November 30th, 2025
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"A budget should reflect the values and priorities of our nation and its people," said Mary Landrieu.
On Tuesday, 24 June 2025, the NSW Treasurer (the Hon Daniel Mookhey MLC) delivered his third budget to the NSW Parliament.
At first glance, Treasurer Mookhey's budget is what would be described as a "conservative" budget, with a $5.7b deficit as of 30 June 2025, and a forecast to return to a "modest" surplus in FY2027/2028.
Hence, while contrasting it with ACA NSW's Budget Submission and NSW's early childhood education and care sector, ACA NSW's provides the following observations on the promising wins in the NSW Budget 2025/2026:
Future of NSW's First Steps Strategy for Aboriginal Children -- The NSW Government has recognised its ineffectiveness to date. According to the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), the percentages of indigenous children not developmentally on track upon starting school were 64.8% in 2018, 65.7% in 2021 and 66.1% in 2024! For 2026-2030, the NSW Government intends to invest $194m to support Aboriginal children's participation in early learning and a range of other initiatives to be announced. (Refer also: ACA NSW Submission's A.2 Future of NSW's First Steps Strategy for Aboriginal Children)
Leveraging NSW's existing and new public preschools for First Nations children -- Using the existing 98 public preschools on school grounds and an additional 100 new public preschools on school grounds, the NSW Government intends to spend $6.9m to support First Nations children. (Refer also: ACA NSW Submission's A.2 Future of NSW's First Steps Strategy for Aboriginal Children)
Essential Housing for Essential Early Childhood Educators and Teachers -- With its call to "build, build, build", the NSW Government has committed $1b to assist by being the guarantor for developers/builders for 5,000 new homes, and another 15,000 new homes over the next 5 years. The NSW Government also publicly recognised that more housing is needed for essential workers. (Refer also: ACA NSW Submission's A.5 Essential Housing for Essential Early Childhood Educators and Teachers)
Expanding public provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) -- The NSW Government has allocated $10m in initial funding to progress the expansion of public provision of ECEC. This might be in response to ACA NSW's overt and public concerns about the NSW Government's methodology for determining the 100+50 new/upgraded preschools on school grounds, that oversupply increases fees, and the lack of a planning framework for new ECEC services. (Refer also: ACA NSW Submission's A.3 Future of 100+50 new preschools on school grounds; C.1 Planning for ECEC.)
The following thus appears to be the list of unaddressed issues persistently raised by ACA NSW with the NSW Government, in particular:
A.1 Fulfilling the promises of early childhood education and care -- Despite now over 12 years of the National Quality Framework, vocational confidence is being eroded due to the regulatory workload, what appears to be structurally declining Quality Ratings despite services' complying with the NQF, yet increasing numbers of children are not developmentally on track upon starting school. According to the AEDC 2018, 2021 and 2024, 42.8%, 44.5% and 45.8% respectively of NSW children are NOT developmentally on track upon starting school.
A.6 Repairing NSW's Quality Rating -- This NSW Budget 2025-2026 appears to make no mention to the growing disconnect between Quality Ratings and the AEDC results for children.
A.7 Rethinking NSW Regulatory Practices -- The NSW Government may be waiting for the conclusion of the Independent Review of the NSW Regulatory Authority and the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Early Childhood Education and Care in NSW.
B.1 Ensuring our children are protected -- The NSW Government appears to be relying on national leadership and/or consensus rather than addressing issues in its own backyard. This includes ACA NSW's persistent question about (a) when Australia's worst paedophile will be extradited to NSW from QLD to stand trial, (b) what are the NSW-specific failures that contributed to the 180 charges of offences against 23 NSW children, and (c) why the NSW Regulatory Authority consistently issued Exceeding the NQS quality ratings for that service before they employed, during when they employed, and after that service employed that paedophile.
B.2 Extending NSWEduChat for ECEC & B.4 Fit-for-Purpose Legal Requirements -- Ironically both Federal Treasurer Chalmers and NSW Treasurer Mookhey want to drive economic growth by boosting productivity. Yet, a "low hanging fruit" to allow ECEC services to use the NSW Department of Education's NSWEduChat artificial intelligence tool to produce documentation that are compliant seemed to have missed the budget. Moreover, no attention appear made on arguably simple tweaks in existing NSW legislation and regulation that add no value (even as those highlighted by the NSW Productivity Commission.)
B.3 Sustainable Supply of ECEC Skilled Labour -- The NSW Government appears to be committed to fund training that are essential, includig early childhood education and care. Of course, ACA NSW is supportive of such funding commitment. However, what still appears missing are commitment for taxpayer funding that guarantees positive outcomes for student educators and teachers, especially in light of at least 50% of registered training organisations without any published measure of success of job readiness, and between $9,000 to $50,000 relocation incentives to three Australian states outside of NSW.
C.4 Fairer & Lower Payroll Taxes for ECEC -- The NSW Government is projected to receive an increase by $14b over the four years to FY2026/2027. Some of this would be due to the 10%-15% wage increases in relation to the Federal Government's Wage Retention Payments (WRP), not to mention the 9.4%-27.8% wage increases due to the Fair Work Commission's decision on Gender Undervaluation. What is unfair is when (a) the NSW Government receives increased payroll taxes while many services are still waiting for the WRP now due by October 2025, and (b) many services that will never pay payroll taxes can have higher fees for parents compared to tax-paying services.
ACA NSW still has additional engagements including with NSW Treasurer Mookhey and NSW Finance Minister Houssos (who is acting NSW Minister for Education and Early Childhood).
For any further information/clarification, please contact the ACA NSW team via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.
PUBLISHED: 24 JUNE 2025
