Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite pleased to rise to speak on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Child Care And Other Measures) Bill 2011. When this bill first came to my attention, back when caucus was discussing it, like most people I thought it was a fairly dull bill. It amends a whole stack of acts that have the word 'administration' in them. It deals with things like improving the effectiveness of the recovery of fees, allowing the government to pursue a childcare centre for return of overpaid fees and a whole stack of administrative things to do with the implementation of the national quality agenda. When you first have a look at it, it really does seem to be a lot of small administrative acts. But it underpins some very important reforms in what is perhaps the most important areas for many people in my constituency and beyond: the area of child care. It underpins ensuring that our childcare system is more efficient and it underpins the pursuit of the national quality agenda, and both are very important.

Mr Deputy Speaker, when it comes to child care there is no doubt that times have changed since you and I were children, when usually only one parent worked and grandparents were available to look after the grandchildren even in their forties. My grandmother looked after me, and I look back now and think she would not have been much older than 45. She was certainly much younger than I am, and she looked after us from time to time. That no longer happens in quite the same way in modern families. So professional child care becomes a very important issue for families, and they care greatly about this issue—as you can imagine, because our childcare system takes care of their precious children for large parts of the day. They care that it is affordable, they care that it is available and they care overwhelmingly that it meets the standards that they expect. The Rudd and Gillard governments have been working very hard since 2007 on all three of those elements—affordability, availability and quality—and this bill underpins some of the work that we have been doing in that area. There is no doubt that the changes we have made since 2007 have already assisted families greatly. Most families now spend around seven per cent of their disposable income on child care, compared to 13 per cent in 2004. It is a substantial reduction from 13 to seven per cent of disposable income and I think we can be proud of that. There is no doubt that this is largely a result of the increase in the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent, up to a cap of $7,500.

The recent childcare update provides quite an interesting picture of the extent to which families are using child care across the country. Currently, 869,770 children attend child care benefit approved child care, an increase of 8.7 per cent on the June quarter in 2009. Again, that is a substantial increase and a significant help for families. Children spend an average of 21.6 hours per week in child care across all types, and almost one in four children between zero and 12 years attend child care. Almost 628,000 Australian families had at least one child in approved child care, an increase of 8.4 per cent on the June quarter. Overall we are investing around $20 billion in funding for early childhood education and child care over the next four years, and that is up by more than $12 billion since the last four years of the former coalition government. Again, that is a substantial increase, which has largely led to that change in out-of-pocket expenses from 13 per cent in 2004 to seven per cent in 2010.

We also made a promise early on to pay the childcare rebate quarterly, and we delivered on that commitment. If you remember back to pre-2007, parents had to wait until the end of the financial year after the year in which they paid the expenses to claim their rebate. We also promised to make the childcare rebate payable fortnightly and we are delivering on that from July 2011. These are significant improvements in the childcare system that is available for parents around Australia.

But $20 billion is a lot of money and it is important that we do this efficiently. The amendments in this bill give the Australian government greater scrutiny over operators and their past practices. It enables the Australian government to offset and recover payments owed by one service from another service run by the same operator. Up until now, that has not been possible. The Commonwealth has only been able to pursue recovery of payments from the specific operator. This will ensure that operators who run up debts to the Commonwealth in one service can be held accountable for their actions via another service. For example, when an operator accumulates debts and then exits the market and re-emerges in a similar form, the government will be able to pursue that new entity for recovery.

We know these accountability reforms are very important. In fact, we have been working to improve the financial accountability of childcare centres for quite some time. The collapse of ABC Learning in 2008 was unprecedented and it was quite a shock. The member for Blair has outlined some of the consequences of that. If the government had not acted quickly, almost 100,000 families would have had to find alternative care arrangements with very little notice. Since that time we have made quite significant changes to ensure financial viability of childcare providers, including strengthening the approvals processes and requiring additional notification of closures of centres. The new approvals process includes financial checks for new childcare centre operators to make sure they are viable from the outset and well placed to meet quality standards. These new amendments build on that work to ensure that we have a viable, efficient childcare sector—again, something that is very important to parents seeking affordability along with quality in child care.

Affordability is, of course, a major issue for parents. As I said, we have made significant changes that have improved affordability for parents. Quality is another issue which parents care profoundly about. Recent reports indicate that quality is not always what it should be. A recent report showed that childcare centres accredited between 1 July and 31 December 2010 were not always up to standard. In some areas, around a quarter of them failed to ensure that potentially dangerous products, plant and objects were inaccessible to children or failed to ensure toileting and nappy-changing procedures were positive experiences. For parents who put their children in child care, I know that reading this report would cause great concern, which is why the national quality framework is incredibly important.

This bill supports the government's $273.7 million investment in the national quality framework. The framework has already been endorsed by COAG. There has been significant work done on this in recent years. The framework aims to improve educator-to-child ratios so that each child gets more individual time and attention, and it introduces educator qualification requirements so that educators are better able to lead activities that inspire youngsters and help them to learn and develop. It includes a new rating system so that parents know the quality of care on offer and can make informed choices. I know that for parents in my constituency the ability to know exactly where they are putting their child and the quality of care that that child will receive is perhaps one of the most important factors in choosing a childcare centre. The amendments also reduce the regulatory burden, in spite of the opposition speaker's claim to the contrary, by requiring childcare centres to only deal with one regulator. We know that the first five years of a child's life shape their future. It is perhaps the five years that have more importance in determining the path or your life than any other years that we live through. So it is incredibly important that we get this absolutely right.

The new national quality framework enables the Commonwealth to share information with childcare services that are regulated by state and territory bodies, and this benefits childcare centres by not requiring them to provide the same information to more than one body. Again, while this bill seems to deal with rather dry administrative matters, it underpins some incredibly important reforms that the government has been undertaking for some time. I am pleased to support this bill.

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