Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this matter of public importance and speak on behalf of the many families within my home state and, in particular, those in Adelaide’s western suburbs, who are doing it tough—battling to raise their families, buy a home, pay the bills and continue in paid employment to fund it all. These families need two incomes to get by and maybe, just maybe, build for their family’s future. This all becomes so much harder without access to quality, well-staffed and affordable child care.

The government has put the problems with child care on the backburner for too long. The government has ignored constant warnings by parliamentary members, particularly on this side of the House, about the issues surrounding insufficient, untargeted and unorganised funding to this vital service in the community. Hundreds of thousands of children miss out on the valuable preschool play and education for the simple reason that their parents cannot afford it.

After 10 long years of the Howard government, child care is becoming a luxury, not an entitlement for all children. Child-care fees are climbing rapidly at five times the rate of the consumer price index, with some parents forced to pay over $100 per day. The federal government has failed to put funds into long day care places and is focusing mainly on after school care, which it controls in a very restrictive way, so that those who need to access these places are those who are least likely to get them.

There is a high level of concern in my electorate of Hindmarsh about the government’s poor handling of child care. At a recent child-care forum, which I and my colleague the member for Sydney held in my electorate of Hindmarsh, one of the participants noted that there were extremely poor conditions in some centres and that at a particular centre there were 20 toddlers in one room. Others at the forum commented on the pool of underused places and how, even where places were available, the federal government had made it so hard to access them that people were having to wait two years to take them up.

There was also a high level of concern at the forum about the lack of properly targeted funding. With no federal government interest in planning, we have massive shortages across most of the country, with some pockets of oversupply. In my electorate alone, there is an average waiting period of two years, with 100 names listed at just about every child-care centre that I have spoken to. My colleague the member for Sydney and others have repeatedly pointed out that the government’s poor planning has caused almost 100,000 places—that is, 30,000 family day care places and 67,000 outside school hours places announced in previous budgets—to remain either unallocated or unused. This is a direct result of the poor targeting and planning of funding in this area by this government. The government has failed to recognise that family day care is the least used type of child care. In fact, most parents need and use long day care. It is these places that are needed to get willing workers to return to the workforce.

The fact that these 100,000 places have not been filled is also due to the lack of child-care workers. The government has done nothing to address the shortage of quality and qualified staff. Its attacks on higher education in recent years further restricts students from taking up places in university child-care courses. With the 25 per cent increase in higher education fees and the average child-care worker’s salary among the lowest of all occupations, no-one could blame students for not wanting to take on an inflated study debt to support a career in such a low-paid and undersupported industry.

The government has focused its funding on family day care. Family day care workers are ridiculously poorly paid and undervalued. The average family day care worker earns on average just $4 per hour, per child, and has around four children to look after at any one time. This means a typical family day care worker earns only around $480 a week before tax.

At the forum that we held in my electorate, concerns were raised about the lack of qualified staff. The quality of the centres available was also of grave concern to the people who attended the forum. At the moment, the federal government does not enforce standards relating to educational development or mandate that services offer educational programs. This situation needs to change.

While parents have to take lengthy amounts of time out of the workforce, the nation loses skilled people who are willing to work but for a lack of child-care availability. With a skills shortage, this country cannot afford to have able and willing skilled workers out of the workforce for excessive periods of time. When these workers return, they require retraining and reskilling. There is no need to import skilled workers from overseas when there are capable mums and dads ready to work and to be retrained.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures in February demonstrating that the lack of affordable child care is harming the Australian economy. The figures indicated that more than 250,000 women wanted to work but were unable to because of a lack of suitable or affordable child care.

My own family experience in the late 1980s—we were some of the lucky ones by today’s standards—was that we were able to find suitable care for our two boys. Thankfully, we were able to find child care in our area, in the western suburbs of Adelaide. And thank heavens we did. It would not have been a lifestyle choice of whether we had a one- or two-income family; it would not have been a choice of whether we had personal convictions about whether my wife or I should stay at home to look after our youngest child; and it would not have been a choice of whether we could afford to eat and pay the bills at that point of time in our lives. We had to work—both of us—and thank goodness the situation was as it was then.

The industry, the availability and the affordability were different from what is the case now. If we had been in the situation faced by hundreds of thousands of families today, we would have been quite literally—and I will use the term—stuffed. It was a central issue to us then, as it is to many Australian families today who are struggling to pay their bills and to ensure that they build the foundations of their family and home for the future.

But the government’s budget shows that it is again sidelining this very important issue. More than a quarter of a million women waiting to return to the workforce will find little assistance in this budget. The government is focusing on providing places in family day care, ignoring the fact that the number of people using this type of care has been declining. In fact, family day care attendance decreased by 6.6 per cent between 2002 and 2004. Long day care places are needed to allow the return to work of the much needed skilled parents who want to work and are ready to work. This government has badly let down those parents and the rest of the community, which would benefit from their economic participation.

With the exorbitant and ever-increasing cost of child care, small tax cuts will not greatly assist families. Child-care fees are rising five times faster than the average rise in the cost of all other goods and services. With the cost of the weekly grocery bill rising—not to mention the impact of high petrol prices—little money is left over in the family budget for child care. Under the Howard government’s watch, child-care fees have jumped by 66 per cent over the last four years alone, and Australian families cannot bear this increase in costs much longer.

In households throughout the nation, neither mums nor dads can afford to take five years out of the workforce; they need to work to make ends meet now and they also need to build up their super for later years in retirement. With the current lack of child-care support they have no choice but to sacrifice many of their prime working years and, in the long run, lose out financially with depleted superannuation savings.

This government has failed to realise that it makes economic sense to adequately fund child care. The total economic benefit of every dollar spent on child care has been calculated at $8.11. The amount of income generated by every dollar spent on child care is $5.63. The amount returned to government for every dollar spent on child care is $1.86. With the government getting a greater return for every dollar spent on child care, it bewilders me why it has had a stifled and haphazard approach to child-care funding. Quite simply, there is no sensible economic reason not to fund child care properly.

We on this side of the House are appalled by the half-hearted way the government is dealing with this issue and we know that a carefully planned approach is required to ensure that quality, affordable and accessible child care is available to all the Australian families who desperately need their kids to be looked after while they are at work. This government’s attempt to give the appearance of creating child-care places, while leaving parents and providers to struggle with a failing system plagued by chronic shortages and rising costs, is a shameful act. Child care affects every young couple starting out; they need affordable child care. Child care is a necessity, not a luxury, for the many Australian parents with children who are working in order to pay higher mortgages and higher petrol prices. (Time expired)

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