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

I thank the honourable member for Makin for her question and her interest in child care. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its child-care survey on 22 May 2006. The publication is released every three years. What this showed was that the proportion of the population accessing child care in 2005 was 22.6 per cent, compared to 14.4 per cent using formal care in 1996. That is basically a 50 per cent increase in the proportion of families that are now accessing child care.

The second thing that the ABS found was that, after taking into account the child-care benefit, the costs of child care—the median cost of formal child care in Australia, after you have got your benefit—was $31 per week. Thirdly, what it found was that, even though the number accessing child care had risen from 14.4 per cent to 22.6 per cent, the number that were unable to access child care had actually fallen. There were 106,100 children requiring additional formal care, down from 123,200 when the Australian Labor Party was running the child-care system. Further than that, the average amount of additional child care required was less than one day a week under the ABS. So here we have a child-care system which has more people accessing it than ever before—

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