On April 4, the Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment released its Report on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2015 with a recommendation that the Senate pass the Bill. Labor Senators and the Australian Greens both produced dissenting reports.

Prior to the release of this report, I had the opportunity to participate in an Early Childhood Stakeholder Roundtable on 16 March with the Minister for Education and Training, The Honourable Simon Birmingham; Senators Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus; and Shadow Minister for Education and Early Childhood, The Honourable Kate Ellis. The Roundtable was hosted by the Australian Childcare Alliance, and was also attended by state ministers and representatives from early childhood peak bodies and NGOs.

The focus of the Roundtable was on the details of the Bill, and specifically, on new research from Professor Ben Phillips at the Australian National University showing that 1 in 3 families will be worse off under the new package. Roundtable participants were to consider what policy changes could ensure the reform package will limit the number of worse-off children and families.

I would like to reiterate here what I spoke about at the Roundtable, because it is clear that, while we have made some progress towards improving access to quality early learning for all children, there is still much work to be done.

While women’s participation in the workforce is an important and worthy goal to pursue, reforms to childcare should be focused primarily on the needs of the child. Optimising early childhood development should be THE primary goal of early education and care. Not only is it a moral imperative, it also has economic ramifications – ramifications that actually far outweigh women’s workforce participation (as PwC’s 2015 report Putting a Value on Early Childhood Education and Care in Australia clearly showed).

As the Nobel Prize winner Professor James Heckman stated, “Investing in early childhood development is the best investment any country can make”.

Rather than focusing on questions of cost, access, hours, days and eligibility, as important as these issues are, I would like government to step back and question why we think it is okay that more than 1 in 5 Australian children arrive at school already in trouble; already behind their peers. There are three bodies of research – brain research, research on early learning, and life course research – that clearly show the need to invest in early childhood development if we are going to prevent costly consequences down the track. We need government to lead a conversation in this country about how we can promote the healthy development of all children.

Early education and care is a form of early intervention. Assuming quality is high, early education and care can mitigate against the development of preventable problems. Expecting schools to compensate for what happens in the first five years before children arrive at school is like placing ambulances at the bottom of cliffs. There will never be enough resources for schools to reverse problems that started earlier, and it is not cost effective to try to do so.

The Australian Government has an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of all children and, ultimately, to all Australians. By investing properly in early education and care, government can build the social infrastructure that will ensure our future prosperity. This should be the real productivity agenda.

Frank Oberklaid – Director, The Centre for Community Child Health