Since the 2025 election, Sussan Ley has repeatedly said that the Liberal Party must modernise and respond to the needs and realities of contemporary Australia. On that, she is absolutely right.
But her latest comments opposing universally accessible Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) on principle show just how far the Coalition still has to go to understand modern Australia and the economy that sustains it.
In 2025, the idea that Early Childhood Education and Care is an “optional extra” for families belongs to another era. This is a country where all but the most privileged few households depend on two incomes just to stay afloat. Mortgage stress is biting. Rents are soaring. And the availability of affordable, quality ECEC is one of the biggest barriers preventing parents, particularly mothers, from working the hours they want and need to.
For several years different polls have showed the extent to which the current policy settings are failing to meet the needs of families. The Essential Early Learning Monitor shows that since 2021 three-quarters of Australian voters see ECEC reform as necessary economic policy. A 2023 poll commissioned by The Parenthood of 1500 parents with children under 6 showed that just 3 in 10 households said the cost of care is manageable.
New polling today from Hilma’s Network, a grassroots Liberal movement pushing for greater female representation in the party, shows more than half of voters support greater flexibility in how households can access subsidies for early childhood education and care.
Whichever way you look at it, Australian parents and voters overwhelmingly recognise the status quo is not working for children and parents.
When Ley dismisses universal ECEC, she is not just rejecting smart social policy. She is rejecting one of the most powerful productivity levers available to Australia.
ECEC is Economic Infrastructure
Economists have been telling us for years that investing in Early Childhood Education and Care delivers a double dividend. It supports workforce participation and delivers lifelong benefits for children.
We do not question whether we should fund public schools or hospitals because we understand they are essential to economic and social wellbeing. ECEC should be seen the same way: as critical infrastructure that supports child development, enables parents to work and helps businesses and essential services to function.
If we are serious about lifting productivity, addressing workforce shortages and growing the economy, universal access to affordable early learning is one of the smartest investments we can make. When parents, particularly mothers, can participate fully in the workforce, the whole economy benefits.
What “Universal” Really Means
Critics often misunderstand what “universal” means in this context. It does not necessarily mean free for everyone. It means available to everyone so that no child or family is locked out because of where they live, how much they earn or what hours they work.
Just as every child in Australia can attend a public school and every person can access a public hospital, universal ECEC means all families have the opportunity to access affordable, high-quality early learning and care when they need it.
In many regional and rural areas, access to ECEC is diabolical. Families are on waitlists for months or years. This is not just a social problem; it is an economic handbrake. It means skilled people are forced out of the workforce, local businesses and essential cannot fill jobs and regional communities miss out on growth.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Critics like to cite the “cost” of universal ECEC. But we should be asking what is the cost of not doing it?
Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world for Early Childhood Education and Care. Universal access to affordable, high-quality ECEC would expand labour supply, particularly among women, improve productivity and build a stronger foundation for children’s development and future learning.
The 2025 AEDC showed that almost half of all children in Australia are arriving at school developmentally vulnerable on at least one domain. That is not a statistic as much as it is a crisis. We know that when children have access to high quality ECEC they are more likely to arrive at school developmentally on track.
You don’t need to be a parent to benefit from more children having the opportunity to arrive at school ready to learn. The unique benefit of investing in the profoundly formative window of early childhood is that when you set the right trajectory for a child, they carry the advantage through their lives.
Universally accessible ECEC would also help fix one of the biggest structural inequities in our economy: women’s economic insecurity. The gender pay gap, superannuation gap and poverty in retirement all trace back to the period when care is most intense, the early years of a child’s life.
A Modern Economy Needs Modern Policy
Australia’s future prosperity depends on how well we use the talents and potential of our people. That means creating a system where care and work can coexist, not forcing parents, especially mothers, to choose between them.
The truth is, the question is not whether we can afford universal ECEC. It is whether we can afford not to have it.
If Sussan Ley and the Coalition want to be taken seriously as a party that understands the realities of 2025, a time when most parents need to participate in some paid work and when economic participation and gender equality are national imperatives, they cannot afford to wage war on ECEC.
Arguing against universal Early Childhood Education and Care is not just bad policy. It is political self-sabotage. It signals to modern Australian families that the Coalition does not understand their lives, their pressures or their aspirations.
That is not a message any party hoping to win government again should be sending.