EARLY CHILDHOOD SERVICES

Mr PICCOLO (Light) (14:36): My question is to the Minister for Early Childhood Development. Will the minister please inform the house about the importance of investment in early childhood services?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (14:37): I thank the honourable member for his question, and I really appreciate the opportunity that he afforded to me to tour his electorate the other week. He showed me a fantastic example at a childhood centre at Trinity—

Mr Piccolo interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —Evanston Gardens, where we saw a fantastic example of great services being provided to young children. A growing body of research is telling us that the early influences and experience in the life of a child have enormous implications for the rest of their life. I suppose that does not sound very earth shattering, but what is new is what we know about the neuroscience and the way in which a child's brain is wired up in those first years. Things that we instinctively knew were good for children, we now know have a very profound scientific basis.

Last week, we were very privileged to have in South Australia Professor Joseph Sparling of Georgetown University. He is an internationally recognised expert in the field of early childhood development and is a key author of a very important body of expertise and research which examines the impacts on parental engagement on children's life outcomes. Actively reading to a baby and the pointing out of names and colours of objects might seem like a fairly basic and natural way of interacting with a young child, but what the work of Professor Sparling and others shows is that the quality of these interactions can have profound impacts on the lifelong development of children.

His seminal work looking at the North Carolina Abecedarian program demonstrates the importance of providing opportunities for parents to learn actively with their children, like those we have provided in South Australia for parents in our children's centres. It is this critical issue of parents learning alongside children. Professor Sparling's report found that the benefits for children whose parents participated in centre-based programs manifest years later in life. In fact, participation in a quality early childhood program—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is warned.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —was a predictor of later college attendance and employment status, even amongst the most disadvantaged families. It is research like this that endorses the investment that the state government is making in early childhood development and the reason why we created the early childhood development portfolio.

What cannot be overestimated is the profound effect that investment in the early years has on later life. I know that many of us, on both sides of politics, over many years, have spent a lot of our time and attention on primary and secondary schools. We, of course, are beginning to now understand in great detail the effect of those early years.

To answer the member for Morphett's question, Professor Fraser Mustard's work is based on the raw material of this professor. The Abecedarian program, and this study, is the raw material upon which both Professor Fraser Mustard and the Nobel laureate James Heckman based their incredibly important and recent work on the importance of the early years.

South Australia has a proud history of investment in the state's future through the provision of quality care and education to our children in support of our families. The recently released report on government services helped to quantify what we have known for some time; that is, that South Australia is leading the way when it comes to the services provided to the youngest children.

This report revealed that the Rann government is investing in our children at more than twice the rate of the rest of the country. The South Australian expenditure on children's services at $423 per child eclipses the average state expenditure of $195 per child. The work of people like Professor Sparling demonstrates the critical importance of this investment for our children, not only for their development but for the general level of productivity of our whole community.

This is the real productivity agenda: the investment in our children in those earliest years. That is why South Australia in years to come will be a much more prosperous and equitable place to live than anywhere else in the world if we continue to keep this leadership in early childhood development.