Russell Broadbent here, your Independent Member for Monash.
Last December, the Albanese Government agreed to deliver a 15 per cent wage increase for Early Childhood Education and Care workers.
This works out to be around an extra $100 per week in the pockets of our essential childcare workers, with the Government set to chip in $3.6 billion dollars to make it happen.
Now, the money from this $3.6 billion dollar grant, delivered by the Department of Education, was meant to cover the government’s mandated wage increases for childcare workers.
But it turns out to be all smoke and mirrors.
The Australian newspaper reported last week that the Federal Education Department’s grant guidelines had left 85 per cent of the nation’s childcare workers without their promised $100 a week pay rise.
And those small day care owners – the ones we see in regional areas like ours – have rightly railed against the bureaucratic red tape, opting to ignore the grant and hike their fees up instead.
Which means it’s the parents who will pay more in the long run.
The grant sounds great in theory – small businesses wouldn’t be forced to rip money out of thin air to cover mandated wage increases for their workers.
But it’s not so great when, as one daycare owner puts it, “it takes two admin staff with three 8 hour working days to see whether it’s even worth them applying”!
So, I agree with this daycare owner when she says this grant is a joke.
I agree when she says that time-consuming compliance has gone through the roof.
And I agree when she says the system is complicated, difficult to understand and was rolled out too fast without proper consultation.
Our early educators do some of the most important work in the country, but at the same time they’re the most under paid and under-valued.
So what good is a wage rise if it’s not going to these valuable and hardworking people?
It’s smoke and mirrors.
And that’s justice as I see it.
