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

The Castle. The tender also says:

Centrelink requires the delivery of an employer-provided child care program that will satisfy both present and future needs of employees, in all of our locations ...

That would be terrific for parents living in suburbs where there are childcare centres with 600 people on the waiting list. The tender also says that the contractor must be able to provide long day care, outside school hours care and occasional care ‘in all locations, as required’ and that child care must be provided on public holidays and outside business hours. It is great if you can get it. It is certainly something that I would like to see. If work based child care like that is available, I would like to see it available much more broadly than just to the select few who work for the government.

People say, ‘Isn’t it a good start to have this sort of child care available for people who work for government?’ Yes. The trouble is that the fringe benefits tax regime, as it exists at the moment, would actually stop employers who want to do this—who want to offer it to their staff—from doing so. If we could offer this sort of childcare arrangement to other employees, we would go a long way to solving the childcare shortages in this country—and the issue of cost as well. The trouble is that we have a tax system that will not let it happen.

Recently I have been asking ministers questions about the sort of childcare assistance that they give to their employees, including how many of their employees are able to salary sacrifice. The answers are quite interesting. Some agencies have childcare centres on site. Of course, these are taxpayer funded. Examples are the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Finance and Administration. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry sponsor a vacation care program. The usual situation is that Commonwealth public servants have preferential access, followed by ACT public servants.

It is great—it is terrific; it is fantastic—that these people have access to child care. It should be supported. But how can the government in conscience say that the only people who deserve this sort of support are its own employees? How can it in conscience say that people who work for other organisations—particularly small and medium-sized organisations—do not deserve support to meet their responsibility as parents that this sort of work based child care offers?

Is it possible to change the tax system so that this sort of support is more broadly available? Yes, it is. The best way to do it is the way that Labor announced in our Care for Kids blueprint. We have said that you could get rid of the business premises rule for fringe benefits tax and that, if we had rules that said that if an employer genuinely invests in expanding the supply of child care or improving the quality of care in a centre—it could be an existing centre or a centre that they combine with other employers to build—we would allow the same fringe benefits tax exempt treatment of that child care as is allowed in these deals for public servants.

We want to see more child care and better child care. We want to see work based child care for public servants. But we also want to see much more work based and work sponsored child care for other Australian workers. Our plan allows fringe benefits tax exemption on all eligible employer provided child care, and it allows employers to claim business tax deductions. We have said that we would also expand the limit from children aged up to six to children aged up to 15.

It is quite mad that, for parents who have a problem with finding and paying for vacation care, that actually overshadows the whole year. There are plenty of parents who spend a good part of the year working out how they can cover 12 or 14 weeks of school holidays with four or possibly eight weeks of family leave. That is, if two parents never take leave at the same time, they might be lucky enough to get eight weeks of leave between them. How do you cover that time? We have said that employer investment in helping with vacation care is also something that should attract fringe benefits tax exemption where it is done appropriately.

It is not beyond our capabilities to provide decent, work based or work sponsored child care for a much greater number of Australian employees. It is terrific where it happens in the public sector, but we really need to look beyond just the public sector, to make this available to a far greater number of employees. I know the employers want to do it if they get the help and support of the Australian government, as the chair of the work and family inquiry has asked for, as the member for Lindsay has asked for and as many government and Labor backbenchers have asked for in the past.

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