The Greens have responded to the government\u2019s package for childcare in Victoria, saying that it is unnecessarily complicated and austere. The government should guarantee free childcare permanently and extend JobKeeper for all early learning workers.
\nSenator Mehreen Faruqi, Australian Greens Education spokesperson, said:
\n\u201cThis package doesn\u2019t work for families, who may still have to pay gap fees. It doesn\u2019t work for educators, who don\u2019t have a wage guarantee. And it doesn\u2019t work for centres, who won\u2019t get the funding they need.
\n\u201cThe time is up for impromptu band-aids and ad-hoc fixes. We need to extend the wider JobKeeper scheme to all early learning workers and guarantee proper relief payments for centres.
\n\u201cThe government must recognise that our early learning system is completely broken. It needs an overhaul and childcare needs to be made free permanently.
\n\u201cWe would not be in this situation if early childhood education were properly funded and fee-free to begin with.
\n\u201cThis saga of stop-gap payments and packages through Covid-19 can be resolved through investing in early education, making it fee-free for families, and considering it an essential service with a properly compensated workforce. This is good for families, good for women, good for children and for our society and economy.
\n\u201cI want to particularly acknowledge ECEC workers. They have been on the frontline and they should be commended for what they continue to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens have responded to the government\u2019s package for childcare in Victoria, saying that it is unnecessarily complicated and austere. The government should guarantee free childcare permanently and extend JobKeeper for all early learning workers. Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Australian Greens Education spokesperson, said: \u201cThis package doesn\u2019t work for families, who may still have to pay … Continue reading “No More Band-Aids: Reinstate Free Childcare and Fund ECEC Properly”<\/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-7587","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\/7587","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=7587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}