Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It does slightly reduce the cost of child care for a limited period of time. But then the mothers are back in the situation of earning $2.66 an hour. The Minister for Human Services at the table says, ‘Oh come on, be generous, be fair.’ What is fair about $2.66 an hour, Minister? You live on the North Shore of Sydney. Do you know anyone on the North Shore of Sydney who would work for $2.66 an hour? Do you expect your wife to work for $2.66 an hour? Do you expect poor people generally to work for $2.66 an hour? That is why I say this legislation is so brutal.

What should happen is that the child-care benefit, which is a good measure, should be increased for people on low incomes. You will then, according to OECD analysis, get some genuine incentive and genuine responses from people to move from welfare to work. But, instead of increasing child-care benefits, the government introduced as a result of the last election the child-care rebate. The child-care rebate is specifically targeted towards higher income earners. Why do I say that? Because it is 30 per cent of the out-of-pocket child-care expenses after taking account of the child-care benefit. The child-care benefit is a properly means-tested benefit. Obviously the government said, ‘We’ve got all these people on high incomes who are saying, “I want help with my child care; this child-care benefit does not give me that help.” Good idea, we’ll come up with a child-care rebate.’

You will not get the increase in participation through the child-care rebate that would have been obtained by increasing the child-care benefit. But, no, the government does not want to do that, because it would be a fair measure to increase the child-care benefit rather than to introduce the child-care rebate, which is absolutely riddled with anomalies and administrative problems. It has been a disaster from day one and an embarrassment to everyone except this government, which is very difficult indeed to embarrass.

If we want genuine incentive to encourage women to move from welfare to work, we would lift the child-care benefit. We would make sure that those mothers get a reasonable take-home hourly rate of pay rather than making the stick bigger and the carrot smaller. I hope I have been able to demonstrate here this evening how unfair and how brutal this legislation is. The government in Tuesday’s budget will spend $20 billion extra over four years and found savings of $2 billion. If you are going to spend an extra $20 billion out of all of the largesse that has been flowing into the government’s coffers through the resources boom, surely you would try to make some extra effort to improve the incentives for sole parents and people on disability support pensions to move from welfare to work.

But this miserable government has not improved those incentives, and the Brotherhood of St Laurence confirms that. Those poor single mothers are still expected to work for $2.66 an hour. The legislation is a disgrace. It just shows that the Liberal Party of Australia is a brutal administration that believes it can punish poor single mothers for being single mothers and is trying to make their lives evermore a misery. We should be taking the opportunity to repeal this disgraceful legislation instead of debating nitty-gritty points about minor amendments.

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