Labor doubles down after being accused of backflip on free preschool election promise

Labor’s Education Minister has reaffirmed his commitment after being accused of retreating from a pre-election promise that he would offer free preschool to thousands of families.

The state government has promised to deliver a pre-poll commitment to offer all three-year-olds access to preschool from 2026, despite being accused on Tuesday of backflipping.

In the lead-up to the election, Labor trumpeted its policy of extending preschool to younger children after it had conducted a royal commission into the sector.

In parliament on Tuesday, Education Minister Blair Boyer said there were a “number of very big issues that we need to deal with first” before the government could provide 15 hours of preschool for all children.

Mr Boyer said it related to the state having the capacity for all of the three-year-olds to take up preschool.

On Wednesday morning Mr Boyer insisted he would deliver his pre-election promise.

“We are 100 per cent committed to delivering this really important election commitment exactly in the way we said we would deliver it,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

”We have not changed our position one iota, not one iota since we first made this announcement.”

He said recommendations from a Royal Commission scheduled to start “very soon” would be following in the state government’s plan to provide preschool to youngsters.

“I think we’re putting the cart before the horse a little bit here, we actually haven’t had the Royal Commission yet and already we have the opposition out saying we have somehow broken our promise,” he said.

“We will seek the advice of a Royal Commission and a Royal Commissioner and how we do that and make sure this is done properly because this really is a once in a generation reform here.”

Minister for Education, Training and Skills, Blair Boyer. Picture: Tom Huntley

He referred to the Victorian government’s 10-year rollout of three-year-old preschool and said Labor was now looking to “do it in stages, most likely”.

Opposition education spokesman John Gardner said Mr Boyer’s comments showed Labor had “walked away” from a central tenet of their election campaign. “Before the election, we criticised the Labor Party for their failure to provide any details about how they were going to deliver this core promise, other than that a royal commission would work it out for them,” Mr Gardner said.

He said his party had also criticised Labor for not including any funding to deliver the promise, other than a $1m allocated for the royal commission.

“For Labor to say today that there are ‘some very big issues’ in the way of delivering on their election commitment on time is the weakest imaginable excuse,” Mr Gardner said.

He said the commitment may cost up to $100m a year to deliver. But Mr Boyer told The Advertiser there was no change to Labor’s policy.

A pre-schooler at daycare. Picture: iStock

“The previous government had four years to commit to three-year-old preschool and they chose not to – and Mr Gardner’s comments today are misleading and wrong about our policy. There is no change to our election commitment.

“We have a serious plan for the future that involves a once-in-a-generation overhaul of early childhood education in South Australia, and it’s not a commitment we take lightly.”

Labor’s royal commission is expected to work through issues around extending preschool to younger children, including finances and effects on small businesses such as privately or community-run childcare centres. It will also consider the cost, accessibility and quality of outside school hours care, in a major restructure of early-childhood education.

The party said offering preschool for three-year-olds would help more workers – especially women – to take on full-time work, at the same time as improving education, particularly in the crucial first 1000 days of a child’s life.