have full visibility of a person's work history in the sector. The mandatory child safety training has now been completed by more than 350,000 people. Mobile phones have also been banned, and a CCTV trial is underway in 300 locations across our country. These reforms are backed by an extra $226 million investment from the federal government, alongside contributions from state and territory counterparts.

Further, while this legislation is about valuing the people in the sector, we also know that we need to invest in the education and training of future early childhood educators. Many of our early childhood workers got their qualifications from TAFE, and, as a result of this government's fee-free TAFE program, more people with a passion for this work are able to get their qualifications without having to carry the burden of student debt.

Ensuring that every child, every parent and every family has access to high-quality, safe early childhood education is so important. While there is always more work to do, this Labor government, through the delivery of significant reform, is making progress and delivering real change for this sector. I am, as a parent with a child in early childhood education, seeing the benefits of these reforms on a daily and weekly basis. I see it through the advancement in learning of my little girl Dorothy. I see it in the skills being developed by my nieces Eleanor and Abigail and the social confidence they're getting through participating in early childhood education. I also see it in the conversations I have with early childhood workers, who share their passion and their love for educating the next generation and ensuring we're laying the foundation for a highly educated community and society and a more productive economy for many years to come.

There are few decisions more personal for a parent than who cares for their child, and there are few jobs that carry more trust than the work of an early childhood educator. Every day, parents across my electorate of Lyne hand over the person they love most in this world to an educator and trust that person to care for them, nurture them, teach them and keep them safe. That is an enormous responsibility, and I thank all those educators across the Lyne electorate for the tremendous, wonderful work that they do.

Speaking here today, I start from a very simple position. Early childhood educators do important work. They deserve to be valued. They deserve safe workplaces, and the children deserve the highest standards of care. The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 provides another $3.65 billion for the worker retention payment to extend the scheme from November this year until 30 June 2028. It also enables grant conditions to be linked to the health and safety requirements contained in quality area 2 of the national quality standard. We welcome the certainty that that provides.

I also think this parliament needs to be very clear about what this bill does not do. It does not solve the childcare shortage. It does not guarantee a place for a family that's been sitting on a waiting list for months or years. It does not resolve the long-term funding of wages after June 2028.

Despite the government saying that it is extending support to family day care and in-home care, the bill, as it's presently designed, does not give many of those educators a realistic pathway to actually receive it. That matters enormously in regional Australia, because child care in regional Australia does not always look like child care in metropolitan Australia. In smaller communities—for farming families, nurses working shifts, police officers, aged-care workers, hospitality workers and parents working outside nine-to-five hours—family day care and in-home care can be absolutely essential. Yet Family Day Care Australia told the Senate inquiry into this bill that virtually all of its approximately 8,500 educators operate as self-employed sole traders or independent contractors. Together, they support more than 47,000 families and 67,000 children.

Under the government's rules, services where educators operate through those lawful contractor arrangements can be excluded from the payment. That simply makes no sense to me. If the purpose of this payment is to retain good educators, why design it around an employment model that excludes so many of the educators we are supposedly trying to retain? A regional family doesn't care whether the person caring for their child is technically employed under one particular industrial instrument. They care that the educator is good, they care that their child is safe and they care that the service is still there next week. That is why the coalition will seek amendments in the Senate to establish a practical pathway for family day care and in-home care educators to access the payment without forcing providers to abandon lawful contractor arrangements.

For Lyne, this is not an academic argument. Across the Mid North Coast and the Hunter region, access to child care has been a serious problem for years. Regional Development Australia Mid North Coast found that only about 65 per cent of childcare demand was being met in 2023. The estimated consequence was an extraordinary $384 million a year in lost wages for families across the region because parents could not work the hours they wanted or needed to work. The underlying survey paints an even more confronting picture. Ninety-one per cent of responding families were on at least one waiting list. A quarter of providers were operating below their approved capacity because they could not find enough staff. A third had been trying to fill vacancies for more than 12 months. That is the regional reality. You can build a childcare room, you can subsidise the fees and you can announce billions of dollars from Canberra, but, if there isn't an educator available to work in that room, there isn't a childcare place.

I see that problem very clearly in Gloucester. Gloucester Pre School & Early Years Learning Centre has 58 children enrolled and a waiting list stretching for up to two years. The community has not sat back waiting for someone else to fix it. The centre has purchased another property in nearby Barrington because it wants to expand its not-for-profit service and create more places. It needs assistance with the capital works to make that happen. That is why I included the project in my prebudget submission to the government and asked the government to support the project through the Building Early Education Fund. There is a fairly obvious point here. You cannot send your child to a wage increase; you need a childcare place.

Sometimes families need more than a childcare place. We see that very clearly in Taree through the extraordinary work of First Steps Count. First Steps Count is built around a simple understanding: if we want children to thrive, sometimes we need to support the whole family around them. It is a child and family hub where families with children from birth to 12 can simply walk through the door without a referral, without having to know which service they need and without having to navigate a complicated system on their own. A parent might come in with their child for a playgroup or an activity. They might need some parenting support. There may be concerns about the child's development, behaviour or wellbeing, or that family may be dealing with much bigger pressures in their lives and need help connecting with health, family or specialist services. First Steps Count brings those worlds together. There are supported playgroups—I've seen them and I've seen the amazing play area outside. It warms your heart to see the kids out there, I have to say. It's not in my speech notes, but I've got to say it. It is just a wonderful space. There are also early learning programs, parenting programs and family support. There are health and wellbeing services and specialist supports. Importantly, there is a navigator who can walk alongside a family and help connect them with the right services, both within First Steps Count and across the wider community. That matters because too often we expect a parent who is already struggling to work out which door to knock on, fill in another form and tell their story all over again. First Steps Count turns that around. The door is open. Families are welcomed, relationships are built and support can come to the family rather than expecting the family to navigate the system alone.

That vision didn't happen overnight. I particularly want to acknowledge Rosemary Sinclair AO, one of the founding members and now patron of First Steps Count. For well over a decade, Rosemary and an extraordinary group of local people held on to the belief that Taree could do something different, bringing services together around children and families rather than leaving families to find their own way through a fragmented system. That persistence has created something our community can be enormously proud of, and I think there is a lesson in it for this parliament. Early childhood policy cannot just be about childcare places or workforce participation. It must also be about development, early intervention, strong relationships, confident parents, connected families and identifying problems early enough that we have a chance to change the trajectory of a child's life. Ultimately, the measure of our success should be a very simple one: are we giving every child the best possible start in life?

That brings me to the Page Research Centre's recent report, Raising the next generation. I think it raises an important question that's been missing from this debate. What are we actually trying to achieve? Is the purpose of family policy simply to get every parent back into paid employment as quickly as possible, or is it to help families raise healthy, secure children while giving mums and dads genuine choices about how they organise work and care? The Page report starts from the principle that children are a public good, that caregiving is productive work and that women deserve genuine choice rather than being funnelled into one prescribed pathway. I think there's something very important in that. Most families I meet aren't looking for government to tell them how to raise their children. They're trying to make the best decisions they can. One mum may desperately want to return to work. Another may want three days at work and two at home. A family may rely on grandparents. Another may depend on family day care. A nurse working night shifts may need in-home care. A farming family may need flexibility that a standard metropolitan childcare centre simply cannot provide. None of those families is wrong, yet our current system overwhelmingly subsidises one particular model.

The Page report argues that this has created an implicit policy preference for centre based institutional child care, while parental care, kinship care and other home based forms of care receive little equivalent recognition. It goes further and proposes replacing the existing childcare-only subsidy for children aged zero to three with a choice-in-care subsidy, available for parental care, kinship care, home based care, community care or centre based care. That is a proposal worthy of serious consideration, because genuine choice means more than making one option cheaper; it means recognising that families are different.

The report makes another point that is particularly relevant to country Australia. More than one-third of Australian communities are what it describes as childcare deserts—generally, areas where there are at least three children for every available place. In some regional communities, there are more than five children competing for each place, and in some small towns there are no long-day-care services at all.

The report specifically identifies workforce shortages, long waitlists, reduced operating hours and long travel distances as problems that fall particularly heavily on regional families, agricultural families, shift workers and small-business owners. That sounds very familiar to anyone living on the Mid North Coast.

So, when I look at this bill, I support better remuneration for educators, but I don't want us to confuse spending more money with fixing the system. Families' childcare costs are still rising quickly. Childcare prices had risen by 7.3 per cent annually in July, more than twice the headline inflation rate, while average centre-based day-care fees have increased by around 28 per cent since the June quarter of 2022. Providers, families and educators are all under pressure.

The government is extending a temporary program for another 19 months without answering what happens when it ends. The worker retention payment was originally intended as an interim measure while the Fair Work Commission completed its work on gender based undervaluation. That Fair Work Commission process has now been completed. But, instead of a long-term model, this bill extends the temporary grant until 2028. As evidence to the Senate inquiry warned, that potentially creates another funding cliff when the scheme finishes. Educators deserve to know what comes next, and well before the next federal election. Providers deserve to know, and parents certainly deserve to know, whether the answer in 2028 will simply be higher fees.

Finally, there is child safety. There can be no qualification on this. Parents must be able to trust that, when they leave their child at an early learning service, that child will be safe. The coalition support strong and enforceable safety standards and welcome the bill's provisions linking grant funding to children's health and safety requirements. But a condition attached to a temporary wage grant cannot substitute for comprehensive, nationally consistent child safety arrangements across the sector.

The Page report also reminds us that quality is about more than compliance; stable relationships matter. Its review highlights the consequences of high workforce turnover and argues that continuity of care is particularly important for very young children. That gives us another reason to retain good educators.

The coalition will not oppose the bill's package, but I want much more ambition for Australian families than another temporary Commonwealth grant. I want an early childhood education system that values educators; that allows the family-day-care educator in a country town to participate on equal terms; that helps Gloucester create the places its community desperately needs; that recognises the realities faced by shift workers, farming families and small businesses; that puts child safety above everything else; and that trusts parents—because, ultimately, parents should not be forced into the childcare arrangement Canberra thinks they ought to choose. They should have genuine options: centre based care, family day care, in-home care, grandparents, kinship care, caring for the kids themselves or some combination of all of them. The goal shouldn't be one-size-fits-all child care. It should be strong children, supported parents, valued educators and, most importantly, strong families, particularly in regional Australia. That means building a system around how families actually live, not how Canberra assumes they live.

I certainly welcome the Nationals' new interest in early childhood education. Earlier this week, on Early Childhood Educators' Day, I had the pleasure of visiting three early learning centres in Hasluck: Sagewood Early Learning in Dayton, Bloom Early Education in Ellenbrook and the Read 2 Grow early learning centre also in Dayton.

As often happens on these visits, I arrived expecting to spend some time discussing policy and workforce issues, and we did. But what stayed with me was the people. I met educators whose days are filled with equal measures of patience, care and professionalism. I saw children learning, exploring and building confidence in environments that had been carefully designed to help them thrive. I spoke with staff who know every child by name and who understand that what they do each day is much more than just supervision; they are supporting learning, development, social skills, emotional wellbeing and a child's sense of belonging. These are institutions full of love. My visits reinforced something I've long believed: early childhood educators perform some of the most important work in Australia.

We all know that the first years of a child's life are critical. Research over many decades has consistently demonstrated that the foundations for learning, language development, emotional regulation and social skills are established in those early years. High-quality early education for children has long been associated with better educational outcomes, stronger workforce participation by parents—particularly women—and the long-term social and economic benefits that of course we all then enjoy. Those findings have been repeatedly recognised by the Productivity Commission and by governments of all political persuasions.

But if we truly believe that early education for children matters, then we must also recognise, in legislation, the people who make it possible. For too long, the early childhood workforce has faced low wages and significant retention challenges. The Productivity Commission found that many educators were paid substantially less than workers with comparable qualifications in other sectors, and that low pay was a major factor contributing to workforce shortages across the country. The commission also heard evidence that many educators struggled financially and, in some cases, relied on partners, second jobs or family support to remain in the profession. That situation was obviously neither fair nor sustainable.

When educators cannot afford to remain in the profession, the people who suffer are not just the workers themselves. Children lose experienced educators. Services struggle to recruit staff, and the trust that comes with regularity and continuity is eroded. Institutional memory goes missing. Families face disruption and uncertainty, and communities lose an essential source of support. That is why the Albanese government's worker retention payment was so important. The evidence now suggests that the policy is working. More than 215,000 educators across more than 11,600 services have benefited from higher wages. Workforce vacancies have fallen. Applications for positions have increased. Thousands more workers are choosing to join, stay in or return to the profession.

This bill builds on that success. It provides a further $3.654 billion for the early childhood education and care workers special account, and it extends arrangements supporting higher wages through to 2028. Importantly, this legislation recognises that better outcomes for children require more than just investment; they require stability. Children benefit when they are cared for by educators who know them, understand them and have built relationships with their families. I know, from meeting parents, day in, day out, within my electorate, how comfortable they feel that they can trust the person caring for their child while they are at work.

Workforce retention is therefore not only an industrial issue; it is a quality issue. Peak bodies across the sector have consistently argued that attracting and retaining educators is one of the greatest challenges facing early learning services. They have pointed to workforce shortages as a major constraint on availability and affordability. While different organisations may have varying views on implementation, there has been broad acknowledgement that improving remuneration is necessary if the sector is to build and retain the skilled workforce Australian families need.

As someone who regularly visits the childcare centres throughout Hasluck, I see the reality of that challenge firsthand. Service directors tell me they want to expand—they want to meet demand in growing communities like in Ellenbrook, Aveley and Dayton—but attracting and retaining qualified educators remains one of the biggest barriers that they face. This legislation helps address that challenge.

It also acknowledges another important reality. Much of the work undertaken in early childhood education has historically been undervalued because it is work traditionally performed by women. The Fair Work Commission found that employees covered by the Children's Services Award have experienced historical, gender based undervaluation of their work. Its determination recognised that the skills, responsibilities and value associated with the profession had not always been appropriately reflected in wages. This bill continues the journey towards correcting that injustice. It sends a simple but important message: caring for and educating young children is skilled work. It is valuable work, and it deserves fair recognition.

The legislation before the House in National Child Protection Week is also important because it strengthens the link between government support and child safety. Families expect childcare services to provide safe environments for children. They have every right to expect that services receiving taxpayer funding maintain appropriate standards and continuously strive for improvement. The bill therefore enables funding arrangements to include requirements associated with quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard, which relates specifically to children's health and safety. It also enables consequences where those standards are not maintained. That reform is part of a much broader effort by the government to strengthen confidence in the early childhood sector. Recent measures have included enhanced compliance activity, mandatory child-safety training, a national worker register and additional safety investments. These reforms reflect a simple principle: every child deserves to be safe, and every parent deserves confidence in the service caring for their child.

This week I spoke with educators in Dayton and Ellenbrook, and I was reminded that public policy is ultimately about people. It is about the educator who wants to remain in a profession that they love. It is about the young family relying on child care so both parents can participate in the workforce, if they wish to do so. It's about the service director trying to recruit and retain qualified staff. Most importantly, it is about the child, who deserves the best possible start in life. Those are the people that this bill supports.

These policies are widely supported in the community. We have a number of quotes that I want to refer to, because they do deserve to be on the record in Hansard. CEO of Early Childhood Australia, Samantha Page, said:

This is a well overdue pay increase, and I am thrilled that the government has acknowledged the professionalism of our educators …

Dr Erin Harper from the University of Sydney noted:

It's a strong signal the federal government recognises the workforce is undervalued and underpaid.

Lisa Annese, CEO of Chief Executive Women, stated that 'decent pay for educators is key to addressing staffing shortages in early education, which flow through to workforce participation and productivity across the economy'. Specialist early childhood publication the Sector characterised the industry response as broadly supportive, with organisations welcoming long-awaited wage justice measures. Goodstart Early Learning said about the 2024 bill:

This Bill and the supporting Government investment recognises the value and essential services provided by early childhood educators for working families, employers and children—with benefits ultimately flowing to the economy and our society as a whole.

Goodstart says their completed job applications have since increased by 35 per cent year on year, and expressions of interest are up 50 to 60 per cent. The National Foundation for Australian Women commends the Albanese government's decisions on long-overdue pay rises for the ECEC educators. The Productivity Commission's early childhood inquiry found higher wages and better conditions are likely to reduce attrition rates and attract more staff to ECEC. Community Early Learning Australia CEO Michele Carnegie wrote: 'The first tranche of this 15 per cent wage increase has been highly successful. It has delivered professional wages for over 200,000 educators and teachers, reduced vacancies and increased workforce retention in record time. It has been the driving factor in improving quality and safety for children in early education by stabilising our sector's workforce without increasing costs for families.'

We've heard from all corners of society on this bill, from those who work directly in early childhood education, as well as from academics and commentators and peak women's organisations. They have stated their strong support, because they all see the benefit of this government's approach.

We haven't heard a great deal from the opposition on this legislation, though—not much at all. It's as if members opposite think there's something more important than the interests of our young children. Now, anyone who doesn't understand what is going on with this opposition's almost deafening silence, on this and many other matters before the parliament, might think that the fix for the Liberals and Nationals is an easy one: just reorder their priorities; put a little bit more effort into a speech or two the day before parliament sits. But the malaise in the parties opposite didn't start yesterday.

In the 1970s, members in the ALP started raising the issue of gender politics and affirmative action. In the 1980s, nationally and in every state branch, the matter was debated. Through the 1990s, and over the 30 years since, the ALP has transformed itself from a party where every conference and party room was almost wall-to-wall bloke into one which now actually represents both men and women in proper proportion. The policies of the ALP in the 48th Parliament are informed by a caucus and a cabinet where women and women's interests are properly represented. This is making a difference in every portfolio, across health and education and housing and opportunity.

In the early childhood education area, where most workers are women and where women are largely the caregivers still mainly affected, policies like the legislation before us could never be expected to rise—as if by magic!—from a party that has not done the hard work to change itself. The opposition leader said the coalition needed to change or die. He's right. But where's the change? That's the problem with change: if you want it, you have to actually change.

A good opposition doesn't just carp; it has to have a vision for the future and policies to underpin that vision. What is the vision of those opposite for our ECEC sector?

Good governments, as the PM has indicated, deal with the challenges of the present, while investing in and planning for the future. Few investments are more important than those that support our children, support families and recognise the value of the educators who help shape the next generation. I congratulate the minister—and, in fact, the former minister for this portfolio, who happens to be in the chamber today, Minister Anne Aly. And I support the bill.

For most parents, there is a moment they'll never forget. It is the moment that they leave their child with someone else for the very first time. You give them one last hug, and then you walk away. Then, for many parents, you sit in the car afterwards and you wonder: 'Are they going to be okay? Are they crying? Will there be someone there who will comfort them when they're upset?' In that moment, you are handing over the thing that matters most in your world—your child—and you are placing enormous trust in the educator standing in that room.

I've always found it strange that we trust early educators with our children, and yet, for too long, we've failed to properly value their work. These are skilled professionals, they are educators, and their contribution reaches well beyond the gates of the early childhood service.

Early childhood education is also good economic policy. It gives parents, especially women, the confidence and opportunity to return to work. When more parents can work the hours they want, businesses can access the skills they need, household incomes rise, workforce participation rises and the economy becomes more productive. So it's not just an investment into our children; it's also an investment into young families, women's economic participation and the strength of our whole economy.

Yet, for too many years, too many early educators were being forced to ask themselves a simple question: 'Can I afford to keep doing the job that I love?' When we came into government, the answer for far too many was no. In some services, staff turnover was as high as 40 per cent. Imagine loving your job. Imagine knowing that your work helps shape a child's future—teaching them to count, to communicate and to believe in themselves—and then imagine having to leave that job because you cannot pay the bills. That was the reality for far too many early childhood educators, not because they stopped caring but because the system had stopped valuing their care.

For too long, Australia relied on the goodwill of a predominantly female workforce. We expected people to keep giving and giving because they cared. But care is not compensation, passion is not a substitute for decent wages and devotion to children should never be an excuse for low pay. This bill is about changing that.

The federal budget in 2024 was a great budget for many reasons, but there was a moment, when the Treasurer was delivering his speech, when we saw in the packed public gallery a group of women start to become emotional—some of them were shedding tears—because there was a budget measure that they saw as finally valuing their work and their place in our society. And those women were all early childhood educators. I really remember that moment because it was a reminder that the work we do in this place has such a profound impact on people's lives.

I went to a breakfast the next day that was organised by Community Early Learning Australia, and Michele Carnegie was there speaking. Many of those early educators were still emotional about that change. And I think this is the important point: they feel they're finally being valued. I thank Michele and CELA for all their work in advocating for this pay rise for early educators.

At the heart of this bill is a very simple Labor principle: if you do important work, you should be paid fairly for it. And there are few jobs more important than educating and caring for our youngest Australians. Every day, early educators help children learn, grow and get ready for school. They build confidence. They help them make friends. They support families. And they make it possible for parents to go to work, to study or to run a business. It's a skilled and demanding job, and, for far too long, it has been undervalued. But it matters and they matter to our Labor government. Dignity at work means decent wages. It means respect for skills, and it means recognising people whose work holds our communities together.

The previous government, the coalition government, had nine years to deal with workforce issues in the early childhood sector, yet it never delivered the sector-wide reforms early educators needed. So by the time Labor came to office, early educators were leaving in droves. Early childhood services were struggling to recruit and were closing, with real consequences for young families. A parent could not get the extra day of care they needed to return to work. A centre with space for another room and more children to look after could not find enough educators to open it. And a child could lose an educator they knew and trusted. Workforce stability matters in every industry, but it matters most in early education because young children thrive on consistency. It helps them build relationships and it helps them feel safe. High turnover makes all of that harder.

Labor understood that this workforce crisis would not fix itself. We had to make early education a profession people could afford to join and afford to stay in. That is why our approach has never been about one payment or one piece of legislation. We are building the workforce from the ground up, and we started with wages. Our government funded a 15 per cent wage increase for eligible early childhood education and care workers through the worker retention payment, and we have consistently backed increases in the minimum wage. But wages are only part of the story.

Our secure jobs, better pay reforms created a stronger supported bargaining stream. And that matters in a sector like early childhood education. It is made up of thousands of different employers and, for too long, workers found it difficult to bargain effectively from service to service and from centre to centre. Those reforms have made multi-employer bargaining possible in sectors like early education. That means early educators have a stronger collective voice, helping to improve wages and conditions. That is what Labor industrial relations reform looks like in practice.

Through free TAFE, early childhood education has been a national priority area. That means Australians can train for careers in early childhood education without being held back by tuition fees. For someone considering a career in this sector, that can remove one of the biggest barriers to getting started.

Meanwhile, One Nation offers a very different approach. Senator Hanson has described childcare spending as 'completely out of control' and, when asked about the government extending the wage increase for early educators, she responded by asking whether they had not already received a pay rise. That tells us something about how One Nation sees this sector. They see early childhood education as babysitting, not the skilled professional education and care that it actually is, and I fundamentally disagree with that view. We fundamentally disagree with that view on this side of the House. For too long, work associated with care has been undervalued. We have too often expected people to accept low wages because of what they do.

We know that our measures for reforms in this sector are working. Since we introduced the worker retention payment in 2024, there are 20,000 more early educators—an eight per cent increase—and job vacancies in the sector are now down by more than 30 per cent. Fees for centres that receive the payment grew at half the rate of centres that did not sign up for the payment. That's why, three months ago, our government announced it was locking in the pay rise for another two years to retain and grow these benefits, which will save the average family $1,500 a year. We are delivering on that promise through this legislation. It will mean a typical full-time educator is around $255 a week better off than in 2024. For an early childhood teacher, that's around $410 a week.

But this bill goes further than just funding. We are requiring, as part of this legislation, that early childhood education services strengthen quality and safety standards. From July 2027, if services don't meet certain requirements under the national quality standard when it comes to safety, their funding may be cut or suspended. This bill is good for early childhood educators, it's good for parents and, most importantly, this bill is good for our children.

At the beginning of this speech, I spoke about the trust parents place in early educators. Every morning, across Australia, millions of parents hand over that trust. They kiss their children goodbye, they head off to work and they trust that someone will care for their child as they learn and grow. The educators who earn that trust deserve our respect and they deserve fair pay, because the work they do is not measured only in lesson plans or attendance records. It is measured in a child finding confidence. It is measured in a child learning their first words and how to count. It is measured in friendships formed and in curiosity sparked. The truth is that, years from now, most children won't remember every activity they did at preschool. But they will remember how they felt: safe, encouraged and valued. And behind those memories is an educator who helped shape the person they would become, and that is work worth valuing and investing in.

There is no greater responsibility we have as a society than giving our children the best possible start in life, and there is no workforce more essential to that responsibility than our early childhood educators and carers. That's why I'm pleased to make a contribution to the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 and support the bill's important objective of advancing wage justice for early childhood education and care workers.

When the Albanese Labor government first came to office, our early childhood education and care workforce was in crisis. It was a crisis that had reached early childhood education centres right across the country. We were confronting a situation where some early childhood education centres had attrition rates as high as 40 per cent. No sector dedicated to care and education can function as it is intended with attrition rates that high, and even more so when we are talking about early childhood educators and carers—the workers who do one of the most important jobs in our community supporting children during the most formative years of their lives. The work they do has a profound positive impact on the development of young children.

Early childhood educators and carers help children develop language skills, including talking and reading; numeracy skills; emotional wellbeing; and the confidence to engage with the world around them. The importance of the work our early childhood educators and carers do can be seen in what we know about early childhood development. Babies are born ready to learn, with more than a million new brain connections being formed every second during their early years. A child's vocabulary can grow fourfold between the ages of two and four. Every day, we see children learning, developing, building relationships and gaining the confidence they need to take their next steps in life. We know these skills are not just important in the here and now. They also provide the foundation children carry with them as they transition into the schooling and throughout their lives.

I've spoken about the significance of our early childhood educators and carers and the role they play in developing what is this country's most important investment, something families across our communities know too well. It begs the question: why was the early childhood education and care sector losing educators and carers in such large numbers? A key driver of attrition rates that reached as high as 40 per cent across the country was not that educators had stopped loving the work they were doing. It was that they were being paid too little to afford to stay in that sector. Early childhood educators are trained and skilled professionals, yet many found themselves leaving the field and pursuing roles outside early childhood education, including roles where their skills remained relevant, because they simply could no longer afford to stay.

The Albanese Labor government did not stand still and watch a critical industry and skilled workforce fall apart. While those opposite may dismiss the need for early childhood educators to have qualifications, skills and fair pay, this side of the House understands the value of their work, and we have taken real action to back in our early childhood educators and carers. Two years ago, the Albanese Labor government delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. This was on top of the Albanese Labor government's support for several minimum wage increases. Thanks to the efforts of the Labor government, a typical early childhood educator is now taking home an additional $255 per week while early childhood teachers are taking home an additional $410 per week compared with pre December 2024 pay levels. These pay rises are already having a positive impact on the early childhood education and care workforce. More than 200,000 early childhood educators across more than 11,000 centres around the country are benefiting from this much-needed uplift in pay.

In my community alone, 71 childcare services are receiving a worker retention payment, with at least 1,000 educators in my community currently benefiting from these policies. These reforms are working. We have turned the tide on attrition in the early childhood education and care workforce. We have gone from workers leaving the sector in droves to having an additional 20,000 early childhood educators in the workforce. Job vacancies are down by 31 per cent, while applications for jobs at early childhood education centres are up by 30 per cent.

It is clear that these reforms to the pay of early childhood educators and carers are having a profound effect on addressing workforce attrition. That is why we cannot risk allowing these much needed and timely reforms to wither away, only to see the same conditions that drove workers out of the sector return.

The Albanese Labor government understands the risk, and we're doing something about it. That is why in June this year, the Prime Minister announced a commitment to an investment package of $3.6 billion over the next two years to continue the pay increases and support this critical workforce. This early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant will continue to go to early childhood education and care centres to fund increased wages for their workers. The amendments in this bill will also provide the opportunity for all centres approved to receive the childcare subsidy to access this funding for higher wages provided they meet the grant requirements. This will ensure more eligible workers and centres are able to benefit from this important package.

Workers are not the only people benefiting from the Albanese Labor government's reforms to the early childhood education and care workforce. Working families are benefiting too. As a condition of receiving the early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant, centres must limit fee increases. This is already providing cost-of-living relief for families. In the first year of the reforms, fees at centres that took up the payment scheme increased at around half the rate of centres that did not take up the grant. The Minister for Education has advised that if this bill fails to pass and these reforms are not extended childcare fees could be at risk of increasing by 17 per cent. These reforms, therefore, do more than support the household budgets of the workers in these sectors. They also support the household budgets of the working families who depend on the work of these educators. Working families are expected to save an average of $1,500 over the next two years. That is real cost-of-living relief for families in my community as well as families right across the country.

Families need certainty that they can continue to send their children to an early childhood education centre that is affordable, well staffed and able to provide high-quality education and care without the costs simply being passed on to parents. This bill provides that certainty by ensuring wage increases are funded directly to eligible early childhood education and care providers, offsetting wage costs that might otherwise have been passed on to families. This goes hand in hand with the Albanese Labor government's three-day guarantee, which ensures that Australian children are eligible for three days of subsidised early education and care each week under our government. This is good for families, and it is good for children. It is one of several cost-of-living initiatives which replace the Liberal's punitive activity test. Previously, children who needed early learning the most were blocked from the system because of their parents' work or study activity. Under our government, every child who needs it is eligible for three days of subsidised early learning each week no matter what their parents do. All children have a right to go to school no matter what their parents do, and now all children will also have guaranteed access to three days a week of subsidised care.

Working families are not only concerned about whether early childhood education and care is affordable or whether their centre will be adequately staffed. They are also concerned about whether the centre they send their children to is a safe one. There is no greater act of trust than placing your child in the care of another person. Early childhood educators are entrusted with our children during some of the most important and formative years of their lives. The bill before the House today takes further action on the reforms the Albanese Labor government introduced last year to keep our kids safe. Those reforms included giving the Department of Education greater powers to revoke funding from operators that fail to satisfy quality, safety and compliance requirements under federal law. The ability to revoke funding from operators that fail to meet these requirements has been instrumental in lifting standards right across the country. Since these new powers came into effect last year, 119 centres have had action taken against them, with 55 of those centres now complying with the relevant safety standards. In June this year, the department took action to cut off funding to a centre altogether for the first time.

These funding powers work in conjunction with another reform from last year's package—the ability for the department to undertake unannounced visits to child care services. Since November last year, we have seen more than 1,300 unannounced visits to centres across Australia. More reforms came into effect at the beginning of this year, including the National Early Childhood Worker Register. This provides much-needed certainty and clarity about who is working in the sector and where they are working across the country. The register is even able to track workers as they move from centre to centre and from state to state.

Furthermore, mandatory child safety training has been introduced, with an additional requirement that it be completed within six months. Importantly, this training is not just a requirement for the staff working directly with children. It also extends to those working on the corporate side of operators, all the way up to CEOs and boards of directors. That matters because it helps ensure that decision-makers understand what is required to keep children safe at these centres, rather than leaving the responsibility solely with frontline staff. We have also enacted a ban on personal mobile phones in centres and rolled out a nationwide CCTV trial at more than 300 centres across the country.

The bill before us today will take further steps to keep our children safe. The amendments will introduce new funding conditions that put children's safety and quality of service front and centre. For operators to obtain grant payments, they will now be required to meet quality area 2 of the national quality standard, which relates to children's health and safety. If operators and service providers fail to meet these standards, their funding may be cut. Parents have a right to know that the centre they send their child to will be a safe place that provides quality education and quality care. While 95 per cent of services are currently meeting this standard, we want that number to be higher.

An important amendment in this bill is the implementation of equivalent conditions for services that are not regulated by the National Quality Framework, particularly in-home-care services. I meet with local early childhood educators in my electorate, and some of these workers have shared with me the pressures early childhood educators and carers face, particularly when it comes to pay and conditions and child safety. They speak of the importance of the wage increases in helping them stay in the sector and in helping centres attract and retain high-quality educators. They also tell me about the importance of properly staffed centres in maintaining child safety and delivering a high standard of education and care.

Calwell is a young and growing electorate, and these reforms are important to families in my community. They are critical to ensuring that children in my community get the best possible start in life. They also bring certainty and dignity to the many early childhood educators and carers who work and live in my community. This is a workforce that, historically, has been overlooked and neglected. This bill changes that. It recognises the value of early childhood educators and carers; it supports fairer wages; it supports working families; it puts productivity back in our economy by allowing parents to return to work; and, importantly, it puts the safety and wellbeing of our children at the centre of our early childhood education and care system. I commend the bill to the House.

When we talk about early childhood education and care in this place, it is easy to focus on funding arrangements, legislation, wage increases and special accounts. Those things matter. But, in Dunkley, this bill—the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026—is ultimately about people—the carers and the children and their families. It's about the educator who welcomes the child each morning and helps them feel safe and confident. It's about the teacher who develops activities that encourage learning, curiosity and social development, and the room leader who notices when something is not quite right and takes the time to check in. It's also about the trainee educator starting their career and developing professional skills. At a local level, it's about the parents from Frankston, Carrum Downs, Langwarrin, Seaford, Karingal and Mount Eliza who trust early learning services with their children's care.

In Dunkley, around 80 early childhood education and care services are receiving the worker retention payment, supporting approximately 1,230 workers. Those workers play a critical role in shaping the lives of local children and supporting local families. Every day, early childhood educators help children learn, develop and grow. They teach children how to communicate, build friendships and work together. They encourage confidence, curiosity and resilience. There's nothing better than being able to visit a childcare centre and see the fun and the life in the children as they learn with their teachers.

Supporting children through challenges and celebrating important milestones is also something fundamental to our childcare services. The significance of that work cannot be overstated. Research consistently demonstrates that the early years of a child's life are amongst the most important for their development. The experiences children have, the relationships they build and the environments in which they learn can influence educational outcomes, wellbeing and social development for years to come. That means early childhood educators are not simply caring for children today; they are helping shape the adults those children will become.

That is why people working in this profession deserve fair recognition and fair pay. The Albanese Labor government recognised that reality when announcing funding for a 15 per cent wage increase for eligible early childhood education and care workers through the worker retention payment. This initiative was about more than wages; it was about recognising the value of care work and addressing years of undervaluation in a sector dominated by women. Supporting workforce retention and attracting new educators into the profession has been vital, along with strengthening a sector that is essential for children, families and the broader economy.

Prior to the worker retention payment, services across Australia were facing significant workforce shortages. Many struggled to recruit qualified staff. Vacancies remained unfilled for extended periods. Experienced educators were leaving the sector. Services found it difficult to expand despite growing demand. Those workforce shortages had real consequences for families wanting to get ahead. Parents faced waiting lists and reduced access to childcare places. They were forced to change work arrangements or delay returning to work because suitable care was not available. For growing communities like Dunkley, these challenges were particularly significant.

Access to reliable and affordable child care is closely linked to workforce participation. When families can access quality early learning services, parents have greater opportunities to participate in work, study and training. When those services are unavailable, opportunities can be lost. Productivity is lost. The economy is impacted. That is why strengthening the early childhood workforce benefits not only children and educators but the entire economy. Workforce stability also helps improve quality outcomes. Children thrive when they can build strong relationships with family educators. Consistency supports learning, confidence and wellbeing. It provides stability at an important stage of development and helps create safe and supportive learning environments.

The results achieved through the worker retention payment demonstrate the value of that investment. Since the payment was introduced, there are around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers nationally, representing an increase of approximately eight per cent. Job vacancies across the sector have fallen by almost 31 per cent. Staffing shortages have eased, and families have benefited from greater stability. Importantly, fee growth at participating services has remained significantly lower than at non-participating services. These outcomes show that investing in workers strengthens the entire sector. It improves workforce retention, it improves access, it supports quality and it helps maintain affordability for families.

In Dunkley, I hear firsthand about the importance of these measures. Our community is made up of hardworking families balancing employment, study, caring responsibilities and household budgets. Many households continue to face cost-of-living pressures. Every dollar matters.

For many families, child care remains one of the most significant household expenses, yet child care is not a luxury. It is essential. It allows nurses at Peninsula University Hospital to go to work. It allows teachers to teach in our many amazing schools. It allows tradies, hospitality workers, retail staff and small-business owners to do their jobs in our fine community, while parents can pursue education and training opportunities. In short, child care is essential and essential economic infrastructure. Without it, workforce participation is reduced, and economic opportunities are limited.

A strong early childhood sector supports stronger families, stronger communities and a stronger economy. That is why I welcome the government's decision, announced on 14 June 2026, to extend the worker retention payment for a further two years. This legislation delivers this commitment. It provides an additional $3.6 billion to the wage justice special account and extends the sunset date to 31 December 2029. Most importantly, it provides certainty—certainty for workers considering their future in the profession, for services planning staffing and growth and for families who rely on quality care.

That certainty is important because workforce decisions are long-term decisions. People considering carers in early childhood education need confidence that their profession offers sustainable employment and fair remuneration for the long term. Services need confidence when making investment and staffing decisions, and families need certainty that quality childcare places will remain available. This bill helps provide that confidence. The extension is also expected to save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years. At a time when many families continue to carefully manage household budgets, that support will make a meaningful difference.

Importantly, this bill is not solely focused on wages. It also strengthens quality and safety requirements. Parents have every right to expect that their children will be cared for in a safe environment. Safety must always remain the highest priority. This legislation strengthens the link between public funding and service quality. From July 2027, services that fail to meet required safety standard standards under the National Quality Standard may face reductions or suspensions in funding. In particular, services are expected to meet quality area 2, which relates directly to children's health and safety—something that is vital. Approximately 95 per cent of services already meet this requirement. That is incredibly encouraging, but, when it comes to children's safety, every service should strive to meet the highest possible standards always. Public investment should support quality outcomes and strong accountability. This bill sends exactly that message.

Another important component of the bill is the expansion of the eligibility for the worker retention payment. Employees across all childcare subsidy approved services will now have access to this payment. This acknowledges an important reality: early learning services rely on a diverse workforce. Educators and teachers are supported by cooks, coordinators, administrators, support workers, trainees and many others. Each role contributes to the experience of children and their families. Each role supports the delivery of quality care. The wage increases supported through these reforms are already making a difference. Combined with increases in the minimum wage, a typical full-time educator is now around $255 per week better off, while an early childhood teacher is around $410 per week better off. That represents meaningful support. It helps workers meet everyday expenses. It helps people remain in a profession that they care about.

I want to acknowledge all of the early childhood educators across Dunkley. The work you do is demanding and skilled and incredibly important. You support children through the critical stages of development. You help families navigate important transitions and you create safe, inclusive and nurturing learning environments. Our community is grateful for your contribution. This parliament should be grateful for your contribution. This legislation reflects our appreciation.

I also acknowledge the parents of Dunkley. Parents want their children to be safe, supported and given learning opportunities. They want confidence that qualified educators will be there to provide the care and attention their children deserve. Ultimately, early childhood education is about people, relationships, trust and opportunity. It's about children developing confidence, encouraging their curiosity and resilience. It's about creating environments where children can learn, grow and thrive. Those moments matter, and this legislation helps support the people who make those moments possible.

I am proud that this bill reflects Labor values and supports communities like Dunkley. When I think about the future, I think about the children attending early learning services across our electorate today. The skills they develop, the confidence they build and the relationships they form in those early years will help shape their future. That is why this investment in early childhood education is one of the most important investments any government can make. We are investing in children. We are investing in families. We are investing in workforce participation, and we are investing in Australia's future.

The coalition welcomes the certainty this bill provides, and we will not oppose its passage. Early childhood educators perform important work. The reason I want to stand today is to talk about how important early childhood education is in the city of Townsville, which I'm privileged to represent, and to tell a bit of a personal story.

I've got two daughters: Astin, who's now eight, and Emery, who's six. They both went to a Goodstart in Annandale, Townsville. My eldest daughter, Astin, had a bit of a speech delay. If it wasn't for the support from early childhood educators, she wouldn't have learned how to communicate the way that she does today. The way that she communicates now—from being someone that couldn't talk at a young age to now being able to talk non-stop—is truly remarkable.

But I suppose the real highlight here is my daughter Emery. My daughter Emery has autism. She has level 3 autism. She is just this amazing young girl. When she was going through a Goodstart she had an early childhood educator there who had something like an affinity just to help and to be there. I remember going there and seeing my daughter—who couldn't talk, who was finding it hard to play with friends—look over and talk to the educator or give the educator a little smile and a sign. The educator came back with a booklet. Inside the booklet it had a picture of a water bottle. It had a picture of food. It had a picture of a toilet. It had a happy face. It had a sad face.

It was something that I hadn't seen before, and it was the way my young daughter started to communicate. When she was happy she would pick up the happy sign. When she was sad, when she was hungry, when she needed to go to the toilet—this was all because of this amazing, amazing educator. My daughter, who now goes to an autism school and gets the best care and the best help—her foundation was at an early childhood education centre. Her foundation that has allowed her to grow is because of not only her mother but also these educators.

Now my daughter who has been nonverbal can say, 'I love you, Dad.' My daughter can tell me when she's hungry. She can throw teddies at me and say, 'Open them.' She can tell me when she's thirsty. She can tell me when she's happy. She can tell me when she's sad. When her sister's sad, she'll look at me and say, 'Wah wah sad.' I half-think she's more having a joke at her sister, but she wouldn't have been able to do this without early childhood educators. These are people that love their job. These are people that rock up to support these young people. Whether it's in parliament or around the country, we say, 'Young people are our future.' Our future only grows when good water gets poured on it. It takes more than just parents to raise a child. It takes a community.

When you have early childhood educators helping to pour that water and make sure that our young people are getting the best support that they need, it is a good thing. I've seen it firsthand with my daughter. I've seen it firsthand with children throughout Townsville, Cairns and around the country. Even when I run into them now, they always say, 'Remember what Emery did?' or, 'Do you remember what Astin did?' I remember getting a phone call to come into the day care to speak with the manager there because Emery sat on a boy and ate his food. She did it not out of malice but out of hunger. Without the educators there, she wouldn't have been able to grow and learn from that.

I have a great belief that our early educators are a part of the foundation of how our children and our young people grow. My six-year-old, Emery, now attends a couple of days at an autism speciality school but then a few days at a school as well, where she's integrating. I look at her, the words that she can say and the love that she has in her eyes and I know it's from the teaching that she got. Whilst I would love to believe that I taught her everything she knows, I know that it's from the community, it's from the people that surrounded her and it's from the people that love her, and they still speak highly of her.

I'm hoping that with all the early interventions, the early education and all the love that she's been shown she'll grow up, she will blossom, she will be an amazing young woman and she'll be one of the change makers that we maybe will see sitting in the gallery or sitting on the floor. It wasn't that long ago that I brought her in here. It turns out you're not allowed to have six-year-olds on the floor, but she came in, ran down, sat on the seat and was so excited. She was wearing headphones and she was just looking at me, saying: 'Love, Dad. Love, Dad.' That happens when a community supports our young people. That happens when we have early childhood educators that are there to support our people.

We come here to work, and parents around the country work. We work to live, right? It's something that happens. You're time poor, and things are going well one day and bad the next. But the one thing you can rely on is our early childhood educators to support our young people, as well as support from our grandparents, friends, cousins, mum, dad, sisters and everyone that's there. It's a community that raises our young people. It's a community that stands side by side to make sure that my Emery, your Emery, gets the support that they need. Without having that early childhood educator that taught me a different way to communicate with my daughter, I would've been stuck in the same circle because it's hard to get the therapies you need. It's hard to get the support you need in regional Australia. When you have people that have that affinity, who want to love, help and support you, it makes life easier and clearer.

I tossed and turned about whether I was going to stand up and talk today. I want to make sure that, for those around the country, those listening tonight and for the parliament, it is on the record that we value our early childhood educators. We value the people that develop and grow our young people. I'm happy that people choose that profession—and it is a profession. It's not a stopgap. It's not a job gap. It's a profession. Early educators do an amazing job. Early educators are the ones who go to our young people, who then go through the schooling system. It's extremely important. It's important because young people either do well or find it quite difficult. I do think people should have choice. I want to tell you my story. Without the young educator that I had, who was very smart and very quick to let me know how to navigate a problem, I would have been worse off. They do a great job.

The only concern I have is subsequent to this. It's not actually about this bill, but it's subsequent to it. It's around the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability guidelines. That's something I am concerned about. Smaller regional campuses are where my thoughts are. These campuses are resource intensive to operate, but they provide critical education services to children who have autism and complex needs. In several communities, these services are limited—if there are any—to the alternative specialist education options available. Consequently, any reduction in services would have significant impacts on some of Queensland's most vulnerable students.

It might sound like this doesn't link in, but it does. It's all together, because this is about early education. For those like me who have children with special needs—my daughter has autism—it's a real thing. I've heard, 'Oh, you've just got to do this or this.' It is a full-time process of teaching, learning and loving. I would hate to see anything be detrimental to early education and early intervention for my loved ones and your loved ones. I can tell you now that, without early intervention, my daughter wouldn't have looked at me in the eye and said, 'I love you, Dad.' Saying 'love you, Dad' is something that we take for granted. But, when you look at your daughter, and those are some of the few words that she can say, your heart melts. Then it comes back with all this love, and all you want to do is do everything for them. My daughter is very cheeky. She'll run away. She'll practice sad faces and angry faces, and then she'll come over and give me a kiss and a hug. My kids are my world, like they are yours, and we must do everything we can to support them.

That's why I wanted to get up tonight and say that we need to love and support our early childhood educators and our other family members that support the growth of our young people, because, without them, things get tough. Without them, things would be worse off. I can't wait to see both my young people, my daughters, grow into amazing young women, but it's because of the help that I got.

I rise to speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account)(Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. It's hard to think of a more important job in our community than caring for and educating our youngest Aussies. Parents entrust their children's wellbeing to the early childhood educators in their neighbourhood. Our nation entrusts our collective future in the ability of our early childhood educators to get our youngest Australians off to the best possible start in a lifetime of learning.

The vital nature of this kind of work hasn't been reflected in the past by what early childhood educators have been paid to do this important work. Before the Albanese Labor government came into office, early childhood educators were leaving their jobs in droves. It wasn't because they didn't love their work. It wasn't because they weren't passionate about this important vocation. It was just that the pay didn't reflect the importance of the job. That's now changing because of the 15 per cent pay rise delivered by the Albanese government nearly two years ago.

It's why this bill is so important. It builds on these strong foundations to provide additional funding to continue this historic 15 per cent pay increase for early childhood educators. It amends the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act 2024, crediting the special account and extending the act's sunset date from 30 June 2028 to 31 December 2029. The special account is used to administer the early childhood education and care worker retention payment grant to ECEC providers to fund higher wages for eligible workers.

This bill provides certainty for workers and early childhood services. It also strengthens safety requirements by making compliance with the national safety standards a condition of receiving Commonwealth funding. This bill ensures that early childhood educators are remunerated appropriately, that we keep fee increases as low as possible for parents across the country and that we make sure that we keep our kids safe. The extension of the pay increase helps to build and retain a quality, stable and dedicated workforce. This workforce creates a stronger early learning system and means more stability and more support for children and their families.

Fundamentally, this bill recognises that the people who help educate our youngest Australians perform some of the most important work in our nation. They help our children to learn. They help our children to grow. They help prepare children for school and for life, and they deserve to be valued accordingly. The members of my community in Melbourne's west know this better than anyone. Point Cook, in my electorate in Melbourne's west, is known as the mum capital of Australia. It's home to more than 16,000 mothers. In Truganina, in the next suburb over, one-fifth of the community is aged between zero and nine years of age. Caring for children is an essential part of my community.

I saw this myself when I visited the Little Learners Day Care Centre in Truganina just this month. During that visit, I met with 19 kindergarten children, along with their educators and the centre's leadership team. What struck me was not only the enthusiasm and confidence of the children but the way that the centre was actively encouraging them to participate in the decisions of the centre, to share their ideas and to express their views, creating little citizens. The educators explained that these conversations help children to develop confidence, leadership skills and an understanding that their voices matter. Those are the sorts of foundations that help children transition successfully to school and beyond. They're the building blocks of lifelong learning. Outcomes like this don't happen by accident; they're the result of skilled, dedicated professionals who invest their knowledge, care and expertise in children every single day.

When we talk about early childhood education, it's important to remember that we're not simply talking about a service. The days of referring to this as 'child care' are long past. We're talking about one of the most important investments that we can make. The first five years are a crucial window of opportunity in young lives—90 per cent of brain development occurs in those first five years. That's why our investment in early childhood education workers is an investment in Australia's future. High quality early childhood education helps children to develop the cognitive, social and emotional skills that they need to thrive throughout their lives. It gives children the best possible start in life. It supports parents to participate in the workforce. It helps businesses find the workers that they need. It strengthens productivity throughout the economy.

Yet, for too long, there was a contradiction at the heart of this sector. As a community, we recognise the importance of the work. It's implicit: when you drop your kids off at an early childcare centre, that is a profound act of trust. But for many years the importance of childcare workers, a workforce made up largely of women, was not reflected in their pay. Too many educators were asked to take on significant responsibilities while being paid less than their skills and their contribution deserved. The consequences were predictable: services struggled to recruit workers, experienced educators left the profession, workforce shortages became more acute, children missed out on continuity of care and families found it harder to access the services that they rely on.

When the Albanese government was elected, the sector was facing serious workforce challenges and high levels of staff turnover. Educators were leaving jobs they loved because they simply couldn't afford to stay. That's why the Albanese government acted. Almost two years ago, Labor delivered a 15 per cent pay increase for early childhood educators and teachers. We've committed $3.6 billion to extend the worker retention payment, supporting the wage increase for early childhood education and care workers to June 2028. When first introduced in 2024, we worked alongside the sector to implement the pay increase, and now we're acting again to ensure the support continues. We're already seeing consequences from these reforms.

Today, more than 215,000 educators, working in more than 11,600 services across Australia, are benefiting from this initiative. There are now more than 20,000 additional early childhood educators in the sector. Job vacancies have decreased by over 31 per cent. Those figures matter because they represent real change. Educators have been able to remain in a profession that they love. Workforces have been able to recruit new team members, and children have benefited from greater stability and continuity in their learning environment.

In my electorate, in Melbourne's west, approximately 87 early childhood education services are receiving support through this program. Over 1,000 workers are benefiting from the wage increases supported by this policy. They're not abstract numbers; they're educators working in neighbourhoods across my community in Melbourne's west. They're part of families, caring for the children of other families. They're helping children take their first steps in learning. They're providing support to families, balancing work and caring responsibilities, and they're contributing to stronger local communities.

The reforms being debated today build on these successes. We're locking in the pay rise for another two years to retain and grow these benefits. When combined with the government's support for minimum wage rises, a typical full-time educator will receive more than $255 per week, and it will be $410 more per week for early childhood teachers. These reforms have been designed to deliver benefits not only for workers but also for families. The government's funding is tied to requirements that help limit fee increases for families. That means better wages do not simply flow through to higher costs for parents. The funding extension will save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years, and we're demonstrating that it's possible to value workers properly while supporting families at the same time. That matters because early childhood education must be accessible. It should be affordable, and it should be high quality.

The bill also recognises another fundamental principle—that nothing is more important than the safety and wellbeing of children. That's why this bill also seeks to strengthen the safety of early childhood education. Parents must have the confidence that, when they leave their child in care, their child will be safe. Children deserve services that meet the highest standards. We've already acted in response to incidents across Australia, including in my community. We've banned the use of phones by educators and other staff when they're working directly with children. We've also implemented the National Early Childhood Worker Register, a secure nationwide database, launched earlier this year. It tracks early childhood education and care staff across the country to improve child safety and regulatory oversight. We've also implemented mandatory child safety training, which 99 per cent of staff have done in the first couple of months.

This legislation takes the next step. Australians rightly expect that government funding support should support services that are delivering safe and high-quality care. This bill strengthens the connection between public funding and compliance with national safety standards. These reforms mean that, if a childcare centre wants funding for their staff, they have to meet the national safety standard—95 per cent of centres have already met that standard, but we want it to be 100 per cent. Services receiving support under these arrangements will be expected to meet the standards that children deserve and that families expect.

I know how important this is to families in Point Cook in my electorate. These parents often need to commute significant distances to get to their workplace, to their job, in order to pay the family mortgage. They rely on child care and being able to trust their children are safe in our childcare system. Parents should not have to question whether their children are safe when they drop them off in the morning. Safety is non-negotiable. That's why we've acted. This legislation means that there may be financial consequences where safety standards are not met.

These reforms recognise that quality, safety and workforce stability are not competing priorities. They reinforce each other. A stable workplace supports better outcomes for our children. Fair wages help attract and retain skilled educators. Strong standards help ensure quality care. Together, these reforms help build the sort of early childhood education system Australians expect.

This legislation sits alongside the Labor government's other reforms. We're delivering a stronger, fairer, more productive and more resilient nation. This year we delivered a budget which is responsible, reforms and builds the resilience of our economy. We've been implementing cost-of-living relief, strengthening Medicare and delivering more housing and more aged care.

We're dealing with the cost of living in a way that makes a real difference to families in my electorate in Melbourne's west and right across Australia. We're implementing reforms to help children and their parents with the cost of living. Because of the major expansion of paid parental leave, 2,215 parents in my electorate have already benefited from extra support, and we're increasing the threshold for eligibility so that more parents can access paid parental leave. Paid parental leave will be expanded to a full six months, meaning families can spend more time at home with the newest member of their family. We've boosted the pay of over three million workers by backing minimum wage increases and award wage increases. Starting on 1 July this year, the Albanese government has given every taxpayer a tax cut as part of our plan to deliver a series of five tax cuts, ultimately saving the average worker $2,800 per year.

We're also continuing to deliver stronger health care. We're delivering significant investments and reforms to secure our universal healthcare system and disability support. We're building on the significant investment in Medicare during our first term of government, making Medicare urgent care clinics permanent, injecting an additional $25 billion into public hospitals and helping more people see the GP for free—the biggest-ever boost to Medicare. In my community in Melbourne's west, 90 per cent of GP appointments are now fully bulk-billed, and our cheaper scripts have already saved people in my community more than $13 million.

We've also been helping young people into housing. Last month we announced that more than 13,000 young Australians will benefit from more than $300 million to build more than 520 homes across the country. This builds on the Albanese government's broader investment in young people at risk of homelessness. This includes $9.3 billion over five years for the National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness. We're continuing to provide more essential support for the more than 200,000 older people in residential aged care.

This legislation, then, is part of a broader agenda—an agenda to deliver real change for Australians. We're ensuring that vital workers in our economy are fairly compensated for the work they do. When I visited Little Learners day care in Truganina, I saw young children being encouraged to speak up, share their ideas and build their confidence in their abilities. I saw educators helping children develop skills that will stay with them long after they leave kindergarten. And I was reminded that behind every successful early learning experience is a skilled professional making a difference in a child's life.

This bill recognises that contribution. It helps to ensure those workers are valued fairly and are rewarded for it. It supports workforce retention, it benefits families, it strengthens safety and it continues to build a stronger early childhood education and care system for Australia. I commend the bill to the House.

Every parent wants their child to have the best possible start in life. That begins well before a child walks through the gates of primary school. It begins in our early learning centres, kindergartens and childcare services. It begins with the educators who spend their days helping children learn, grow, build confidence and discover the world around them.

Every day, early childhood educators do work that shapes lives. They help children learn to communicate. They help children make friends. They help children feel safe. They help children develop skills that they will carry with them into the schoolyard and beyond. For many families, they become trusted partners during the most important years of a child's life. That is why the Albanese Labor government continues to make early childhood education and care a priority.

We have worked to make child care more affordable. We have expanded supports for families. We have increased access to early learning, and we have recognised something educators have known for years. If you want a strong early childhood education system, you need a strong early childhood education workforce. We cannot expect educators to stay in the profession if they cannot afford to live. We cannot build quality services if centres cannot attract and retain staff, and we cannot say we value early childhood educators while asking them to accept wages that do not reflect the importance of the work they do.

Not long ago, I heard the story of an educator from Melbourne. She shared her experience through an Australian Services Union campaign. She spoke about the children she works with every day, the joy she gets from watching them learn and grow, and the families she has supported over the years. But she also spoke about something nobody working in the profession should have to worry about. She spoke about rent. She said that the pay rises delivered through the Albanese Labor government's worker retention payment were the difference between paying her rent or facing homelessness and the difference between staying in the profession she loved or being forced to leave. Think about that for a moment. Someone trusted with educating and caring for young children was worried she might not be able to keep a roof over her own head. Her story is not unique.

For too long, low wages pushed skilled educators out of the sector. People stayed because they loved the work. They stayed because they cared deeply about children. But love for a profession does not pay the rent. Commitment does not cover rising grocery bills. Goodwill cannot carry an entire system forever. For years, workforce shortages became a growing problem across the sector. Services struggled to recruit, experienced educators left for better paid work elsewhere and vacancies grew. Some centres delayed expansion plans, others limited enrolments or closed rooms. Families found it harder to access the care they needed. At the time, many educators found themselves carrying heavier workloads.

The Australian Services Union heard this directly from members working in council operated early learning services across Melbourne. Members described how staff shortages and high turnover created enormous pressure inside centres. As services struggled to fill positions, more and more work fell back onto the already stretched permanent educators. Workers described a system that was becoming increasingly impossible. They described experienced staff leaving because they could not afford to stay. They described the loss of consistency that followed. Children would form relationships with trusted educators only to see them leave. Families would build relationships with staff only to find those staff moving on.

Everyone could see that something needed to change, because workforce stability is not just a workplace issue. It's a quality issue. It's a safety issue. But, most importantly, it is a children's welfare issue. Children benefit from stable relationships. They benefit from familiar educators who know them well. They benefit when centres can retain experienced staff. That is why the Albanese Labor government acted.

In August 2024, the government announced funding for a 15 per cent wage increase through the worker retention payment. It was recognition that workforce shortages would never be solved unless we addressed the reasons workers were leaving. One of the biggest reasons was pay. Early childhood education was treated as essential work but not paid like essential work. This is a workforce made up overwhelmingly of women. It is a workforce that has historically been undervalued. Labor took a different view. We recognised that if we want a world-class early learning system educators deserve fair wages, and the results speak for themselves.

Since the worker retention payment was announced, there are around 20,000 more early childhood educators and care workers in the sector. That is about an eight per cent increase in the workforce. Job vacancies have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The proportion of services operating with staffing waivers has fallen from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. Those are not just numbers on a page. Those numbers represent educators staying in the profession. They represent services retaining experienced staff. They represent children benefiting from greater stability and consistency. They represent a workforce becoming stronger.

The reforms have also helped families. Importantly, services receiving the payments are required to limit fee increases. As a result, fees at participating services have increased at around half the rate of those at services that have not signed up. That means the policy is helping educators while also helping families manage cost-of-living pressures. Families should not have to choose between quality child care and balancing the household budget. This government believes we can support workers and support families at the same time.

In my electorate of Melbourne, we can already see the difference. Since the introduction of the worker retention payment, 64 childcare services across the electorate have received support. At least 1,100 early childhood educators have benefited. That means experienced educators remaining in the workforce, it means more stability for children, and it means greater certainty for families who rely on early learning services every day.

The legislation before the House, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026, builds on that success. It delivers on the Albanese government's commitment to extend wage funding for another two years. It provides an additional $3.6 billion through the special account that extends the legislation to allow those payments to continue. It also expands eligibility so employees in all CCS approved services can benefit from the payment.

This is about locking in the gains that have already been achieved. It's about giving educators confidence that support will continue. It's about giving them certainty as they plan for the future. And it's about ensuring families continue to benefit from a stronger and more stable system.

When combined with increases to the minimum wage, these changes mean that a typical full-time educator will receive around $255 more per week than they did in December 2024. An early childhood teacher will receive around $410 more per week. That is real money—money that helps people pay their rent; money that helps cover household bills; money that gives workers greater security; and money that helps people remain in the profession they love. The funding extension will also save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years. Again, this demonstrates that good outcomes for educators and good outcomes for families go together.

The legislation also introduced an important new focus on safety. From July 2027, services receiving funding may have their payments reduced or suspended if they fail to meet key children's health and safety requirements under the national quality standard. Around 95 per cent of services already meet this standard. That is encouraging. But, when it comes to children's safety, we must always aim higher. Families deserve confidence that services receiving taxpayer funding are meeting high standards of care. Children deserve safe environments, and public funding should reinforce those expectations.

Importantly, fair wages also contribute to better quality and safety. Stable teams create safer environments. Experienced educators know the children in their care. They know their health needs. They know their routines. They notice when something is wrong. When staff turnover falls, these relationships become stronger. That is good for children, families and educators alike.

These reforms do not stand alone. They are part of a broader Labor vision for children and families—a vision that recognises that support should be available at every stage of life. That is why we have expanded paid parental leave. That is why we have made child care more affordable. That is why we have invested in women's health. That is why we are strengthening Medicare. And that is why we have delivered Medicare urgent care clinics across the country.

All of these policies are connected. A family welcoming a new baby benefits from paid parental leave. As their child grows, they benefit from affordable early learning. When they need health care, they benefit from a stronger Medicare system. When women seek health care, they benefit from expanded investment in women's health. This is about building systems that support families throughout their lives, and early childhood education is a central part of that picture because, when child care works, families have more choices. Parents can participate in work and study, children receive the benefits of high-quality early learning and communities become stronger. For Labor, early childhood education has always been the starting block in life for our youngest. It is an investment in children, it is an investment in families and it is an investment in Australia's future.

Before I finish, I want to return to the educator whose story first appeared in the ASU's strong and committed campaign for fair wages for early educators, the woman who said these pay rises were the difference between paying her rent and facing homelessness. She was not asking for special treatment; she was asking for the dignity that comes with fair pay for important work. She wanted to continue helping children learn. She wanted to continue supporting families. She wanted to continue being part of a profession she loved. For too long, workers like her carried an early learning system that depended on their goodwill. This government chose to do more than simply thank them. We chose to act. We listened to educators, we listened to providers and we backed those words with funding, because if we believe children deserve the best start in life—and we do—then we must also believe the people helping deliver them that start deserve fair pay. Labor believes every child deserves the best start in life. So do I. That benefit sits behind all investments in early learning. It sits behind cheaper child care. It sits behind paid parental leave. It sits behind stronger Medicare, urgent care clinics and our investment in women's health. And it sits behind this legislation because, when a child is thriving, families are stronger; when families are stronger, communities are stronger; and, when we invest in people who educate and care for our young Australians, we invest in the future of our country. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to speak in favour of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. This is an important piece of legislation, and it gives me great pleasure to support its passage through this parliament. Every child deserves a safe and supportive learning environment, and we can secure that by ensuring that the professionals we rely on to maintain and sustain it are paid fairly and that we retain those important professionals to support families and communities across Australia. Paying workers fairly, boosting staff retention and tying funding to improved centre safety are good for workers, good for our youngest Australians and good for families.

Since my election and even before, I've spent quite a lot of time in various early childhood education and care settings. I've read lots of stories and put on lots of voices that I won't repeat in this parliament. I may want to, but I won't. But what I can see is the value of strong professional relationships. What I see is those very deliberate decisions made by professional early childhood educators who observe the behaviours of every child and think critically about when to intervene, when not to intervene, when to ask guided questions and when to just let play continue. It is a clinical practice profession. Evidence emerges and changes all the time. It is an important and intricate profession and one that we need to treat with the respect that it deserves because, as more and more evidence comes in, we realise the importance of those early years as part of the developmental continuum and how crucial it is that we create learning environments that foster the development of those social capabilities and those foundational literacy skills; make sure that that behavioural and social learning is done in a way that supports positive relationships between peers and adults; and make sure, as well, that that language acquisition can support the achievement of different developmental milestones. I see that professional language used by educators across my electorate.

My electorate has about a thousand early childhood education and care workers. Thanks to the wage increases locked in by this legislation combined with the increases to the minimum wage supported by this government, early childhood educators working full time will see about $255 a week more in their bank account. For early childhood teachers, that goes closer to $410 per week for an average worker in that profession, making an enormous difference and making remaining in that profession financially sustainable so that they can continue to contribute over many, many years, because we know it is a younger profession than most.

Retention is something that is crucial to success in an early childhood education and care setting. The evidence is consistent. It is the building of relationships with the young people and with families that enables the delivery of effective and supportive learning environments. Years of high turnover, quick staff changes and inconsistent staff ratios and presentations meant that families were losing confidence in early childhood education and care and that the quality of that support was deteriorating with time. And that had a cyclical effect where the motivation of workers was reducing. We were losing good people at a great pace because, as other speakers in this debate have pointed out, you could make more money from working at the supermarket, working at a pub or at another job than doing some of the most important work in our community. And that had to change.

So the Albanese Labor government stepped up. When the Fair Work Commission said that higher wages were important, they stepped up and locked in a 15 per cent pay rise. And now we stand here today extending that support, making a huge difference to those workers. When you combine that with the other increase, to the minimum wage, this is making a huge difference to that important workforce. And we can see the importance in the lives of our young people.

Early childhood education and care has a particularly profound impact for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. I've heard a lot of people in this House and elsewhere talk about early childhood education and care as if it's just The Baby-Sitters Club. It is not. It is a clinical practice profession. It is important work making sure that this crucial stage in the learning journey of our young people is supportive and nurturing, that it's setting our young people up for success. As I said, that is even more crucial for our most disadvantaged. So this isn't just about providing a babysitting service so people can go to work. Although the economic aspect is important, this is about kids.

That is why it's so important that this bill also ties that additional funding to ensuring safety in our learning environments. We have national standards, reasonable expectations for safety, and it is crucial that the investment of taxpayer money is tied to community expectations, making sure that a safe, secure and supportive learning environment is provided wherever these funds are directed. That's incredibly important and a change that I think should be welcomed across the chamber.

It's time that we finally recognise that this workforce has been undervalued for far too long. It's been seen as just a simple time filler, as looking after the kids while something more important is going on. But this is about as important as work gets. Whenever you visit a kindergarten you can almost spot straightaway the kids that were engaging in earlier learning at three years old or two years old. Their confidence is increased, and their ability to communicate, to share and to manage conflict between one another is noticeable even from a distance. And it all comes down to the professionalism of the staff. You can walk into an early learning environment and learn a lot right away by looking at the physical environment itself and the interactions all of the staff are having with the young people as well as with the families because, as is often said—and it's a bit trite—it does take a village to raise a child. It is that relationship—that trust and confidence between parents and other caregivers and those professionals—that makes a huge difference. It ensures that consistency of learning. It makes sure that we can share observations of those important developmental milestones.

That inclusion of a professional educator, particularly in the early years, also provides a great opportunity for interventions where things might be running a little off course. They can identify where some additional learning support will be beneficial to young people or where there might be some additional support needs that can be addressed with the right interventions. Because these people are working with young people every day in a clinical practice profession, they will spot those little intricacies that you won't necessarily spot if there is just one child in the family. So having that professional available as a resource all of the time is incredibly valuable for families.

There is an inherent value of having kids spend time with kids—building relationships with one another, managing conflict and managing compromise. We live in a society now where not everyone has five or six siblings that they can learn these things from, so creating an environment where kids can be kids and learn from each other in an organic way is really important. Structuring it is also important, making sure that play based learning is very purposeful, delivering learning opportunities for our young people and challenging them across skill sets.

As I said earlier, the role of an educator, even in play based learning, which is so important, varies across the learning cycle. Sometimes it is allowing those organic lessons to be learned. Other times, it's asking questions or perhaps redirecting what they're doing to make sure that they're getting the maximum possible learning benefit. Sometimes, it's joining in the play activity to build those relationships, but that, again, is a set of clinical decision-making. It's all very purposeful. When you see a great early educator do their thing, it is absolutely magic to watch.

It is also critical to make sure that we have enough educators in every single early education environment. We saw, before this 15 per cent pay rise, how often centres were applying for exemptions for ratios, which is code for staff shortages. For us to have effective learning, we cannot allow staff shortages. That means ensuring that we have a sufficient workforce to go in every day and, if we need an additional bit of support, ensuring that there are people we can call up to help.

The key in this space is ensuring that we actually have long-term staff who are happy in their jobs and show up to work all the time. It really shows when you go into a learning centre that has staff who have been there for many years and are very experienced. They've been able to build those trusting relationships. Even when one person might be sick, you know that it's just one locum or one casual with a very experienced workforce around them. That can create safe, supportive and educationally valuable environments for our young people. Back in the bad old days, when you go into centres and it's a different group of casuals every single day, it's a red flag.

We need to make sure that we setting this workforce up for success, and, with that, have appropriate pay and conditions, respect for the workforce, learning opportunities for the workforce so they feel like they can grow in their professional capability and career opportunities, and making sure that they're receiving the respect they need to pay the bills. That still matters; it is still work. We have to make sure that you can have a good life where you can meet your needs and still engage in this incredibly rewarding profession.

There are far easier ways to make a buck than to work in early childhood education and care. It is a great workforce; it is a workforce that cares deeply about our young people. We have to back them as well. I know the thousands of early childhood education and care workers can do a fantastic job having walked into those environments and seen the interactions they're having with kids, their parents and their grandparents. They are doing magic work every single day. It's tiring, but it's really important work. They deserve our respect, and, more importantly, they deserve the pay that they need to be able to go about their professional life and continue to contribute all the wonderful things they do to the lives of our young people.

For too long, we allowed this industry to fall by the wayside. We had declining quality and shortages, often in really vulnerable communities—regional communities, outer suburban communities and disadvantaged areas—because those parents often didn't have the spare cash to pay for early childhood education and care, and they were missing out. What we know from the evidence is that those are the students who stand to gain the most from a high-quality early education. Quality is key.

Low-quality early education does not provide those developmental benefits. It is quality early education where we see secure relationships built, where students have the opportunity and exposure to language and are encouraged to grow their vocabulary, specific social skills and their early problem-solving skills to focus on supporting the achievement of those milestones. This doesn't happen by accident; this doesn't happen by leaving the kids alone on the floor and hoping it will happen.

It takes more than just a full day of Lego. It is a very well-curated learning experience that these professionals do incredibly well. As I said earlier, it is a clinical practice profession. We learn all the time. More evidence emerges on ways to engage with students from different backgrounds. Continuous learning in this profession is crucial, like it is in so many. This is always an evolving space.

We have a lot of students with various support requirements, and those all need to be addressed in innovative and professionally guided ways, as well as ensuring there is a professional workforce where you can build those collegial relationships and professionals can learn from more experienced professionals and develop their capabilities over the course of their professional journeys. It is incredibly important, and you don't achieve that in an environment full of casuals who are wishing they can get out of the profession as soon as possible because they're not paid enough to live.

This is going to the very practical. This is going to ensuring that we set ourselves up to be able to have that workforce where there is retention of staff, where capabilities are developed, where learning environments are curated to be the most supportive possible and where kids are kept safe. These reforms make specific provision for that and to ensure that there is sustainability of service provision for families across Australia. While my focus is on the experience of young people, this is a crucial service for families as well. It ensures that people can participate in the workforce, participate in their communities and pay the bills as well. We know parents need to pay the bills and early educators need to pay the bills, and that takes time and money.

We need to be investing in this crucial workforce to ensure that families can do what they need to do but also that our students, whether our most vulnerable young people in disadvantaged communities or young people who are about to enter school, are achieving those developmental milestones. We need to make sure we're setting our kids up for success, and that means looking at learning as a continuum that we have to set. There is a range of capabilities we expect our young people to learn, and there will be developmental milestones for each of them that all need to be achieved. Having written a lot of rubrics in my time, I can tell you that that takes a lot of thought and a lot of effort. Sometimes, when things don't go to plan, it does mean being able to adapt to environmental changes and to challenges.

We know that great early childhood educators know exactly what's going on in the lives of these young people. They know what's going on in the family. They know when there's conflict. They know when there's risk. They know when things might be going a little bit tough and a little bit of extra support is required. They can read the behaviour and the language of young people and provide them with the support they really need. We need to make sure that those professionals are supported because building relationships cannot be done just once in a blue moon. It takes continual contact, continual effort and continual engagement to build the kind of relationships necessary to really contribute to those developmental milestones for our young people.

This bill really gets to the crux of it. It is making sure that we have a reasonably paid, consistent early education workforce; that we are backing them in; that we are backing in our young people; and that we are doing everything we possibly can as a government to set our young people up for success and to support families to cover the cost of living, particularly as times get tough.

I'm so pleased to rise and speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 today. This is essential legislation that will lock in the Albanese Labor government's 15 per cent pay rise for early educators while strengthening safety requirements for services. This bill will deliver more than $3.6 billion to fund this pay rise and put into law the requirement that services meet national safety standards to receive the payment.

Every day, both in my electorate of Chisholm and all around Australia, early educators and care workers help children learn, grow and get ready for school. We know that work as an early years educator and carer is one of the most important jobs in the country. All of us on this side of the House believe that these critical workers should be paid fairly for their work. In my electorate of Chisholm, a community which places an extraordinarily high value on education, we are home to well over 1,000 early childhood education and care workers. I reflect now on the many visits that I have had the opportunity to make to the early childhood education centres in my electorate. I always love having the opportunity to visit these centres in my community. They are some of my most favourite visits that I get to make. Observing and interacting with the children and hearing directly from their educators and care workers about their work always inspires me.

When we were first elected, the workforce in this sector had been undervalued and underpaid for far too long. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of being undervalued and underpaid was that early educators and care workers were leaving the job that they loved in droves, not because they wanted to but because they felt they had to. However, as the Minister for Early Childhood Education has recently highlighted, we are now hearing about the enormous difference our pay rise is making every week since the introduction of the wage guarantee. Indeed, that is what I'm hearing in my community. I'm also hearing that our changes are helping early childhood educators and care workers to stay in the jobs that they love and really commit to the sector. Our commitment to fund educators and the sector through better pay has made such a meaningful difference. I hear this from families all the time, too.

There are 80 childcare services accessing the worker retention payments in my electorate of Chisholm, with at least a thousand early childhood education and care workers benefiting from those payments. The purpose of this amendment here before the House is to lock in that funding. These changes, when combined with our support for minimum wage rises, will mean that a typical full-time educator will be $255 better off per week. Early childhood teachers will be $410 better off per week compared to before this program started. Importantly, over 80 per cent of eligible services are now receiving the payment.

We know that since we announced our pay rises—this is incredibly encouraging—there are now more than 20,000 early educators in employment. That's an increase. That's about an eight per cent increase on the total workforce. I think we really need to highlight that as a significant achievement. As many of my colleagues have already highlighted throughout this debate, if you pay people more and pay them what they deserve, people want to do the job, and they want to stay in the job. We've seen that job vacancies have decreased now by over 31 per cent. Goodstart Early Learning, Australia's largest childcare provider—I've visited a number of their centres in my community—has seen the need to engage agency staff decrease by 69 per cent in the first year of the program alone.

Part of the arrangement of this package was to tie funding to a commitment from services receiving the payment to limit fee increases for parents, which is an arrangement that will continue. I know that is really important to people in my community and right across Australia. Through this legislation, we are making sure that workers can be fairly paid without costs being passed on to families. That's only fair. This is a win for workers, a win for families and, of course, a win for children. It's worth noting that since our government announced these pay rises, fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at around half the rate of centres that haven't taken up this payment. This is really a clear demonstration that the policy was well constructed, well consulted and is working as intended.

We on this side of the House will always support Australian workers and their families. This is another example of us doing that. This is policy that is practical and policy that helps people. One of the practical realities is that, over the next two years, the average family will save around $1,500. This is real help with the cost of living. This legislation, importantly, will also put into law the requirement that early childhood education and care services meet the national safety standard as a condition of the payment that they receive. I know safety is a really important consideration, as it should be, in early childhood education centres. Today, 95 per cent of early learning services are meeting the safety standard. This is more than ever before, but we do want that number to be higher. From July 2027, if services don't meet that national quality standard when it comes to safety, their funding can be cut or it can be suspended. Every parent deserves the confidence that their child is safe in care. This is one way that we're providing that assurance.

Our government also believes that this is essential work and one of the most important jobs in the country and that people in the sector should be paid fairly for that work. Before our government announced that we would fund a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care, the sector was doing it really tough. Services were delaying expansion plans. They were closing rooms, and they were limiting enrolments because they couldn't find staff. Workforce retention was an uphill battle.

Every family, of course, deserves to have access to quality, affordable education, and this is such a significant issue in my community. I speak all the time to people in my electorate about the importance of early childhood education and care. I've previously undertaken a survey with my electorate on the importance of early education and care for children.

Debate interrupted.