Wednesday, 3 June 2026

 Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:31): Our government believes that every child deserves the best start in life, and that is why we have made kinder free – not just because it saves families money, and that in itself is incredibly important, but also because it gives every child the opportunity to learn and grow. It gives parents, women most particularly, more choice – the choice to return to work, to study, to pick up extra shifts. At a time when we know that so many families are under pressure, we know that matters because that extra shift, that little bit more work, can help pay the rent, the mortgage or the groceries.

I want to acknowledge that none of this happens without our hardworking early childhood educators and teachers. They are the ones who take that free kinder opportunity and turn it into supporting our kids to learn, speak, play, share and grow. That is why we are backing teachers and early childhood educators with more kinders, more childcare centres, more training, more scholarships and a historic pay rise for early childcare workers too, because we know that when you back the workers you back children. You are also supporting families and supporting women, and core to our Labor values is backing working people.

While we will continue this work to support our kinders and to support our early childhood workers, the Liberal Party continue to back a bloke who stole from one. We will continue to support our early childhood educators.

Michael O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the Premier is again straying into attacking the opposition on exactly the same issue you have made rulings on four times so far.

The SPEAKER: The Premier will come back to the ministers statement.

Jacinta ALLAN: We understand that the videos have disappeared, but the truth has not. We will continue to back our early childhood educators. We will continue to back our kids in kinder and support them to have the best opportunity to learn, to develop and to grow under our Labor government.

The SPEAKER: I acknowledge in the gallery the Honourable Marsha Thomson, a former minister and member for Footscray.