In this year's budget, the New South Wales Government introduced the inaugural Women's Opportunity Statement, which sets out its plan to invest in the aspirations of women across New South Wales. The Government has committed more than $16.5 billion over the next decade in transformational reforms to address some of the biggest barriers women face in pursuing their dreams and aspirations, and building a better future for themselves and their families. Today, I am excited to introduce a bill that will cement one of the Government's most transformative reforms to increase women's economic opportunity: our investment of up to $5 billion to expand access to quality, affordable child care. The women of New South Wales are some of the most highly educated anywhere in the world, yet the workforce participation rate of women is 9 per cent lower than that of men. By lifting the workforce participation rate of women so that it is equal to that of men, we can grow our economy so that it is 8 per cent larger by 2060‑61. This is the equivalent of increasing the average income of every household in our State by $22,000 per year. This is an economic opportunity we cannot ignore.

We know that one of the most acute barriers is the cost and lack of access to early childhood education and care. Almost half of all Australian women currently seeking work report that caring for children is the main barrier to working or working more hours. There are two key drivers for this. The first is the high workforce disincentive rates faced by women when the full costs of child care are considered. After factoring in childcare costs, income tax and the loss of family tax benefits, some women returning to work are taking home less than 25 cents in each dollar they earn. The second driver is a lack of access to child care close to work or home. According to research from the Mitchell Institute for Education and Health Policy, over a third of Australians live in areas where it is extremely difficult to find a childcare place—also known as "childcare deserts". This issue is particularly bad in western Sydney, south‑west Sydney and in the regions.

Child care is the key to ensuring that no‑one has to choose between having a family and having a career. We are committed to giving women the genuine option to pursue a career while raising a family, without having to make unnecessary trade‑offs. This bill is a huge step in delivering on that vision. Today we are cementing our landmark investment into child care with the establishment of the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund. The fund will target known barriers to families accessing quality early childhood education and care by providing major incentives to enable providers to extend more affordably their services to more families. It will help existing services, including not‑for‑profit and for‑profit providers, to grow in size and quality, and it will improve the viability of existing services, particularly in regional and rural locations.

The fund will also support sector organisations which help break down barriers to children accessing education and care. The fund will also support services to drive down their fees for families and to build, retain and better reward their workforce. Over the next decade the fund will expand access to affordable child care, targeting areas of the State with the least access to affordable child care. The fund will work hand in glove with the Commonwealth Government's commitment to increase the Child Care Subsidy. The fund will mean that New South Wales families and childcare service providers can plan and invest with confidence. We estimate the fund, alongside all the early childhood education reforms announced in the budget and committed to by the Commonwealth, will support the delivery of about 47,000 additional, ongoing and affordable childcare places. These reforms will see up to 95,000 women enter the workforce or take on more hours and drive down the gender workforce participation gap by up to 14 per cent within a decade.

The reforms will also deliver major cost‑of‑living relief to working families across New South Wales. We estimate the fund will help save a middle‑income family in western Sydney with one child in child care approximately $3,400 a year. A family living in regional New South Wales with two children in care could potentially save up to $7,800 a year in childcare costs. The Government will identify priority areas and release detailed guidelines for accessing the fund after consultation with the sector. Investment from the fund will be guided by expert independent reports and expert advice, which will underpin a long‑term plan for the expansion of the childcare system in New South Wales. This fund is a huge step in a long journey to reform our early childhood education and care sector to make it work better for our families, children and educators.

I turn to the detail of the bill. The bill establishes the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund in the Special Deposits Account. Establishing the fund in the Special Deposits Account will ensure the Government's landmark investment to boost the supply of child care is sufficiently safeguarded and enduring to give certainty of funding for the sector. It will also create opportunities to support long‑term public‑private partnerships and innovative solutions from the sector to boost supply in target areas. Part 1 of the bill sets out that the principal objective of the fund is "to increase participation in the State's workforce, particularly for women, by making quality child care more affordable and accessible". The fund will target assistance particularly in areas where there are childcare supply shortages or higher barriers to parents and carers participating in work because of the affordability or accessibility, or both, of child care.

Part 2 of the bill establishes that the Minister must commission expert persons to review, monitor and report on the childcare sector. These independent reports will provide the primary evidence base in the development of the fund's strategic direction and key strategic documents. The reports will provide independent advice to the Minister on areas where there are childcare supply shortages and oversupply, and areas in which parents face higher disincentives due to cost and accessibility barriers to child care. As set out in part 2, clause 6, from 2026‑27 onwards the reports will include an estimate of the annual amount required to be invested into the fund to support the delivery of the fund's objectives up to a cap of $650 million per year indexed to the consumer price index. Part 2 further sets out that the expert persons commissioned to prepare the independent reports may gather additional necessary information, evidence and data. That power is intended to be available only where reasonable efforts to gather information by other means have been unsuccessful, such as through the Department of Education's existing processes or information‑sharing arrangements with the Commonwealth, which we are actively pursuing.

Part 3 establishes the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Board to support the fund's strategic direction and operations. The board will provide advice to the Government on the strategic direction of the fund, informed by expert independent reports commissioned by the Minister. The board will comprise five members to be appointed by the Minister for Education and Early Learning and the Treasurer as follows: the NSW Department of Education Secretary or delegate; the NSW Treasury Secretary or delegate; and three additional members with appropriate expertise, with at least one employed in the Department of Education to ensure continuity with our broader Early Years Commitment. The board will have authority to approve and release payments out of the fund in accordance with the objects of the Act and key strategic documents and guidelines. The board, as the final decision‑maker for granting funds and financial assistance, will ensure a high level of accountability and transparency of the fund's investment. In addition to supporting accountability and transparency, the board will exercise its functions in accordance with the principles of market understanding and fiscal responsibility, as with any grants program.

Part 4 of the bill establishes the fund in the Special Deposits Account and provides a standing appropriation into the fund in line with the Government's commitment to invest $775 million over the next four years. From 2026‑27 to 2031‑32, the New South Wales Government will invest an annual amount informed by the estimates in the independent expert reports to ensure New South Wales families have adequate access to child care at affordable prices to maximise workforce participation, capped at $650 million a year indexed to CPI. Having those funds committed into the Special Deposits Account safeguards the funds for investment into the childcare sector as established in statute, provides certainty to the sector and enhances transparency and accountability of these investments.

Part 5, clause 24, is incredibly important. It ties the focus of the fund back to the ability for parents, particularly women, to work or work more hours if they want to. The clause provides for people exercising functions under the Act to consider the disincentives posed by childcare costs on parents and enables the Minister to develop and publish guidelines on further details of the assessment of workforce disincentive rates. The fund will also be guided by regulations and guidelines developed following further consultation with the sector.

This bill delivers on our commitment to invest in a brighter future for all New South Wales families and responds to the call for change we have heard from so many women across our State. It addresses the number one recommendation of the New South Wales Government's Women's Economic Opportunities Review to make child care more accessible and affordable and empower women to participate in the workforce. Not only will this help more women into the workforce and close the women's workforce participation gap; it will also increase economic activity in New South Wales by up to $17.1 billion per year by 2032-33. I repeat: $17.1 billion per year by 2032‑33. This investment is not only the right thing to do by women and children across New South Wales; it is also one of the biggest productivity reforms we can do to increase prosperity across the New South Wales economy. I fundamentally believe that every person has the right to choose to participate in the workforce. For too long this right has been overlooked, despite the calls, from so many women across this great State, that this is a basic right that every person deserves. I am proud to introduce the bill to the Parliament. It takes a big step towards delivering on this right. I am excited to commend the bill to the House.

Second Reading Debate

The Hon. COURTNEY HOUSSOS (17:20): I lead for Labor on the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022. We will be supporting this bill. I thank my colleague the member for Macquarie Fields, Anoulack Chanthivong, who led for us in the other place. I refer members to his, as always, insightful and learned comments on the bill. I acknowledge the work of my colleague the shadow Treasurer, the Hon. Daniel Mookhey, and my colleague and friend the shadow Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning, Prue Car. They formulated Labor's careful and considered position. The Labor Party in the lower House moved a number of amendments to which the Government agreed. I will outline some of those shortly. It goes to how we have sought to engage on this very important issue. The Labor Party absolutely understands the importance of accessible, affordable and high-quality child care.

Increasing the participation rate of women in the workforce is the main economic objective of the bill, but on this side of the House we understand that there are significant benefits for children when they undertake early childhood learning. That is especially the case for disadvantaged children from low socio-economic or non‑English-speaking backgrounds. There is now so much scientific research that tells us about the development and learning going on in those crucial childhood years from nought to five. If we support that through early childhood education with fantastic early childhood educators and teachers, then we will ensure that, when our kids start school, they are ready to learn.

I frequently talk about New South Wales having the fastest declining education outcomes in the world. When kids get to school and start behind, they stay behind. It is so much harder for them to catch up if they do not have those skills and have not harnessed those learning opportunities in those early years. That does not mean that we are teaching them the times tables from when they are nought to five years old. Any early childhood educator could tell you about play-based learning and all of the ways of teaching children in those crucial early years. So many skills can be imparted by our fantastic and skilled early childhood teachers. I thank them and pay tribute to them today. This bill has an economic objective, but there is an equally important educational and social aspect to what it seeks to achieve.

I thank also Unions NSW and the United Workers Union in particular. I know that the Labor Party consulted with a large number of stakeholders in formulating our position, but I especially thank them for taking the time to provide considered and constructive feedback on this bill. They expressed a concern about the lack of transparency of the board and the fund and said that the bill does not address the skill shortage and the workforce issues within the childcare sector. The United Workers Union, as the union representing those workers, understands the shortages our early childhood sector is facing. We talk in this place a lot about the chronic teacher shortages in our schools. It is so much worse in our childcare centres, not only in terms of teachers but also in terms of the qualified early childhood educators we are trying to get.

This fund is a significant amount of money—$5 billion. We want the board to be able to address the workforce issues. So our amendments require that an independent person on the board produce, every two years, a workforce plan addressing skills, wages, standards and quality of training for workers within the childcare sector. We want to make sure that we are maximising the use of this money and that workforce planning is in place to ensure that we are harnessing the benefits in that crucial nought-to-five period I talked about. The amendments also require that independent person to have regard to quality standards when conducting the review into the childcare sector. The Federal Labor Government introduced the National Quality Framework at a Federal level to govern our early childhood centres. We know how important that is for ensuring centres are up to standard and operating well. We think that this is how, at a State level, we can ensure that the money is being spent in the best possible way.

Labor moved amendments also in relation to auditing and transparency. We believe the bill needs better transparency of the board and the fund. As a result, we moved amendments that would require all independent market-monitoring reports to be tabled in the Parliament within 60 days of being handed to the Minister, require a statutory review three years after the fund commences, and require the Auditor-General to conduct every three years a performance audit of the fund and of the programs it has provided financial assistance to. I take this opportunity to again place on the record my deep respect for the Auditor-General, for her office and for the work she does. It is incredibly important. When we are establishing a fund of this size, we must ensure that the Auditor‑General has oversight and the ability to provide that important feedback on how the fund is being used and how it can be improved.

Labor's amendments to part 4, which the Government supported in the lower House, require that the Minister produce an additional annual report. This additional annual report is to be tabled in each House of Parliament within six months of the end of the financial year to which it relates and include the audit of the fund by the Auditor-General, including the report of the Auditor-General on whether the payments from the fund have been made in accordance with the Act. The amendments required also that any underspend to be carried forward first be approved by the Treasurer.

We made some amendments around the board membership and the qualification requirements for the appointed members, which are that at least one of the appointed members be a person appointed by Unions NSW and another appointed member be appointed by Business NSW or the Australian Industry Group. This recognises that it is important for the board membership to represent how the industry works. The sector and the workers who are affected in the sector should be reflected in the board, which has such a significant amount of money to put toward such an important cause. That was an important and useful amendment to make as well.

The shadow Minister for Education and shadow Minister for Early Childhood Learning, Ms Prue Car, talked about the shortage of teachers and early childhood educators in the State. I have not spoken to a childcare centre operator, stakeholder or industry group that has not stressed the challenges that they are facing in finding qualified teachers or early childhood educators for early childhood centres. This became significantly worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a crucial challenge for us going forward. If we are going to harness this amount of money and make sure that we are maximising the potential benefits of early childhood education, it can only be done with qualified and trained early childhood educators. The full spectrum of educators is required, from university-trained teachers to diploma and certificate III and IV trained educators. They all play an important role.

I am sure many members in this House have firsthand experience of how fantastic our early childhood educators are. With the indulgence of the House, I thank, in particular, Ms Lynne Marshall, who retired as director of Earlwood Uniting Church Preschool at the end of last term. She had worked in early childhood education for more than 40 years. She is a remarkable, amazing woman. She and that centre have had an incredible influence on the lives of our family—of our children, Anna and Arthur—and of so many families in our area. She was there so long that she taught children who brought their own children back. Despite that incredibly long history at Earlwood Uniting Church Preschool, she made sure that they were always adopting new ways of engaging and learning, and were constantly changing and adapting. She leads an amazing team. She is an incredible shining force for the potential of early childhood learning.

I appreciate the indulgence of the House. Ms Marshall retired at the end of last term, and this is a great opportunity for me to show an example of how, when our early childhood education centres and preschools work well, they are remarkable and amazing places. They become almost an extension of your family, and that is what we want. This is a significant amount of public money. It is a very important cause. That is why New South Wales Labor supports it, with important amendments. The amendments allow for increased oversight to ensure that this bill is achieving these goals; that the right workforce and oversight are in place; that the public money will ensure the economic opportunities and support for families overall, and women in particular; and that educational outcomes are addressed. I commend the bill to the House.

The Hon. MARK LATHAM (17:33): In addressing the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022, it is clear that the bill is not about economics and is certainly not about helping women and the female labour force participation rate. It is 100 per cent, purely and solely about politics—Liberal Party electoral politics, with Matt Kean trying to fight off the teal threat to Liberal electorates on Sydney's North Shore. The bill is back‑end loaded in the dodgy style of the Gillard Government's 10-year Gonski and NDIS funding commitments. It has $400 million in the forward estimates but supposedly $4.6 billion unfunded in the last six-year period of the 10‑year funding envelope. Essentially, it is invisible money with no way of realising the full funding commitment three Parliaments from now.

Anything that is to do with three Parliaments from now is, by and large, a fiscal fantasy. In that sense alone the bill is a sham—another capital commitment accounted for off budget, adding to the true level of ballooning debt and deficit in New South Wales under the Kean-Perrottet Government. Let's not forget the accounting trick in Mr Kean's budget. In June John Kehoe ofThe Australian Financial Review wrote:

Despite NSW promoting 'returning the budget to surplus' by 2024-25, that is not a real surplus because it includes recurrent spending and excludes infrastructure investments.

Using the same accounting method as the federal government, NSW’s cash deficits are $24 billion in 2022-23, $16.6 billion in 2023‑24, $12.6 billion in 2024-25 …

When you add the Transport Asset Holding Entity accounting trick on top of that, between $1.3 billion and $2.7 billion is the true cash deficit of this Government, depending on the year. It is tricky stuff to avoid the truth, but that article belled the cat. Of course, these were heroic assumptions. The truth is that, in giving up our triple‑A credit rating, the bill adds to the fiscal carnage and problem.

What is the purpose of the bill? Essentially it is setting up an election slush fund for subsidising new childcare centres in Government marginal electorates, overseen by a board yet to be appointed and yet to have any terms of reference applied to it. Benefit-cost ratios find no mention in the legislation, nor is there any rigorous analysis of how the money might be spent. It is a blank cheque for pork-barrelling in Liberal electorates vulnerable to the teal Independents and National Party electorates under siege in the bush. The board will be filled by political functionaries such as Daisy Turnbull and woke, frivolous elites like Sam Mostyn.

For all the huff and puff in this place about the evils of pork-barrelling, incredibly, the Labor Opposition is waving the bill through. It reminds me of the famous saying about Bob Menzies—that his glorious military career was cut short by the outbreak of war in World War I. The Labor Party's glorious commitment to ending pork‑barrelling was cut short by the imminent arrival of a general election. They will not stand against pork‑barrelling because there might be some marginal electorates where there is a commitment that they will be keen to support, even though they know the funding allocation was on the most spurious, irrational grounds. The Labor Party, along with the Government, has embraced Keanism in all its debilitating nature—shallow, opportunistic, duplicitous and completely and utterly wasteful and corrupt in the use of taxpayers' money.

The bill is based on false assumptions about gender equality in New South Wales. It is part of the Treasurer's wacky homage, in the preface of his Women's Opportunity Statement, to Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame, the credibility of one unravelling in the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court and the other a spaced‑out, leftie ratbag. Let's put this political activism and fake emotionalism aside and look at the facts. What is the true meaning of improved gender equity when important professions in Australia are already female dominated? These include GP doctors, pharmacists, vets, lawyers, teachers, journalists, PR specialists, office managers and community service managers. In the big, important professions, there are many more women working in the highly paid positions than men. I think most parents want their daughters to work in those jobs rather than the male‑dominated industries of construction, transport, plumbing, garbage, landscaping, removalists, security and the military.

Then we hear about the gender pay gap. In reality, Australia has had equal pay laws for 50 years. When women leave the workforce to have babies—and the woke mob are yet to contradict this; only women can have babies—their career paths are disrupted. Hence, there is the so-called gender pay gap. But the data, when it was collected by the Federal Government, showed that there is no such gap for university graduates entering the workforce. In fact, for professional groups in the highly paid areas, many female-dominated groupings were at a higher pay rate than male. It was not by a big margin, but the female groups dominated. But like in so many areas where the research ran against the conventional wisdom, the response in Canberra was to discontinue the dataset. We have not seen it now for some four or five years.

Invariably, gender equity comes down more jobs for a tiny number of women—the leftie elites who want to be MPs, government Ministers and corporate board members. That is an accurate description of the committee that the Treasurer established, headed by Sam Mostyn and including that well-known, impoverished single mother representative, Daisy ''I only have four paid nannies to help me" Turnbull. The single mums in the vast suburbs of western Sydney are completely unrepresented on that committee and in the ridiculous situation of being represented by someone as wealthy as Daisy Turnbull. Is there anything more sickening in public life than the privileged feminist elites crying poor about the need for child care? One of them, Annabel Crabb, wrote a long, turgid book about the so-called wife drought—how women need a wife to help them survive in juggling work and family commitments. But then after hundreds of pages of insomniac therapy, she finally revealed that in her own circumstances she and her wealthy partner had a live‑in nanny—or three—to ease their burden. The problem was not so much a "wife drought"—and this applies to Mostyn and Turnbull and their ilk—but rather a nanny El Niño.

From an economic rationale perspective, why is New South Wales funding childcare subsidies traditionally financed out of Canberra? Why is New South Wales, already heavily in debt and deficit, volunteering for reverse cost‑shifting? Why are we now allowing Jim Chalmers to say, in effect, "For the first time ever New South Wales is going beyond its traditional State funding and responsibility for preschools and offering up capital support for new childcare centres traditionally funded out of Canberra. Here's a chance for the Commonwealth to reduce its own effort in this space and undertake budget repair effectively funded by the foolish Matt Kean"? If Jim Chalmers has got any sense, that probably is what he is saying. The funding effort in Canberra will drop in proportion to New South Wales' reverse cost‑shifting. We are volunteering to fund things traditionally funded out of Canberra with its broader, more substantial tax base.

This is a recurring pattern in the mismanagement of the New South Wales budget, entrenching, for electoral reasons, new entitlements that can never be worked out of the system in the practicality of party politics. It is the defining feature of Kean‑Perrottet fiscal extravagance, which includes $10 billion in green energy programs under the delusion that a provincial government can save the planet when, in fact, its wasteful spend‑athon and destruction of the electricity grid has been measured to reduce average global surface temperatures by 0.00055 degrees Celsius over a century; $2 billion in university research funding—again, reverse cost‑shifting—that benefits and reduces the effort of the Commonwealth; the recently announced 25 State‑funded GP clinics, which are traditionally funded out of the Medicare scheme in Canberra; State money for long‑day childcare fee relief, which again funds an established Federal Government responsibility; the infamous trade commissioners, duplicating the huge national expenditure by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including Austrade; and wasted State spending on the arts, Aboriginal affairs, multiculturalism—all of which is better funded out of Canberra with its broader tax base.

We have never seen voluntary cost‑shifting in a State budget on this scale and dimension before. Tragically, these foolhardy decisions are now embedded. Labor supports them. No future major party government is likely to restore fiscal sanity and abolish them. The other delusion in the bill is its claim to lifting the New South Wales female labour force participation rate. The impacts of the combined budget measures claiming to be female‑friendly on participation, working hours and wages are extraordinarily marginal. At page 69 of the budget's women's statement, the participation uplift is as low as 0.5 per cent over a decade, and just 0.7 per cent over 40 years. That is through to 2060. It is a dismal 0.018 per cent increase per annum—essentially nothing. For working hours, the uplift might be as low, according to that data, as 0.1 per cent over the next decade and, for wages, just 0.15 per cent through to 2032‑33.

These are not cost‑effective reforms. Why would they be at State or provincial level, where the Government has such limited industrial relations [IR] or economic powers? Whether it is male, female or overall labour participation rates, normally they are calibrated out of Canberra where there are substantial IR, economic and fiscal powers. It is Matt Green's plan to save the planet by blacking out the electricity grid in New South Wales. It is the work of a delusional narcissist who has lost touch with the reality of where he sits in the pecking order of political power. Kean can barely save his own party on the North Shore of Sydney, let alone save the planet.

What is the research base for this pork‑barrelling bill? Minister Kean was unable to answer that question in crossbench briefings, but a junior staffer piped up to say that it is a Mitchell Institute report commissioned by Jay Weatherill—it turns out—at the Victoria University, itself a glorified centre for adult education. This report has invented the notion of childcare deserts, which are said to be populated areas where there are less than 0.333 childcare places per child. No account in this so-called research is taken of the availability of preschool places, the preferred option of so many families for their children, as it was for mine. The report focuses on just one part of the early childhood sector: centre‑based day care as supported by the Commonwealth childcare subsidy.

Again, the availability of family day care, outside school hours care and many publicly provided local services is not even factored into this Mitchell Institute report. The research that the bill relies on is incomplete and unreliable. It has been written solely to produce a certain outcome—an outcome that cannot be verified on any factual basis. In the tiny map on page 5 of the Mitchell Report, it is hard to see how Sydney is in need of this teal‑generated Kean largesse. The areas coloured dark red, denoting the so‑called childcare deserts, cover the city's national parks, bushland and the former army land at Holsworthy in south‑west Sydney, where people, obviously, do not live. If people are not living there, is it hard to know why there is a childcare or any other form of service provision desert?

The Government's focus naturally, given that reality, turns to the bush. One can already hear the greedy engines of the Coalition's Daryl Maguire Memorial Engine Room at the Pork‑Barrelling Central gearing up for more abuse of State taxpayer funds. I am laying London to a brick on that, come February or March, the Kean slush fund will be supporting the announcement of a new childcare centre in Dubbo, where The Nationals are under siege from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. We know Dubbo well. I have the Dubbo pork‑barrelling list in front of me: one hundred and eighty-three grants over an 18‑month period, or a grant every three days, while the much needier electorates of Fairfield and Bankstown, low socio‑economic status electorates in western Sydney, received just three grants. For every time Dubbo receives 60 grants, those needy western Sydney electorates get one. According to that ratio, number 61 will be on its way to Dubbo courtesy of the election slush fund now before the House.

In its support for the bill, Labor's anti-pork‑barrel credentials have been shattered. The proximity of a general election seems to have scrambled its members' brains and their public policy judgements. I cannot believe that the Labor Party is writing into the statute book another invitation for Kean‑style pork‑barrelling geared by the National Party to the electorates that it feels it might lose at the general election in March. At every level, by every test, whether we are talking about fiscal responsibility, the foolishness of reverse cost‑shifting or the likelihood of abuse for pork‑barrelling, this is an appallingly bad bill, typical of the Kean genre. Accordingly, One Nation opposes it and will vote against it. We did consider amendments, but quite frankly the bill is so bad it is unamendable. It is unsalvageable in its form and needs to be voted down by the Parliament.

Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE (17:47): I speak strongly in support of the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022. I congratulate the Premier, the Treasurer and the Government on bringing forth such an imaginative bill at this time in the life of the Parliament and the life of the Liberal‑Nationals Coalition in New South Wales. I have studied the bill. To me, the bill, for the first time, picks up all the areas of opportunity that have been neglected over past years by governments. It is time to provide legislation that does meet the needs of children in the area of child care and that also meets the needs of families in providing opportunities for working women. The bill gets a lot of ticks from me. I have observed the Parliament for many years—over 40‑odd years—waiting for a bill like this to be drafted and introduced. I congratulate the Government on this bill. It has the full support of me and our party, the Revive Australia party. I am sure this bill will go a long way to help to revive New South Wales.

The Hon. AILEEN MacDONALD (17:49): I am so pleased to speak in favour of the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022. I have been involved with a preschool management committee in my community, knowing that preschool learning was integral to my children's development. It also gave me the ability to run our small business. The bill is the right thing to do, and I will go into some of the detail. The New South Wales Government has committed $15.9 billion over 10 years to give every child in New South Wales the very best start in life and set them up for future prosperity, ultimately setting up our State for continued prosperity. The Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund, the focus of the bill, is a central part of that commitment, investing up to $5 billion over 10 years towards delivering quality, affordable and accessible child care for New South Wales families.

Quality child care and early learning supports children's educational journeys and shapes future success for individuals, families and society. Accessing care and support during that foundational component of a child's development is central to ensuring the best possible start for all children, but is especially critical for children and families who are more vulnerable or are experiencing disadvantage. Importantly, affordable and accessible child care is also a chance to support families by ensuring that second income earners, statistically more likely to be women, have a genuine choice to continue their career after having children if they choose. The bill will be a catalyst to help women have greater choice in balancing work and care, and will enable women to have greater financial independence and economic security. The benefits from that will flow into household earnings and the economy. It will also drive more equal distribution of care within households and, with that, a greater societal recognition of the importance of early childhood education and care.

Addressing the barriers to accessible and affordable child care is a complex challenge. However, a strong and thriving early childhood workforce is the foundation to providing quality early childhood education and care. Quality child care depends on investment in more places, higher quality early education, and rewarding and secure early childhood jobs. New South Wales has a diverse early childhood education and childcare system, delivered through a mixed market of preschools, long day care, occasional care, family day care and before- and after‑school care services delivered by a range of for-profit, not-for-profit and government providers. Across that diversity of services and providers, there are shortages of early childhood teachers and educators throughout Australia. Those shortages have been significantly exacerbated by COVID-19, but staff turnover rates were as high as 30 per cent even before the pandemic. It was predicted that 39,000 additional educators would be needed nationally by 2023—only next year.

Let me be clear: The overwhelming majority of the early childhood workforce are not employed by the New South Wales Government. The Commonwealth holds the essential levers on pay and conditions for those workers, alongside individual employers. The pay and conditions of teachers and educators are covered by the Commonwealth Fair Work Act 2009 and either the modern award, which provides for minimum wages, or an enterprise agreement negotiated directly between employees, their representatives and the employer. To address those concerns, together with the other jurisdictions and the Commonwealth at the Jobs and Skills Summit, New South Wales committed to work with unions and business on workplace relations for the early childhood sector and will be developing a long-term vision through National Cabinet for early childhood education and care reform.

Alongside Government members' support for the National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy, we are taking immediate action through major investments within New South Wales to address significant and sustained workforce shortages to ensure that our ambitious early years reforms and goals can be delivered and supply side issues are addressed. The New South Wales Government is making an historic investment of $281.6 million over the next four years to help build the New South Wales early childhood education workforce as part of this Government's Early Years Commitment. That investment will assist in addressing ongoing shortages of qualified early childhood educators and teachers.

The Government is offering early childhood teacher higher education scholarships of up to $25,000 to provide financial support to those studying bachelor‑level qualifications. Students may also be eligible for a completion incentive payment if they remain employed in the early childhood education and care sector. The Government is also offering scholarships of up to $2,000 for students undertaking VET qualifications. That opportunity is in addition to the existing fee-free pathways for certificate III and diploma qualifications through the JobTrainer and Smart and Skilled programs.

We will be providing early childhood teacher supports, including supplements for employers who demonstrate best practice workforce strategies. We are also seeking to create innovative new career pathways in partnership with universities and VET providers, including accelerated programs to upskill to a diploma or degree. That significant investment is already reaping benefits, with 430 successful scholarships announced since the commencement of the program and 87 per cent of the recipients currently working in the early childhood sector.

By working together with the sector, we can deliver more quality, affordable and accessible services; enhance our children's educational outcomes; and provide genuine choice and new opportunities for working parents and women. Research suggests that thin markets in the sector—that is, areas where there is no or insufficient child care availability—are driven partly by workforce issues, partly by difficulty in suppliers responding to demand because of the structure of the industry and partly by the short-term nature of demand. Those issues can be addressed through the fund, both through the quantum of funding we are securing for that purpose and through the provision of a diverse range of programs and financial support that prioritises both the sector and families.

Further, because the Commonwealth Government's Child Care Subsidy arrangements are changing, the fund is designed to evolve over time to meet contemporary challenges and address gaps that may arise as the policies of both New South Wales and Commonwealth governments evolve. That is why the fund is designed to respond flexibly on funding, based on sound evidence and stakeholder consultation. The fund will have a wide scope to determine the best way to improve affordability and accessibility while supporting competition, parental choice and capacity of childcare providers, informed by independent market intelligence.

That could include supporting funding proposals to increase the size and quality of the early childhood workforce, including support for staffing costs to operators so that centres are adequately resourced to deliver quality services and offer more attractive packages to their staff. It could include trialling new service models so that quality services can be delivered at a time and in a way that suits educators, parents and the local community. It could include helping services to operate in communities that need extra support to stay viable. Finally, it could include creating innovative new investment partnerships and approaches, including to child development, with integrated service offerings. The Perrottet Government will work with the sector and across jurisdictions on workforce strategies and design the fund so that together we can transform the childcare sector to benefit children, parents, educators and providers alike. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr JUSTIN FIELD (17:59): I oppose the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022. I am not sure that this enormous investment of $5 billion is best directed towards the provision of, largely, private and for-profit childcare facilities in New South Wales. It is a bit peculiar to other States that in New South Wales the provision of care and early childhood education is overwhelmingly delivered in private long day care centres. One just has to look at the objectives of the legislation and the way that it has been presented in the media around the economic potential of providing additional childcare facilities. Not one aspect of it is grounded in the needs and best interests of children. I am not going to vote for legislation that starts from the assumption that investment in care is primarily about the economic participation of women, as much as that is an incredibly important conversation for us to have.

This is a huge amount of money. There is a good argument for why a lot of additional economic resources need to be put into support for mothers, fathers and families to assist people to make choices in their lives for themselves, their families and their children. This legislation seems to be directed at one particular choice: to support people to put their children into care from the early stages of their lives. It seems that this is a controversial position to take in society these days and, as a man, it is difficult to stand up and talk about these issues, but I have been informed in my thinking about this bill and this debate by the experiences of my wife, in particular, who works supporting women during pregnancy and in postnatal care. I have also been informed by the experiences of the women in my office and by Peter Cook's bookMothering Matters and Steve Biddulph's bookRaising Boys. We need to be able to have an honest conversation about the role of care, mothering and fathering, and of the importance of being able to spend time with our children, particularly in their infant years.

There is a conflation in this debate about child care, as if child care is everything that happens before a kid goes to primary school. There is a distinction between the experience of a child in the period from zero to two years old and the period between three years old and five years old. We know that there are huge benefits of experiencing early childhood education for the development of a child and their social interaction. It is an educational opportunity that has profound benefits for children in society. But there are clear, well-documented risks to the emotional development, social welfare and health outcomes for infants who are put into institutionalised care. I use that term not in the way that we think of institutions of the past but in the way that we have set up a model of care for children in our society that sees so many of them—about 45 per cent of children between zero and two years old—in these forms of care. There are risks associated with building our economic model around the idea that the preferred option is to put infants into care.

There is an argument at the centre of this debate, and it has been made to me by the Minister and his team, that this is ultimately about choice—that this is about providing women and families with the choice to be able to go back to work. Let us interrogate that idea of choice for a moment. I am not just talking about the $5 billion in this package; I am talking about all of the Commonwealth money that goes into childcare subsidies and support. When a government decides that the majority of its economic resources should provide for facilities that enable this type of care to be provided, it is implicitly saying that is the preferred model. It is saying that the work of mothering and fathering is of less economic value than the work a person will do when their child is in care. I am not sure that is a good public policy position to take.

In response to the2021-22 NSW Intergenerational Report, the Treasurer said that "the economy would be 8 per cent larger by 2060-61 if women's participation reached parity with men". That is just fiddling with the numbers to suit an economic argument. If we are honest with ourselves, women's participation in work is more than equal to men; they just do not get paid for the majority of the work that they do as caregivers. That we are not prepared to acknowledge the value of that work, and to say that the real economic opportunity for our society is for women and families to put their children into care and do more productive work, shows how little consideration there is for the needs of infant children in this debate. We should have a conversation about choice and what that means.

A recent article written by journalist Virginia Tapscott was titled "I care for my own kids, so why am I made to feel like a freak? The government wants me to get a 'real job'. But I don't want gender equality if it is simply a process of erasing everything that is inherently female." She is talking about the inherent role of women in caring for children and the fundamentally important role that mothering in the infant years plays for the health and wellbeing of mothers and children. That has huge implications for our society. If we build the most emotionally intelligent, connected and bonded children, we create an environment in our society where we get the best health, social and economic outcomes in the long term. I will read a couple of sections of this article because they go to the heart of this matter, and they are points being made by a mother of four who has been going through the real considerations that are the basis of this Government policy in her family. She says:

It's easier to make childcare more accessible than to get men to do their fair share of unpaid care work.

That is a very important point. She then says:

Making childcare more accessible is also easier than genuinely shifting the seat of power to be more inclusive of women and caregivers or giving them any sort of agency in that role … The easiest and most effective way to reduce our oppressive circumstances has been to limit our engagement in caregiving, rather than fighting to change the factors that make caregiving oppressive, such as little support and low or no pay.

In concluding, she says:

It's time to give caregivers a seat on the board, government support and a workplace that is more inclusive of people in unpaid caregiving roles. It's time to recognise a caregiver's contribution and fully enable them re-skill and re-enter the paid workforce without penalty when they are ready. If it is the most important job in the world—

mothering, caregiving and caring for each other, particularly our infant children—

why don't we act like it?

We do not act like it when the overwhelming amount of government investment is not in supporting people to be good carers but instead enabling them to hand off their children, including their infants, to institutions to be cared for by someone else, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that there are risks to the health and long-term social wellbeing of those children.

I have had this very real experience in the past six years, and I have to say that a big part of my decision to leave politics at the end of this term is related to it. Banjo was born three months before I became a member of Parliament, and it has been an intense juggle for me and my wife, Melissa, to try to be good caregivers and to continue to do what we do. I am leaving because, ultimately, I want to be a dad first and foremost. I know that is a common thing for people to say—that they want to get out of politics to spend more time with their families. But it is not just the time; it is the role. It is the most important job that I have. It does not really matter what else I can achieve if I have had a chance to give my son the opportunity to be a secure, emotionally intelligent, sensitive human.

My feeling is that, if we can build a society of children like this, if we ensure that our children genuinely get the best start in life, we might very well find that many of the challenges that we grapple with in this place—the economic and social challenges that we deal with within our communities—might well look after themselves. This is not a judgement on how others choose to parent. The reason that this is important to me is that I recognise that I, like very few others, have had the opportunity to make the decision to spend a lot of time with my son because I had the sort of job that enabled that flexibility. It was a privileged decision that most do not get to make.

If Banjo had not come into my life around the time I started in Parliament, if I was still doing the nine to five, I might not have realised the importance of the role. He may well have ended up in care from the earliest age because that was just what we had to do. But I had the flexibility to be with him and to see the consequences of being able to be with him—and to see what it meant for my wife to have the support of my being there as well, so she could also be with him. I got to see that and I cannot ignore those things. So why isn't the discussion about how to design public policy to help parents to parent, not just to help them go to work? They do no more important job if we are to have a happy and healthy society. Bring a bill to Parliament with $5 billion to help address that, and I will happily support it.

I was talking to Emily from my office earlier. She had Reuben in August last year. Emily stayed at work pretty much full time until she had Reuben—it coincided with the COVID pandemic, so things were a little bit different. She has had the great opportunity to largely do her work part time. I would like to think that I provided a really supportive environment for her to be able to deliver the care that she wants to give to her son. Again, I recognise that that has been a privileged opportunity: partly because I thought that was important for an employer to be able to deliver, and partly because for a public servant there is more support and flexibility for that.

If you want to talk about choice, how do we enable people to make genuine choices in how they fulfil their multiple roles in society? For a lot of us, it is a short part of our lives that we spend as carers for children. This is especially important for mothers. It is not just about giving them the ability to go back to work. Real choice would enable them to choose to care for their children in the way they want to, and for that not to have a huge economic impact and burden on the rest of their lives. We can support them to stay connected to their work, to maintain their skills and to be able to come back. We can enhance access to maternity and paternity leave so that mothers and fathers can actively participate in the care of their children for longer.

I suspect that if we had invested some of this money into genuinely providing choices for people—to choose how to care for their children, or to access institutionalised care—maybe the choices they make would be different. I suspect that quite a lot of women and families would choose to spend more time being carers for their children. We have seen that other countries, particularly in Europe, have tried to make a genuine choice possible. They have invested in both universal free childcare and also much longer periods of paid parental leave. That is real choice. I know that requires huge dollars. But to dress this particular policy up as choice for women, I think, disregards the very real risks of having infants in care from a young age.

We are missing an opportunity to have a genuine discussion about how to make sure people can provide that critically important role as carers, and how much better off we might be—as people, as families and as a society—if we were to do that. I do not support this bill. I am very concerned by the way it is being dressed up purely around economic and employment participation. It fails to recognise the needs of children. It fails to genuinely provide choices. I think that in 10 years' time it will be a massive subsidy to private and largely for‑profit childcare centres. Whilst I know there are a lot of people who work in those centres and do an incredibly important job at very low pay—and there is a really important role for them, particularly in the preschool years, for early childhood education—that is not the be-all and end-all in delivering options and choices for parents, for families and children.

I wish it was different: that, with the Government so prepared to actually spend money on this important area of public policy, we could have a broader and more nuanced conversation about the needs of women and families and children in society. It is disappointing that this debate has been so narrow in its focus. I have expressed that to the Minister and to the Minister's office, and I appreciate them for listening to my arguments.

I really thank, in particular, Ishbel and Emily from my office for helping me to be able to come here and say these sorts of things in the debate today. It does feel very awkward in some ways, as a male, saying this. But, with their support and the support of my wife—women who were prepared to put this down in writing—I think that I have a responsibility, also having watched it so closely in my own life, to try to articulate that. I recognise some people will construe it in a certain way, but I hope that I have been able to articulate it in a way that enables people to understand that it comes from a good place and a real hope that we can really, genuinely meet the needs of women and families in our society.

Ms ABIGAIL BOYD (18:17): On behalf of The Greens, I contribute to debate on the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022. The bill is, to put it kindly, the wrong solution to the right problem. The Government is right to finally acknowledge the enormous financial burden placed upon new families in New South Wales trying to access quality early childhood education and care. There is, of course, no doubt that there is a lack of affordable early childhood centres and child care throughout the State. It is particularly pronounced in lower socioeconomic areas and in western New South Wales, where, not coincidentally, there is also a distinct lack of publicly owned and run facilities.

The stress and impact on families that the lack of childcare options presents, and the impact on children's long-term wellbeing, is something that we need to address urgently, along with the ongoing barrier that it presents to some women's participation in paid work. You do not need a 77-page research paper to tell you that—we have known about it for years—but Treasury got one done, just to be sure. TheWomen's economic opportunities in the NSW labour market and the impact of early childhood education and care report did not allow its somewhat misguided assumptions to get in the way of achieving some really meaningful insights. The report states:

The cost of ECEC in Australia and New South Wales is high by international standards, with subsidies progressively withdrawn on the basis of household income, from a level below the average full‑time wage of a single income earner. Accessibility of care, in terms of the availability of places across locations, and the type and quality of care, presents a further challenge to parents. The ECEC market is predominantly privately run, with limited system management to prevent cost escalation and to ensure supply across the State, in stark contrast to the universal public provision of education from age five onwards … A significant determinant of availability and quality of ECEC is the workforce, who are paid well below the average wage.

So the report acknowledged the issues that are caused by the fact that we have a predominantly privately run early childhood and childcare system, and the fact that the workforce is not adequately compensated for the incredibly valuable work that they do.

It was with great fanfare that the Treasurer announced he would be addressing the lack of affordable and accessible child care in our State as part of his so‑called women's budget in June. Affordable and accessible child care, he told us, is critical to increasing "women's workforce participation", to enabling women to be seen as productive units for the purposes of our economy—never mind the enormous contribution that women make to our economy through their unpaid work. I have long expressed the view that it is well past time that we move on from archaic concepts of gross domestic product and gross State domestic product which undervalue the millions of hours of unpaid work performed across the State and which create a perverse incentive to get more people into paid work regardless of the tangible impact on their wellbeing. I reiterate that you can improve GDP in this State by getting everybody to pay for each other to look after their children, but if everybody looks after their own child that does not increase GDP. The idea that just because there is a cost involved it creates some sort of tangible impact of an increase in GDP and upon people's wellbeing is, of course, a complete fallacy.

This also ignores the experiences of single women and two‑income families who are already working full‑time, often in multiple jobs, and spending huge chunks of their income on ensuring that their children are looked after. This bill is not focused on them because it is directed only at increasing the numbers of women working, or the hours they are working each week, and not on easing the burden on women who are already working. Never mind the evidence that shows us that early childhood education is of significant benefit to the children themselves, above and beyond that to their parents, particularly in lower socioeconomic areas. Access to early childhood education has been shown to have a huge impact on children's lives. In addition to the development of early social skills, children attending early childhood education are more likely to have disabilities and other learning disadvantages picked up at an earlier age and to receive the early intervention they need to prepare them adequately for school.

I acknowledge the excellent contribution from Mr Justin Field in relation to this conflation of care of infants and then the years leading up to preparation for school, before they even get to preschool stage. I reflect on my own experience as a parent. My view on whether I would be the one to look after my children or ask someone else to was always based on the principle that I would look after them unless they would be better off with someone else spending that time with them. If I felt that I was just depositing them at a daycare centre like a repository, to be held as opposed to being educated, then that was not good enough for me. But what an incredibly privileged thing that is for me to say, because I had a choice. I had a choice whether or not to work. I chose to work, knowing that I could afford and that I had access to child care. That is not a choice the majority of people have. I am keenly aware of that.

I think that the inequality between those who can and those who cannot afford these sorts of childcare options is even more stark when children reach the age of 2½ or three. From my own experience, that was the point at which my children started experiencing difficulties that I was incapable of dealing with. I did not know what to do. There was nothing in the parenting manual about how to look after my children at that point. I was incredibly fortunate that I could put them into early childhood education where they were able to identify, "Yes, your children are different from the norm. There is something here you need to look at." But, again, what an absolute position of privilege I was in and that other people were not in.

It is no accident that that is how our system has got to the point that it is at now; it is through systematic underfunding of public services. We are making it so that only the most privileged of us are able to provide that sort of care for our child. I think that it is really important that we focus on that when we talk about choice. I share some of the previous speaker's sentiments that it does seem to be an approach that is based on a very privileged, wealthy vision of what families are going through. It really rubs me the wrong way, when I consider the realities of what most people are going through in this State.

The framing of the provision of affordable and accessible child care as a women's participation issue goes some way to explaining why the Treasurer has conceived and drafted the bill for this reform so poorly. But to understand how the Treasurer could get this reform so terribly wrong, we need to understand his and the Liberal Party's adoration of market economics and stubborn adherence to the idea that profit‑taking entities can provide essential public services somehow cheaper or more effectively than public and not‑for‑profit entities. When we saw waves of privatisation 20 or 30 years ago, there was certainly that view. I think it has been disproven now. I think people have seen that private entities have the same issues. If you look at the core structural drivers and impacts around a public versus a private entity, there is no inherent reason why a government entity would be less effective or more costly than a private one. I know that I am rubbing up against the core ideology of the Liberal Party on that, and I am unlikely to get any love for those sorts of sentiments.

But it is no accident that child care in our State is so unaffordable and so patchy; it is precisely because over the years the government stopped funding public alternatives. The so-called childcare deserts outside metropolitan Sydney that the Treasurer keeps talking about are effectively the same areas in which there are no publicly run centres. Long gone are the days when local councils routinely ran childcare centres. Childcare centres used to be run across the State. Looking back through the history of childcare provision, it is not that surprising that we have ended up where we are. A whopping 75 per cent of our daycare centres are private and run for profit, 17 per cent are private not‑for‑profit and 2 per cent are managed by Catholic and independent schools. Only 6 per cent are run by government.

So what is the Treasurer's solution to this problem—a problem created by giving over the running of an essential public service to the private sector? It is more investment in the private sector. That is his solution to a problem which has been caused by investment in the private sector. Here we have a proposal not to directly invest billions of dollars in public childcare services but instead to prop up the very entities taking profit at the expense of families across our State. The response from the Government is to shovel more money out the door to private providers, with the hope of maybe enticing or incentivising them to build more services in underserviced areas. How the Government expects this to improve affordability is anyone's guess. Following the Government's logic of supply and demand, a new entrant into an underserviced area would be able to charge even higher fees to desperate families and, driven by a profit motive, private for‑profit providers surely will.

I compare that with Labor's response to improving child care for Victorian families. Labor will spend $9 billion and establish 50 government‑owned and affordable childcare centres—greater investment, starting sooner, in government public services. Early childhood education and care is the first rung on our education ladder. The fact that this policy will further degrade the availability of a public education offering flies in the face of our proud, universally available public education system, which we have spent so long building up, protecting and supporting.

The bill contemplates more money going to private operators. The Greens policy at both the New South Wales and national levels is explicitly against public money going to private early childhood education and childcare centres. It is a core Greens policy principle and informs our thinking on the bill. We should be doing something far more similar to what the Labor Government in Victoria is doing. For example, we could have set up a fund for councils to access to establish council‑run early childhood education centres instead.

Notwithstanding The Greens' opposition to the bill on the basis of our core disagreement with privatisation of public services, I thank the education Minister and the Treasurer, and, in particular, their hardworking staff, for working cooperatively with us on the bill. In the past few days over the course of a number of meetings, we have been able to agree on a number of amendments, which, if successful, will improve the bill. We have some fundamental differences of opinion on policy. However, there is always room to improve any legislation if the attempt is made to work it through. I sincerely thank the Treasurer and the education Minister for the respect they have shown to The Greens in taking the time to have those discussions. I am out of time but will have more to say during the Committee stage.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (The Hon. Wes Fang): I will now leave the chair. The House will resume at 8.00 p.m.

The Hon. PETER POULOS (20:00): On behalf of the Hon. Damien Tudehope: In reply: I thank the Hon. Courtney Houssos for her contribution and for indicating that the Opposition will support this important reform bill. It is encouraging to see the Opposition doing so, especially when the Government is providing leadership and a blueprint to undertake this very important initiative. I thank the Hon. Mark Latham, Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile, the Hon. Aileen MacDonald, Mr Justin Field and Ms Abigail Boyd for their contributions.

The Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund Bill 2022 provides for financial assistance for the provision of affordable and accessible child care. In the history of this very historic Parliament, this is landmark reform. For the most experienced and seasoned member of this Chamber, Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile, to acknowledge that this reform is well and truly overdue and highly imaginative is an indication of how far we have come in a very short period under the stewardship of this energised Government under the leadership of Premier Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean.

The bill supports women and supports the aspirations of working families. The measures will achieve savings and address a significant cost-of-living pressure for working families. The policy has been shaped by women and has guided the Government's response. This Government is listening. This Government provides choice. This Government understands that childcare reform is due. This is global leadership. I commend the bill to the House.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (The Hon. Chris Rath): The question is that this bill be now read a second time.

Motion agreed to.

In Committee

The CHAIR (The Hon. Wes Fang): There being no objection, the Committee will deal with the bill as a whole.

Ms ABIGAIL BOYD (20:05): By leave: I move The Greens amendments Nos 1 and 2 on sheet c2022‑160L in globo:

No. 1Name of Act

Page 2, proposed section 1, line 4. Omit "and Economic Opportunity".

No. 2Objective of Act

Page 2, proposed section 4(1), lines 25–27. Omit all words on those lines. Insert instead—

(1)The principal objective of this Act is to increase levels of affordable and accessible childcare across the State.

As I made clear in my contribution to the second reading debate, the dressing up of childcare funding as economic opportunity for women is misguided and wrong-headed. It is about far more than that. The idea that we are targeting only those women currently not working and that this fund will be specifically directed towards getting more women into the workforce, rather than easing the burden on women who are already in the workforce is wrong-headed and it also underestimates the value of the unpaid work that women do across the State. Calling this bill something to do with women's equal opportunity is a long bow. For that reason, we are proposing that we take out "economic opportunity" from the name of the Act and that the objective of the Act to be, instead, "to increase levels of affordable and accessible child care across the State", because that problem has been identified. This is not about a simple reduction of barriers to women working. It is about providing the best possible support for families across the State.

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