Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ben Carroll:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (10:39): I rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. I am excited that I have 30 minutes today, unlike on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023 from a couple of weeks ago. I think we will have a little bit more to say about this piece of legislation.

A member interjected.

Jess WILSON: It was a very important piece of legislation, and I think everyone in the house appreciated me going through it part by part in great detail. But today on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024 can I thank from the outset Liam from Minister Blandthorn’s office in the other place –

Members interjecting.

Jess WILSON: they are usually here – for organising the bill briefing and for always being very responsive to our questions and coming back to us very quickly with detailed information. I am sure I have put him in a little bit of trouble now, but I do pass on my thanks to him and to the department representatives as well for making the time to brief us on this important piece of legislation.

I say from the outset today that the coalition understands the need to improve the availability of child care and early learning outcomes right across the state, particularly in regional Victoria and in our growth areas. For that reason the coalition will not be opposing the bill before us today. I say that from the outset so any talking points can be updated as per our position.

Members interjecting.

Jess WILSON: Just send that through: not opposing. We know how important early learning and child care are not only for women and for mothers but more broadly for families and very importantly for children right around the world but particularly when looking at increasing access here in Victoria across the state. But we know that the government’s track record when it comes to delivering on what are lofty promises that sound very hopeful and very good is hugely problematic, and I will come back to that throughout my contribution today.

First can I raise the importance of early childhood education and care to parents and to families. The lack of availability of child care is a handbrake on our workforce in Victoria, particularly when it comes to participation of women and mothers in the workforce. One of the many functions of child care is to enable greater workforce participation, particularly for women. According to Deloitte, a lack of access to child care takes almost 27,000 women entirely out of the workforce in Victoria and costs our economy here in Victoria about $1.5 billion a year in lost earnings. But the economic imperative is only part of that story. The most pressing imperative is to empower every mother and every family to strike the right balance between time spent with children and the myriad of tasks and mental load that go with raising a family and juggling the many demands on a family with time spent in the workforce making sure that income is available to provide for the family’s needs.

The earnings that go along with the time spent in the workforce are only part of that story too. Women do not only want to return to work after having children for financial reasons, but for many women their careers provide them with a way to derive meaning and fulfilment in life and, most importantly, of being able to continue on that career trajectory to ensure that they are moving through the ranks of their workforce and up the ladder so we see more women in leadership positions right across the state. Many women wish to continue to be in the workforce once they do become parents, even if it does mean trying to juggle their time, trying to strike a balance between time spent with their kids and time spent at work. It is important to recognise that that balance looks very different for one family than it might for another family, and we need to be able to understand the different needs of families right across the state. Every family is different, every family is unique and every family deserves to have a childcare and early learning setting that is available and that suits their needs and their priorities. The challenge for us as policymakers in this space is to design a system that has flexibility and adaptability at its core and is available for all families no matter how many hours of child care they need, what their income need is or where they live.

It is also important to note that child care and early learning do not exist purely so that parents can go to work. There is a mounting body of evidence that points to the vital importance of early childhood education in future learning outcomes. The Productivity Commission is considering these very issues at the behest of the Commonwealth. Its draft report issued late last year states:

… there is recent evidence from Australia and overseas that shows that most ECEC programs … have positive effects on children’s early academic, cognitive, or non-cognitive skills.

The evidence is particularly strong for early childhood education for children in the three- to four-year-old age bracket. Dana McCoy of the Harvard Graduate School of Education states:

We know from decades of studies that children who are enrolled in quality early educational services demonstrate immediate gains in their academic and non-academic skills, and these benefits can even persist all the way into adulthood.

Over in the United Kingdom, a landmark study of the benefits of preschool was conducted in the two decades prior to 2017. It found that children who had attended preschool had higher English and maths results in high school, had better self-regulation of social behaviour and were less inclined to hyperactivity. It also found the significant benefits of preschool education to society more broadly: an estimated lifetime earning benefit of up to £36,000 per household, plus an extra £9000 in tax takings for the exchequer.

Crucially, the research shows that children most likely to benefit from early childhood education are those from disadvantaged backgrounds. To again quote Dana McCoy of Harvard:

Research has also shown that low-income children often benefit the most from early educational services, and that preschool can help to close the gap between them and their more advantaged peers at school entry.

So we can view early childhood education as an equaliser, helping to ensure that our most disadvantaged children can have the very best start in life and enjoy the benefits of our primary and secondary schools alongside their peers. Given the mounting evidence of the benefits to children and parents and to the economy, how to get the best settings right for early childhood education and care is a public policy question governments in the country are over and over again seeking to solve.

I mentioned previously that the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into early childhood education and care is ongoing, with their draft report released in November last year. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission also conducted an inquiry into child care and released their final report in December 2023. These reports provided excellent context and reform directions for all parliaments right across Australia to consider. But the consistency of these reports and what they highlight is the need to achieve availability, affordability, inclusivity and flexibility in the sector. They also shine a light on the gaps in the market and where families, children and indeed whole communities are falling through the cracks in the system.

A 2022 report by the Mitchell Institute of Victoria University found that more than 9 million Australians live in an area where there are insufficient childcare places for families, with 1 million of those having no access to child care at all. Twenty-eight per cent of metropolitan and 52 per cent of regional Australians live in areas considered childcare deserts, where three or more children under the age of four are vying for every one childcare place available. I know the member for South-West Coast, the member for Euroa and the member for Mildura speak regularly about the impact of what we call childcare deserts in their own electorates in regional Victoria. In Victoria the median stands at 0.41 childcare places per child, with multiple regions across the state designated as childcare deserts, as I said. Unsurprisingly, you will often find that these deserts are in regional Victoria, in remote communities, where families face severe shortages of early childhood education and care opportunities. In many cases this is due to workforce challenges within these regions and areas, and I will certainly come back to the issues around workforce.

Just to turn further to the research from the Mitchell Institute, what it shows is that areas of Victoria with fewer childcare places have lower levels of workforce participation for women who have a child under the age of five years. There is a direct correlation between having fewer childcare places available and women’s participation in the workforce. For example, the member for South-West Coast’s electorate of Warrnambool in the south-west region has an average of 0.29 childcare places per child combined with a 56.5 per cent female parent workforce participation. Now, Deputy Speaker, if you contrast that to Melbourne and the inner suburbs and areas which you and I represent, the region has an average of 0.58 childcare places per child and a female parent workforce participation rate much higher at 69.1 per cent, demonstrating that correlation between fewer childcare places and women’s participation in the workforce.

The ACCC in its final report, which I spoke to earlier, noted the highly localised nature of childcare markets and drew three broad categories of childcare users, being those that are (1) adequately served, (2) under-served or (3) unserved. It notes that current policy settings in child care tend towards demand-side interventions and principally the Commonwealth’s childcare subsidy. In order to meet under-served and unserved locations and cohorts, the ACCC flags the need to consider supply-side funding mechanisms in locations where centres would otherwise be unviable. For unserved markets in particular the ACCC states there may be a potential role for government to support the direct delivery of childcare places. According to the ACCC, the fragmented nature of the sector means:

To ensure there is supply of childcare services in areas that have very high costs to supply … supply-side subsidies should be considered.

The Productivity Commission’s draft report appears to align with the ACCC’s thinking, stating:

… in persistent ‘thin’ markets or communities with complex needs, the Australian Government should provide additional funding to support the establishment of appropriate services and, where necessary, ensure their ongoing viability through block funding.

You may note that the Productivity Commission mentions the Australian government specifically, which you would expect given it is Commonwealth-commissioned research. But it is worth reflecting on the fragmentation of the sector both in a market sense but also in a regulatory sense. Centre-based and family day care have generally been the policy domain of the Commonwealth, while preschool and outside-of-school-hours care have tended to be managed by the states, and these historical distinctions have become increasingly blurred, particularly when we are now seeing significant growth in the offering of three- and four-year-old kindergarten with long day care settings. The Productivity Commission’s draft report warns that moving towards universal access to early childhood education and care:

… will require staged and coordinated implementation of reforms to maintain quality and avoid bottlenecks that exacerbate unmet demand.

Further, the commission states that:

The planned expansion of preschool in a number of states … will also … further increase the demand for staff.

And I will certainly come back to those workforce challenges shortly.

The commission advocates for a new partnership agreement between the states, the territories and the Commonwealth to ensure clear lines of responsibility, communication and coordination.

This is all simply to highlight that there are a lot of moving and interconnected parts when it comes to the early childhood education and care sector and that any changes in this sector will have flow-on consequences right around the country and right here in Victoria. So it is incumbent on all of us in this place and indeed in every parliament across the country to ensure that any reforms in this sector are carefully scrutinised for unintended consequences.

That brings us to the specifics of this bill, the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill. The bill seeks to confer upon the Secretary of the Department of Education the authority to employ childcare workers and other support staff as necessary to operate government-owned childcare centres. It also allows the secretary to charge fees to parents sending their children to government-owned childcare centres. The bill primarily amends the Education and Training Reform Act 2006, but it also makes amendments to the Long Service Leave Act 2018.

I note that the Secretary of the Department of Education has existing employment powers when it comes to the employment of public school teachers, and the government has advised that these powers are not suitable for use in early childcare and early learning settings. As a result, the bill gives the Secretary of the Department of Education the authority to employ childcare workers and other necessary staff, such as the early learning centre (ELC) directors and administrators, and charge fees to parents sending their children to government-owned childcare centres. The bill also enables the minister to make ministerial orders setting out the employment conditions for the public sector childcare workforce and the fees to be charged to parents sending their children to government-owned childcare centres.

I want to say from the outset that the coalition does not oppose supply-side interventions in the early childhood and education care space. We note the work of the Productivity Commission, as I have spoken about, and the ACCC, the alignment of their work in this space and their recommendations for a role for government in ensuring supply in thin markets or those underserved markets, particularly in remote and regional Victoria, where service provider viability is likely to be an ongoing issue. We are of the view, though, that the interventions must be made with the utmost care so as not to disrupt existing service providers or distort the market for those many not-for-profits. Such distortion could result in a reduction in the number of childcare and early learning places, which would obviously be counter to the goal of increasing availability.

Any distortion in this sector carries significant risk because we are already at a crisis point when it comes to the early learning and childcare workforce. Chronic and severe workforce shortages are already plaguing the sector and hindering availability of places. In 2023 the Australian Childcare Alliance surveyed over 600 childcare centres, and over two-thirds of them stated they had capped enrolments because they were unable to recruit enough workers to cover the mandated staff-to-child ratios. As a result, some 16,000 childcare places are offline due to the workforce crisis right across the country – that is 16,000 families who cannot strike that balance between work and family time, that critical balance that is so important for the wellbeing of the children and the parents.

Those families who are already struggling to find a place do not need a poorly planned intervention in the sector that takes staff away from existing centres. Without a comprehensive plan to increase workforce capacity the government’s plan to open government-owned ELCs will simply result in childcare places being shuffled around the map without any significant impact on the overall availability for families. We will end up in a situation where we are robbing a childcare place from Peter to give to Paul without actually growing the capacity of the system. These government ELCs will have access to the same workforce that every other Victorian centre and preschool currently has access to. The government has no plan beyond its pre-existing workforce strategy to create more workforce capacity in the system to support the new government-run ELCs without taking staff away from the existing centres. I think it is fair to say that the existing workforce strategy is not improving the situation. The chronic and severe workforce shortages are not being eased in any meaningful way by any measure this government has put in place over recent years.

Where does the government think that these workers are going to come from? There are 800 vacancies being advertised as of today right across the early childhood workforce, and this bill estimates that they are going to need some 700 educators, over 100 teachers, not to mention the dozens of centre directors, assistant directors, educational leaders, admin supports and cooks. The government says they plan to employ trainee educators to help build the pipeline. While this is one positive step, it is certainly not in isolation going to solve the hundreds of staff that will be needed in these centres from day one. The answer is that these staff will be coming from existing centres already in place across the state. They will be coming from the ELC down the road, the kindergarten up the street, the childcare centre in the next suburb over and the council preschool in the neighbouring shire. What will these existing centres do when they can no longer fill their own shifts? They will reduce the number of places that they have to offer, which they are already doing now given these workforce shortages.

The picture could be even more dire in regional and rural areas. We know from the experience of trying to attract teachers to primary and secondary schools in these locations that additional resources need to be deployed to get staff on school sites. Of the 50 new government-owned ELC sites, 17 are located in regional or remote locations according to ABS classifications. But the government has no specific plan in place to overcome the likely staffing challenges in these locations that are being experienced now. Sadly, I am unconvinced the government has given any further consideration to the impact of this intervention on existing providers in the sector.

Another factor that seems to be largely ignored is the potential of these new government-owned ELCs to crowd out existing centres. The government says they will set fees at these ELC centres according to the principle of affordability. This is an important aim, but again there seems to be a lack of consideration about what these childcare fees might do to enrolments at existing centres. The ACCC did not find significant evidence of price gouging in their review. So we have a situation where the government is seeking to establish new centres that are backed by the Victorian Treasury to operate in the same market as centres that must completely cover their own costs, whether they be not for profit or for profit. The government claims that each location has been carefully chosen in areas where existing capacity is limited, but in a dynamic and changing market and with many of the government sites still being years away from having the first sod turned, let alone specifically identified – the member for Mildura before was saying that she would love to have some input into where that actual site might be placed in her area – the risk of unintended consequences from the establishment of government-run ELCs is very real.

My concerns about this bill are not because the coalition objects to supply-side interventions in the early childhood sector – we have covered those in much detail – but as the Productivity Commission and the ACCC both point out, there is both a social and an economic imperative for governments to increase capacity in the childcare and early learning sector and in doing so they will need to involve both demand and supply-side measures. My real concern is that the establishment of the government-run ELCs without a broad and coherent sector-wide strategy to increase workforce capacity risks market distortion and could actually undermine the availability in the long run. To again refer to the work of the ACCC and the Productivity Commission, there is a need to look at the much broader role for government in terms of acting as a market steward in this space.

The Productivity Commission notes that overall there is little coordination in the setting of early childhood education and care policy and a multitude of different programs with overlapping objectives that have been engaged over the years. The ACCC states that the range of market types and the need to develop appropriate government measures to suit the needs and characteristics of local government communities strongly suggest that some form of broad government stewardship for childcare markets across the sector is warranted. What these two reports are saying is that an overarching strategy for market stewardship is needed.

Again, on the government’s record in this space, we look at the rollout of the free kinder program, where we have had councils across the state and across Melbourne – Knox City Council, Warrnambool City Council, Mornington shire, Glen Eira, my own council of Boroondara – talk about the impact of the rollout of the free kinder program and the impact that has on existing sessional kindergartens not having the resources to continue to operate. We have reason to not trust that the government has thought through the implementation of this plan, and that is why I today move a reasoned amendment. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government:

(1) provides a preliminary or draft fee structure for the early learning centres (ELCs) scheduled to open in 2025 and 2026;

(2) seeks written feedback from any childcare centre, kindergarten or preschool within a 15-kilometre radius of the proposed government ELC sites regarding the likely impact of a government ELC on their workforce capacity and enrolments, and provides their feedback to the house;

(3) conducts an analysis on the childcare workforce implications of the new government ELC sites, including:

(a) establishing the workforce vacancy rates around the locations of the new sites; and

(b) providing the house with a comprehensive plan on how the government will ensure existing childcare centres and kindergartens are not disadvantaged in their ability to recruit and retain staff in their existing programs; and

(4) provides an estimate of the budget impact of the operating costs for the government ELCs scheduled to open in 2025 and 2026.’

I have said it before and I will say it again: the coalition understands the critical importance of increasing capacity in the early childhood education and care sector, particularly in regional Victoria and in our growth areas here on the outskirts of Melbourne. Availability and flexibility in child care and early education are vital to family wellbeing in the 21st century, and that flexibility and that availability of places is absolutely paramount to any system that we are seeking to design or improve. It provides the social and the academic benefits to children that I have spoken about and that they enjoy well into adulthood, and it sets them up much better than they would otherwise be for starting school at the age of six. It enables greater workforce participation and increases female participation in particular in the workforce, but that economic imperative is only part of the story.

Most importantly, the design of this system should empower every mother and every family to strike the right balance between time spent with children and time spent in the workforce. Achieving that balance between time where they want to be at home and family time with their kids and time where they want to be in the workforce is key for many parents trying to unlock that fulfilment and meaning. That is why it is so important that we get the design of the early childhood and care system right.

We have expert federal bodies putting out a myriad of recommendations and commentary in this space talking about the need for the federation, the states and the Commonwealth, to work together on the design of this system. Unfortunately, as I have said throughout my contribution today, we on this side of the house, the coalition, have little trust and confidence that the Labor government is going to be able to roll out this plan and implement it in a way that does not see the reduction of workforce in the existing ELCs and does not see staff having to move from existing ELCs into government-run centres. We do not want to see the market distorted any more than it is. We want to be able to provide a system that increases capacity and places for children whilst also providing that flexibility for parents.

That is why we on this side of the house have moved the reasoned amendment today to understand the detail behind the bill before us. This is largely a structural bill, a bill that provides the department secretary with the ability to employ teachers and educators and other staff right across these centres and to set fees for parents without any detail as to how that will be done and what the plan is for the government when it comes to dealing with the immense workforce challenges in this space. Particularly when we look at regional Victoria, the workforce challenges are crippling in these areas. As of today we have 800 vacancies for early childhood workers right across the state, and what this bill proposes is that another 1200 workers will be required in the years ahead without any plan to actually increase that workforce capacity.

Finally, what we have seen in the government’s rollout of the free kinder program is a concerning lack of detail and plan around the implementation of how this is going to operate in the market and actually impact existing providers. As I said, we have seen Knox City Council, Mornington Peninsula, Glen Eira and Warrnambool councils, as the member for South-West Coast says, all questioning their ability to continue to run their council kindergartens. Knox City Council has stopped running all but two of their 28 kindergartens as a result of the government’s rollout of the free kinder program. Now, we all want to see greater access to free kinder, but there is a lack of resourcing in this program and a lack of funding provided to councils to ensure that their sessional kindergartens can continue to operate. Sessional kindergartens that have been the absolute foundation of kindergarten for decades in this country are shutting down as a result of the lack of funding and lack of resources from this government. We on this side of the house want to see an increase in the availability of child care right around Victoria, particularly in regional Victoria and our growth areas, where there are unserved markets and there are very thin markets and there are a lack of places, which results in a lack of participation in the workforce. That is why we do not oppose this bill, but we call on the government to do a lot more work and a lot more homework on its implementation.

Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Development Victoria, Minister for Precincts, Minister for Creative Industries) (11:09): I have been in this place for a little while now, and I have to say I was not expecting the opposition to move a reasoned amendment on this bill, which would kill off the bill. It is as good as voting against the bill even though the opposition are saying they are not opposing it. But to effectively try and knock this bill off, which is simply seeking to establish 50 early learning childcare centres and preschool programs in some of the most disadvantaged parts of our state – many rural communities – absolutely floors me. I cannot believe the opposition, after all the rhetoric we have heard about supporting access to preschool and kindergarten programs and childcare deserts and so on, would move a reasoned amendment that this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government does a number of things.

Members in this chamber know that a reasoned amendment is effectively an attempt to kill off a bill. I think that is a great shame because communities around the state have been identified through a process that the government has undertaken to look at the availability of child care in different communities. What does the existing supply look like? What is the estimated demand for child care in those particular communities? What is not being met by existing providers? And what is the level of disadvantage in those communities based on socio-economic indexes. You are talking about the areas that most need those services to be implemented. The government took to the election a commitment to deliver 50 of those services in those areas that need them most, and this bill, without going through the fine detail, effectively helps the Secretary of the Department of Education to make the arrangements for employment and fees at those centres. It is an enabling bill for that election commitment to be delivered.

Those communities – places like Alexandra, Casterton, Churchill, Cohuna, Drouin, Foster, Mildura, Newborough, the Nicholson district, Rochester, Numurkah, Portland South, Warrnambool, Shepparton, Hamilton, Maffra, Wonthaggi, Woori Yallock, Yallourn North – are being told by the opposition today that this is not an urgent priority for those local communities. I am absolutely floored, because I thought it was an agreed position across this chamber that investment in early years education is critical for preschool-age children growing to their full potential. We heard just then from the opposition about the importance from an economic point of view as well. There is well-established research from the big reforms of the early 2000s pointing to the benefits economically if you invest in those early years and then you have a good school education system, how people can contribute to the economy. There is a great economic benefit from investment in early years education. Of course that leads to the government’s Best Start, Best Life reforms, a $14 billion investment. This is a really small but important part of those early years reforms. I am genuinely shocked that the opposition would seek to delay this rollout. I think it is a misjudgement on the part of the opposition. I understand the arguments that have been put. It flies in the face of that then to say we want to put this legislation onto the back burner.

As I said, the government has carefully determined where these centres are to be established. It is very important to note that many of these are in regional communities, but many of them are in disadvantaged parts of Melbourne as well. This is on top of our three- and four-year-old free kinder, which is saving families up to about $2500 a year, so it is a really important measure not just in terms of encouraging families to participate in kinder programs and early learning programs but also helping to take pressure off family budgets at this time. When we know budgets are under pressure, that saving of up to $2500 per family is really important. As the opposition have pointed out, investing in early years also means you are giving many parents, predominantly women, the opportunity to return to the workforce, which is such an important thing as well for those women as a point on its own but also economically as well.

Importantly, I did hear the opposition point to their concerns around the rollout of free kinder. I understand that last year, 2023, some 97 per cent of services were funded, a nearly total take-up of that program, so an overwhelming success. Who could argue against the rollout of free kinder for three- ‍and four-year-olds? It is a great program introduced by the Allan Labor government. The opposition quoted I think it was the Mitchell Institute when they were talking about the provision of child care. Of course child care is a federal government responsibility. It does mesh with our early childhood education and preschool programs, as it does with local government, but we have had nearly a decade of inaction in terms of child care from the federal government. Peter Hurley from the Mitchell Institute, at a time when Josh Frydenberg was one of our treasurers, said:

… there’s need for a ‘change in mindset’ that puts children at the centre of new funding rather than just making subsidies to private providers more generous.

I think if you listen to the opposition’s arguments in this debate, it is a market-first approach and a children-second approach. I do not think this government would be anywhere near an argument that says we would not put children ahead of every other aspect and make sure that they get the preschool education that they deserve. That is about working with the market but also intervening in areas where the market is failing and not providing appropriate services for families.

As I said, I think that the opposition have erred in moving this reasoned amendment and saying to these communities that they do not want to act quickly to provide these centres in their area. It does not surprise me. I remember back to the last time the opposition was in –

Members interjecting.

Colin BROOKS: I get my best material from the opposition. The last time the opposition were in government, I remember very clearly the cuts that were made to occasional care. I remember talking about the impact that that had on my local occasional care service, Watsonia Occasional Child Care, the Take a Break program, which meant that particularly women who were, for example, looking for work and needing care occasionally to attend job interviews, to go out and find work or to train were not able to do that because the Baillieu government cut funding. The Baillieu government cut funding from that important program at the very same time that the federal government at the time was putting lots of money into child care and early learning across the country. There is a track record here in Victoria of the opposition when they are in government and there is a track record at the federal level, and we are even seeing it now at this level when they are in opposition seeking to delay this legislation’s passage through this place. This government will support this legislation on behalf of all those communities, particularly those disadvantaged families that are keen to see those services rolled out in additional communities.

I know we have a very, very long list of government members who want to speak on this bill, so I will wrap up my contribution there. But I will say again: we will not be supporting the reasoned amendment put forward by the opposition. We will push on and make sure this legislation passes this place as soon as possible.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (11:17): I rise today to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. As I came into the chamber then, it was interesting to get a history lesson from the government on what happened in the deep, dark past. When parents are now probably working very hard and trying to put their young adult children into a home that they cannot afford or supporting them to find a place to rent that they cannot afford, we are being told that that is the reason that parents today cannot access child care and return to work. I think that we see so many times in this place this retelling of old, old ancient history, and there is zero accountability for the decisions that have been made by the Andrews and now the Allan Labor governments. This government has been in for now a 10th year. The women who cannot access child care today can only look to the failed policies of the Allan Labor government and the Andrews Labor government before it for why women cannot get back to work now – why they cannot make the decision on whether they want to be a stay-at-home mum or make sure they can get that all-important early years education from zero to four years.

I note that the member for Euroa is in exactly the same situation that I found myself in until very recently, where we could not access early years education for our children either. We understand it firsthand.

Juliana Addison interjected.

Emma KEALY: I note the interjections, and I know it is unparliamentary both to interject and also to take interjections, but for the member for Wendouree to even question that the childcare system in Victoria is working anywhere near adequately is a blight upon the people that she represents in Wendouree who cannot access child care today because Labor have failed to plan for the workforce that they need to care for the kids today. The government should have looked at training the workforce up a long time ago. Free TAFE has been a failure in recruiting workers in the childcare sector. I hear from the Labor side of the chamber cries of disbelief. Have a look at your resources. Have a look at the number of vacancies that exist in early years education across the state. The reason that women cannot access child care is because Labor has catastrophically failed to build the workforce that every single mother needs and every single father needs to get their child into early years education and give them the best possible start for life.

It is not only failed workforce policies – and this will be exacerbated through this piece of legislation we see today – but it is also additional things that we see in there. We love seeing things like free kinder. We love seeing things like having pre-prep come through. We love to see investment in new childcare facilities, and for my electorate of Lowan there are two facilities listed as part of the rollout. I am so proud because these are facilities that I have been calling for, standing side by side with my communities, for years and years and years. It is not like passing a piece of legislation is going to make a difference to the number of workers that are available out in the workforce, and that is where the critical need is. I absolutely, as do all of my colleagues on this side of the chamber, welcome further investment into early childhood education. We understand that particularly in areas of remote Victoria there simply has been market failure. The money just is not there, because you have to provide such big incentives to pull people out of Melbourne so that we have got a high level of support and availability of childcare places in rural and remote areas.

Murtoa in western Victoria is a great example of that. Through speaking to families in that area for many, many years, we have an interesting situation where we have actual childcare workers living in Murtoa who cannot access child care for their own children. I recall speaking to a mother who is a qualified childcare provider and educator, and she had to take her child to child care in Warracknabeal and then drive another 45 minutes away to work as a childcare educator in Horsham and then go back to Warracknabeal, pick up her child and then go back home to Murtoa. It is an absolute childcare desert through that region, and this is because there simply are not enough incentives and enough support for our valuable and vital early years educators. Until that situation is addressed, we are only going to see policies like the legislation that is before us today just make that market even thinner and provide so many more challenges for anybody, particularly in rural and regional Victoria, to be able to access child care.

I think we need to get beyond this concept that when the government puts out a media release all of a sudden like a magic wand it fixes the problem. We all acknowledge there is an issue. My frustration is that this issue has been in place for a long time and Labor has had 10 years to fix it, and yet still all we get are media releases and nothing actually on the ground, no additional workers in this space, no additional support to make sure our kids in rural and regional Victoria are getting the very, very best start to life. The questions that I would like to see fully rounded out as part of this legislation as it passes through this chamber, which it inevitably will, but also through the upper house, are a comprehensive plan on how Labor are going to train up the additional childcare educators and managers that are required to fulfil this promise. We are very good at setting the expectation that all of a sudden everyone will be able to access a childcare place if they want one – and that absolutely is something we should all aspire to as members of this place – but without the vital workers it simply will not be delivered. It simply will not be delivered, and it is impacting people today.

I know of so many people. I know of ICU nurses, in incredible shortage across the regional areas of the state, even in Melbourne – we know there is a healthcare workforce challenge – and other nurses who cannot return to work because there is no-one to look after their children. On the other side I know of families where the wife is a nurse and the husband is a chippie, where he is going to work during the day and she looks after the kids, and then she goes to work at night-time while he looks after the night shift of the kids. They do not see each other anymore. They cannot see each other because there is no child care available.

Not only is Labor’s failure to build the early years education workforce having an impact on the opportunities for our youngest Victorians to access high-quality education in that vital zero- to four-year period; we have also got lower productivity, particularly in the workforce areas that are most in need. The examples I have given today are childcare workers themselves. I know of teachers, I know of nurses and I know of people in the construction centre – these are all people that we could unlock to fill those vital job vacancies that need to be filled to keep our economy ticking over.

I absolutely support the reasoned amendment put forward by the member for Kew, and I congratulate her for the comprehensive work that she has done in speaking to the key stakeholders, constructing this and pointing out to the government the areas where they could do better. It is not saying that we are objecting to the bill, but we are saying, ‘You know what? There’s an opportunity here. When legislation comes before the house we can do the very best we can.’ You do it once and you do it right. That is how I was raised, it is clearly how the member for Kew was raised, and I would like to see that brought through in legislation we bring through the house.

While I have heard those interjections hurled across the chamber that somehow because we have got a reasoned amendment we are killing this bill, that is absolutely untrue. What we are doing is offering a list of suggestions of improvements – how we can make this legislation better – to ensure that vital early years education is provided and actually delivered in a funded way and in a way that caters for the workforce and makes sure that we are actually filling the gaps in early years education right across the state.

I would like to congratulate the Yarriambiack Shire Council in particular but also the schools and the parents in the Murtoa area and the Yarriambiack area for their considerable work and the advocacy that they have done over many years to secure funding for that vital childcare centre in Murtoa. It was fabulous to make an election commitment about that, it is even better to be able to deliver it, and I am very proud of that. Of course we have got Hamilton on the list as well – again an area which is in a childcare desert. I have strongly advocated for another childcare facility in that region for a very long period of time. I do welcome that investment, and I hope that it continues in other areas of my electorate of Lowan in the west of the state. We are in a childcare desert, and our parents deserve to be able to send their kids to the best quality early years education.

Melissa HORNE (Williamstown – Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Local Government, Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (11:27): I ‍rise in support of this bill today, and I have got to say, listening to the debate on the other side of the chamber I am quite surprised that those on the other side are actually claiming to support this, because that certainly does not seem to be the conversation that is going on.

I know that you, Acting Speaker Marchant, actually trained as a teacher, didn’t you? That love of education and the importance of education particularly in those foundational years is so critical to a child’s learning. This is indeed what this bill strives to do, whether it is about employing staff, investing in admin staff or investing in childcare centres to make sure that every child in Victoria has got that right to a good education and to free education. After all, this is a historic investment. Can I say as the daughter of two schoolteachers, nothing makes me more passionate than seeing the ways that we actually invest in the next generation coming through. Being able to have the minister make those ministerial orders to fix the fees to pay for attendance at government early learning centres and setting the employment terms and conditions for the government early learning centres workforce is actually critical to that equity.

Let us not underestimate just how much we have invested in early learning for Victorian children. We have made kinder free, and this is transformative, particularly for people in my electorate, where there are some low socio-economic people and where that access is so vital to be able to give people, particularly first-generation migrants, that first start to life. Free kinder will save families up to $2500 in fees per child each year. Particularly in a cost-of-living crisis, it is about being able to provide that much-needed relief for family budgets and give women that freedom of choice to be able to return to the workforce. After all, we know that a workforce is so much better when we see that diversity represented in every aspect of our society. Did you know that in 2023 approximately 97 per cent – that is more than 2750 services – of funded kindergarten services were participating in free kinder? That is of benefit to up to 140,000 children – absolutely to be commended.

On top of that, we continue to lead the nation in early childhood education and care. We are establishing pre-prep over the next decade, a new universal 30 hours a week program of play-based early learning for four-year-old children. This is part of, as I said, an absolutely historic investment of $14 billion in the Best Start, Best Life reforms. I can remember, late last year actually, going down to one of my kinders with the then Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Ingrid Stitt in the other place, along with Bachar Houli, who is one of the iconic people in my electorate, to announce this program. It was absolutely fantastic, and it was particularly wonderful to see Bachar at a kindergarten that he had attended. He was also able to say that he was on the cusp of being able to go out there and say, ‘Where are the kinders that my kids are going to go to?’ We understood that this program that we were introducing would benefit so many kids across our community.

In 2025 pre-prep will start in the Rural City of Ararat. I know from having been there just late last week, after those devastating bushfires tore through Pomonal, that this sort of support for Ararat rural city will be extremely welcomed. It is going to be rolled out in Gannawarra shire, Hindmarsh shire and Murrindindi shire – again, another local government area that was really impacted by the floods earlier this year but also the storm event that tore through on exactly the same day. Northern Grampians shire will benefit – again, I was up there late last week – and Yarriambiack shire. This is so critical.

If I have a look at, say, some of the kinders in my electorate, to be honest an astonishing level of investment has gone on. We have got Altona Gate Kindergarten – $20,000 of school readiness funding has gone in there. We have got Altona Kindergarten, with $185,000 for a Building Blocks improvement grant. Altona North Children’s Service have received $200,000 to upgrade the outdoor space and $30,000 for the school readiness fund. Goodstart learning in Altona has had $8000 for a sensory sand and water table, and that is a beautiful area, let me tell you. Guardian Childcare and Education at Altona North has had $6000 for school readiness funding. But it does not stop there. Emma McLean Kindergarten has received $3000 in school readiness funding, but it is also an early learning centre that is receiving significant capital upgrades as well. We have got the Explorers Early Learning in Williamstown, with $8000 for school readiness funding. The Shine early learning centre in Brooklyn has received $6000 for school readiness funding. Home Road Kindergarten – I have been there many, many times, and the staff there, particularly Carly Conlon, who runs that centre, are amazing human beings – have had staged upgrades over a number of years, but their latest one was $180,000 for a Building Blocks inclusion grant for an all-abilities playground. The kids were so delighted when I went down to announce that.

South Kingsville Pre School have had $175,000 in a Building Blocks improvement grant as well as a multisensory play space, and that is a beautiful little native garden down there. The Kids by the Bay Children’s Centre have had $4000 in school readiness funding, and Newport Gardens Early Years Centre had a $600,000 Building Blocks capacity grant which expanded the centre in preparation for three-year-old kinder. The growth that is going on through that suburb is absolutely phenomenal. This will make such a difference to those young families in the area.

Robina Scott Kindergarten, an absolutely iconic place in Williamstown, has had a number of different grants – $180,000 for the Building Blocks inclusion grant, $110,000 for new child-safe toilets and $8000 for new safety padding and equipment. Seaholme Kindergarten is an entirely new build. It is fantastic. This is a $9.9 million Building Blocks capacity grant modular kindergarten. On top of that we have got Sutton Avenue Kindergarten, which is a brand new building as well, and The Range Children’s Centre has received an enormous grant to upgrade their outdoor play areas, which are absolutely spectacular. I was down there with the then minister for early childhood Ingrid Stitt in the other place to have a look when it opened, and it is an absolutely spectacular area. Finally, the One Tree Altona North childcare centre has received $200,000 in the Building Blocks inclusion grants to upgrade their outdoor space, and that will finish sometime next year.

As a government we have provided more than $9.95 million in funding to support five projects that will deliver 370 new kindergarten places across the Hobsons Bay LGA. Among these there will be 66 places at the new two-room modular kindergarten at Seaholme and a further 66 at the new Sutton Avenue Kindergarten in Altona. We are a government that is absolutely committed to making sure that kids, the next generation, have the absolute best start in life. We have got the investment that actually matters. We are delivering the teachers and all the staff that will make such a transformation to these young people that will come up and be the leaders of the future.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (11:38): Good childcare options give children the best start in life. We have already heard from a number of speakers about the importance of childcare places to ensure that we have young people with all of those options. There have been so many studies that have indicated what good child care does just from an educational perspective, from maths and English, and how that benefits them later in life; and with behavioural issues, how child care in those early childhood years helps remedy any potential child behavioural issues later in life. There have been umpteen studies about that. We are absolutely on a unity ticket, and the Liberals and Nationals absolutely support the importance of child care and providing the best possible child care that we can.

On top of that, what good childcare options provide for workforce participation, particularly for women, is absolutely imperative. Again we have seen so many studies where women have been locked out of the workforce because of poor childcare options. We have heard that there have been many reports, including a Deloitte report that said lack of access to child care takes almost 27,000 women entirely out of the workforce in Victoria and costs our economy about $1.5 billion a year in lost earnings. With a workforce shortage, you would think the one thing that we need to do is to get more people into the workforce and particularly more women in the workforce, and that is why more options are important. I acknowledge that the government are looking at expanding 50 childcare centres, and that is important. Many of those will be in areas where there is a lack of childcare options altogether, particularly in many rural and regional areas. But I do want to point this out because while we are opening 50, we are closing many because of poorly managed options and a poorly managed education system here in this state.

I want to particularly take note of three which are in my electorate: Caulfield, Murrumbeena and Carnegie early learning centres. These are council-run centres. Many of those parents that have been sending their kids to those centres over many years talk about the importance of council-run and government-run childcare centres in terms of ensuring that it keeps competition so they can get the best possible child care they can and the fact that these centres provide a quality of learning that many private centres do not provide. Whether it be dealing with children with special needs or whether it be dealing with kids with different cultural backgrounds that require specific attention, these centres have been second to none and have been very, very successful over a long period of time. But unfortunately at the end of March three of these centres will close. So while the government are opening new centres, particularly through rural and regional Victoria, there are three in the City of Glen Eira that will close at the end of March. What does that mean? That means that effectively we will have 118 children displaced out of those childcare centres who will have to find other options. It will mean probably a ripple effect with some 300 children and their families also having to look at options. That has been devastating for the local community, as you would imagine, and ultimately it is due to bad government policy.

There are policies like free kinder, which the government talks up as being a fantastic silver bullet. Well, there is no such thing as a silver bullet and there is no such thing as free. Ultimately someone ends up paying the price. When you distort the market and you have policies like free kinder, you see that many of those childcare centres have not been able to provide free kinder at the rates that the government is offering and have then needed to be topped up. Ultimately you see pressures on many of the government-run kinders, and then you see issues like the three of these having to close. Local councils – because of a lot of this interference from, effectively, government policy – have pressure on a number of these local kinders in terms of numbers, and ultimately that causes closure of good local services.

We have been trying to keep those three centres open, and we had a petition that some 7000 locals signed, particularly to keep Caulfield and Murrumbeena open. Those centres go back so many years. We had a rally just before Christmas, and I met a doctor who went to that child care and is now sending his kids to that child care. I met his mother, who was talking about when she would send her son and how now her grandchildren are going to that child care. That is the history – you are talking years and years; 30-plus years or more – of these childcare centres that will ultimately close.

I want to particularly put on record Ashlea Diamond, Emiko Hunt, Jeremy Koadlow and Sarah Fischer, who were key drivers to try to keep the childcare centres open and alive. It was not through a lack of their effort, because it was second to none. Hundreds and hundreds of families turned up to try and keep those centres alive. Mother of two Emiko Hunt told Nine News that she was hoping to keep them going, and now unfortunately she has said she might have nowhere to send her children:

It will mean that I can’t return to work next year …

That is what Emiko Hunt said. It will mean that, because of the closure, she cannot return to work. The Deloitte report that I referred to before about women not returning to the workforce because of childcare is Emiko’s story. It is real if you do not have options. These mothers unfortunately have to stay at home to look after their kids because they do not have those real options. So that is a real-life case story of not being able to provide child care.

Parents from out of the blue have been really trying to keep those centres open. Katerina, a mother whose children attended one of the centres, said she had hoped the council would keep them open for another 12 months. She talked about the 300 children being impacted by the closures and the ripple effect of the closures:

We’ve all called multiple child care centres and we don’t have places …

There are so many examples of this. One of the things that it is important to note of these government-run and council-run centres, particularly in the petition that many of the locals signed and was started by Ashlea Diamond, is:

All three of these centers are magical places of nurturing and learning. All three centres consistently rate ‘Exceeding’ in all aspects of the National Quality Standards. They are places where children thrive. They are workplaces where an industry of highly-qualified and committed educators have built their professional careers for … decades.

Without these centres, the early learning options in our community become privatised …

with less options. That is what this is about. We are talking about real options. The government talks about the new centres that are opening, and we think that is important, but we also need to ensure that we do not see centres closing like we have in my City of Glen Eira. I commend the member for Kew on the amendments to this bill that she has put forward, because we need to look at what the implications of some of the government policies are, what they are doing for the existing centres and how we are going to plan the rollout in terms of how we ensure that we have workforce participation of educators in these centres. These are real issues, because you cannot just magically put out a press release and think you are going to fix something unless you have the educators available, you have the centres ready to go and you have the community involved. There are many areas that have been identified, as we have said and many of my colleagues in seats in rural and regional Victoria have said, where there are no options or very few options. They are important, but we need to look at what this does across the board. This government thinks that they can solve a whole range of things with free programs. Ultimately the taxpayers pay. The free kinder program has cost the survival of many of these childcare centres because it has been a poorly rolled out policy. That is what we need to get right. We need to ensure that we have a plan, we have a commitment and we have a rollout.

I want to finish where I started: childcare options give kids the best start and options in life. We have got to do whatever we can to invest in child care. We have got to get more women into the workforce, and to do that childcare options are so imperative. We support that; the Liberal–Nationals absolutely support that. We will work with any government to ensure we get the best childcare options for all, but this bill does not go far enough. This bill does not deliver the silver bullet that this government thinks it does.

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (11:48): I also rise to support the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. I do want to perhaps begin by picking up on a few of the comments from the member for Caulfield. The member devoted most of his remarks, as we heard, to the closing of council-run facilities in Glen Eira. I just want to make it very clear to the member for Caulfield that nothing in this bill seeks to close down community or council-run early childhood centres. In fact the complete contrary is true. This government is absolutely on a unity ticket with the member that as we step up our investment in early childhood, councils should do the same. I believe that Ryan Batchelor in the other place, Josh Burns and other Labor representatives have spoken about that issue at some length, as the member for Caulfield is well aware, because he attended those rallies with them. I do not think it is in any way correct to tie that issue to this bill, as the member has sought to do. But we do agree with him on his general principle. In fact we have some experience of that up in Darebin in our part of the world, although I give credit to Darebin council that they have really addressed those issues well and continue to support our community early childhood centres in particular.

As we know, this is in fact the third early childhood bill that we have discussed in this place in the last four months, almost one every second sitting week. I know in my own very brief time as a public servant I would have been petrified to have had to prepare and support three bills within four months, but it is an absolute credit to the minister, her team and her department that they are pushing on with this legislative program in support of our Best Start, Best Life reforms.

We have heard already today from the member for Bundoora and the member for Williamstown about the broad benefits of that reform package. I will not repeat their remarks, but I would just like to note my particular excitement at the bush kinder grants that Minister Blandthorn in the other place announced just last Thursday, I think. We are lucky enough in our family to be benefiting at the moment from bush kinder and free kinder, but availability is limited, certainly in our part of the world. I was very excited to see 150 kinders take up those grants, or thereabouts, including four in our area: Goodstart Reservoir up in Gertz Avenue; Wood Street Childcare; Guardian Preston West on Murray Road, just near Preston West Primary; and Inspire Early Learning, just behind the church also on Murray Road. Well done to those four kinders. As they implement those new programs with our state government support, I think that will more than double the number of bush kinder programs in our area, which is wonderful news. But today’s bill deals more specifically with the 50 new state-owned early learning centres.

There are some important details in this bill, particularly with respect to the industrial relations arrangements for workers in those centres. As the title of the bill suggests, employment powers are central to it. But I want to just begin by touching on the key part of the debate we have listened to, which is the question of whether the state government should operate early childhood centres at all. Historically, we have not done that. We are now going to be doing so. If you think that is a good idea, you should support this bill, which will enable it to happen. If you do not think it is a good idea, well, you might seek to hold up the bill. We have heard a very mixed reaction from the opposition and perhaps not an entirely coherent one, but there has certainly been some pushback.

Cindy McLeish interjected.

Nathan LAMBERT: The member for Euroa is not here, but there have been some interjections to the effect that we are crowding out non-government operators in the area, and I do want to mainly just address that line of argument. I would say there are lots of reasons for the state government to operate early childhood centres. If I can start with a very simple one, co-location with government-run primary schools has a huge amount of value and I think is something that we are learning has even more value than we hoped for. We are lucky enough in our part of the world, at Reservoir East Primary now, to have a co-located centre there. That one is run with Darebin council and another provider. But I think it is a really important part of this bill – a small but important part – that it will now give the state government the capacity to do that on our own in perhaps areas where we cannot so easily partner.

More broadly I think it is a general principle in public policy that only the state government and the federal government ultimately ensure that 100 per cent of people have access to important services. We live in a very big state, and for various reasons of geography, demography, special needs and so forth there is always the chance that there will be gaps. I think it is important for the state government to have the capacity to step in and fill those gaps. I do not think, really, we have heard any argument from the opposition speakers on that. In fact, somewhat inconsistently, a lot of their points have been that gaps exist, and they are now saying they want to hold up a bill that will address those gaps in order to do more analysis on the gaps. As some people know, I love a bit of data analysis more than most, but there is no need at all to hold up this bill to do more analysis of something we know self-evidently to be true. Again, the member for Bundoora spoke eloquently about this. There are gaps that need addressing. We know that. We should proceed with this unamended bill now.

I think it is important to also note the size of what were doing here. Fifty new early childhood centres will be well received. It is important to remember there are about 3000 or so kindergarten services across the state – I think about 5000 if we include the care services as well. That means that the state government’s market share, if I can use a term perhaps the opposition might use, is 1 or 2 per cent state government provided. This is not anything like primary schools, where it is around 70 per cent. It is a relatively modest involvement, and I think that is important with respect to the workforce issues and the so-called market distortion issues that have been raised and that I think frankly are scaremongering by opposition speakers. I will note on the workforce front that there is this imputation that we are unaware of this issue. Of course that is not at all true, and in fact we have appropriated, I think, now over $370 million in initiatives to address that issue, through scholarships – I think over 4000 have been taken up so far – and not only our free TAFE program, of course, but a range of specific programs to let people move from cert III to diploma and to further education for teachers and educators.

I think, finally, if we look long term where we are going with universal pre-prep, we are obviously trying to address that challenge where young children have very holistic needs across health and their development and their confidence and provide support for them in what is of course a very intense time of parenting, and then as children get older the state government’s predominant role moves to education. I think we still have a bit to learn. The great dream of pre-prep is that we are going to do both of those things better, that we are going to do school readiness better whilst also doing that broad understanding of what young children in particular need better. It is done well at the moment; I think we still have a bit of learning to do between now and 2032 about how we are going to do it best. A lot of that learning will come from listening to early childhood professionals, but I think some of that learning will come from operating our own early childhood centres.

There is a funny saying in computer science, which was my background, about eating your own dog food. It is an expression that means that if you are developing an application you should use it yourself so you know how it works, and I do think amongst all the other benefits of our new early childhood centres, the fact that the state government and the Department of Education specifically are operating these facilities will be an opportunity for them to learn more and ensure that we get those reforms right.

I will just touch very briefly on the specifics of the bill. As we know, most of the clauses are relatively straightforward, and I think we have not heard any contest today over them. They extend arrangements that already apply to schools and other education and training programs. The most substantial part of course is clause 11, which I think takes up more than half of today’s bill and relates to employment matters. We see that we have extended some important components of the Education and Training Reform Act 2006. Long service leave outside work and working with children checks, things like that, have been extended across to the new arrangements. Not everything has been extended across, and of course we have left a lot of the employment decisions to future ministerial orders. I appreciate that the AEU and the United Workers Union and other worker representatives will no doubt have a keen interest in how those future ministerial orders are made and will be involved and consulted in those discussions. But my understanding is that they are comfortable with the approach the government is taking, and I think as a general principle of course they are very happy to have those discussions with the minister rather than seeking to embed things in legislation and for them to ultimately have to negotiate with the Parliament. And of course we have the Victorian Early Childhood Teachers and Educators Agreement and other instruments in this state and a very general commitment to ensuring that we lead the nation in terms of our support for early childhood staff, and those commitments will guide those discussions.

I would love to touch on the reasoned amendment, but in the brief moment I have got left I will just thank Bronwen Fitzgerald, Darren Youngs and the team in the department and the minister’s office for their work and commend this unamended bill to the house.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (11:58): Acting Speaker Marchant, I do look forward to your undivided attention as I make my contribution today. I am here to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. In short, this bill is really about how the introduction of the 50 early learning centres is going to be done across the state, and it puts a few of the nuts and bolts in place, where the Secretary of the Department of Education has the authority to employ workers and support staff to operate these government-owned early learning centres. Previously we have known that the government has had those powers, and this actually brings that in line so that they can move forward in this regard with this particular program.

It also allows the secretary to determine the fees that are charged to the parents that send their children to these early learning centres. We have no idea about the level and the extent of the fees, how high or how low they are. They are going to be in more disadvantaged areas, so I would expect that they would be on the lower side rather than the higher side, but when we raised these issues in the bill briefing we were not given a lot of information.

I do want to start, however, with the benefits of early learning. I think everybody does agree that there are well-documented benefits of early learning. Historically we have had children go to kindergartens to do the four-year-old kindergarten and then also the three-year-old kindergarten, and as more and more women participated in the workforce over the last decades there has been a need for greater childcare arrangements. So we have seen a swelling of childcare centre numbers across the state, and a lot of those centres began then to offer the kindergarten programs as part of that. I know when my daughter was in child care she was indeed able to be the beneficiary of a kindergarten program, and although there were only so many hours a week that it was going to be for, it essentially ran a full-time kindergarten program. Following that I did enrol my daughter in a pre-prep program, a four-year-old program which was full time, and that was a wonderful experience for her and certainly for us as a family. It did in fact make some of that juggle a lot easier.

But I want to talk about the benefits, particularly firstly the benefits for children participating in early learning. When you enrol in something that is quite formal, you learn how to participate, you know what to do and when to do it. You get some understanding of a bit of a timetable – we stop for morning tea, we stop to go out and play, we stop to do this and we read books here. They understand structures of programs, which gives them a good basis for going to school. They can develop great habits. They learn to cooperate with other kids and they learn teamwork whether you have to work together just in a little group of two or three or in a bigger group. The socialisation is so important for kids. They learn to respect and interact not just with adults but if they have not had children around them, they get to socialise with kids and to take turns and to know that ‘If it is my turn with this, then you have a turn.’ Numeracy and literacy are also absolutely key to that. I know that reading is an absolute key to success, and you can do the basics of counting, so when children start to go to school they are on the front foot, they are not on the back foot. It is really important to engage and include children in education early on.

Sadly across the state there are many disadvantaged areas. There are a number in my electorate, and I have been to different places across the state to see some real disadvantage. In those places a lot of the parents do not do the things that we might think are stock standard parenting approaches. They do not read to their children. Even when a kid is at school, they do not necessarily do the reading at home to make sure their children are reading. They do not count with them. They do not do a lot of the activities that many of us in this place would just do as part of the course of being a parent. I remember being in the Latrobe Valley at one point in a particularly disadvantaged place and the principal of the primary school was talking about the initiative to try and co-locate some childcare centres with primary schools. He said that they had children that had come to prep who were not toilet trained. They had been wearing pull-ups – I think that is what they are called – for years and the parents did not take that seriously. Most parents would send their kids along to primary school and to prep thinking they are going to learn to read and write and at the same time you have a teacher quite distracted because she is trying to make sure that the kids are toilet trained because that has not happened. This is something that is so fundamental and that really needs to be tackled early on. Having that earlier year will help get on top of some of these issues in very disadvantaged areas; you cannot penalise a kid who has lousy parents. You need to give children a good start in life. Absolutely the co-location of child care with schools is a good idea, and it does allow that easier transition between that four-year-old kinder and heading to prep.

Also beneficiaries of child care are parents, particularly women, and over the years there has been greater workforce participation for women. We know that there are workforce shortages everywhere, and I will touch on that a bit later, but we have a lot of people who stay at home because they cannot access child care and return to work – they cannot get the number of days they want, they cannot get every day – and that is particularly detrimental to women’s participation in the workforce. We know Deloitte has done a study that said $1.5 billion is lost in earnings because women are unable to participate in the workforce. I met with KPMG a number of years ago out of Canberra, and they had done similar work in this area. And it is not just women’s participation in workforce, it is also providing women with the opportunity to be leaders in their workplaces. If a woman is back at work three days or more, they have a greater chance of being in the mix for leadership roles. I am not talking about leadership of multinational companies, I am talking about leadership in an organisation that may have 10, 20, 30 people. Women need to be able to devote time to their leadership. Being in the workforce and having child care really does help that.

There are a number of shortcomings with this bill and the rollout of this strategy. At the moment we see people not being able to take up jobs because they cannot access child care, and there are shortages of child care. We know that there are childcare deserts across the state, and the member for Lowan in her speech mentioned the issues in rural and regional Victoria in detail. She is a lot further from some of the major hubs than I am in my electorate, and I know that we have issues certainly in my electorate.

Through this program there is an intended rollout in Alexandra in the Murrindindi shire and Woori Yallock in the Yarra Ranges shire. Both of those are in my electorate, and no-one really knows what is going on. We have got a bill here, and we were unable to get a lot of answers at the bill briefing because no-one really knows. We think that in Alexandra the early learning centre is going to be co-located with the primary school. Certainly that is ideal; I am not sure how much space they have got. In Woori Yallock all I know is what everybody knows: that there is no location determined yet and that people are working towards this. So there is a lot of work to be done. We were not given a lot of satisfactory information at the bill briefing. I would have thought that things had been progressed a little bit further here, and that has not been the case.

On the workforce issues, we know that there are workforce issues in child care already. There are workforce issues with teachers. How many schools have started with way under the number of teachers that they need? We are going to have to find a lot of staff to actually manage and deliver the program at the early learning centres. This is not 50 people; this is a number of people across each location, and to find the staff in country Victoria is very difficult. If staff are coming to live in country Victoria, often there are no properties for them to either rent or buy, so there are a lot of challenges in this field, which is why we have put the reasoned amendment forward saying to the government, ‘Look, get your act together. Get a little bit more down the track and let us know what’s happening here.’

Everybody supports and understands the benefit of early learning here. I sincerely hope that Labor do not botch this. Their record on implementation is very poor. We do need a comprehensive plan. We do need to know that this is not going to be botched and have overruns, like so many other projects that have happened in this state. As I said, their record is very poor in this area, and I really hope that this is one that does well out of it.

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (12:08): Acting Speaker Addison, it is lovely to see you in the chair and such a privilege and a pleasure to be back here contributing to yet another piece of really important legislation regarding early childhood education in Victoria. Nothing is more important to the future of our state than the beginnings, the preparation that we give our young people across Victoria. Wherever they live, whatever their parental circumstances might be, whatever their socio-economic circumstances might be, it is an absolutely central tenet of this government that we are committed to children and to their future. It is why the portfolio for children was created – to reflect the central importance of children to our legislative agenda. I commend and thank the committed public servants like Bronwen FitzGerald and like all of those that the Parliamentary Secretary for Children identified before, but also the minister’s team, for the huge volume of work and exhaustive consultation that has taken place in bringing this piece of legislation to the Parliament.

We have heard some confused and confusing comments from the members opposite. Apparently they share our commitment to early childhood education, but the compelling lack of members opposite would suggest that they have other things on their minds and things that they consider far more important to their life in this Parliament than the future of Victoria and Victorians. I cannot imagine what that might be, but I can only assume it has something to do with poor leadership.

I do want to talk about the way in which this legislation builds upon previous bills that have been brought to this place that I have had the pleasure to comment upon recently, bills that enabled the minister to acquire land to ensure that the kind of co-location that the Parliamentary Secretary for Children talked about in his outstanding contribution a few moments ago can happen to ensure that families do not have to do the double drop-off and that you have the kind of linkage between early childhood education and school education.

Dylan Wight interjected.

Iwan WALTERS: It is indeed fantastic for families, as the member for Tarneit rightly notes. Other bills have enabled early childhood centres to be located in more densely populated areas of Victoria so that wherever a family is living in Victoria they have access to high-quality, accessible early learning for their children. This bill of course is focused on ensuring that the Victorian government has the capacity to deliver on its really important commitment to establish 50 government-owned early learning centres across the state. It needs to do this by ensuring that the Secretary of the Department of Education has the capacity to employ early learning professionals. I am a former employee of the Secretary of the Department of Education, and I believe you may have been at one point, Acting Speaker, in our capacity as teachers, and while it sounds like the opposition on the one hand support this initiative, they are also cautioning that the sky might fall in should that possibility come to pass. Of course these 50 government-owned early learning centres are a core component of our government’s $14 billion Best Start, Best Life reforms. These are landmark reforms in our state, and the 50 government-owned early learning centres are going to be in areas that need them most, in areas that the private sector is not adequately serving at the moment in part because of very rapid growth in certain parts of Victoria or because geography renders it difficult to ensure that every child has the capacity to access quality early learning.

I was reflecting in reading the bill about the nature of the powers that the secretary needs to take on to establish these 50 government-owned early learning centres and to employ early childhood teachers and educators, including trainee educators, centre directors and assistant directors, administrative staff and cooks, because it is illustrative I think of the operational complexity of high-quality early learning centres and early childhood education. I want to acknowledge the outstanding work that so many centres across my electorate already do to manage this complexity, centres that I have had the immense privilege of visiting recently, like Kool Kidz Childcare Greenvale, like Pelican Childcare Fairways early learning in Craigieburn and like the co-located centres at Bethal Primary School in Meadow Heights and Roxburgh Park Primary School and kindergarten, which is just being built at the moment. These are fantastic centres that do an amazing job of delivering for the children that they educate.

I had the pleasure of visiting with the Minister for Children the newly reopened early learning centre at Bethal Primary School. These centres do a fantastic job at positively intervening and supporting the young people who they educate and working with their families to smooth the journey into school education and to provide the kind of life skills that the member for Eildon talked about in her contribution. They do this every single day amid significant operational complexity, and I just want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank them for the work that they do every single day and also to wish the Secretary of the Department of Education the very best as the secretary goes about ensuring that these 50 government-owned early learning centres replicate that outstanding education and that supportive environment wherever they should be located around Victoria. I will be delighted to see one of these centres – or more, potentially – serving my own community in Greenvale.

I do want to talk a little bit about the reasoned amendment and particularly the member for Preston, the Parliamentary Secretary for Children, who reflected on the need for these centres and the fact that they will not be crowding out existing provision. There will be no negative impact on existing services. We know from the anecdotal feedback we get through our electorate offices constantly as well as the empirical evidence base that the department has that there are areas that are under-served by high-quality early learning in Victoria. There is a need to ensure that in growing areas and in areas that have significant socio-economic disadvantage we are providing access to high-quality early learning. It is the role of government to correct for market failure and to ensure that there is outstanding universal service provision in this most important area of social policy, early childhood education. That is why I am so proud to be part of a government that is genuinely committed to ensuring that every Victorian has the best start in life.

Best Start, Best Life reforms are not just a slogan, they are a $14 billion program of real, tangible programs including 50 new early learning centres but also all of the reforms we are making around free kinder and pre-prep and ensuring that there is a pipeline of really highly skilled and qualified early childhood educators who are working to support our young Victorians. It makes a difference because every Victorian deserves the opportunity to have a great start in life, and too many for too long have been held back. We know that one in five Victorian children starts school behind and that not getting the best start in life has long-term consequences not just for that child and their family but for the state in its service provision and for all taxpayers who pay for that service provision. It is both the moral and the fiscally prudent thing to do to intervene early to ensure that every child has access to great early learning. Regrettably across Australia and across Victoria a child’s family circumstance plays an unacceptably large role in determining their outcomes long before they get to the school gate.

The member for Eildon has just left the chamber, but I believe she referred to the member for Lowan’s earlier contribution talking about some of the challenges of distance and geography in ensuring high-quality early learning. I reflect on my own time teaching in the Grampians, in the member for Lowan’s electorate, where too often children were arriving in my classrooms not having had access to high-quality early learning. They were getting to primary school in such a way that it was really difficult for the primary school teachers to counteract the legacy of inadequate early childhood education. This bill and the government’s broader agenda seek to counteract those challenges to ensure that every student has a platform to succeed and thrive.

In reflecting on my experiences at Stawell, I want to pause – if you will permit me, Acting Speaker – and reflect upon the community that I lived in when I was teaching at Pomonal, which has really suffered very grievously in the last week, and all the families who are worried about their children with their school being closed. I thank all of the emergency services workers and all of the educators who will be supporting families this week – early learning and schoolteachers – but also all of the government workers, the volunteer firefighters, every single person in the Pomonal community who has been working to provide the 39 houses I believe –

A member interjected.

Iwan WALTERS: 45 houses that have been destroyed and the families who lived in them with the support that they need going forward.

This is an incredibly important bill. It will help to ensure that students in Pomonal, students in Stawell ‍– students across Victoria – have access to outstanding early learning. I thank the minister and her team for the consultation and the work they have done to bring it to this place. I commend it to the house, unamended.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (12:18): I rise today to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024, a bill that would benefit significantly from the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Kew. This piece of legislation aims to strengthen the government’s commitment to opening 50 new government-owned early learning centres (ELCs) by employing staff and setting and charging fees for parents. This commitment, announced in advance of the 2022 election, with further details provided in the 2023–24 budget, stated these new government-owned and government-run centres would be in communities of greatest need. Sadly, so many communities across our state, including many in my electorate of Euroa, are set to remain without child care despite desperately needing it.

A 2022 report from the Mitchell Institute indicated that the Euroa electorate had significant issues when it came to childcare availability and accessibility. The Seymour region, Benalla, Avenel, Nagambie, Kilmore and Broadford were some of the areas pinpointed as struggling the most, whilst similar towns, such as Murchison, Rushworth, Tooborac and Redesdale had no child care whatsoever. These are major towns, not inaccessible backwaters, but they are being placed at a disadvantage when child care is so rare. The lack of childcare options is placing a significant barrier on young people who want to raise their families in regional Victoria. We have got incredible local childcare providers, but in most of these places there are up to six children competing for one place. It is not sustainable. Not having facilities will have a massive impact on the town’s future, with families choosing to relocate most of their lives to bigger centres like Shepparton. The lack of child care perpetuates generational disadvantage, something that is disproportionately impacting regional towns.

The Allan Labor government’s inability to manage money or manage a project is now impacting the education opportunities of our children. We already have extreme cost-of-living pressures as well as a labour crisis, making more accessible child care so important to ensure parents can return to work and alleviate these issues. Towns like Nagambie and Avenel were not even included in this government announcement, despite serious problems finding local child care in these areas. I had asked on several occasions that Avenel be included as one of the towns to receive a new childcare centre. Avenel is a growing township, with housing developments attracting residents, families and businesses to the town. Unfortunately, like many regional towns in Victoria, they have insufficient childcare facilities. They literally have none at all. With neighbouring towns, like Nagambie, also struggling with waitlists, it is imperative that Avenel is given the facilities needed to provide child care locally to all who needed it. It was incredibly disappointing to see them miss out on being included in the most recent announcement as towns and inner-city suburbs with far more childcare options were included ahead of them.

As part of the government’s rollout of the new early learning centres, I was initially pleased that Seymour, located within my electorate, was included to alleviate some of the strain on the system locally. But let me tell you my community has been incredibly disappointed about this misleading announcement. The reality is that the centre will not be delivered until well beyond 2028 if it is delivered at all. The headline-grabbing announcement of a new early learning facility prevented private and not-for-profits from filling the childcare void, while this government has no goal to actually deliver and relieve childcare waitlists. This government has a clear track record of overpromising and underdelivering for Victorians. I have serious concerns that this childcare initiative will be added to the ever-growing list of failures.

One major issue of concern for this program relates to getting staff at these childcare facilities. We know from experience that trying to attract teachers to primary and secondary schools in regional communities requires additional resources. For the few childcare facilities that my region has, staffing still remains a key issue despite them operating for years. With 17 of the 50 new government-owned ELC sites being regional or remote, this is something that must be addressed. So far there are very few details and no clear plan to overcome the very probable staffing challenges that will arise in these locations. In 2023 the Australian Childcare Alliance surveyed over 600 childcare centres, with over two-thirds of respondents saying they had capped enrolments due to staffing shortages. As a result, about 16,000 childcare places lay dormant due to the workforce crisis. Given we are already at crisis levels of workforce shortages, any interventions in the sector must be well thought out, organised and executed so there are no disruptions to existing service providers. Disruptions and distortions to the market could result in a significant reduction in the number of childcare places. We must ensure that getting staff to these new facilities does not take away from our already struggling system.

The government estimates they will need 700 educators plus another 100 teachers as well as administrators, support staff, cooks and more. Hundreds of staff will be needed, ready to go in these centres from day one, and there is no plan to ensure that these staff are not coming from existing centres. Neighbouring centres and kindergartens will be sacrificing their own staff for the new centres, and we are already seeing it locally in our community. They will have to reduce the number of places that they offer, taking places offline at a time we need to be growing capacity in the sector.

Due to how significant an issue this has been throughout my electorate, I created a survey and a review for local parents last June so they could explain the challenges and difficulties they faced accessing child care locally. Responses were received from major towns across the electorate, such as Avenel, Benalla, Broadford and Rushworth, as well as other smaller towns in the region. The responses shared overwhelmingly negative experiences, with 98 per cent of respondents saying they had been adversely impacted by access to a childcare centre in the region. Of those that were working, the responses highlighted a significant reliance on family and friends for child care due to limited options in the area.

Inaccessible child care has been an absolute slap in the face to parents not wanting but needing to return to work. One of the many functions of child care is to enable greater workforce participation, particularly for women. According to Deloitte, lack of access to child care takes almost 27,000 women entirely out of the workforce in Victoria and costs the economy about $1.5 billion a year in lost earnings. This is unacceptable. I want to share some of the responses to my surveys as well as personal stories shared with me that demonstrate the enormity of the problem we are faced with.

Felicity is a PR and marketing expert who lives on a property near Seymour with her family. She has been on a waitlist to get adequate care for her beautiful son Sebastian and has been forced to seek private babysitting support and nanny help, which means many days she is working entirely to pay for the care of her child. It is unsustainable, unfair and at times dangerous when leaning on people for care who do not have adequate experience or first-aid knowledge, but we have no other option. She has to work to remain relevant and experienced in the field that she is damned talented at. In a way, she is lucky enough to be able to seek some private care, because many people like single mums or those without family support can only work the hours their children are in care, which is so limiting.

Lauren in Seymour is an incredible landscape architect with two gorgeous boys. She volunteers on absolutely every community event in town. Last year she had to quite literally wait at the door of childcare centres for access, waiting for a child to not attend because they were sick or absent. This is completely unacceptable. Another mum Lou, a local nurse who recently had two twin boys Freddie and Tommy, is on a 40-strong waitlist in Seymour for a centre that takes eight babies. Can I quickly say happy birthday, Freddie and Tommy – we adore you. But this government has genuinely promised a centre so far down the track that boys like Tommy and Freddie will be at school before it even starts to get built. There are countless more responses we received to these surveys. One mother said:

We have been on a wait list in Nagambie for over 6 months and still predicted to be waiting until December 2024. Unfortunately, I’ve now had to claim jobseekers payment due to lack of childcare, even if we have the baby and childcare we’re still limited with before and after-school care.

Another had to change jobs to one that is 40 minutes away just to be able to get full-time day care. One mother, a nurse in our community, said it is almost impossible to get child care:

… unless you want to be on a waiting list for 12 months. That is not always an option.

As an RN in a struggling healthcare system, she cannot work as much as possible because she cannot get the care for her child.

Many of the concerns about getting mothers back into the workforce can be found in amazing work done by the Sustaining Economic Empowerment and Dignity for Women, or SEED, project. I want to thank the local girls in Seymour for the extraordinary research they have done, highlighting the lack of child care as one of the major contributing factors in Seymour. The SEED project’s Flip It! report points out that a lack of access to childcare services has reinforced traditional gender roles in Seymour as women who may want to work are often obliged to stay home, work part time or take on lower paid jobs closer to home in order to look after their children. The report notes how these attitudes have manifested in high rates of domestic violence.

With that being said, I would like to make a big shout-out to all of our local teachers and childcare providers for what they do considering the lack of investment: to Narelle, Evie, Jacquie, Nicole, Jen, Trean and Amanda.

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (12:28): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill, the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. Education is certainly a passion of mine, and I have spoken in this place about it before, being a former primary school teacher. We all know that the early years in a child’s life and early childhood are the most critical phases in their development. In their formative years they are laying the foundation for that learning, the growth and the social and emotional development. But the whole key to unlocking that potential is our early years educators. I can imagine a world where every child has access to quality early childhood education, where potential knows no bounds and children have the opportunity to thrive and succeed. That is the world that we as a government are trying to create and are working towards creating. It does start with recognising the importance of early childhood and this government certainly recognises that for our youngest Victorians and for our families.

This investment in early education that has occurred over the years, in more recent years with Best Start, Best Life, is certainly unprecedented. As part of the $14 billion Best Start, Best Life reforms the Victorian government has committed to building these 50 new government-owned and operated early learning centres across Victoria, giving families further options. These centres will open in a few years to come, and all 50 centres will be located where they are most needed, in areas where there is significant childcare shortage and higher rates of disadvantage. This is going to increase the ability of carers and families to access child care and give particularly women options and choice when they are looking to return to work.

I am really proud to have one of the 50 centres announced in my electorate in an area that was in desperate need of a service, and this is in what they call the Portarlington statistical area 2 region, which takes in the towns of Portarlington, Indented Head and St Leonards. The state government and local government are working together really well to have a dedicated service, a preferred service, at the St Leonards township, where there is no current service for families. I remember that when announcing this there was a lot of excitement. It was just so well received by that St Leonards community because they had been advocating for a service for a while. They have been eagerly contacting me in the last little while to get regular updates on where we are at with that. With the growth that we have seen across the Bellarine, in particular down on the coastline of Portarlington, St Leonards and Indented Head, it is vital that we have this service to keep up with that growth. It is a great place to raise a family, and many families have moved to the area. This childcare centre will be absolutely welcomed by the families there, and I am really pleased to see this investment.

This bill does empower the Secretary of the Department of Education to employ staff at early learning centres and enable the Minister for Children to make orders in relation to staff employment and the payment of fees by parents of children enrolled in the centres. So that is just a little bit about what this bill is trying to achieve. The bill also will make sure that we expand the scope of the act in matters relating to early childhood to create this new government workforce under the act. It also recognises changes to enable the Secretary of the Department of Education to employ staff to deliver on these 50 ‍early learning centres. When we talk about staff in centres, we are including early childhood teachers, educators, trainee educators, centre directors, assistant directors, administration staff and maybe cooks as well. As we promised in the election, these staff will be directly employed by the Secretary of the Department of Education.

Obviously being very passionate about this issue is one thing, but it is another to have a deeper understanding of what the local impacts are. Last year it was a privilege to be part of the Victorian parliamentary internship program, where an intern comes to your electorate and is paired with you. I was really fortunate to work closely with a student, Indigo Coulson, who was studying at Melbourne University. When we discussed what issue we thought would be a good one to investigate for the Bellarine, she and I decided that early childhood would be the main focus. Her report titled ‘Socio-economic and geographic inequality: early childhood education and care in Bellarine’ is an absolutely incredible report that highlights some of the challenges and issues going forward for our local Bellarine communities. I will give her a shout-out: she actually won the internship award for her report. It was fantastic.

For her report, Indigo surveyed families, providers, local government and educators and got a really good snapshot of what was happening across the Bellarine and, depending on where they lived, what type of early childhood service was available to families and the quality as well. She identified suburbs that were definitely in need of additional early learning centres, and I suppose it was probably no surprise that she did identify the St Leonards and Portarlington areas, where one has now been committed to. I am so proud of that report. It is on my website if people would like to look at it closely. It really does highlight the importance of families having easy access to child care – like when you are a new parent and you are navigating a new system. Making sure that it is easy for parents to access their closest or most easily accessible childcare centre and that they feel comfortable with the quality of service that they receive when they are there is really important to families. We do have an incredible number of high-quality early learning centres across the Bellarine; we are very fortunate.

The research does show, though, time and time again that early years development is so critical for our little ones. It does shape their cognitive, emotional and social skills and sets them up, and our educators, as I said, play a pivotal role in ensuring that. I would like to take the opportunity to really thank all of our early education staff for what they are doing with our littlest ones on the Bellarine. You are amazing. Thank you for all the work that you do. Your dedication, your passion and your commitment to nurturing our young minds make such a difference. You are not just educators; you are mentors, role models and champions of our little children’s futures. You have that power to instil the love of learning and you foster that creativity, and we thank you. On this side, the government certainly thank you for that work, and in thanking you for that, we show our support with these initiatives and the things that we have done to support you.

This bill, though, does impact beyond that classroom, and investing into our childhood education is investing into our future. In the electorate of the Bellarine, as I have said, we have some wonderful centres, and I have been really pleased to see some further investment this year and last year into some of those centres to support the programs that are happening. Bush kinder is a wonderful program that gets the children out and about in the natural environment. We have such a great environment on the Bellarine, both in bush and parkland but also in a beach setting. I would like to congratulate Headstart Early Learning Centre Ocean Grove, who I visited the other day and who were recipients of a bush kinder grant; Woodlands House Child Care centre in Ocean Grove; and Lonsdale House Childcare in Point Lonsdale. It is fantastic to see that they will have support for their bush kinder programs. Lonsdale House Childcare in Point Lonsdale and Woodlands House in Ocean Grove also received support for early years assessment and learning tools, which will be really great initiatives for the staff there to be assessing and to be doing best practice in their centres, which is absolutely fantastic. I am really pleased to see that support.

This initiative, though, is not just about dollars and cents. As I have said, it is about investing in our future. It is by investing in early childhood and quality educators that we are setting up our future. We are building a stronger and more inclusive society where every child has the opportunity to thrive. I am proud of what this government has done to accomplish that. Let us continue to champion early childhood education and ensure that every child in Victoria has that chance to reach their full potential.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (12:37): I rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024, a bill that gives effect to the government’s commitment to opening 50 new government-owned early learning centres by employing staff and setting the charging fees for parents. This is an announcement that the government made prior to the election, together with making three-year-old kinder available to all children and complementing four-year-old kinder. It is obviously something that we need. There is plenty of evidence that tells us that the earlier we start with children having the supports around early learning, the better the educational outcomes. But also it is important because in South-West Coast we have a childcare desert, and this goes some way to addressing the issues. I say ‘some way’ because it is quite concerning that we have this big announcement that gets these parents, who are desperate for child care, really excited about a solution, but the dates that are forthcoming are quite disappointing.

But that being said, in Portland we do have a commitment that the facility that will be at Portland South Primary School will be completed by 2026. This is a good thing for the parents of Portland, because they are absolutely desperate. I have had many forums in recent times to talk to the parents about what we can do to solve the childcare desert issue at a local level, and I will maybe talk a bit more about that later on. In the community of South Portland the teachers that I met with on the day that announcement came through were really excited, because there is only one toilet there for all the teachers – 19 teachers, support staff and adults that support that community at Portland South school. The very fact that they are hoping that the childcare centre will provide toilets is a good thing, if nothing else.

Of course it is a terrific announcement, but for the parents who are needing child care now, 2026 is a long way away, and then there are the Warrnambool parents who are on probably the never-never list of ‘We’ll get to you in maybe 2028’. When you look at the children who are born now, they will actually be starting primary school by then. So it really does not help those parents who are struggling with the cost of living and interest rates on mortgages – even that one factor, and there are many, many more than that, with energy prices going up under this state Labor government by 28 per cent. With the cost of groceries I really do wonder how families are making ends meet. That is why women are needing to go back to work and parents are desperate for childcare facilities, and we just do not have enough places in Warrnambool. In my part of the world, South-West Coast – in Warrnambool, actually ‍– for every child there are 0.29 places available, and we have 56 per cent female workforce participation. So 56 per cent of women are participating in the workforce, but there are only 0.29 places for the children to go. Compare that to Melbourne, which has 0.5 places per child and has female participation in the workforce of 69.1 per cent. That figure there shows you that we are very much in a crisis situation, and I feel it in my office most days when families are ringing up saying, ‘What are we supposed to do? We can’t manage the cost of living without both parents working, and we simply can’t get child care.’

That actually led me to in the Parliament last year put forward a motion for debate to take place so we could thrash out what we could do here and now. I believe there are regulations, without compromising child safety, that we can put in place, according to the childcare operators in my electorate. As long as we can get the federal government to cooperate with the state Labor government – and they are both Labor, so there is probably good reason that you would expect cooperation – we can make the fees more portable and we can find ways that work in the regions. I have raised this in the Parliament before. There is an example of a doctor who has children of preschool age, and three nurses in the clinic. They have the room, they have the space and they are happy to employ someone to help look after their group of children, but it does not fit under the regulations and rules of a daycare centre, because it has to be in someone’s own home rather than somebody else’s home. Those sorts of things that do not compromise child safety do not really make any sense. So it was disappointing that I put forward the motion to ask for a debate to occur so we could thrash this out and put forward those ideas that our communities have put forward but it was denied.

You heard from the member for Euroa just before me, and the situations that she brought forward about families needing answers now. They have the solutions. We have been listening to our communities, and whilst this bill will set up early learning centres, it will not actually solve the problem today. I think it is important that we listen to families, and the fact that that debate that I suggested in the house was denied by the Labor government is an absolute disgrace.

These early learning centres – whilst I see the benefit, and we also agree with three-year-old kinder – they have to actually come with some degree of planning. Labor have not put forward a plan, so whilst we are building 50 centres, what is the answer? What is the solution for the workforce shortages that we already have in the region? To actually say we are going to have more places for children in care centres and three-year-old kinders does not actually acknowledge the fact that you cannot do that without training. You cannot do that without planning and you cannot just say ‘Here’s a new centre’ and poach people from other places to fill it, because it does not actually solve the problem. It just shifts the problem around and probably distorts the market and disrupts the service of the families who may have a placement but then lose one of the workers.

I really do hope that the government thinks a bit harder and does something magical in the next two years between now and 2026, because I am not sure where these workers are going to appear from. Given there are 800 vacancies in the childcare workforce today, I am not sure where the solution is going to come from. We tried to ask some of these questions in the bill briefing. They are reasonable questions, but the government could not tell us where the money was going to come from to run the services. The 2023–24 budget, which included the $921 million to establish the 35 new government-owned early learning centres by 2027, did not actually cover anything other than the building costs and did not include any forecast operating expenses, including wages.

On that, part of the bill is set up to enable the employment of the early learning educators, the administrators to run the centres and the cooks to feed the children, but I am still confused as to why we need a piece of legislation to do that because we do not do that for nurses, ambulance officers or teachers; that is part of the appropriation bill that we pass each year to be able to pay the public service. I often think that this is just a way of the government saying it will shout everyone down by saying it has solved the problem of childcare deficits and deserts, like in South-West Coast. Here is a bill and it can just put out press releases with these announcements. If you peel back a bit of the detail, you see that, like I have said, in Warrnambool it will be at least 2028, when many of the children who have been born are at school, so it is pretty disappointing.

We have seen a million examples of this; maybe that is an exaggeration, but dozens of examples of this. The bill we had in the Parliament last year about giving people the ability to walk into a pharmacy and get treatment for a urinary tract infection – it is a great concept, but it is still not possible in South-West Coast because there is no protection for the pharmacists. They are not aware of what the rules are because the trial had just started when the bill went through and there was no detail. This is very similar – a great concept, we need to fill the desert that we have got in child care, but without the detail, without understanding where the people are going to come from to fill this beautiful building that we are building in Portland, which hopefully will have toilets for our teachers rather than 19 of them sharing one toilet. As a parent who has four children and who relied on day care as a nurse, as a shiftworker – every single child of mine was in day care – it is a real concern for parents.

Child care is something that is putting enormous pressure on families in a region that already has massive workforce challenges. It is trying to attract people to the area, but they cannot find child care and they cannot find houses. How on earth is this government proposing that we fix this in this short time frame without the level of detail needed? A shout-out to all the families who are struggling. I am advocating for you. We are trying to find a solution. I am trying to get the government to listen. Let us have that debate because I know the parents have the solution, and we can get some solutions now.

Paul MERCURIO (Hastings) (12:47): I rise to make my contribution to the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. It will amend the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to provide the state with appropriate legislative powers to operate government-owned early learning centres in this state. I would like to thank the member for South-West Coast for being positive at the beginning of her debate. It is great to hear that you will be getting a centre in 2026. That is a good news story. I think we all agree that we need more, and that is why Labor is in fact building 50 more centres. That is what this bill is about, and that is what we are doing. We are getting on and doing it, and it is not always easy. It is complicated and complex work, and that is why we need a bill and legislation to help us guide the way that we move forward on building the 50 extra centres.

This bill will primarily make changes to the principal act that will give powers to the Secretary of the Department of Education to employ staff at government centres to deliver early childhood education, enable fees to be fixed and charged to parents and allow the minister to make orders regarding fees and employment conditions for the early learning centre workforce. Although the secretary currently has powers that pertain to this, they are unsuitable for employing and setting out the conditions for early childhood employees, so this bill will establish a more modern power for the secretary that better reflects what this government’s early learning reforms are trying to achieve.

Since I began my time in this place I have talked on a number of bills that were for early childhood education. Indeed the member for Preston said this is the third time we have spoken on early childhood education, which again shows that Labor are putting the work in. I have been to kinders in my community and seen firsthand the wonderful kinder kits that they get at the start of each year, and I have heard absolutely brilliant stories from families that are not only benefiting but thriving from this government’s reform to early childhood education. It is clear to me that this Labor government not only cares deeply about the future of our kids but actually puts action behind it. It is very easy to just say some fancy lines or buzzwords about what is going to be done; it is harder to plan and implement these policies in an effective way. But that is what we have been doing and that is what we will continue to do as we are now debating this bill.

On reading this bill and writing this speech, I looked back on what was available to me and my wife when we had our three daughters. Actually it was more when we had our first two daughters way back when. Back then we were a one-income family. Believe me, the wage of a professional ballet dancer was not very generous, and it was a bit of a struggle. As my girls are now 28, 32 and 34, I had to really strain to think back on what was available to them. In fact I called them all so that they could remind me of what we did. There was certainly nothing free, and there was very, very little, if any, financial help. On my one wage we struggled to get my two girls into what was known as a day care/child care/kindergarten sort of set-up.

That was really important, because having a young family, as we all know, is not a ride in the park. It can be very stressful, and having the ability to get my kids into kindergarten or preschool gave my wife some time for her mental health and also helped with our relationship, because having kids is incredibly stressful. It was an important time for my girls. They loved being in kindergarten, once they got over the crying at the morning handover. It was a great environment, and the staff were all so incredibly warm, caring, patient and kind. As I said, it was also a much-needed break for my wife’s mental health and some quiet time for us to be together, a break from the kids to reset, refresh and do the shopping without having to constantly say, ‘No, you cannot have that.’ It does wonders for the soul.

Mathew Hilakari: Unheard of.

Paul MERCURIO: Unheard of. In essence we coped through that early time in our life, but I am aware that we all have different experiences, so it is refreshing to know that Victorian families are better off under this government as we are making massive and needed changes to early childhood education, and this bill will only continue to strengthen our commitments.

These changes are all part of the Best Start, Best Life reforms, but this bill in particular will help deliver over 50 new government owned and operated early learning centres in areas where they are most needed. However, we will also need the staff to fill these centres. To make sure we have the workforce needed, we need to invest and create pathways to enable educators, and we are doing that work as well, despite what those on the other side might say.

Part of the massive $14 billion investment we have made is to make sure we are upskilling people by providing support to 780 diploma-qualified educators to become degree-qualified teachers. We are providing support for more placement and mentoring experiences for 550 students and allowing another 200 trainees to undertake paid traineeships in early childhood services whilst they complete their certificate III. Whilst we support the pipeline of workers coming through the system, we are also providing immediate support to current qualified teachers and educators through providing financial incentives of up to $50,000 if they move to an area where it has been hard to find staff. If you are someone who has left the profession but still has eligibility, incentives of up to $9000 are available to rejoin the workforce.

Once teachers have begun their education career, supporting them through their journey is just as important, as we do not want to be seeing burnout occurring so early on, because that would create more staff turnover. There are free career development opportunities that include conferences for first-year teachers and coaching and mentoring support for teachers and returning educators, and we are establishing early years learning networks for teachers that have been recognised as leaders to share their professional expertise and, crucially, experiences, building on our commitment to include more people with lived experience in developing the future of the education workforce.

We have consulted and worked with not only early childhood teachers and educators but also over 5000 Victorian families to hear their input and what would work best for them and to listen to their feedback, which is invaluable when making decisions as important as this. On top of listening to educators and families, we also need to have on board our service providers, peak bodies, unions, and our universities and TAFEs so that everyone is on the same page and understands what we are trying to achieve, greatly improving how early childhood education is being done and building on the work that has already been started. This bill is just another part to revolutionise how we educate and the logistics of it all. There is talk, which is what the other side only does, and there is action, which is what this side does. These centres will start to open from next year until 2028, and these bills and various amendments are all part of that important process.

The first few of these centres are being opened in 2025, and that will be exciting for those communities, starting with Eaglehawk North, where the Premier will be quite happy to see that one built; then on to Fawkner, where I am sure the member for Broadmeadows will be keen for that one; then across to Sunshine for the next centre, where the amazing member for Laverton is eager to get it underway; and then finally we have another being started up in Murtoa, which should make the member for Lowan quite happy to see that provided for her community. As I said, for the member for South-West Coast, there will be one opening there in 2026, which is something to actually celebrate and not complain about. Not only are they in places that need that support most, but also co-locating these early learning centres with services like maternal and child health, parenting programs and community spaces and having them next door to our schools where possible to eliminate the hassle of a double or triple drop-off just makes sense to me, and I am sure it does to every other parent in this place. Less time in the car means more time in the learning environment.

This is the start of 50 new childcare centres. This is the start of 50 new places that will educate and be a safe place for our children and 50 new places that will be new career beginnings for some workers and the revitalisation of careers for others. It is for our educators, it is for our parents, and most importantly, it is for the future of young Victorians. I am glad to see that those on the opposite side support this bill. Unfortunately, I am not happy to see the reasoned amendment, because I support this bill. I commend the bill to the house.

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (12:57): It is a thrill indeed to get up and to speak to the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Early Childhood Employment Powers) Bill 2024. It is also good to see that the Leader of the Nationals has decided not to take an early lunch and to be here with us for this very important bill.

I was just reflecting on the words of the member for Hastings in his very, very solid contribution. Investment in our youngest Victorians is just so important. It lays the foundation for our Education State. But to hear the member for Hastings reflect upon his time when he had young children and the difficulties that went with earning a wage – being able to support family and also able to raise your children in the best possible way that you can – there are many instances that all of us in this chamber have seen of the extraordinary work that our ECEC workers, our early childhood education care workers, do.

Before I get into the substance of my speech, because I suspect I will be truncated at some point –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Juliana Addison): Order! The time has come for the house to break for lunch. The member will have the call when we return.

Sitting suspended 12:59 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.

The SPEAKER: I acknowledge in the gallery today a delegation from the Sabah State Legislative Assembly in Malaysia. I welcome the honourable Speaker, deputy speakers, members and officials to observe question time today.

I also acknowledge the former member for Hawthorn in the gallery, John Kennedy.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: The house will come to order. I hope you will be on your best behaviour for our guests today.