The Greens have said that the federal government must urgently support early learning and immediately provide relief for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Victoria.
\nSenator Mehreen Faruqi, Australian Greens Education spokesperson, said:
\n\u201cThe current situation is untenable. The federal government should immediately extend JobKeeper for all early learning workers and provide free childcare with a guaranteed relief payment for services.
\n\u201cJobKeeper was taken away from ECEC workers before anyone else, and now the future of hundreds of centres hangs in the balance. We risk a situation in which thousands of early learning workers are stood down without an income.
\n\u201cScrapping JobKeeper for these workers, who are mainly women, and reverting to the expensive fee-paying model was a big mistake.
\n\u201cWe need urgent clarity from the Victorian government on who is eligible to continue to access childcare. Families and children in vulnerable situations should not be turned away.
\n\u201cWe must support families and children during these turbulent and uncertain times,\u201d she said.
\nAdam Bandt MP, Leader of the Australian Greens, said:
\n\u201cChildcare support was a vital part of the initial Covid response. But now, as things are more restrictive than they\u2019ve ever been for millions of Australians, the government has selectively pulled support for both families and childcare workers.
\n\u201cRipping out support for a sector as crucial as childcare will have a ripple-effect that will increase risk and unnecessary hardship.
\n\u201cParents shouldn\u2019t be forced to pay fees if their children can\u2019t attend, and centres and staff need to know they\u2019ll be financially supported.
\n\u201cWe have to learn our lessons on the fly with this epidemic. Pulling JobKeeper and free childcare is a mistake that needs to be acknowledged and reversed immediately,\u201d Bandt said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens have said that the federal government must urgently support early learning and immediately provide relief for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Victoria. Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Australian Greens Education spokesperson, said: \u201cThe current situation is untenable. The federal government should immediately extend JobKeeper for all early learning workers and provide free childcare … Continue reading “Federal Gov Must Support Early Learning In Victoria”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}