I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Early childhood education and care workers do one of the most important jobs in this country, but you wouldn't know it from what they've historically been paid.

When we were first elected, child care workers were leaving the job in droves—not because they didn't love the job but because they couldn't afford to keep doing it, because you could get paid more stacking shelves than you could educating the most precious things in our lives: our kids.

In some centres the attrition rate was 40 per cent.

That's 40 per cent of the workforce leaving the job they love in any given year, and that's a crisis.

But it's now changed and it's changed for a reason: the 15 per cent pay rise that this Government delivered almost two years ago.

When combined with the Government's support for minimum wage rises, this means $255 more per week for a typical full-time educator and $410 more per week for early childhood teachers, compared to December 2024 when we first implemented the pay rise.

More than 215,000 early educators at more than 11,600 centres across the country are now benefitting from this.

Job vacancies are now down 31 per cent, job applications in some places are up 30 per cent and there are now 20,000 more childcare workers doing that sort of life-changing work right across the country.

In other words, it's worked. It turns out that, if you pay people more, more people want to do the job.

That's why on the 17th of June, the Prime Minister announced an investment of $3.6 billion over the next two years to lock in this historic pay rise.

This bill delivers on this commitment.

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.

For the first time, all Child Care Subsidy-approved services will be eligible for funding as long as they meet the grant requirements.

This includes that all educators are engaged under a workplace instrument.

This is an important protection for workers and ensures the Government's investment is passed on in the form of higher wages.

But it's not just workers that benefit from this.

To receive the funding, services have to limit fee increases.

This has a real impact for families.

Over the first year of the program fees at centres that have received the payment have increased by about half the amount of centres that didn't sign up.

If this legislation doesn't pass, the advice of my Department is that child care fees could skyrocket by about 17 per cent.

We don't want this to occur.

That's why this legislation is important.

It means child care workers are paid what they deserve and the costs aren't passed on parents.

That will save the average family about $1,500 over the next two years.

That's big.

This bill does something else as well. Something very important.

It establishes a new object and condition of funding for the Act which puts service quality and the safety of our children at its heart.

To receive the funding, services will now also be required to meet Quality Area 2 relating to children's health and safety under the National Quality Standard.

If they don't, their funding can be cut.

About 95 per cent of services already meet this standard, but I want that number to be higher.

That's what parents have got a right to expect.

And it's what our children deserve.

The bill also allows for equivalent conditions to apply to services that are not regulated by the National Quality Framework, such as In Home Care services.

This is the latest in a raft of reforms we have introduced to improve safety in our early education system.

The legislation we passed last year gives my department the power to cut off funding to operators that don't meet quality, safety or compliance requirements under the National Law.

Since the legislation passed, my department has taken compliance action against 119 centres, putting them on notice to lift their game.

These are centres that haven't met the safety standards for at least 5 years.

And it is no accident that 55 of those centres have now suddenly fixed the problem they had refused to in the past.

The threat of cutting their funding has forced them to act.

This is not an idle threat. In June we cut off funding to a service for the first time.

Seven other centres have decided to close.

That legislation also gave my Department the power to undertake unannounced visits to child care services.

Since November 2025, Australian Government Authorised Officers have conducted more than 1,300 unannounced visits to services across the country.

States and territory regulators have stepped up too.

Last quarter, regulators undertook 1,540 compliance actions, more than double the 735 at the same time last year.

On 27 February, two other big reforms came into force.

The first of those is the National Early Childhood Worker Register.

The events of last year made clear how important this is. To know who is working where. And to be able to track people from centre to centre and from state to state.

The second is mandatory child safety training.

This is now a requirement for everyone who works in a centre. And not just them. Everyone up to the CEO and the Board of Directors has to do it as well.

They have six months to complete the training, and we've seen more than 350,000 do the foundation training so far.

The next stage of child safety training began two weeks ago.

We have also banned personal mobile phones in centres.

A national CCTV trial is also underway in more than 300 services.

The Australian Federal Police are part of the advisory group on that, as well as the Australian Centre for Child Protection, the National Office for Child Safety, and other leading experts.

All up, our Government is investing an extra $226 million in child safety reforms.

States and territories have committed more than $270 million as well.

That's around half a billion that governments are investing in strengthening quality and safety in early childhood education and care.

And last month, Education Ministers agreed to explore the development of an Early Education and Care Commission to strengthen quality and safety in the system.

This Bill supports the educators who support Australian families every single day.

It supports workforce participation.

And it helps make our centres better.

And safer.

I commend the Bill.

I rise to speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. I want to begin by saying that I acknowledge those wonderful early childhood educators and teachers who care for and educate Australian children every day. They certainly do an outstanding job and important work, and I thank them very much indeed. Parents trust these educators with the people they care for more than anyone. They depend on them to keep their children safe, help them learn and give them a stable and caring environment.

A stable early childhood workforce is essential for many families. Without it, those parents cannot return to work, pick up that extra shift, study or run their businesses. So the opposition welcomes the opportunity and the certainty that this bill provides and will not oppose its package. We recognise the importance of workforce stability and we do not want families, educators or providers facing a sudden funding cliff when the current worker retention payment expires in November. But we will be bringing forward some important amendments because, while the government has got the headline that it wanted, there are serious problems buried beneath it. This bill provides another $3.6 billion for the worker retention payment. It extends the payment from 30 November 2026 to 30 June 2028 and extends the wage justice special account until the end of 2029. That provides certainty for the next two years, but it does not provide the long-term answer that I know many in the sector are looking for.

We've been here before. What we've got from this government is no long-term plan. When the original scheme came before the parliament in 2024, the coalition did not stand in the way of the legislation, but we warned the government that a temporary taxpayer funded payment was not a substitute for a sustainable workforce plan. We asked what would happen when the funding ended. Two years later, the government's answer is another two years. This government does not have a plan. It simply reacts.

The worker retention payment was supposed to be a bridge while the Fair Work Commission completed its gender based undervaluation review and the government considered a longer term funding model. The Fair Work Commission has finished its work, and it's determined new classifications and minimum award rates under the children's services award, which are now in place. The government knew from April 2025 that significant award increases were likely, and the commission handed down its final decision in December. So the government's had time to develop a sustainable plan, but instead it's come back to the parliament asking for another $3.6 billion to extend the same temporary grant program. That's not a funding model; it's another funding delay and a very expensive one.

We welcome the certainty that this extension provides today, but changing the expiry date from 2026 to 2028 does not answer the obvious question: what happens after 2028? The Front Project, which supports the bill, told the Senate inquiry that the question of long-term structural funding has not been resolved; it's simply been extended. The Y Australia warned of another funding cliff in 2028 and the risk of sudden fee increases if the support is withdrawn. Educators also deserve to know whether the current arrangements will last. Providers need to know how they're expected to plan their businesses. Parents need to know whether these costs will eventually be passed on through increased fees that they will need to pay. And taxpayers deserve to know what another $3.6 billion will achieve in the long run.

That brings us to the broader economic problem. The government is using successive taxpayer funded grants to manage the symptoms of high inflation, rising operating costs and historically weak productivity. It's not addressing the economic conditions that are eroding real wages, squeezing providers and driving up costs for families. Annual childcare inflation is now 7.3 per cent, more than twice the inflation rate of 3.5 per cent. Average centre based day-care fees have increased from $11.35 an hour in the June quarter of 2022 to $14.50 an hour in the March quarter of 2026. This government is presiding over a cost-of-living problem. This is an increase of approximately 28 per cent. Almost 40 per cent of services now charge above the hourly childcare subsidy rate cap. These figures matter around the kitchen tables of Australia. They matter to the mother deciding whether to return to work and whether their family would be better off. They matter to the father deciding whether the family can afford another day of care. They matter to the shift workers, the small-business owners and the families already being squeezed by housing, groceries and electricity bills. The government can't keep pointing to how much taxpayer money it is spending and call that success. Families do not judge the childcare system by the size of the government's announcements; they judge it by whether or not they can find care, whether they can afford it, whether their children are safe and whether the care actually suits their family. Another temporary grant may provide some short-term certainty, but it's not a substitute for stronger economic management or a sustainable plan beyond June 2028.

There is another major problem with this bill. When the government announced the extension, it said that family day care and in-home care would finally be included, after being excluded from the original scheme. The coalition welcomed that announcement. We thought, 'This is good; the government is taking the right step.' But family day care and in-home care are not secondary forms of child care. For some children, a smaller family day-care setting actually works best. For families in regional and remote communities, it may be the only option that's available. For parents working shifts hours or irregular hours, or for families with complex needs, maybe with children with special needs, in-home care is essential. But headline inclusion is not the same as genuine eligibility. Under the government's settings, services are only eligible if all educators are engaged as employees under a compliant workplace instrument. Services that use lawful independent contract arrangements are excluded. This is not a small technical problem. Family Day Care Australia told the Senate inquiry that virtually all of Australia's approximately 8,500 family day-care educators operate as self-employed sole traders and independent contractors. So the government has announced that family day care is included while retaining a rule that locks out its predominant workforce model.

For many educators, the benefit exists in the press release but not in reality. Forcing these services to convert their entire workforce to an employee model may be commercially unviable. It would impose significant and substantial costs and undermine the flexibility that makes home-based care work. The result is a divided system. Educators in eligible centre-based services can benefit from the Commonwealth funded wage premium while contractor educators doing equally—and I want to stress that: equally—important work in other approved settings miss out. That's not fair, and it doesn't make sense.

A workforce retention program should reflect the workforce that actually exists, not the workforce model that the government prefers, not the 'one size fits all' system that this government is forcing upon Australian families. That is why the opposition will move amendments in the Senate. That's why we're moving these amendments that will prevent eligibility for the payment being made conditional on a particular workforce instrument or industrial arrangement. They will provide a practical pathway for otherwise eligible family day care and in-home care services using lawful contractor models to access the payment.

Of course, providers must comply with workplace laws and demonstrate that the funding reaches eligible educators, but access to Commonwealth funding should not be used to pressure providers into adopting a particular industrial arrangement. The government already permits labour hire workers to receive the payment without requiring providers to prove that the labour hire agency has a compliant workplace instrument. Instead, providers must demonstrate that the funding has been passed through to eligible workers. The government has not explained why a similar auditable pathway cannot be developed for family day care or in-home care educators. It has not explained why a similar auditable mechanism cannot be developed for family day care and in-home care educators.

This bill also allows grant agreements to include conditions linked to quality area 2 two of the national quality standard, which covers children's health and safety. The coalition supports strong and enforceable standards because the safety of children must always come first. But conditions attached to a temporary wage grant are not a substitute for comprehensive and nationally consistent child safety reform across the entire sector. The government must explain how these conditions will work in practice and ensure that they do not produce unintended consequences for educators, providers or children.

As I said in my introduction, the opposition will not oppose this bill. We have amendments that we hope can be supported, but we recognise that the certainty that this extension provides and the importance of avoiding a sudden funding cliff for educators, providers and families is important. We will not ignore the economic problem that sits behind it. We will not pretend that extending another temporary program is a sustainable plan, and we will not accept that having family day care and in-home care included in the government's announcement but excluded by the fine print is OK.

These amendments are practical. They reflect the workforce that exists and ensures that family day care and in-home care educators are not shut out simply because they work under lawful contractor arrangements. Educators deserve certainty, providers deserve workable rules and families deserve care that is safe, affordable, accessible and flexible, and that is what the program should deliver.

I also rise to speak on the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. In my very first speech to the Senate, I said the following:

In early childhood education, we have to be bold in our vision, broad in our approach and brave in our means of delivery, and we need to do so in partnership with our early years educators, in whose hands we place our youngest and most vulnerable minds and yet whose critical work we choose to undervalue and underpay. Again, this is a choice—a policy choice and a values choice—and we must change our path.

Today, almost seven years to the date of saying those words, I could not be more proud to stand here, as a member of the Albanese Labor government, in support of a bill that locks in the 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators for another two years. This is a bill that changes our path.

My passion for early childhood education would be of no surprise to anyone in this chamber. I have spoken here often about its transformative power. We know that, when we get the early years right, magic happens. In those critical years, when 95 per cent of a child's brain connections are formed, we can change the course of their life. When we get it right, we can smash intergenerational disadvantage and we can set our country on a different, better and fairer path. But none of this is possible without the early educators, who deliver that early education and all of its transformative potential. They are the most important piece, and they deserve to be fairly paid for the life-changing and nation-building work that they do each and every single day.

In 2024, the Albanese Labor government delivered a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood education and care workers through the worker retention payment. We know that, before the payment was introduced, services were struggling to attract and retain staff. They were delaying planned expansions. They were closing rooms. They were limiting enrolments. The sector urgently needed greater workforce stability, and, since our government introduced the worker retention payment, the results have been significant. We've seen the workforce grow, while keeping costs down for families, and there are now around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers. We've seen job vacancies fall by almost 31 per cent, while the proportion of services operating with a staffing waiver has declined from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. These are substantial achievements, and what they show is that the policy is working. That's why we're backing it in, locking in the 15 per cent pay rise for a further two years and ensuring that these benefits continue for workers, for services, for children and for their families.

The bill credits the special account with an additional $3.6 billion and extends the sunset date for the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Act 2024 to 31 December 2029. Funding will continue to be tied to a commitment from services to limit fee increases for families, which is important to continue easing those cost-of-living pressures and ensure we're still able to deliver quality early education. As we work towards a universal early childhood education and care system, safety, of course, must remain our top priority, and that is why the bill introduces a new object and condition of funding. From July 2027, services must meet quality area 2 of the NQS, or their funding may be cut or suspended.

Earlier this month, the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which I chair, tabled its report on the bill. Our inquiry ran for just under a month and received some 31 submissions. The evidence that we received over the course of that inquiry was clear: since the worker retention payment was introduced, staff retention has improved and vacancy rates have fallen. Submitters overwhelmingly supported the bill's passage, recognising it, on the one hand, as an important cost-of-living measure for parents and families across the country and also as critical for the workers delivering early education and care. Submitters warned that, without the bill, early education and care workers would face a reduction in pay, creating uncertainty and increasing the risk of further workforce attrition.

Our government is committed to building a stronger, more accessible and higher quality early childhood education and care system. We're investing $1 billion through the Building Early Education Fund to deliver new and expanded services where they are needed most, particularly in regional and rural communities. Our three-day guarantee ensures every child can access at least three days of subsidised early childhood education and care each week, with First Nations children eligible for up to five days. This bill continues our work in building a universal early education and care system that puts quality, opportunity and children at its heart. By investing in the educators who nurture the next generation and in children from the very beginning, we are giving every Australian child the opportunity to thrive.

I want to thank Minister Walsh, who's brought this bill to our chamber, not just for her work in this place as minister for early learning but for her service over many years before entering this place, standing up for workers in early childhood education. I want to commend her on how she has now used her position as a minister to continue that advocacy, to continue standing up for those workers and to deliver for them through this bill. I know those workers know that the minister has their backs, and I want to commend her on this work.

There are few more exciting areas of public policy that we have the chance to deal with in this place than early childhood education. We know that, when we get it right and when quality early education is delivered in the first five years of a child's life, you change the way a child's brain grows and develops. And, when you change the way their brain grows and develops, you change every opportunity before them. You give them every chance at having the best possible future education, learning potential and learning opportunities, going forward. Of course, when you don't, the opposite is true. When we don't provide children with a quality early education and when we don't provide those critical early interventions and get those children support when they need it, especially children from disadvantaged backgrounds and especially children with extra needs and extra learning requirements, it's too late for many of them to catch up when we send them off to school at the age of five.

The opportunity to intervene in a child's education in order to have the most transformative impact is in the early years. There is absolutely no way in hell that, if we were designing our school education system today, we would design it to start at age five, because the evidence is simply so compelling that, if you have a child exposed to a quality early learning environment, the simple acts of singing songs while counting fingers and toes, reading books and playing games in engagement with a qualified educator can transform the way that child's brain works. It is extraordinary. It's here in this chamber and this parliament that we have every opportunity to influence the policy settings to get more children having opportunities to engage in play based learning which could change the course of their life and also the course of our country. This is about our nation's future. It's about the potential of children, and therefore it's about the potential of our nation. That's why I call it nation-building work. Play based learning in the early years is nation-building work.

We have an extraordinary workforce across our country delivering early education in a whole range of settings and sectors, all of which are important and all of which play an incredibly important role. It is well overdue that those workers are adequately valued for their role and their contribution in building a nation that is better, fairer and more productive and which gives every single child an opportunity to thrive, to meet their fullest potential and to succeed in our education system.

I am very excited about this bill. I am very excited about what it will mean for that workforce. I'm very excited that it means we will lose fewer brilliant early educators who simply haven't been able to afford to continue to do the work that they love and the work which matters to all of us—not just to families with children in early education but to all of us. It's about the nation we want to build. I'm very proud of this bill. I commend it to the Senate.

The Australian Greens support this legislation to extend the worker retention payment, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. The worker retention payment has delivered a modest but important increase to the wages of eligible childhood educators. It recognises, in part at least, the incredible, relentless and vital work they do, and it helps retain educators in a workforce that is under enormous pressure. But I need to make it clear to this chamber that there is much, much more that needs to be done.

I can't tell you how many rounds of estimates over the last couple of years I have spent asking the government the same question: what does Labor plan to do when the worker retention payment finishes? We, along with educators, providers, unions and families were forced to wait until the eleventh hour for this answer. There was nothing in the budget, despite numerous leaks and speculation, and that uncertainty is incredibly damaging and anxiety inducing.

I've heard directly from educators and providers about how devastating it was to spend months not knowing whether this government would continue funding the wages that they relied upon. I've heard from service providers who refused to take up the worker retention payment due to the uncertainty that it was going to create for the future of the workforce once it ends. People who do some of the most important work for our families, for our children and for our economy were left wondering whether their pay would be cut before Christmas at the end of the year, whether their centres would be able to afford to retain staff or whether parents would ultimately be asked to pick up this bill if the government dropped the ball.

This extension is, of course, welcome, but this weight has not been without consequence, and it still doesn't solve the underlying problem plaguing the early education system. This bill extends the worker retention payment to June 2028. It also allows the government to make the payment conditional on services meeting quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard, which covers children's health and safety. Of course services receiving public funding should be meeting national safety standards. I think that this is the bare minimum that parents expect of public money flowing to our early learning centres, but I'm once again here before this government asking where the investment in quality and safety before harm occurs is to prevent harm from occurring in the first place.

This government is prepared to attach consequences to funding after a service fails to meet safety standards. It's happy suspending or terminating funding when things go wrong, but where is the investment in building high-quality services before children are put at risk? We shouldn't be waiting for harm to occur before the government chooses to act. We should be investing in properly trained, properly paid and properly supported educators. We should be giving services the resources, the staffing and the time they need to deliver safe, high-quality early education and care. We should be building a system where safety is embedded from the beginning not one where governments wait for a failure and then reach for the penalty box, and we cannot do that without the workforce.

Australia needs more than 21,000 additional qualified early childhood professionals just to meet the current demand and sustainable staffing levels. The Greens have been clear that a 15 per cent wage increase is not enough. We have consistently supported the 25 per cent wage increase sought by unions and have advocated for genuine pay parity with school teachers. The educators I speak to are absolutely exhausted. They are doing training in their own time. They are carrying enormous administrative workloads. They are trying to meet increasingly complex needs with too few staff and too little time, and many, too many, excellent educators are just simply leaving.

The worker retention payment is a single lifeline in the middle of a workforce crisis. Quite frankly, it is a bandaid on a bullet wound. We need a sustainable workforce strategy with wages and conditions that recognise early childhood educators as professionals and foundational educators. We also need to be honest about who is ultimately paying when governments fail to fund that workforce properly. Childcare fees are already rising rapidly. Childcare costs increased by nine per cent in the year to April 2026, more than twice the overall inflation rate. For families of almost 1.5 million children who rely on early learning, early childhood education and care is now the second largest household expense after housing. It should be treated as an extension of education—from early childhood right through to tertiary.

I hear from parents who cannot wait for their children to turn five, because then they will be able to shrug off one of the biggest costs on their household budgets. I hear from young couples who want to start a family but are looking at the cost of early learning and wondering whether they can even afford to have a child. This is a national shame. How have we become a country where the No. 1 obstacle to starting a family is the cost? How can we have a Labor government that says it wants to increase women's workforce participation and advance women's economic equality while failing to deliver the one thing that makes work and study possible for so many women—accessible, affordable, high-quality early learning?

This government needs to understand that child care is not a luxury. It's essential social, educational and economic infrastructure, and yet we continue to pour billions of dollars of public money into a broken subsidy model that leaves families pulling their hair out whilst navigating Centrelink, providers navigating complex administration, educators fighting for decent wages and private companies extracting profits from an essential public service. The Greens believe there's another way. We've been shouting it from the rooftops, waiting for this Labor government to take action with that thumping majority. If Labor finally taxed gas exports at a minimum of 25 per cent, it could raise the public revenue needed to invest in the services Australians actually need.

Imagine putting that money towards a genuinely universal free early learning system, a system where every single child has a place in a high-quality service in their own community, no more postcode lotteries; where parents do not have to navigate the broken Child Care Subsidy system; where educators are properly valued and paid; and where public money funds children, educators and quality care, not profits for shareholders. That is the system that Australia should be building and that we could be building if Labor had the bravery to finally stand up to the corporate donors and to stop sacrificing our children and our families to protect the bottom lines. They are essentially choosing them instead of us, instead of our families. Right now, far too many children are locked out of the early learning system altogether.

The Inclusion Support Program is supposed to make sure that children with a disability, developmental delay and other additional needs can participate fully in early learning. I shouldn't even need to say it. The funding is simply not keeping pace with the cost of providing that support. The subsidy for an additional educator hasn't been indexed since 2016. That's a decade. What a shameful 10-year anniversary that is. In the midst of Labor's barbaric NDIS cuts, this is another discriminatory system fully failing in full swing against children with additional needs. A child should not miss out on early learning because their service cannot afford the additional support required to include them.

We also need to properly fund and support Aboriginal community controlled early learning organisations. ACCOs provide culturally safe, community controlled early learning that does far more than simply provide a childcare place. They build relationships with families. They embed culture and connect early learning with broader health, wellbeing and family supports. But the funding system hasn't been designed around the way ACCOs actually deliver these services. ACCOs need dedicated long-term needs based funding that reflects the true cost of their work.

What all this comes down to is ambition—ambition to pave a world-leading early learning system, not just propping up the path that needs immediate fixing like workforce retention or to respond to the latest scandal or spot fire but building a new bold ambitious system from the ground up. This is the work that we are demanding Labor do. The Greens are ready to support ambitious reform to our early learning system. There is a huge Labor majority in the House, and the Greens are in the balance of power, ready to get this work done without delay. The Prime Minister has said that he wants universal early learning to be his legacy. Well, where is he? Where is the planning? Where is the ambition? He's four years in, and all we are seeing is some reactive tinkering around the edges. Families deserve more, and the Greens demand more. This is why we are supporting this bill whilst demanding and fighting for so much more for our kids and for our families.

I want to be clear about what this legislation doesn't do. It doesn't provide long-term certainty beyond the worker retention payment. It doesn't improve workforce conditions for early educators. It doesn't address childcare deserts. It doesn't make early learning genuinely free and accessible. And it doesn't establish an independent national early childhood education and care commission that the Greens have been calling for, that the sector wants and needs and that Labor has now committed to consulting on. Even within the workforce, this payment does leave people behind. We need to be clear about that. There are early childhood educators working in family day care and in-home care who, through no fault of their own, miss out on the worker retention payment because they're engaged as contractors rather than employees due to the nature of their work.

These educators are doing essential early learning work, but the government's wage support doesn't reach everyone. We support the worker retention payment, and we do not want to see the wage increases it provides to the majority of the early childhood workforce delayed, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time—something that we are urging this Labor government to do.

The fact that the worker retention payment is the right mechanism for the majority of the workforce doesn't mean we must not also urgently address the gap for educators in family day care and in-home care. I urge Labor to work with these sectors to find a solution that properly values these educators for the work they do and the complex care they provide, regardless of their employment or contractual obligations. We need a government that stops treating early learning as a problem to be managed and starts treating it as essential public infrastructure, a right of every single child and every family in this country. It is the great equaliser in society, after all.

Educators deserve certainty and value. Parents deserve affordability and access. Our children deserve the very best start to life. They deserve a system designed around their safety, their rights, their development and, of course, their wellbeing. For these reasons, I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name on behalf of the Australian Greens:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes the uncertainty to the early childhood education and care workforce caused by the delayed confirmation of continued funding for the worker retention payment; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) provide certainty in relation to Commonwealth-funded increased pay and improved conditions for the early childhood education and care workforce beyond this extension of the worker retention payment,

(ii) include the continuity, viability and sustainability of the early childhood education and care workforce in the design and priority work of the proposed Early Childhood Education and Care Commission; and

(iii) urgently progress a genuinely universal, high-quality and free early childhood education and care system that truly values educators, prioritises children and takes profit out of care".

The Australian Greens are calling on the government to provide certainty for the early learning workforce beyond the worker retention payment and urgently progress a genuinely universal high-quality early childhood education and care system that values educators, that prioritises children and that finally takes profit out of care.

Headlines about billionaires making profits off the early learning system—our kids are not the headlines that families should have to read about. Education comes first. Our children cannot wait for this Labor government to drag their heels on incremental reform. Labor's got the numbers. We can get this done; I say it again and again. Now is the time for reform. Now is the time to be ambitious. Now is the time to put our kids and our families first, not our corporate donors and these enormous for-profit chains that are cutting corners every single day and putting our children in danger. Only the Greens have the bold vision—no, not only the Greens. Parents and families and the Greens have a bold vision to build the system that we need, so let's get on with it.

I rise to speak in support of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. As a mother, and as a family therapist, I know that the early years of a child's life matter enormously. These are the years when children build relationships. They build confidence and curiosity and the foundation that really sets them up for the rest of their lives. That is why early educators do some of the most important work in this nation. Early childhood educators help children learn. They support families and give parents the confidence to work. Yet, for too long, these skilled workers have been underpaid and undervalued.

Almost two years ago, the Albanese Labor government began delivering a 15 per cent wage increase through the worker retention payment: 10 per cent from December 2024 and a further five per cent from December 2025. More than 215,000 educators at more than 11,600 services now benefit. Job vacancies are down 31 per cent, and there are 20,000 more workers in the sector. That is an excellent outcome.

This builds on the success that we've already seen. It credits over $3½ billion to the special account so grants can continue supporting higher wages through to 30 June 2028, and it extends the act's sunset date to 31 December 2029 so the program can be administered and finalised. For the first time, all childcare subsidy approved service types can be eligible if they meet grant requirements, including family day care and in-home care services that employ their educators. Providers must engage workers under a compliant workplace instrument and pass the funding through higher wages.

When we value early educators properly everybody benefits. Fairer pay helps attract and retain experienced educators, while children, parents and families benefit from a more stable workforce. As we have consistently said on this side of the chamber, early education is not babysitting. It is education. It is one of the most important investments that we can make in our children and in our families.

My sister is a kindergarten teacher. She has dedicated her career to early childhood education and supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professionals in the sector as well. In fact, my sister was the kinder teacher for my now 10-year-old son, which is very, very sweet. She chose to do this work to make a difference and help our kids to see themselves represented and to know that they belong. For First Nations communities, this means culturally safe, high-quality early learning and a stronger workforce for First Nations educators. For First Nations educators and kids, this is not a period in time in which you have something to do with this little person's life. It is often just the start of a lifelong connection to that young person. I know that for both my sons, who went to an Aboriginal early years' centre, the women and the men in the early years centre will be people that they know for the rest of their lives and will be people they call aunty and uncle for the rest of their lives.

Importantly, this bill isn't just about wages. It's also about quality and safety. The bill allows the Secretary of the Department of Education to impose funding conditions, requiring providers to meet quality area 2, children's health and safety, under the National Quality Standard from July 2027. Services that are not rated as meeting quality area 2 may have funding reduced or suspended. Parents need to be able to trust that their children are safe and they are receiving a quality education. I think that has certainly been at the top of lots of parents' minds in the recent months. The program extension also retains a cap on fee growth so that government funding for higher wages is not simply passed on to families through excessive fee increases. I think that's a really important safeguard for families.

At its heart, this bill reflects a simple Labor value. If you do important work, you deserve a fair pay. Few jobs are more important than helping educate and care for Australia's littlest people. Early educators shape lives. They deserve fair wages, decent conditions and recognition as the professionals that they are. We've seen some really horrible conversations happening amongst members of the crossbench about the role that early educators have and the skills that they bring to the sector. They should never ever be diminished. I believe early educators, as I've said, do believe one of the most important jobs in our nation—setting our kids up for the very best life ahead. For kids who have had a tough life or might be having a tough time at home, often an early years' service is a place where they go to get some safety, some security, some consistency in relationship and connection. That does really help shape them and offer a bit of a buffer for what they might have happening at home. Our early educators do have the skills to help that family and to help that child, and I think it's really important that that is also acknowledged.

Early educators carry a lot of responsibility. It's not just educating little people; it is supporting the family. In the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early educators, it's often doing the community work too, outside of that. As such, they do absolutely deserve fair wages. They do deserve decent conditions and recognition as the professionals that they are. This bill delivers exactly that, and I am immensely proud to commend this bill to the Senate.

I want to make a couple of quick comments with respect to the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 and also deal with a procedural matter as a part of that. Can I say that, in listening to the contributions from colleagues around the chamber, I don't think there's anybody in here that would not agree with the sentiments that are being expressed with respect to the importance of early childhood care and development. I think that's a universal perspective that is supported across the chamber.

But there are also some elements of this bill, as Senator O'Sullivan explained in his contribution, that I think are of concern—also the comments of Senator Hodgins-May with respect to the cycle of this funding that's supporting the wages of early childhood workers and the fact that it has to be continuously extended rather than being a part of the way the system works. In my view—and I'm not expressing anyone else's view here—this is the wrong way to manage an issue such as this. It should be part of the way the system works rather than having to be continuously extended. It was obvious to me when the legislation first came into place that it was only there for a year. Something was always going to have to be done about it at some point in time. Here we are, at the eleventh hour, doing that but for a period of two years, and somebody's going to have to come back and deal with this again in 2028.

I particularly want to reinforce the comments of Senator O'Sullivan with respect to family day care. There's no point in claiming or saying that family day care qualifies and then writing rules that make it difficult for it to do so. In that sense, I very much support Senator O'Sullivan's second reading amendment to this bill, which I foreshadow.

I want to reflect on the circumstances of family day care in my local community, where the Abracadabra Childcare Services family day-care centre at Spreyton has had to close because the person who was running, owning and operating that facility just couldn't handle the stress of the government not supporting a structure for that particular facility that would make it economically viable. There's a lot of talk about the importance of the various types of family day care that operate within the country and ensuring that children get the opportunity for access. But, in this circumstance, you had a family day-care centre that was actually loved by its local community—they've said that to me in those terms: it wasn't only valued; it was loved—and that's had to close because the government hasn't followed its own Productivity Commission's review and allowed for the centre to operate in the way that the Productivity Commission recommended. The minister could change this with the stroke of a pen and work with state colleagues to ensure that dual-application facilities could operate, but the minister refuses to do that. That drives up costs. It drives these businesses out of business.

Similarly, Addisons Family Day Care at Latrobe is facing a similar situation. They are looking at having to spend something in the order of $500,000 or $600,000 to modify their facility so that they can stay in operation, but they're not getting the support from the minister that they should get for these vital, valued and loved services in these local communities.

The government might say that they're putting a whole heap of money into other facilities within the community, and they are. That's appreciated, but it shouldn't be at the expense of those that have been operating there for 15, 20 or 25 years. They should not be doing that at their expense, particularly not because these facilities don't follow their desired industrial relations policy, which is exactly what's happening here. If you don't have the industrial relations policy that they want, you're not going to get supported by the government. That's the wrong way to be operating, in my view.

The minister should be supporting these small, family based services to provide the quality of care that meets the quality of care in any other facility. We all agree on the importance of that. But, because you're not union based, you're not supported by the system. I think that's a real flaw in the way that this government is operating the system. We all need to see more capacity in the system. Both Abracadabra and Addisons Family Day Care operate in areas that are currently regarded as childcare deserts. Why would we be forcing these facilities to close while we're waiting for others to be developed? It doesn't make sense to me. I can tell you, having spoken to the families who've used this intergenerationally, they're not happy about it either. They are not happy about the circumstance either. They would like to see these valued and loved facilities continue to operate. Sadly, for Abracadabra, that time has passed. But, hopefully for Addisons Family Day Care at Latrobe, it can continue.

I again note Senator O'Sullivan's foreshadowed second reading amendment for procedural purposes in the chamber.

I am thrilled to speak in favour of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. I'll never forget my son's first day at his day-care centre in Beeliar. I'll never forget the outfit he was wearing—a really cute pair of striped leggings; a top with hippos, tigers and bears; and a backpack that seemed far too big for such a little boy. I was nervous, like lots of parents are when they're dropping their kids off at early childhood education for the very first time. I was worried about whether we'd chosen the right centre, whether he would feel the love and the care, and whether he'd get the education that we so deeply wanted him to. I felt guilt about two parents going back to work full time. But, really, from that very first day, it became clear to me that that all of those worries were unfounded.

I want to give a shout out to his day-care educators at Busy Bees in Beeliar, who have done an incredible job of comforting him at times when he's needed it. I think, particularly, of when I first started travelling here to do this job just over a year ago. He was only two, and that was a big change for him. His educators were such an important part of making that transition easier for him. They talked to him about mummy's new job, mummy going to Canberra and what that meant for him. They helped him to count down the days until I was coming home. It made such a huge difference to him and also to me. They've encouraged him in his various interests, such as farm animals, that arise, as they do, in toddlers. For a long time he was a real 'Old Macdonald' fan. I think they played and sang that song to him until they wanted to never hear it again. They have encouraged his love of spooky Halloween monsters and of the Wiggles. They've taught him to name his feelings, which is something that, possibly, I could have benefited from learning in early childhood education! He tells me when he's feeling angry, sad or happy. His counting is extremely impressive. He's recognising letters, numbers and colours. Perhaps what I'm most thankful for is their encouragement of his brushing his teeth, because I think any parent in this place or out across the country knows the pain of trying to get a toddler to brush their teeth. It's as though they're being tortured. His early childhood educators have given him the interest and talked to him about why that's so important, and I'll be forever grateful to them for that.

William first started day care in April 2024. Just a few months after that, in August 2024, the Prime Minister announced a $3.6 billion pay rise for early childhood educators—15 per cent above the award. I was a candidate for the Senate at that point, and it was one of those moments where I felt so proud to be part of this Labor team. Since we backed those wage rises, early childhood educators have been earning up to $410 a week above what they were taking home before. That pay rise makes a world of difference for workers who had waited far too long to see it.

Early childhood educators are some of the hardest working and most patient people in this country. Since coming to this job, some of the best days I've had have been in early childhood education centres, watching the educators do their work and seeing the kids learning and playing with their friends. I've loved talking to educators about the difference that this pay rise has made to them. They've told me about how much easier it's made the day-to-day cost of living, putting food on the table, helping their own kids get the education that they'd like them to get and putting fuel in the car. What they've also said to me is that it's about the recognition. It's about the government understanding and showing that their work is important and that their work is valued. I'm really pleased that we have been able to give them that important recognition. We've recognised the dedication, the skill and the hard work that they put in day in and day out in early childhood centres right across the country. You cannot sit in one of those rooms for any period of time and walk out thinking that that work is anything other than skilled work.

Educators in these workplaces are some of the most deserving of a pay rise, but they waited a really long time to get one. For decades they were underpaid—not because the work is easy and not because it doesn't matter but, I think, largely because of who does it. This is a workforce that is overwhelmingly made up of women, and so, sadly, it's no surprise that the sector was overlooked for as long as it was. But I am proud to be part of a Labor government that has delivered wage justice for these workers—some of the lowest paid but hardest working and most skilled workers in the country.

We didn't just hand over the money and hope for the best. We made sure every dollar was passed on to workers for a pay rise without leading to an increase in fees for families. That's really important because we want to make sure that early childhood educators receive the pay that they deserve but that this doesn't cost families more in fees, which we know are already a challenge for so many families. And it worked. More than 3½ thousand grant agreements were signed between December 2024 and June this year—pretty impressive numbers.

But that funding was due to run out on 30 November, and so this bill makes sure that it doesn't. It credits $3.65 billion to the special account upfront, covering the pay rise all the way through to 30 June 2028. This means the money will keep flowing as the sector needs it and to the workers who need it, rather than hanging on a budget cycle and the uncertainty that that brings year to year. So educators and services can plan ahead.

Importantly, it also puts into law the requirement that national safety standards are met in order to receive payment. I think we can all reflect on some of the terrible and terrifying circumstances, stories and allegations that we've heard from childcare centres across the country and agree that it is so important that our government and all governments place the highest of expectations on the standards and quality of care in our early childhood centres. There is nothing more important than making sure our children are cared for and safe when we say goodbye to them in the morning.

The part that really matters for families is that certainty in the sector—certainty in knowing that their child will be safe when they go to early childhood education and care and in knowing that their children are being taught and cared for by well-paid educators who are happy to stay doing the work over the long term because they feel that their work is valued and recognised and that they are paid in accordance with that value and recognition. But it's also about providing certainty around fees. I think that's a really important thing to acknowledge. This bill will make sure that the cost of pay rises for educators doesn't fall on families, which will save the average family $1,500 in childcare fees over the next two years. It's really important that no family have should to choose between going to work and giving their child access to quality early learning. We don't want to see educators at risk of reduced pay, and we don't want to see families at risk of higher out-of-pocket fees.

Sometimes the conversations in this place and outside about early childhood educators have been disappointing. Senator Hanson, of course, went to the National Press Club in June and questioned why childcare centres need people with a degree to look after children at all. She said that our childcare system had gotten out of proportion and that it was ridiculous. But I think it's really important that our eyes are on this place in the coming days as we look to pass this bill. I hope to see the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation vote for a continued wage rise for early childhood educators. Parents right around the country will be watching, because it's an important message. Do Senator Hanson and One Nation back in early childhood educators? Do they back early childhood educators continuing to receive the pay rise that they so rightly deserve? Senator Hanson will have her opportunity to vote on this bill in the coming days, and I call on her and her colleagues to do the right thing. Actions speak louder than words, and Australians will be paying attention to how they vote on this bill.

In conclusion, I want to finish where I started, which is talking about the childcare centre that my son attends most days. I really want to reinforce the pride that I feel every day walking my son into an early childhood centre in our local community where he is loved, where he is cared for, where he is taught things that I could not teach him, like brushing his teeth happily each day. These are such valuable lessons, and I can see the difference that it makes in his life every single day. Early childhood educators are part of the village that parents need to be able to do the work that they do in helping our national economy. Our job in this place is to support the workers who allow us to do that. That is fundamentally what this bill is about. It is about making sure that workers in early childhood centres right across the country are paid what they deserve, and this bill gives them the certainty that they will be.

Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 is a long title for a bill with a very straightforward purpose. It locks in higher wages for early educators for another two years, helps families with the cost of care and gives the government a stronger way to make sure public funding goes to services that keep children safe.

Every morning across Australia, parents hand over the person they care about most in the world to an early childhood educator. They often do it at 7.30 in the morning, while trying to find a missing shoe, remember a lunch box and make it to work on time. They rely on the person at the door to welcome their child, settle them in, notice when something is wrong and help them through a very big day in a very small person's life. That educator will teach children how to share, speak up, listen, count, create, make friends and handle feelings that can be very overwhelming when you're three. They will answer a huge number of questions. They will manage tears, spills, sunscreen, stories, naps and the occasional total breakdown. Sometimes I think these educators would be very useful here in the chamber for certain senators!

That is skilled work. It carries real responsibility and, for far too long, the pay did not reflect that. We could all see where that road was heading. Centres were delaying expansion plans because they couldn't find staff. Some were closing rooms; others were limiting enrolments. Families could have a place on paper but still find that the room wasn't open because there weren't enough educators to run it safely. For the workers who stayed, the pressure kept building. Rosters became harder, days became more exhausting and people who loved the job began asking whether they could afford to keep doing it.

That is why the Albanese Labor government announced on 8 August 2024 that we would fund a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care workers. It was a direct response to a workforce problem that had been allowed to grow for years. If Australia wanted more early learning places, more reliable care and a stronger system, we needed the people who make that system run, and, if we wanted those people to stay, we had to pay them properly. The results since that announcement paint a pretty strong picture. There are now around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers in the sector. That is an increase of around eight per cent. Job vacancies have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The share of services operating with a staffing waiver has dropped from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. In practice, that means more rooms able to open, fewer centres scrambling to fill a roster, more consistency for children and more certainty for parents.

It also means children have a better chance of seeing the same familiar faces each week. That consistency is a huge part of quality early learning. Young children build trust through steady relationships. An educator who knows a child well can tell when they're unusually quiet, when they're worried, when they're struggling to join in or when they're ready to be challenged. They know which song helps it drop off. They know that a child calling a stuffed bunny by its name is not a minor detail but an extremely important piece of personal information. You can't build that kind of knowledge and trust with endless overturn of exhausted workers. Workforce stability supports learning, but it also supports safety. People who know the children, know the room and know their colleagues are better placed to notice risks and respond quickly.

The wage rise has also been delivered with families in mind. Services receiving the worker retention payment have had to limit fee increases. Since the payment began, fees are participating centres have grown at around half the rate of fees at centres that didn't sign up. This goes against those who suggest a pay rise for educators would simply be handed straight on to parents through higher fees. The government designed the payment so workers could receive more without families copping it. The evidence so far shows that this approach is working. On 14 June this year, the government announced that we would lock in the pay rise for another two years. This bill gives effect to that commitment. It credits the wage justice special account with an additional $3.6 billion and extends the act to 31 December 2029. That gives services the backing to keep paying higher wages and gives workers greater certainty about what they will earn. For the first time, employees in every childcare subsidy approved service will be eligible for the payment.

When this funding is combined with the government's support for increases to the minimum wage, a typical full-time educator will be earning $255 more each week than they were in December 2024. For an early childhood teacher, the difference is $410 a week. That is the kind of change people feel in their household budget. It can cover groceries, power bills or a tank of petrol. It can make rent week less stressful. It can mean a worker who has spent years caring for other people's children can keep doing the job they're trained for instead of leaving for a better paid role in another sector.

Early childhood education has long been treated as work that people do because they care, as though caring deeply somehow makes fair pay optional. The sector is overwhelmingly staffed by women, and the low value placed on the work has never been separate from that fact. We hear plenty of nice words about educators. They're thanked in speeches. They receive handmade cards at the end of each year. Parents know exactly how much skill and patience that job requires. Many parents saw the difficulties during COVID. But appreciation does not pay the rent and gratitude is not a workforce policy. The people teaching children in the first years of their lives deserve wages that recognise the skill, judgement and responsibility involved. This funding moves us much closer to that.

Early learning allows parents to work more hours, return after having a child or take up a new job knowing their child has somewhere safe and reliable to go. Communities benefit when local services can keep staff and children arrive at school better prepared to learn. You do not get any of those benefits without a workforce. The extension will also save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years. The requirement to restrain fee growth will continue for services receiving the funding, so the benefit is shared: educators receive higher wages, services are better able to keep their staff and parents get some protection from rapidly rising fees. For a family already doing mental gymnastics at the supermarket, $1,500 is meaningful. Child care is one of the largest regular bills many households face. Parents should not have to choose between an affordable place and a centre with enough qualified staff to provide good care. A decent early learning system has to deliver both.

This bill also strengthens the connection between wage funding and children's safety. From July 2027, services receiving funding through the wage justice special account will be required to meet quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard, which covers children's health and safety. If a service does not meet that standard, its funding may be reduced or suspended. Around 95 per cent of services already meet quality area 2. That is a strong base, and it also leaves a gap that we should not wave away. When a service receives public funding intended to support its workforce, the community is entitled to expect that it meets the national standard for children's health and safety. The purpose of this condition is practical. It gives the government another lever when a service falls short. Funding can be cut or suspended, and services have a clear financial reason to fix problems and meet the standard.

This works alongside the broader goals to strengthen quality and safety across early learning. Better pay helps retain experienced educators. Stable teams communicate better and know their children. Clear standards tell providers what is expected. Real consequences make those expectations more than words on a website. Families should be able to drop their child off with confidence. They should know that the service is properly staffed, that health and safety requirements are being met and that their concerns will be acted on. They should also know the educators in the room are being supported to build a long-term career.

There is a habit in debates about early education of discussing every part separately. Wages sit in one box, affordability sits in another, safety and quality get their own section and workforce shortages are treated as a separate problem again. In a real centre, these things arrive together every morning. If a service can't retain educators, it may have to close a room. If a room closes, families lose care and parents lose work hours. If staff are constantly changing, children lose community. If fees rise too quickly, families cut back or leave. If safety standards slip, every other claim about quality becomes fairly meaningless. This bill deals with those connections. It provides the money to continue higher wages, keeps fee restraint attached to that funding, expands eligibility across all childcare subsidy approved services and adds a clear health-and-safety condition.

The progress already made shows why continuing the payment is the sensible course. Twenty thousand more workers is progress. Vacancies down by almost a third is progress. Staffing waivers falling from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent is progress. Slower fee growth at participating services is progress. But no-one in this government is pretending the job is finished. Families still struggle to find places in some areas. Educators still face demanding days. Services in regional and remote communities have particular hiring challenges. Five per cent of services not meeting the relevant health-and-safety standard is five per cent too many. The answer is to build on what has worked.

There is also a broader point here about what governments choose to value. Early educators do work that shapes a child's first experience of learning outside the home. They help children become confident enough to try, curious enough to ask questions and secure enough to form relationships. Much of that work happens quietly. There is no ribbon cutting when a shy child joins a group activity for the first time. There is no press conference when an educator helps a child learn to manage frustration. But those small moments build, and every family sees the difference. The quality of a child's early education should not depend on whether their centre can keep enough staff, an educator's ability to stay in the profession should not depend on how long they can personally absorb being underpaid and a parent's ability to work should not collapse because a local service cannot fill its roster. Public investment can change those outcomes. We have evidence that this investment already has.

I am very pleased to support this bill. It keeps faith with early educators, gives families practical help with costs, supports more reliable services and puts a firmer expectation around children's health and safety. Most of all, it recognises something families have understood for a long time: early educators are professionals. They carry enormous responsibility, they shape children's lives and the system only works when they are there. They deserve more than warm words; the government is putting the funding behind them.

I rise in support of the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026. Early childhood education and care workers do one of the most important and demanding jobs in our country. From Devonport to Smithton, Queenstown to Hobart and everywhere in between, educators and carers are, every single day, helping children grow and prepare for school. They create safe, inclusive and nurturing environments that support not only children but families and communities across my home state of Tasmania and right across Australia.

I was reminded of just how valuable their work is when I joined the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Jess Walsh, and the member for Braddon, Anne Urquhart, at Malangenna Children's Centre in Devonport recently to announce that the Albanese Labor government will invest $4 million to expand and refurbish the Malangenna Children's Centre. This investment will deliver up to 70 additional places for children and create a modern, fit-for-purpose early learning environment which will help more children and more families get access to quality care and quality early childhood education in Devonport for years to come.

The Albanese Labor government's commitment to delivering high-quality, accessible early childhood education and care in north-west Tasmania is also reflected in our support for Lady Gowrie in Latrobe. Thanks to the tireless advocacy of Anne Urquhart MP and the Latrobe Council, Lady Gowrie Tasmania secured $334,000 through the Community Child Care Fund, ensuring local families continued access to quality early learning and care after the unexpected closure of the previous service. This investment provided immediate and practical support to the community at a critical time.

During my visit to Malangenna, I was struck by the dedication and professionalism of educators and carers. The happiness, confidence and enthusiasm of the children were a testament to the extraordinary work that they do every day. The contribution of early childhood educators cannot be overstated. They play an incredibly important role in supporting children's development and giving families the confidence that their children are learning, growing and thriving in a safe and nurturing environment. Yet for far too long the pay and conditions of early childhood educators have failed to reflect the value of their work. Too many educators have been leaving the sector not because they no longer love the job but because they could earn more stacking shelves at the local supermarket. At the same time, families have faced rising fees, and services have struggled to retain experienced staff. In some centres, staff turnover has reached as high as 40 per cent. A turnover rate of 40 per cent is a crisis, and there's no other way to describe it. Families across north-west Tasmania have experienced firsthand the challenge of finding early childhood education and care places for their children. That's not fair on educators, and it's not fair on families. It's certainly not fair on our children, who deserve the best possible start to life.

However, this has changed thanks to the Albanese Labor government's 15 per cent pay rise, which we delivered two years ago, and it's why this government's Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 matters. We're delivering on our commitments made in June to invest $3.6 billion over the next two years to lock in this historic pay rise. The results of the Albanese Labor government's reforms speak for themselves. The impact of the historic 15 per cent pay rise was immediate. Staff turnovers fell sharply, helping services retain the experienced educators that children and families rely on. Combined with the Albanese Labor government's support for increases to the minimum wage, a typical full-time educator now earns $255 more per week than they did in December 2024, while early childhood teachers are earning around $410 more per week. More than 215,000 early childhood educators in over 11,600 centres across the country are now benefiting. Job vacancies have fallen by 31 per cent, applications for positions have increased by as much as 30 per cent, and there are now 20,000 more childcare workers doing some of the most important work across Australia: supporting our children and our families. These are not just statistics; they represent real change for educators, real relief for families and better outcomes for kids.

This bill builds on the progress and ensures that gains are not lost. Firstly, it amends the existing act to credit the special account with an extra $3.6 billion. That's $3.6 billion that is going directly to support the childcare sector. It also extends the sunset date of 30 June 2028 to 31 December 2029, providing more certainty for services, for staff and for families.

Secondly, the special account continues to fund the early childhood education and care worker retention payment, which enables providers to deliver higher wages to eligible workers. Put simply, this is an investment in the people who care for, educate and support our children every day.

Thirdly, and importantly, services can only access this funding if they limit fee increases. This safeguard delivers real benefits for children and families. In the first year of the program, fees at participating centres increased by around half the rate of centres that chose not to participate. Without this legislation, childcare fees could increase by as much as 17 per cent. By keeping costs down, this bill is expected to save the average family around $1,500 over the next two years.

This bill also strengthens the quality and safety standards in the sector. From July 2027, services will be required to meet quality area 2 of the National Quality Standard, which focuses on children's health and safety. Providers that fail to meet this standard risk losing access to funding. Around 95 per cent of services already meet this standard, but we're aiming for 100 per cent, and we owe it to our parents and to our kids.

Finally, this bill includes technical amendments to ensure the workers retention payment grant is available to all providers. This government is delivering real change—real change for childcare educators, real change for families and real change for children. I am proud to support this bill. I'm proud to be in the same team as this minister, who's working tirelessly for families and for our kids and who wants to see outcomes for families. Thank you. I commend the bill to the Senate.

In listening to the debate today, I think it's been really nice to hear, across the chamber, the support and respect that early childhood educators have commanded across the board. Some bills perhaps are not so exciting to talk about in this place, but today's bill is one that I am certainly very proud to speak to. It is one that is personal, because it impacts lots of people that I know and because it is about delivering and supporting equity for a largely female dominated workforce that, for too long, have been undervalued for the skill, professionalism and dedication that they bring to this important work. It is also a practical demonstration of what this government stands for when it comes to delivering for working women and their families in this country.

Between the ages of three and five is one of the most formative developmental periods of a child's life. In the short space of just two years, children begin to dress and feed themselves. They begin to copy letters and write their names for the first time, and their emotional regulation improves. They learn to recognise when someone is hurt and how to comfort them. They enjoy playing with other children, and they learn to cooperate with their peers, and, as we heard from Senator Whiteaker earlier, they might learn important skills like brushing their teeth without having a meltdown. In my case, one of the things that I will be forever grateful for from the early childhood educators that were in my family's life is helping the team at home teach our kids how to toilet train.

In short, between the ages of three and five children, develop many of the skills they will need to become happy, healthy and engaged members of our society. The vital role that early childhood educators and carers play during this pivotal stage of our children's lives cannot be overstated or that of the broader family and communities within which they live. They help shape these years, and that is why I, along with the Albanese Labor government, am very proud to stand here today to support this bill, which extends the 15 per cent pay rise for more than 215,000 educators and locks that support in until June 2028. These are the workers that we trust to nurture, guide and care for our children through some of the most foundational years of their lives. They deserve to be recognised, and they deserve to be better paid. The principle really is that simple.

If you want to attract the best possible quality early childhood educators, then you need to pay them what they're worth. Our government needs to recognise that and fund them for what they are worth. If you want to retain these early childhood educators, then you need to pay them what they are worth so that they can stay and build a satisfying career in the sector that they love and that we so desperately need them to stay in. If we want a strong, stable and highly skilled workforce that delivers the best possible outcomes for children, then we need to pay them what they're worth. We need to recognise that caring work is skilled work, we need to recognise that caring work requires high levels of training, and we need to recognise that caring work is professional work.

I know these educators. I know very, very many of them, but one of them I know very well, and that is my sister Erin, who has worked as an early childhood educator for more than 20 years. The work that she does, along with all of her colleagues, is incredibly important. Every day she helps children build confidence, curiosity and independence. The work that she does requires skill, patience, expertise and enormous dedication. She has spent decades helping children learn and grow while also supporting families at some of the busiest and most challenging times of their lives. What hasn't been spoken about so much in this debate is that the work is also physical work. There is physical labour involved, and it takes a toll for many of the workers who work in the sector for many, many years. Educators like Erin have also become an important part of a children's extended family as they are part of an important care team that looks after children in those first early years.

Yet work like this has too often been undervalued because it is work predominantly undertaken by women. If we truly value the contribution educators make to our children and communities, then that value must be reflected not only in our words but in their pay and conditions. Early childhood educators like my sister should know and feel that their work is valued, that their work is respected and that their work is fairly remunerated. We in this place need to ensure that the workforce sees early childhood education and care as a rewarding and long-term career option. I am so proud of my sister, and this government is proud to stand beside her, her colleagues and all early childhood education workers.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Goodstart Pakenham and meet the educators working there every day to support the local children and their families. I was struck by a few people I met on that day, in particular Alice Spaulding, who is a dedicated centre manager and who cares deeply about providing an excellent service for the families in her local community. She was a real standout—passionate, dedicated and highly, highly skilled. Like all centres that I visit, Goodstart Pakenham is a vibrant centre. The children are curious and engaged. The educators are passionate about their work, and you really get a sense of fun when you go and visit. But, of course, it's a lot of hard work and a lot of skill that makes that environment seem fun for the kids.

Many of the workers at Goodstart Pakenham have worked there long enough to see the children that they once educated go through school and university and then return to the centre to become an educator themselves. That speaks volumes about the impact that these educators have on a community. Pakenham is a growing area, and demand for services continues to increase. Early childhood education is not immune from those pressures, yet the quality of education being delivered at Goodstart Pakenham is very clear. Children are leaving the service at four or five years of age, already reading and writing. They are confident, they are capable and they are ready for school. I also want to particularly acknowledge Selma Wong, who was named Goodstart Educator of the Year in 2024, who I met and who is an outstanding advocate for her colleagues and her profession.

The reality, however, is that, while important progress has been made, early childhood education remains a highly feminised industry. Too often, feminised industries have not been valued in the same way as other professions. For generations, work that has traditionally been undertaken by women has been underpaid and undervalued despite requiring significant skill, training, responsibility and emotional labour. That needs to change. Workers should not be paid less because they are women, nor should they be valued less because their work has been historically seen as women's work.

When we value early childhood educators properly, we are not simply lifting wages. We are recognising expertise and we are showing respect to the work that they do. We are recognising responsibility. We are recognising the profound contribution these workers make to our economy, our communities and the next generation of Australians. Quality early learning starts with skilled, qualified educators. Every day they help children learn, grow and prepare for school. Every day they support children's learning, development and safety. It is some of the most important work in this country, and it must be properly valued. I want to thank every worker at Goodstart Pakenham for the warm and generous welcome that they extended to me. The beautiful artwork that the children created with your support now hangs proudly in my Melbourne office.

For educators, children and families alike, access to high-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education is critical. It lays the foundation for success throughout a child's life, and it is also fundamental to building and maintaining a strong, stable workforce. That is why, on 8 August 2024, the Albanese government announced that it would fund a 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood education and care workers. At the time, services across the country were delaying expansion plans, closing rooms and limiting enrolments because they could not find enough staff.

Workforce retention and stability are also critical to quality and safety in the sector. Children thrive when they are able to build consistent and trusted relationships with educators, and educators are more likely to stay when they feel supported and valued. The results speak for themselves. Since the worker retention payment was announced in 2024—we've heard these numbers a few times in contributions today, but I think they are worth repeating—there are around 20,000 more early childhood education and care workers, representing an increase of around eight per cent, at a time when we absolutely need it. Job vacancies in the sector have fallen by almost 31 per cent. The proportion of services operating under a staffing waiver has decreased from 8.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent. Fees at centres receiving the payment have grown at around half the rate of those at centres that are not participating.

When combined with the government's support for minimum wage increases, a typical full-time educator will receive around $255 more per week, while an early childhood teacher will receive around $410 more per week compared with December 2024, when the government first implemented the pay rise. This bill builds on that success. It extends support for wage increases through the wage justice special account and introduces important measures to strengthen quality and safety in early learning. I know the importance of securing that pay rise—$255 every single week is a lot of money—so securing this into the future shows the amount of undervaluation that this bill is seeking to continue to address, recognise and fix.

From July 2027, services that fail to meet national quality standard requirements relating to safety may also have their funding reduced or suspended. That matters because every child deserves a safe, high-quality learning environment and every parent deserves confidence that standards are being upheld. Importantly, services receiving the payment must continue to limit fee increases. That means that educators can receive the pay rise they deserve without the cost being unfairly passed on to families. Again, the evidence is clear: providers participating in the worker retention payment have increased fees at around half the rate of providers outside the scheme. That is significant.

Around 95 per cent of services currently meet the relevant standards, but, of course, we want that figure to be higher. This bill recognises a simple truth: if we value early childhood education, we must value the people who deliver it. If we want children to receive the best possible start in life, we need to support the workforce that makes that possible. This government understands that investing in early childhood educators is an investment in children, in families and in Australia's future.

In closing, I also want to pay tribute to Minister Walsh for her incredible work in bringing this bill to the parliament and securing the wages for these workers. Minister Walsh is a minister with deep understanding of the issue and a deep respect for the workforce that delivers in this sector, a respect which is backed up by commitment delivered by this bill and action contained in this bill.

The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 locks in this government's commitment to a historic 15 per cent pay rise for our nation's early childhood educators. When we first came to government, educators were undervalued and they were underpaid. They were leaving the sector in droves. They loved their jobs, but, unfortunately, love doesn't pay the bills. These are the people who give Australian children a great start in life, and they just weren't getting the recognition that they deserved. The Albanese Labor government has given this vital workforce that recognition with this historic 15 per cent pay rise, and it has already paid dividends. Around 20,000 more educators have joined the workforce since the pay rise was first announced. Job vacancies are down by almost a third and staffing waivers are down by almost half. We know the pay rise is working, and that is why we're locking it in.

I acknowledge all of the senators, and members in the other place last week, who have spoken on this bill. We heard so many amazing stories shared of local early learning services around the country, centres that simply wouldn't run without the passionate, dedicated educators who work there. We've heard about just how life changing this pay rise has been and will continue to be for them. With this pay rise, a typical full-time educator is $255 a week better off. It covers more than 215,000 educators, the vast majority of them women. I see the benefits almost every week when I visit our nation's early learning services. I speak with educators about how their lives have changed because of our government's investment in them. They also tell me the difference that the pay rise makes for children as well, giving them the continuity and stability that they deserve. We know that children benefit from seeing the same faces each day and from having a trusted educator who they know will see them day in and day out.

Before coming to this place, I proudly stood side by side with educators across the country as they walked off the job, asking for the respect and recognition that they deserved. Now our government have delivered that respect and recognition, and we are locking it in. Early childhood educators are professionals. They are skilled professionals who have a hugely important job. Those educators were demanding a pay rise which reflected their importance and value. I'm so proud that we have now delivered that for them.

As the Senate considers this bill, it's important to recognise why our educators had to fight so hard for this pay rise. If you want to know what was standing in the way, look to the other side of the chamber. For almost a decade in government demands for better pay fell on the deaf ears of a coalition government, a coalition government who said it was just too hard, a coalition government who said, 'It's not our problem,' and a coalition government who said, 'Who cares?' to the educators who care for and educate our nation's children. That was their attitude. They watched on as this workforce was plunged into crisis.

When Labor brought legislation to this place in 2024, those opposite called it a 'sugar hit'. Their friends in One Nation sing from the same songbook. At the National Press Club, Senator Hanson questioned why we needed 'people with some sort of degree to look after a child'. Senator Hanson also questioned why educators needed another pay rise. 'Didn't they just get one?' she said. Senator Hanson was correct about one thing. Labor did just give our educators a pay rise, and, with this legislation, we are locking that pay rise in. It is a pay rise that is well deserved. Australia's early childhood educators know who is on their side. Australian families know who is on their side. The Albanese Labor government has delivered real change for Australian children, Australian families and our nation's dedicated early childhood educators.

Our bill is just one part of this government's commitment to strengthening this important sector. We've also introduced the biggest reforms to child safety in the nation's history, standing shoulder to shoulder with state and territory governments. This bill continues that really important work by making meeting national safety standards a condition of receiving the worker retention payment.

The government will not be supporting the second reading amendments moved by those opposite. While I'm grateful that the Liberal Party has chosen to not oppose this critical legislation—legislation previously described by them as 'a sugar hit'—we are the government who created the worker retention payment. We are the government that is extending that payment to employees in family day care and in-home care. And we will not be supporting the second reading amendment moved by Senator Hodgins-May.

Our government is putting in place the building blocks of universal early learning every single day. We are building a system that is high quality, affordable and available where families need it. We have done more in the last four years than happened in the previous decade. This bill is a critical building block. So is our billion-dollar Building Early Education Fund. Just this morning, I was proud to stand with my colleagues in the Mural Hall to celebrate having reached building early education agreements with all eight states and territories. These agreements will deliver 42 new services, 33 of them co-located with our schools. We are the party of universal early learning and we are building it piece by piece every day. I encourage all senators to lock in this pay rise and to support this bill.

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Hodgins-May on sheet 4123 be agreed to.

I move the opposition's second reading amendment:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) welcomes the certainty that would be provided to the sector, and the avoidance of price shocks for families, if the worker retention payment ends in November 2026; and

(b) notes:

(i) the Government's failure to address the cost-of-living and operating cost pressures affecting families and providers,

(ii) that requiring a workplace instrument to access the payment places unnecessary administrative burdens on providers and places pressure on providers and employers to negotiate union agreements,

(iii) that the eligibility requirements for the payment effectively exclude much of the family day care and in-home care workforce, and

(iv) that extending the temporary payment does not provide a sustainable long-term funding model beyond June 2028".

The question is that the second reading amendment as moved by Senator O'Sullivan on sheet 4097 be agreed to.

by leave—In the interest of time, I ask to have my support recorded for parts (a), (b)(i) and (b)(iv).

Bill read a second time.