I am delighted to rise today to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI), which is all about our littlest Victorians – and rightly so, because though our youngest Victorians may not have the voting rights which elect us as members of this Parliament, it is nevertheless the decisions that are made here which will impact on them and their opportunities into the future. So it is very fitting, I think, that this time has been dedicated in the parliamentary program to speak about how the Allan Labor government is supporting Victorian children to thrive. It is an absolute priority for this government, underscored by the fact that we now have a dedicated Minister for Children as well as a dedicated Parliamentary Secretary for Children, my good friend the member for Preston.
The single most precious thing we have as a community and a society is our children. Children are our future leaders, thinkers and innovators. The knowledge, values and sense of community we instill in them will shape the culture and moral fabric of our society into the future. The opportunities, skills and love of learning we nurture in them will determine our future prosperity and our ability to weather the challenges of the decades ahead. Our children are precious, and there is nothing more worthy of our investment, of our attention and dedication or of our love.
It has been a really lengthy debate today, and as I round it out with this final contribution from the government ranks I am conscious that my colleagues have made some outstanding contributions. The member for Preston spoke with complete heart about the work our government is doing to support children with disabilities both in the health system and in the education system. It was a significant and thoughtful contribution, and I extend my thanks to him for sharing it with us.
The member for Footscray, another fellow parent with children around the same age as mine, spoke very eloquently about the roller-coaster ride of parenthood and the absolute necessity of having support around us in those early stages. Together our investment in expanding our early parenting centres alongside our work to open dedicated infant, child and family health and wellbeing hubs and to boost the amount of time maternal child health nurses can spend with families is a dramatic uplift in practical, direct support to families navigating these tumultuous early years.
The member for South Barwon, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, gave a very good overview about how we are supporting Victorian children through our education system, including by making it free to study to become a secondary school teacher in Victoria. And the member for Bass spoke passionately about our Labor government’s unwavering commitment to modernising schools right across our communities, something which the electorate of Northcote has also benefited from, having just this year seeing the recent completion of a STEAM centre at Thornbury High, a new learning building at Preston South Primary and wonderful new facilities at Croxton School for specialist learning. Right across maternal and child health, early parenting, education, wellbeing and disability support, our government is prioritising children in this state.
I want to add to and augment the contributions of my colleagues by speaking about a part of this MPI which is very close to my heart, and that is kinder. As many know, I have got two young girls – Ariana and Cleo – and for the last six years we have had at least one of them, but mostly both of them, in child care and kinder in Northcote. Cleo is finishing up four-year-old kinder this year, and we will be sad to say our final goodbyes to her centre and all the outstanding, compassionate, talented educators that have nurtured both her and her sister over the years. These are some of the most hardworking, empathetic and oh-so-patient people you will ever know. How they manage to get the best out of my otherwise unruly and wilful little people I will never understand. We think our jobs are hard but, Speaker, try spending 8 hours in a class full of toddlers and see how tired you are at the end of the day.
I have nothing but admiration for our early childhood workforce, and I have been proud to be part of a Labor government which has elevated this sector well beyond outdated understandings of simply childminding into a truly educational practice. That is where it should be, because we know that the first 2000 days are critical in shaping the trajectory of a child’s life and that 90 per cent of brain development happens in these first five years. This is the golden zone – our opportunity to give kids the best start in life and the tools, skills and support they need to prepare them for a lifetime of learning.
That is why it was my absolute honour to join our former Premier at Alfred Nuttall kindergarten in Fairfield last year when we announced an extraordinary package of truly Labor reforms in early education: free kinder for three- and four-year-olds embedded permanently in our state, a new pre-prep year with 30 hours a week of free play-based learning to be rolled out over the next 10 years and 50 low-cost government-operated childcare centres in the parts of our state where they are needed most. This is the biggest transformation of early childhood education in a generation. It is the kind of reform that changes lives, that leads to generational opportunity – the kind of reform that only a Labor government delivers.
Sometimes I think about my grandmother Eleni, who as the oldest child had to leave primary school in grade 3 to look after her younger siblings in their village in Cyprus, and then I think about my mother Rita, who was the oldest of six and the first in her family to gain a university degree here in Australia. That opportunity for an education was one of the big drivers for their migration, and it is a familiar story to many European migrants in those postwar years. Education is the single best tool we have for improving economic and social equality, and it starts with instilling a love of learning in children from birth.
This year more than 2750 kindergarten services are participating in free kinder. That is about 97 per cent of the sector, and it will benefit around 140,000 children. Free kinder is not just incredible educational and social policy but deeply significant economic policy too. Free kinder will save families up to $2500 in fees per child each year, and crucially it gives more women the choice to return to the workforce. About 28,000 Victorians, mostly women, want to work more but cannot because of the cost of child care. Free kinder means more hours of quality free early education and care for three- and four-year-olds and more flexibility and choice for families. As we embark on this decade-long transformation of early education, we know that we will need time to grow a strong and skilled workforce and to deliver the infrastructure required to get more childcare and kinder spaces into our suburbs.
Earlier this year I visited Merri community kindergarten in Thornbury to meet Chelsea Ford, one of more than 3500 early years educators who have joined Victoria’s kindergarten workforce through our government-funded scholarships. Chelsea was very obviously loved by the kids at the centre and was proud to be working to support Victorian children to thrive. We were joined by the former minister for early education, who spoke about the over $370 million Labor government investment to build a stronger kindergarten workforce through things like training scholarships, career development opportunities, targeted financial incentives, access to recruitment agencies and our free TAFE courses. And we are partnering with universities to upskill diploma-qualified educators as degree-qualified educators.
But of course we also need more child places in our kinders, and this is something that has been raised with me often in the inner north as our populations grow and the pressure on our existing network increases. In the inner north many of our kinders are now benefiting from our Building Blocks grants, including Batman Park kinder, Thornbury kinder, Perry Street kinder, Merri kinder and Yarralea kinder, and we are building a brand new kinder at Thornbury High.
Across our state we are dedicated to building 50 government owned and operated early learning centres to address the childcare shortages in areas of greatest need. Where possible those will be co-located with schools to avoid that dreaded double drop-off. It is an ambitious reform but is one that we are committed to as we work to improve early education across this state, and this is Labor policy at its finest. It is groundbreaking for children in this state – for the next generation that is coming through. It is something that we are absolutely committed to. I have not even spoken about bush kinder and bilingual kinder, about our kinder kits and our toy grants or about the hugely important school readiness funding, which is helping support kids with additional needs. It is fantastic policy and I support it.
