Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

if you wait for the end of the sentence, you never know what you might learn—and the government subsidises child care through a variety of means. One is the childcare benefit; the other is the childcare tax rebate. Obviously, the government makes these payments available. The childcare industry is aware that the government is a subsidiser of childcare fees. That means, of course, that there is an interconnection between the government’s policies and intentions and these payments. What I have said to childcare operators is that we want to work with industry. I would remind the member opposite that these questions have been motivated by press reports where one operator on one day was reported as considering a price hike in the vicinity of 10 per cent. That same operator today was reported as saying that no decision had been taken. Other operators were reported as saying that fee increases could be in the order of two to three per cent—that is, they could be in the order of the sorts of fee increases that we have seen reflective of real cost changes. At this stage, when the material from operators in the public domain at the moment is these sketchy reports, the government is indicating to operators that it will be watching to see—

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