Cheaper childcare heads action list for new minister Jason Clare
New federal Education Minister Jason Clare has vowed to ‘stop the slide’’ in school results and make childcare cheaper.
New federal Education Minister Jason Clare has vowed to “stop the slide’’ in school results and make childcare cheaper.
Mr Clare, whose surprise promotion pushed aside Tanya Plibersek despite her six years as opposition spokeswoman on education, was “pinching himself’’ after his swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday.
“The idea that a kid from Cabramatta could one day become Education Minister blows my mind,’’ he told Sky News. “We come into this building (parliament) wanting to change people’s lives for the better (and) that’s what education does.
“Our schools are effectively the engine room for the new economy. What we do in our primary schools and our high schools, if we get it right, really sets the Australian economy up for the next decade and the decade beyond, making sure our kids have the skills they need for the jobs of the future.’’
Describing education as “the most powerful cause for good in this country’’, Mr Clare said he wanted to “turn around’’ the fall in Australian students’ academic results, compared with other developed countries.
“How do we stop the slide in student results in primary and high school?’’ he said. “We’re falling behind the US, the UK, China and Korea.
“I want to work with state education ministers and teachers … to see what we can do to turn that around. Part of that is getting more high achievers at high school to go to university and become teachers.’’
Mr Clare, who has two young sons, said his first priority would be to legislate to enact Labor’s election pledge to increase childcare subsidies. “I’m living it,’’ he said of the hip-pocket pain from rising childcare costs.
“I’ve got a little boy in kindergarten and another one about to go to childcare. When Jack went from childcare last year to kindergarten this year, it was like I got a pay rise. Childcare is super expensive. There’s a reason why people don’t send their children to childcare, or don’t send them for that extra day, because it is so expensive.
“There are a lot of Australians who are skilled now, ready to go (to work) but not working for as many years as they’d like to because childcare is so expensive.
“It’s a big reform … making childcare cheaper, not just because it’s good for kids and mums and dads, but because it is good for the economy.’’
A working couple on average wages with two kids in full-time care will save $420 a week through Labor’s subsidies, due to start in July 2023.
Mr Clare, 50, attended Cabramatta Public School and Canley Vale High School in the battler suburbs of western Sydney, where he is the MP for Blaxland.
He was the first in his family to attend university, graduating with a law degree from the University of NSW. He worked as a senior adviser to NSW premier Bob Carr and then as an executive at Transurban before entering parliament in 2008.
Mr Clare was minister for justice, minister for defence materiel and minister for home affairs under the Rudd and Gillard governments, but his interest in his new portfolio was apparent in his maiden speech to parliament when he described education as “the great equaliser in an unequal world’’.
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