Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (16:26): I too would like to speak in support of the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which introduces stronger regulations for early childhood services and safeguards for the quality of maternal and child health services. I will be focusing on our stronger regulations for early childhood services during this debate and the importance of this bill passing in 2022.

I thank the member for Mordialloc for his contribution to this debate and for the work that he does as Parliamentary Secretary for Schools and Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Social Inclusion. Like me, the member for Mordialloc is a proud parent of two daughters and wants the best opportunities for his children and every child in Victoria.

I would really like to thank the member for Euroa for sharing her experiences with us. Thank you. You will be missed in this place, and that was just beautiful, that advocacy at the end, so well done to you. It was a really, really great contribution. You will be missed—I am sorry, Chair, not to go through you—and I wish you and all the family all the best for the next chapter.

This bill is about ensuring that Victoria continues to be a nation leader in providing children with quality early childhood education that really does set them up for life. I wish to thank the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep in the other place for her commitment and advocacy for the early childhood portfolio. I wish to particularly thank Harriet Leadbetter and the advisers in the minister’s office as well as the department for the work that they have done to bring this bill to the house. Your work is appreciated, so thank you so much. I wish to commend the minister on the landmark work she is doing in leading our transformative early education program.

Anyone who has sent kids to kinder knows that kinders are not just places where our children learn, where they create and where they innovate and play; they are a vital part of our community. Kinders provide important bonds and create social cohesion and inclusion for parents, children and carers.

I know that some of my best friends are mums I met through the kinder drop-offs and the kinder pick-ups and when we cut so much fruit together as volunteers at our local kinder. Importantly, I always love when I am out and about in Ballarat catching up with my daughters’ kinder teachers, including Heather, Kate and Mary. They are wonderful early educators who inspired my girls to be curious, to be compassionate and to be caring.

The role our kinders play in our state is crucial, and that is why it is so important that we invest in the educators, the programs and the infrastructure to support them. Since 2015 kindergarten services in my LGA, the City of Ballarat, have received more than $10 million in state government funding to support 40 infrastructure projects and 92 IT or inclusive education equipment projects—really, really significant investments by this government in early education.

Our government is proudly embarking on the largest early childhood investments in this state’s history to give every Victorian child the very best start in life. Our Best Start, Best Life program is a game changer for families and for the whole community. The changes that we are introducing to early childhood education will be transformative in both the short and long term for our children, their parents and our state.

The Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 before the house will ensure that we deliver quality, safe and accessible early childhood education for every Victorian child, and it is another example of our commitment to building on our track record. By amending the laws that regulate the quality and safety of early childhood services, this bill will ensure that oversight and compliance tools for early childhood regulators are as robust as possible.

This is a bill that I am really proud of, because every parent—I certainly did and my husband certainly did—expects their children to be safe at kinder, to be provided with high-quality care and education and to be looked after. You do not want to be worrying while you are at work or while you are raising your other children about whether your kids are safe at kinder. You want to know that robust checks and balances are there.

It is very important that we pass this bill this year because Victoria needs to be able to ensure that this is passed in 2022 to enable the implementation of the outcomes of the five-year national quality framework review in mid-2023. All state and territory education ministers around the country have agreed that the regulatory changes recommended by the national quality framework review should commence from 1 July 2023, and this is also the strong expectation of the stakeholders in the childhood sector.

The national quality framework operates as an applied national law scheme. The national law is enacted by Victoria as the host jurisdiction and is applied in other jurisdictions as their own law or, in Western Australia, through corresponding legislation. The passage of this bill this year is also critical to ensure the integrated sector regulator provisions for the child safe standards can commence on 1 January 2023 along with the rest of the new enforcement regimes for the child safe standards.

I think everyone in this house is in agreement that making sure children are safe is our number one priority and so important, and passing this legislation is important. Significantly, this bill further complements the Andrews Labor government’s life-changing reforms to early childhood, giving our youngest Victorians the very best start and the best opportunities in life.

Early education is an issue that is important to many families across my electorate of Wendouree, and the rollout of the Andrews Labor government’s landmark reforms is most welcome. Childcare fees are crippling family budgets and holding parents back—mainly mums—from returning to work.

I know from firsthand experience how tough childcare fees are on hardworking families. When I was teaching part-time—I was a secondary teacher—we had a school timetable across a fortnight, so there would be some weeks that I did not teach on a Tuesday at all but the following Tuesday I taught all day, and I had to have the kids in child care on both Tuesdays. At one stage I did the maths: I was earning $1.71 an hour after I had paid childcare fees. So we need to change this, and we are changing this, because we know the profound impact that it is having.

That is why we are making kinder free for three- and four-year-olds, saving families across Ballarat and the whole of Victoria up to $2500 per year. In doing so we are delivering relief to household budgets. I know that when you are juggling on part-time wages with these high fees it is really, really challenging.

On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity of having a street stall at the Ballarat Baby & Children’s Market at the Doug Dean Stadium in Delacombe and had so many terrific conversations with lots of new parents and grandparents about our exciting investments in early education. It was wonderful to speak to so many parents with newborns and share the excellent news that from 2025 we will transition from four-year-old kinder to pre-prep with 30 hours of learning, creating a high-quality, universal program to give four-year-old kids the opportunity to learn through play.

I strongly believe that by investing in early childhood education we are ensuring the next generation will have a bright future and our state will benefit significantly. Whether it is through the building of new bricks and mortar infrastructure or free TAFE courses to train early childhood educators, the Andrews Labor government is supporting our littlest learners to get the best start in life.

We are also creating more three-year-old and four-year-old kindergarten places across Victoria, including in my electorate of Ballarat. In June this year I was delighted to announce $2.25 million for the Building Blocks capacity-building stream grant for the City of Ballarat to create three kinder rooms at a brand new Alfredton Ballymanus community hub. It is a part of my electorate that I know very well, having grown up just less than a kilometre away, and it is only a short distance from where I attended Alfredton kinder with Mrs Lucas and Miss Helen. I have such happy memories of my kinder days being filled with interactive play, singing, painting, games and so many stories.

The Building Blocks capacity-building stream grant for the Alfredton Ballymanus kinder was one of six grants announced across Victoria, sharing in almost $10 million. The investment will allow more kids to attend kinder and ensure that they get the best start possible. What we are going to do in Ballymanus is construct three new kinder rooms, each with the capacity for 33 children undertaking three- or four-year-old kinder programs. But what is really important is that means 198 children will be able to access three- or four-year-old kindergarten programs during the week.

This is so significant and is wonderful news for the families with babies and young children living in Alfredton and the adjacent growth suburbs of Winter Valley and Lucas. I know this because the young families are telling me how pleased they are that they will be able to walk their little ones to kinder and their children will go on to make friends with kids in the neighbourhood. This is a really, really important part of our program.

I am so proud to be a part of this government, and I commend the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 to the house.

 

Watch and read more of my speeches to Parliament here, including responses from ministers on how we’re working for Wendouree.

You can also view videos from Parliament, browse Hansard transcripts, learn about bills and legislation, and much more at the Parliament of Victoria’s website.