When it comes to the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024, I have two areas of concern.
First, it does nothing to address childcare deserts which are particularly abundantly in regional and rural Australia. The Albanese Labor government need to be mapping the childcare deserts and ensuring childcare provision that we need.
And second, they have to make sure that we can get the workforce that we need.
The big problem with this bill is that we are not seeing anything which is going to concretely address the very real issue of childcare deserts in regional and rural Australia.