Early childhood services have been increasingly privatised over the past two decades, and they’re not meeting the real needs of our communities.
The Victorian Greens want to reinvest in our communities to ensure that all Victorian children have access to high quality and affordable early education and care.
All children have a right to high quality learning that is developmentally appropriate, affordable and delivered by caring and supported professionals. But a lack of planning and regulation means our early childhood sector is overly privatised, and it isn’t meeting the real needs of children, families and communities.
The Victorian Greens have a plan to redress the balance, ensuring accessibility and affordability of high quality early childhood education, and a better deal for Victorian families, committing $111 million to:
- Invest in local communities: We’ll invest up to $101 million to support the expansion of community childcare, with a focus on planned development and services that meet community needs.
- Plan for the future: Through an urgent review of the early childhood education and care sector in Victoria, we will map statewide supply and demand issues and respond to ballooning waitlists;
- Roll out bush kinder: We’ll scale up bush kinder with an investment of $10 million, supporting the improved health and wellbeing of hundreds of little Victorians;
- Support staff: The Greens will continue to support workers’ advocacy for better pay and conditions. We’re committed to free TAFE for early childhood educators and reducing HECS/HELP debt burdens for all university graduates; and
- Work towards two years of free preschool: The Victorian Greens will call on the Victorian Government and the Council of Australian Governments to develop a policy framework to provide all three and four year olds with 15 hours of free pre-school per week.