ACA President’s Report

Whilst the outcome of the mid-year federal election may already seem like a long time ago, it has set a positive new path for the early learning sector. With Labor securing a majority government, Prime Minister Albanese and his new Cabinet made it crystal clear that improving access to high-quality early learning (child care) services is one of their key priorities.

With the Cabinet changes, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Development, Amanda Rishworth, moved across to the portfolio of Social Services, with Anne Aly appointed as the new Minister for Early Childhood Education and Youth.

ACA is extremely grateful for Minister Rishworth’s strong support of our sector over the last five or so years and we wished her well in her new portfolio. Meanwhile our engagement with Minister Aly has commenced well and promises a positive, ongoing working relationship. At our first face-to-face meeting with her in mid-June the Minister invited ACA to participate in the Department of Education’s ECEC Workforce Roundtable discussions. This eventuated in our presence at events held in Victoria and also Western Australia.

Our contributions formed part of the discussions at the Australian Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit in September, with the Summit outcomes document including a long-term vision for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) reform to better support parents’ workforce participation and to also support better outcomes across the ECEC sector, including a particular focus on workforce shortages. ACA continues to work tirelessly on addressing the nationwide workforce shortages in our sector. We recently shared our 2022 Workforce Policy Proposal with Minister Anne Aly and we are urgently calling on the Labor Government to address the workforce shortages via a set of short-term, medium and longer-term initiatives. At the same time we have been working closely with all ECEC peak bodies to develop a collaboratively supported range of solutions at all levels of the sector and government to address the workforce crisis. I’m proud to report that we have now launched our exciting Employee Assistance Program (EAP) via our partnership with LifeWorks. This means that as an ACA member you have the opportunity to subscribe to the ACA LifeWorks EAP program for your team’s ongoing use, at a fraction of the usual cost per staff member. We’ve worked hard to get this incredible value for our members, and we highly recommend you take advantage of this offer. For more information please visit www.bit.ly/ ACALifeWorks or contact ACA Qld directly. On a final note, whilst it may already feel like a world away I hope you and your team of educators enjoyed this year’s Early Childhood Educators’ Day celebrations, with your own service celebrating it in your own special way. As always, we welcome your feedback on the resources we produce for this event and we encourage you to share your thoughts via our short survey at www.bit.ly/ ECEDay2022. We hope it was a wonderful celebration at your service.

Paul Mondo ACA President