John Cobb (Parkes, National Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

Can I go back to the member for Sydney’s questions on child care initially. There was quite a row of them, but I will attempt to deal with some of them together. It seemed to me that many of the questions that the member for Sydney raised revolved around the issue of the child-care management system which the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the government spoke about—the smartcard and how the system will be managed. A lot of that seemed to me to come down to the issue of the child-care management system, which the government put over $50 million into.

The child-care management system will be built on the previously announced expansion of the child-care access hotline. Even though the cap has been lifted, it will include information on vacancies and information for providers in regions. It will provide information as to where vacancies do and do not occur—in other words, where families can most easily take advantage of those things that are available and what areas need to be looked at by providers themselves.

Until now, there has been a total lack of reliable centralised information on the supply of child care and associated demand. I have no doubt that the issues already addressed by the minister will address the shortcoming. It will streamline processes and reduce the administration burden on child-care services. It will help people get access to technology and systems that many have never had access to before and provide an automated system for the exchange of information. It will also allow the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the government to have up-to-date information on the supply, availability and the utilisation of it. We will announce further details of the child-care management system as soon as it is completed.

The member for Sydney talked about what the government have done to address the issue of fraud in various ways. It is true that we conducted audits around Australia as to what was happening. In future, there will be audits undertaken of child-care systems around Australia, as indeed there should be. I think a lot of this has to do with people—providers in particular, be they family day care providers, organisers or child-care centres—knowing what is expected of them. Some of this involves education. I suspect a small part may involve something worse, but obviously the auditing will look at that and, if necessary, deal with it.

The states put in place licensing and regulations. I have no argument with regulations. We are talking about children and, obviously, they have to be properly provided for. But, quite often, the rise in child-care costs is to do with the new licensing and regulations that are put in place. The costs of child care rose at twice the rate under the Labor government than they have under the Howard government. At the same time, we have doubled the places and doubled the amount of money that we have put towards child care.

As far as shortages and availability are concerned, the member for Sydney mentioned choice. I think the budget measures go a long way towards resolving that. The fact that there has been an uncapping of all places, except for occasional care and home care—in other words, at least 99 per cent of all child-care places—obviously means that people do have an absolute choice. The member for Sydney raised a very good point—we have to have family day carers, and we are addressing that issue. The member for Sydney referred to workers—I assume she meant carers in family day care. They are not really workers; they are carers in the home. (Extension of time granted) There are a few issues about that. No. 1 was the uncapping of that situation. No. 2 was that we looked at a payment of $1,500 to be put towards providing at least 600 places, and we will see what comes out of that.

Probably something that is also important in getting a lot more carers involved in family day care is regionalisation rather than, as has been the practice, local government areas running a family day care system between them. I could use the example of my own electorate of Parkes, where the local government areas of Forbes and Parkes run a family day care system. Up to now, carers within those areas have had no choice other than to work there. Under the regional system being introduced, they will be able to practise wherever they choose. In other words, theoretically, it will be possible for a family day care organisation out of Perth to run one in the seat of Parkes. That is not likely to happen, but the point is that regionalisation will mean that a carer does not have to go under a system locally. Somebody in Parkes could actually run a family day care in Dubbo because it might be a system that suits them better.

Family day care is a very big issue, particularly regionally, because it is very often one of the few options there. We are committed to making family day care more available to more people. Yes, there are a lot of underused places. Uncapping, while it does not make those unused places immediately used, does mean there is no limit in any town anywhere in Australia on people’s ability to partake of it. I have not necessarily answered them in the order they were asked, but they are the main issues that were brought up by the member for Sydney.

The member for Charlton asked about self-funded retirees. While I do not pretend to know all the answers on self-funded retirees, I would like to point out to her that households in receipt of utilities allowance and seniors concession allowance will receive a one-off payment of seniors concession allowance of $102.80. In 2004-05 we introduced a utilities allowance for older Australians on income support to provide additional assistance with household bills and the seniors concession allowance for holders of the Commonwealth’s seniors health card in recognition of the fact that this group does not receive concessions from most state and territory governments.

In the short time left, I will return to the issues to do with Indigenous Australians and family violence brought up by the member for Sydney. I thank her for saying that I do have an interest, and I can assure you that I do. That is a very big part of my electorate, as it is for all regional Australians. I say firstly that I do not believe for one second that the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs attacked the Northern Territory government. What he was doing was offering cooperation to deal with an issue not just in the Northern Territory but Australia-wide. This is not just an issue for the Northern Territory; this is an issue Australia-wide, as has been recognised by the premiers of all other states. This is about leadership and the fact that Aboriginal leadership around Australia has recognised we cannot go on as we are. I think people have got the guts now to face up to issues they did not want to face before. I think what Minister Brough was doing was saying, ‘It is time to use the fact that everyone is now willing to face up to issues that have to be faced.’ I am very proud to be part of a government that—and to work for a minister who—is willing to face up to this. I hope governments like the Northern Territory government will work with us to do so.

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