Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The early years represent the most powerful lever we have to shape the kind of Australia we want to become. Investing in the early years is the single most important thing we can do to build a fairer nation and to ensure that every child, no matter where they live or what their parents do, can thrive. Access to high-quality early education and care should be available to all families who seek it, without cost, availability or quality concerns presenting a barrier.

I am proud to be part of a government that sees the extraordinary potential of high-quality early education and care and that is matching that with investment. We are committed to delivering high-quality early education and care to every family who seeks it, to every family who needs it. We're backing in families with our three-day guarantee and the cheaper childcare reforms. Our three-day guarantee gives 72 hours per fortnight of subsidised care to children who need it. We've scrapped the punitive activity test, which locked children out—children who often can benefit most from a high-quality early education—and locked out families who weren't able to comply with its strict application. We're improving access by building quality supply where it is needed most. The $1 billion Building Early Education Fund will build and expand more quality not-for-profits and more centres co-located at schools to help families avoid that double drop-off.

We've announced our four agreements with the states and territories to deliver almost 2,000 new early learning places for families. Eighty per cent of those will be co-located, with more agreements to follow soon. But, of course, we're improving not just access but affordability too, making early education cheaper for more than one million families thanks to our policies. On average, this has meant families paying $3½ thousand less over a year because of the reforms.

We've capped the amount early learning centres can increase their fees by through the worker retention payment, and we're building a sustainable work force, led by a minister who has spent much of her working life fighting for these very workers. We've funded wage rises for early childhood education and care workers, with the second instalment of the 15 per cent wage increase delivered in December last year. We want to keep our highly skilled educators in the sector for years to come and train a new generation of educators, too. As I have said in this chamber many, many times before, our early childhood educators do life-changing, nation-building work every single day, and for too long in our country they have been underpaid and undervalued for the extraordinary work that they do. That has to change. It is changing, thanks to the investments of our government.

There could be no more important lever, no more important investment, than in the early years. Through investment in the early years, we don't just change individual lives and we don't just change opportunities and trajectories for families who can then work; we actually change the potential of our entire nation. Investing in the early years is the single most important foundational decision you can make to improve a child's whole education. When you improve a child's whole educational opportunity and potential, it's extraordinary. You can see and map out in a child's brain what happens when they have access to early childhood development opportunities. The simple act of counting fingers and toes and singing songs to a child sees an extraordinary change in the child's brain and development potential. We're investing in the early years because we know it matters. We're also investing to expand parental leave because we know those critical early months between a mother or a parent and a child are absolutely essential too for sparking those brain connections, for fostering that sense of security, for setting the foundations for an extraordinary educational potential going forward.

These are some of the most important policy issues facing our nation, in my view. Our government is investing in them. Our government is making the decisions we need to make to ensure more families who want to access the extraordinary potential of early education are able to do so. That ambition needs to be limitless. Of course there is more that we can do, and I look forward to working with senators in this chamber who share that passion on the path forward.