Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

She sits here saying, ‘Good.’ I hope you are learning something here and that you recognise the failure of the Labor Party’s poorly coupled together policies at the last election. The embarrassment of the last leadership challenge occurred just a few weeks ago—the leadership challenge you have when you are not having one, when the Labor Party coupled together yet another policy failing—and the Labor Party now recognises that what the coalition has done and what the Treasurer announced on budget night was a new landmark for Australian families—99 per cent of child care in this country now unlimited.

Just so the member for Sydney and those opposite fully understand, I will put it into more simple terms. That means that no matter what figures we have in the budget—$25,000 is what we have budgeted for—if the demand is bigger than we have budgeted for, the federal Howard government will fund it. No child will be without child care as a result of a lack of funding from the Howard government. That has never happened before in government policy. That is an enormous step forward.

What does the industry have to say about the proposals? I heard the member for Sydney refer to Linda Latham, CEO of the National Family Day Care Council. Her comment about the budget in relation to this was, ‘This is great for family day care.’ It does not get much simpler than that; it is not very ambiguous—‘Great for family day care’. Sallyanne Atkinson, from ABC Learning Centres, which is the largest provider of child care, said:

Under a combination of tax breaks and a boost to services, child care is now more affordable.

I will go on. Childs Family Kindergarten, which do not have the concerns of the Labor Party that they will not be able to get staff, said:

It is very hard to get more than nine or 10 places under the current criteria. This will help make it more viable.

Camp Australia have equally positive comments, which they sent to one of our members. In fact, they sent their comments to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs congratulating the government and thanking it for the removal of the cap on approved child-care benefit places and for the end of red tape. I congratulate the member for Dunkley, because clearly he has worked with this local constituent group in the area of Langwarrin, who make reference to a particular area there that will benefit from this. This is about individuals. This is about families and communities who will benefit. Here is a reputable organisation whose logo is ‘We make kids smile’. The reality is that, as a result of these initiatives, they will be able to put more smiles on more children’s faces.

Here is a good one: Go Bananas, over in Western Australia, congratulated Dr Mal Washer, a good mate of mine who is up here. He has been out there working very hard to secure outside school hours care places. They said:

I would like to congratulate you and your department for changing the child-care funding structure, particularly in outside school hours care. The recent changes you have made will provide opportunities for new services to be established, which will address a real and significant need Australia-wide. We believe the changes just announced will reduce the red tape involved in establishing dedicated outside school hours care services and will enable more mothers in particular to enter the workforce.

That is exactly what the Howard government is about. It is about removing red tape. It is about getting government out of the process and putting money in the hands of people who will provide these services. It is about getting rid of the things that have not worked, like the monopolistic approaches where we have had only one family day care service in any one area, and about giving a chance to people. But the Labor Party’s idea before the last election was, ‘We’ll create 8,000 new outside school hours care places.’ That was it—8,000. Ever since then, they have carped on about it not being enough. Even though the federal government committed 80,000 and the Labor Party committed 8,000, they said it was not enough. So on one hand they say something but they cannot physically deliver it.

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