Page 1370 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 April 2013
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government does not shy away from that, and we are taking steps to assist the education and care sector to address these workforce issues.
That is why I welcome the very recent Australian government announcement that it will establish a $300 million early years quality fund to support quality outcomes for children. This commitment is a historic first step in ensuring Australia has the professional workforce needed to provide quality early childhood education and care on which families can rely.
The fund aims to assist early childhood services to attract and retain qualified, hardworking professionals. Funding will be provided directly to services to improve quality outcomes for children by supplementing pay increases. This wage increase for early childhood educators will assist in raising the professional standard for our hardworking and dedicated early childhood educators.
Eligible services will receive grants to promote productivity and increase wages for employees with a certificate III by $3 per hour from 1 July. There will also be a proportional increase for staff across the existing classification scale. All long day care centres approved for childcare benefit can apply for the funding. Funding will be approved through an application and assessment process using a defined set of eligibility criteria. Funding will also be conditional on service commitment to participate in negotiations to achieve or maintain an enterprise agreement in the workplace. Eligible services must demonstrate a commitment to improve quality outcomes for children, including workforce plans to attract and retain qualified staff.
Providers will also need to commit to ongoing affordability for families by agreeing to restrain fee rises to reflect only actual increases in operational costs. This will ensure improved fee transparency for families and assist with maintaining the affordability of early childhood education, which is also supported through the Australian government’s childcare benefit and childcare rebate.
In addition, the Australian government is establishing an early years quality fund advisory board to assist in the implementation of the fund. The board will consist of representatives from employer and employee organisations, representatives from the early childhood sector and officers from the Australian government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
This great reform from the Gillard Labor government sits alongside our own reforms and initiatives to reform the sector. Indeed, only the Labor Party went to the last ACT election with a comprehensive policy on supporting early education and care. The supposed alternative government was silent on this issue, despite its importance to ACT families. To contrast, I am proud that the Labor government has been very active in trying to tackle the issues facing the sector and their families in our community. We have engaged in a policy of targeted land release. We are building new community facilities to house new services, as well as providing upgrades and refurbishments of other centres to not only meet the requirements of the new national standards but expand and upgrade their offerings.
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