Doorstop interview - Adelaide, South Australia
LOUISE MILLER-FROST, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BOOTHBY: Hi everyone. My name’s Louise Miller-Frost; I’m the Federal Member for Boothby. I’ve been allowed out of my area into Steve Georganas’ area of Adelaide today for this really exciting announcement. I’ve had a long commitment to education and the importance of education to people getting good quality, well-paid, secure jobs for the future. And we know we have a skills shortage, so the more people we can get through TAFE and university and have those great careers, the better. So, it’s my absolute pleasure to be here today with State Minister Blair Boyer and Federal Minister for Skills Brendan O’Connor. And I’ll pass over to you, Brendan, for an exciting announcement.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR, FEDERAL MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND TRAINING: Thanks very much, Louise. It’s wonderful to be here again in Adelaide – a remarkable part of Australia. And, of course, this announcement today is absolutely critical because it’s about investing in preschool education, which is growing exponentially. Across the country, increasingly people are wanting to be able to not only have carers look after their kids but also increasingly understand the need to educate children before primary school. If you look around the world, those most successful nations have been formally educating children before primary school. It’s on the march, if you like. And you’re noticing federal and state governments are starting to invest more in this area too. Because if we want to have the smartest, the most skilled labour market in the world, then we need to start early, not only dedicating ourselves to the care of preschool children but providing education so that it sets them up for a remarkable life. Today I met Gloria and Bradley, two students who are enrolled in Fee-Free TAFE for preschool education. That to me reminds me that we have this combination of government decisions investing in Fee-Free TAFE. We now have well over 400,000 Australians in Fee-Free TAFE, a large proportion of that are in the care sector, including preschool education. That’s a partnership between the Albanese Government and in this state the Malinauskas Government, focusing on the skills that are needed for our economy.
Today’s announcement is another example of how important it was that the Federal Government and State and Territory Governments struck a National Skills Agreement - the first agreement of its kind in more than a decade – a $30 billion five-year agreement to provide not only certainty of funding to the skills needed for our economy but also providing reforms that are needed. And today’s announcement is about those reforms: improving our VET sector, improving, indeed, even universities, ensuring that we have education and training sectors that are fit for purpose, that are providing skills to an ever-changing economy and labour market. And today’s announcement is about investment in preschool education and care. It’s about really supplying the skills in an area of increasing demand. And why is that important? Well, firstly, for people who want to have ongoing employment and have skills that are in need, then we have this sector where there is growing opportunities for employment. Secondly, there are businesses, there are public and private providers of preschool education, that need skilled workers. Without this investment, this new Centre of Excellence, we will not be able to supply the skills to this sector of the economy. So that’s absolutely critical. But ultimately, it’s also about ensuring we’re investing taxpayers’ money in areas of demand, so we have a strong labour market and a very strong economy. So, this is good for workers, it’s good for businesses, and in the case of this Centre of Excellence, it’s great for parents and it’s great for kids. There’s no loss here; it’s all win. And I’m very proud to be associated with this announcement. I’m very happy to be with Louise and also, of course, with Blair Boyer who has been my partner working on these issues to invest in areas of demand for the South Australian economy and for the South Australian people. So very happy to be here. I’ve been very fortunate to be announcing Centres of Excellence in Western Australia, in Queensland with the Federal Treasurer and the state minister very recently, in the ACT, and it’s wonderful to be here in South Australia, investing in an area of massive demand, providing opportunities for Gloria and Bradley to get great jobs, providing those centres that need skilled workers and providing parents and kids the services that they need to get on with their lives. So, it’s a great day today for South Australia and for Adelaide. And it’s a part of the National Skills Agreement and the partnership between the Malinauskas and Albanese Governments working together to invest in a way that’s strategic, that understands the demands of the economy, that anticipates the needs of the labour market and in doing that we are delivering to South Australians and more broadly to Australians. And I’ll pass over now to my counterpart minister, Blair, to add to that. Thank you.
BLAIR BOYER, SOUTH AUSTRALIAN MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, TRAINING AND SKILLS: Thank you Louise and thank you Brendan. It is great to be here today. I was trying to think back on the way to the conference this morning about how often we’ve had Minister O’Connor in South Australia. I think this is the fifth or sixth standup that Brendan and I have done together.
O’CONNOR: That’s right.
BOYER: And Louise has been at a lot of those as well. That speaks to how committed Brendan is, not just to his portfolios, but to our State. There’s no federal minister that I think I have stood up with more than Brendan, and they’ve basically all been positive announcements for our state around the National Skills Agreement, Fee-Free TAFE and now an Early Childhood Education and Care Centre of Excellence here in South Australia. And, of course, it’s really important for us as a state where we are, you know, on our way to delivering a second year of preschool, 3 year old preschool, commencing in 2026 that we have the Centre of Excellence, which really, if I was to characterise it, will be the engine room for training and course development for early childhood staff for the whole nation, and it’s going to be housed right here in Adelaide, just down the road at the Currie Street TAFE campus. We know that it’s not buildings, it’s not technology that are our biggest assets in our preschools, our childcare centres, our primary schools or our high schools; our biggest asset is always our staff, whether they are early childhood workers or early childhood teachers. And the biggest investment that we can make both as a state and federal government, in terms of improving the quality of education that young people like the ones running around behind us here today get, is investing in our staff. And this is all about doing that. This is about making sure that we have world-class course development and training for those people who will go on to care and educate the youngest and most vulnerable people in our education system.
Now, I might give a couple of examples about the kind of opportunities this Centre of Excellence is going to provide for us here in South Australia and, of course, because it is a national Centre of Excellence, more broadly right across the Early Childhood Education and Care sector in Australia. An example is we’ve made some big pushes here since being elected in March of 2022 to improve the quality of education that we give children with autism. We have committed to autism inclusion teachers in every primary school in the public education system in South Australia, and we have delivered on that. One of the opportunities this Centre of Excellence will provide us here, though, is to do more course development work to provide more skills to our early childhood workers around how they better care and educate young people in settings like this who are on the spectrum. I think it’s something that we should be incredibly proud of here in South Australia that we have taken a leadership role around doing that.
Another example – and this very much comes back to Julia Gillard’s Royal Commission into how we deliver that second year of preschool – and that is around recommendation number one, how we reduce the level of developmental vulnerability of 5-year-olds down from its current level I think of about 23.8, which is above the national average, down to 15 per cent over the next 20 years. Now, the area in our state which has basically the highest level of development vulnerability in 5 year olds is on the APY Lands. It’s going to be very hard to offer things like 3-year-old preschool, for instance, if we can’t do it in language. And having this Early Childhood Education and Care Centre of Excellence here in South Australia will give us the opportunity to focus on making sure we can develop the course for Pitjantjatjara – so language – so that those young Aboriginal kids who are growing up on the Lands also can get the benefit of 3 year old preschool, and that will significantly contribute towards how we meet Julia Gillard’s recommendation of getting that level of developmental vulnerability down to 15 per cent from its current level of 23.8 over the next 20 years.
I want to take the opportunity to thank Brendan and the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, as well. We have fought very hard to secure this. There was a lot of stiff competition because, of course, we are not the only state that is moving towards 3-year-old preschool. Other states are doing that too, and there is some really stiff competition on for attracting staff from other jurisdictions and making sure that we have the highest quality early childhood workers and teachers that we possibly can. So, I am very pleased that the Federal Labor Government decided to award this to South Australia. It is a significant investment. I think it is $28 million, a lot of which will go towards some upgrades of the TAFE CBD campus just around the corner on Currie Street but also staffing and some other things as well. And I’m pleased to advise you that it’s going to be up and operational by next year as well. So, we are going to very soon see the benefit of South Australia being the engine room for course development and training for early childhood right across Australia. Happy to take questions, and as is Minister O’Connor.
JOURNALIST: Is this $28 million that was announced, is this part of the $56 million from February this year or is it in addition to?
BOYER: This is in addition to.
JOURNALIST: How many places will there be at the Centre of Excellence?
BOYER: I might just come back to you on exactly what that will be, if that’s ok?
JOURNALIST: What qualifications are currently needed to become an early childhood educator, and will that change to strengthen and expand the workforce?
BOYER: So, currently Certificate III Early Childhood Education and Care, a diploma and then, of course, a teaching degree if you’re an early childhood teacher. And we’ve already made change as per the recommendation made by Julia Gillard around reducing the length of that course from four years to three years, which is bringing us in line with other states that already do that. And of course, it will help us get people actually through faster. The current arrangement that we’ve had in South Australia is a birth to 8 degree, and although that on the face of it sounds like a really positive thing, the percentage of that course that actually focused on those first five years was a very small percentage. So, what we’ve done instead is created a three year degree where the focus will basically be entirely on those first five years, which is exactly what we want. That’s what, you know, the second year of preschool is all about.
And, of course, those statistics around the level of developmental vulnerability are taken at the age of 5, and that’s our number one recommendation, is how we get that figure down. It’s around kids’ cognitive ability at 5, social, emotional, physical – all the things that do or don’t set those kids up for their first day of school. And we here in South Australia, every state and territory, and it is a national, international phenomenon, is that we have a problem with kids not being ready to learn when they start school. And a second year of preschool, which is the biggest change to our state’s education system since 4 year old preschool was introduced about 50 years ago, will make sure that we get better prepared young people for their first day of school, sitting down to actually learn to be literate and to be numerate and to go on and have all those skills that Brendan referred to just then, that we need in our workforce, to deliver on existing demand that we have. We’ve got all that growing demand across areas like 3-year-old preschool and AUKUS and all those kinds of things.
JOURNALIST: I just want to ask about early childhood education in regional areas. We’re talking – there’s already extreme dire shortages of childcare workers let alone before we expand to 3 year olds. Will there be targeted incentives at this Centre of Excellence to encourage people to head to the regions?
BOYER: There may - I’m getting the thumbs up from the Chief Executive of TAFE, which is always good to see as a Minister.
O’CONNOR: Like Caesar.
BOYER: That’s right. It’s done. I’m glad it wasn’t this (thumbs down). Otherwise, I might have had a major problem. Very good question though. You’re right. As someone - I grew up in the country part of Victoria down near Mt Gambier. It’s always been an issue around availability of childcare. And I think what has happened is there’s been a societal change – and it’s a good one – is that people just aren’t prepared to accept it anymore, particularly women who want to get back into the workforce or want to increase their hours are no longer willing to accept that just because they live in a rural or regional area they can’t access childcare. And I’m 100 per cent with them. And we’ve been working with the federal government on that. We’ve had some wins down in places like Kingston South East, but I make no bones about it – it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be complicated, it’s going to be expensive because sometimes it means we need to actually build a facility that doesn’t exist and we’ve then got to attract staff as well. But, again, it all comes back to how we deliver on recommendation one from Julia Gillard. We’ve got to get the vulnerability down from its current level to 15 per cent, and that means not just focusing on metropolitan parts of our state but on the rural and regional and remote parts as well.
(questions on local issues)