Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Childcare centres are not big polluters, not big polluters at all, but they bear, and they continue to bear, the cost of Labor's carbon tax, running as they do on wafer-thin margins. At the end of the line there is only one place these centres are going, and that is to the parents of Australia to raise childcare fees and costs, which is what we have seen under six years of Labor.

Now, the shadow minister stepped up, obviously feeling a bit tetchy about this, and made a personal explanation yesterday, to say in response to my comment that child care costs were going up by only 57 cents a week. She said, 'Oh, that was a report. I read that in a report and that's why I said it.' What this shadow minister should have done and what members of the opposition should have done during her time is actually visit the childcare centres and facilities in their electorates and talk to the people who work in child care every day, and understand the real 44 per cent increase that is the reality about the increase in costs.

We are surrounded by red tape and regulation and, member for MacPherson, I look forward to your constituents telling us what we can do to improve the amount of red tape. I have my friend the member for Kooyong in evangelical mode, corralling ministers and demanding to know where their red-tape dollars lie. I will certainly be providing the information to him, because there are numerous examples of how costs are increasing beyond the scope of everyday parents. We look forward to costs coming down.

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