5-12 August is Early Learning Matters week and is a great opportunity for the community to reflect on the importance and benefits of early education for all of our youngest minds.

As part of Early Learning Matters Week, Member for Blair, Shayne Neumann MP visited Choices Family Daycare in Karana Downs to talk with providers about their role in educating our youngest children.

Labor has long understood the importance of early learning and the positive impact this can have on children’s development and education.

Labor knows that high quality learning and development experiences such as play based learning in the first five years of life are critical to children’s cognitive and non-cognitive development.

Early Learning Matters Week highlights the incredible support, care and value which our early education providers and educators provide, and why it is so important that all children access early education.

Labor has always been for early education and will always be the Party of early education.

In Government, Labor took action to reduce the financial burden of child care on families. We increased the child care rebate from 30 to 50 per cent of out of pocket costs, and increased the cap to $7,500. We invested $970 million to create the national universal access to preschool for four year olds program, and we introduced the National Quality Framework which has lifted standards and quality in early education.

In stark contrast, the Turnbull Government has a shameful record in early education. They have reduced access to subsidised education and care to some of our most vulnerable families with their unfair new activity test and funding cuts. They refuse to provide long term certainty to the national preschool program, and they have cut funding to the national safety and quality program..

The Turnbull Government’s own unfair child care package fails to value the importance of early childhood education, and treats early years learning as nothing but a babysitting service.

Unfortunately, the reality is as we highlight the importance of early education, there are one in four families who are now worse off under the Turnbull Government’s unfair child care changes.