Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I think the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs just explained the answer to that very well. What he said was that, as long as there is no cap on places and there is unfulfilled demand, any eligible person who can set up a facility is free to do so and to attract child-care benefit. I know that in my electorate there will be plenty of schools that will want to set up outside school hours care. Up until now, the problem has always been that the places were limited. I do not know if the member for Sydney is in contact with schools in her electorate, but certainly the ones that contact me say, ‘Can you lift the limits?’ I am going to go back to them and say: ‘There no longer are any limits. As a consequence, if you have people who want to use a service, set it up and get it going they will get the child-care benefit and, in addition—something the Australian Labor Party never had the wit to introduce—a child-care rebate which from 1 July this year is going to give a 30 per cent rebate on out-of-pocket costs up to $4,000 per child per annum.’ Let me put that in context. If you have two kids in child care, that could be $8,000. If you have three kids in child care, that could be $12,000. These are great announcements that would be welcomed by Australian families, and we look forward to the Australian Labor Party supporting them.

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