Preschool Staffing

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:35): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister offer a guarantee that the government will not poach staff from non-government early education services in order to meet its preschool staffing requirements? With your leave, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The royal commissioner highlights that workforce shortages exist in both public and private sectors today and these will be substantially exacerbated by the three-year-old preschool policy. Given the proposed model requires most working families' children to receive their preschool education in non-government services, the model will not work if non-government staff are poached by the department. The royal commissioner highlights the advantageous working conditions within the Public Service compared to non-government services.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:35): I thank the member for the question. Of course, what minister for education or early childhood would want to poach staff from other areas, particularly such an important area as this? It is our ambition that we do not do that, and again that goes to the heart of the royal commissioner's recommendation around both the workforce fund and also having a coordinator-general for that workforce strategy to try to find ways that we can actually grow the pie instead of cannibalising the workforce of other areas.

Part of doing that, of course, goes to the answer I gave in the last question about things that we already did immediately after coming to government in March last year around fee-free technical colleges bringing courses back to TAFE because those things that we have done are about creating a bigger workforce. It is not necessarily about dragging people into the public sector who are in those roles in the existing workforce or with other employers, whether it's the for-profit or non-for-profit sector. It is about encouraging other young South Australians or mature age South Australians who might look at a career change to move from the career they are currently in to take up early childhood education and care.

It is certainly my hope—and this will be one of the things that our workforce coordinator-general is tasked with—that we are focused on meeting those targets around the 660, the 880 and the 120 by actually growing the workforce.

I might say that it's the same attitude we have taken in terms of the teacher workforce as well. We have states like Victoria, which is offering very large incentives, up to $30,000, to attract teachers from across the border. At the national cabinet table I raised with other education ministers and Jason Clare in front of the Victorian minister that I think it is a poor way to approach things and that, if we are to have a truly national approach to education in the early years, it shouldn't be a case of some states offering enormous incentives to take staff from across the border.

We should all be focusing on growing the pie in our own states. That is what South Australia is doing with teaching and it's exactly the same kind of method and approach we are going to take with the early years in terms of how we meet the workforce commitments contained within the royal commission report.