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

Apparently the Leader of the Opposition was never sitting over here. But when the Leader of the Opposition was sitting over here with Larry Anthony, down the bench, let us just look at the track record on affordability. In that time when Larry Anthony was there and the Leader of the Opposition was there, there was a 33 per cent increase in childcare costs to families, according to the ABS.

I have been asked about ABC Learning from the opposition backbench, interestingly. This is the same Larry Anthony who, after losing his seat, went straight into a director’s role in the private childcare industry—and who for? Maybe you can supply the answer for me. Of course as a director of ABC Learning, where annual reports tell us that Mr Anthony received a $60,000 director’s fee and a further $125,000 in consultancy fees from one provider—$185,000 for some part-time work, earnings of a former Howard government minister from the childcare industry. Now, of course, we have his colleague sitting here saying that increasing competition and supply in child care is apparently an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money to make a political point. Australian working families who want child care, who want it affordable and who want it at decent quality standards know this is a government that is acting to make a difference and this is an opposition without an idea and with a track record of failure.

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