Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, President, and congratulations on your election. I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. I also acknowledge the Gubbi Gubbi people back home in my local community of Queensland. I rise tonight incredibly humbled to be a senator for the great state of Queensland. I am a proud fourth-generation Queenslander. We are battlers, people who work hard, speak straight and don't ask for more than a fair go. I stand here tonight holding my young son, as you can see, with his bedtime fast approaching. I am praying that Auggie and I make it through this speech unscathed, so godspeed! Auggie is here not as a symbol but as a powerful reminder of why I am here. I'm a wife and a mum from the outer suburbs of Queensland. I've come to this place to fight for other Queensland families.

Mums and dads fundamentally belong in this chamber, not in theory but in the full, lived reality of working parents—the mess, the chaos, the juggle, the struggle and, of course, the magic and the mayhem that comes with raising children. Mums are masters at turning chaos into order and making the impossible possible, and I hope to bring just a bit of that mum energy to everything I do in this place, always remembering that it is Queenslanders who sent me here. I say this to my fellow Queenslanders back home, to the new mums struggling to return to work, to those people working far, far away from home on a FIFO shift, to the young workers working in a big supermarket late at night, to those doing the morning hustle on the way to work, to those battling their way through traffic to pick the kids up from school, to those simply just trying to make ends meet at the end of the week: I see you, I get you and I'm here to serve you.

When I set off on the campaign trail earlier this year, my young son was just three months old. As a new mum who was still breastfeeding, I sat in the back of a minivan with my Senate colleagues while we travelled the length and breadth of the Bruce Highway visiting Queenslanders where they're at. I made pit stops to pump breastmilk in a public toilet of a service station, at a regional airport and out the back of a country pub. It's not unlike other working parents who juggle returning to work with their caring responsibilities each and every day, and it has taken many, many parliamentarians decades to blaze a trail for working parents. It's thanks to their efforts that this working mum can stand here today in this chamber with her son. Now the responsibility is on the shoulders of everyone here to make this kind of modern workplace flexibility a reality for people outside of this building. I am committed to making the lives of working families just that little bit easier. I want families to have real choice and real flexibility in how, when and where they work.

When we combine flexible work and flexible care our economy is more productive, workforce participation for women is higher, our local roads are less congested and our families are healthier and happier. It's a win-win. That's why I want families to have an early education system that lets them choose the best care arrangements that work for them, with greater flexibility in days, locations and hours. Families might be fly-in fly-out, night shift workers, single parents or living in different homes. They shouldn't be penalised for not fitting into the mould no matter how they live or work. Right now, there are some 350,000 Queensland children in early education and child care, and we need a universal childcare system that works for all of those families and more.

I also want our early education system to truly be a world leader in choice, quality, safety, health and wellbeing. That's why I'm extremely proud of the record investment delivered by the Albanese government to deliver a much-needed 15 per cent pay rise to our amazing early educators. Educators are the beating heart of our childcare system, and they do incredible work to love and guide our littlest people. But for far too many families the start of child care can feel like a vicious cycle—a vicious cycle of colds and flus and illnesses that take a toll on families and place a massive drain on women's workforce participation and the productivity of our economy. Unplanned absences from work can cost our economy up to $33 billion annually. A study found that parents, mostly mothers, on average lose between five and 10 working days each year due to childcare related illness. Forty per cent of women have reported taking unpaid leave because their sick leave ran out while caring for their sick children. Flexibility in care and work can help turn this around in relation to our drain on productivity.

The other challenges facing families are access and safety while in care. In order to keep up with the rising cost of living, parents must rely on access to childcare places to get back to work or to simply stay in work. In regional and rural parts of Queensland places are very hard to come by, or simply non-existent, in so-called childcare deserts. In fact, a staggering 3.7 million Australians live in a childcare desert, a location where there are three children to every one child place available.

A recent study found thousands of families of western Queensland are sitting on childcare waitlists for up to 12 months. Of those families that could access care, 50 per cent reported they are not able to access the number of hours or days that they need. I'm proud of the Albanese government's investment that will build more childcare centres in regional and rural parts of Queensland. These centres will focus on co-locating services on school sites and supporting growth in high-quality not-for-profit providers.

But we cannot have a universal system until we have a system that truly deserves the trust we place in it. When it comes to trust, one thing I know is I cannot hold my son in my arms forever—I literally cannot! There comes a time where I must let him go. Next month, like thousands of Australian families, I take my young son to child care for the first time, and I do so filled with a gut-wrenching fear—a fear that has been amplified by the recent headlines about some of Australia's worst child sexual offenders infiltrating our childcare centres. These predators have preyed on the most innocent among us: our children. I know I'm not alone in this chamber in feeling the gravity of this moment.

There are several issues that, as policymakers, we must continue to confront to ensure the highest standards of safety in our centres. This includes screening processes that are impenetrable, a built environment that creates visibility in all high-risk locations, reviewing our staffing ratios and carefully considering the use of technology such as CCTV to deter offenders and to protect privacy. If you will now excuse me, I'm going to hand Auggie over, because even the toughest of little Queenslanders need a break every now and then.