The pay gap that has opened up between education and care teachers and teachers in kindergartens—over a decade now—is wrong. It is unacceptable. Why did it happen? It happened because between 2008 and 2017, there were not adjustments to the per child, per hour funding rate for education and care services to reflect the pay increases that were being given to kindergarten teachers—none, not one at all, during that nine-year period—and, as a result, we saw quite a significant pay differential open up. Under our Government we have given annual funding increases in terms of the per child, per hour funding rate, including to the salary component of that funding rate, every year that we have been in Government, but we recognise that that is not enough to undo the damage that was done during that nine-year pay freeze, so we do have to do more to catch up and to start to get nearer to pay parity. 