Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

In the lead-up to the budget we were led to expect a great deal to be done in the area of child care. One of the areas that was under constant discussion was shortages in child care. We were led to expect something quite impressive in that area. The minister’s press release on budget night included a statement that was an admission of 10 years of neglect and mismanagement in the area of child care. It says:

... there is no reliable, centralised and independent source of child care market data to ensure that the movements in supply and demand can be accurately tracked.

That is an admission that 10 years of neglect and mismanagement means that there is no reliable and centralised data. That is what Labor has been saying for years now. We were also told in that press release that a national child-care management system would be set up and it would ‘support approved child-care services to implement a more streamlined process, cutting unnecessary red tape and providing parents with improved access to information on child-care availability’, that it would ‘provide services with access to technology, systems and information exchange that many services have never had access to before’ and that final ‘funding will be announced in the future’.

There is nothing in the budget that talks about the funding for the management system. The only significant new funding in the budget is for fraud and compliance, and that money is allocated to spot checks, as far as we can tell, which is the only measure specified under that initiative and costed at the very precise figure of $50.8 million. The first thing I want to ask in relation to spot checks is: can the minister provide us with the information—which he does not seem to have announced publicly but only leaked selectively to some newspapers—on the extent of fraud estimated in the child-care sector? We have no idea whether $50.8 million is too much or not enough. We have no idea, if there is significant fraud in the child-care area, whether it will be enough of a measure to stamp that out or, indeed, whether it is overkill. So I would like to know what the estimates of fraud are and whether this $50.8 million is simply for spot checks or will cover other measures as well. Is any of the $50.8 million to be spent on the PIN or smartcard that the minister has spoken about in public? Do we know whether it is going to be a PIN or a smartcard? Have you any details so far of that fraud and compliance system?

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