Every day, parents trust early educators with the most important people in their world, and every day Australia asks early educators to do one of the most important jobs imaginable.
Today the Albanese Government has passed legislation through the House of Representatives to make sure those educators are fairly paid.
Once it passes through Parliament, the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024 will deliver a 15 per cent wage increase for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workers.
This wage increase will be tied to a commitment from Child Care Centres to limit fee increases. We want to make sure workers can be fairly paid without the costs being passed on to families.
Since coming to Government, the number of ECEC workers has grown by more than 30,000, but we need more.
This $3.6 billion investment will help retain our existing early childhood educators, who are predominately women, and attract new employees.
By improving access to quality early childhood education and care we can also boost productivity and workforce participation in the short and long-term. Significantly, the wage increase also applies to workers in outside school hours care services - creating benefits for the parents of school aged children too.
This wage increase is an important next step in the Government's reforms to the sector, building on the successful Cheaper Child Care changes.
The wage increase will be phased in over two years, and include a 10 per cent increase from December 2024, and a further 5 per cent increase from December 2025.
This means a typical ECEC educator who is paid at the award rate will receive a pay rise of at least $103 per week, increasing to at least $155 per week from December 2025.
For a typical early childhood teacher, they'll receive an additional $166 a week from December this year, increasing to $249 from December of next year.
To be eligible to receive funding for the wage increase, ECEC services won't be able to increase their fees by more than 4.4 per cent over the next 12 months from August 2024.
There will also be a limit on fee growth in the second year of the wage subsidy. The percentage limit on fee growth that will apply from August 2025 will be determined by a new ECEC cost index being developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Early learning providers can now apply for Commonwealth Government funding to deliver the pay rise.
This is a win for workers, a win for families and will help ease cost of living pressures.
Combined with the Government's Cheaper Child Care initiative, this wage increase will help support the availability of early education and care for families and is a crucial step in charting the course to a truly universal early education system.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Education, Jason Clare:
"The child care debate is over. It's not babysitting. It's early education and it's critical to preparing children for school.
"They lift our kids up and now we are lifting their pay.
"This means wages up for workers and keeping prices down for families.
"A pay rise for every early childhood educator is good for our workforce, good for families and good our economy."
Quotes attributable to Minister for Early Childhood Education, Dr Anne Aly:
"This is a wonderful outcome for a highly feminised workforce that has for far too long been neglected and taken for granted.
"We're boosting the wages of early childhood education workers, while relieving cost of living pressures on Australian families.
"Properly valuing the early childhood education and care workforce is crucial to attracting and retaining workers and vital to achieving the quality universal early learning sector Australian families deserve.
"A quality early childhood education sector is necessary to support children's learning and development as well as workforce participation in the broader economy."
