Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I would have thought the Minister for the Environment, who is at the table, would be up for some empirical policy advice—obviously not, judging by the interventions being made as he makes his way through his big stack of folders.

The rush to make these cuts is really a political strategy. It does sell Australian mums and dads short. It does attack their living standards. The government try and justify it by a budget emergency that does not exist, if you listen to credible people, like the International Monetary Fund. If the government had an economic strategy, we would not be debating these cuts. Unfortunately, these cuts are not the only cuts that they propose to the childcare system. Others have spoken about a series of cuts that add up to around $1 billion, whether it is the $450 million for outside school hours care, the $157 million for family day care services, the funding that has gone from Indigenous child and family centres or the $300 million in support for educator wages—the people I began my contribution by talking about, the great people who look after our kids in the community. Now, of course, we have this attack on the absolute backbone of the childcare system: the CCR and of the CCB. We know from the education department that the combination of measures that we are debating now will hurt half a million low- and middle-income families, who will receive less support as a result of this measure.

The member for Griffith paid tribute to former Prime Minister Rudd, and I pay tribute to him as well and to former Prime Minister Gillard and all the ministers who were in this portfolio, including the member for Adelaide and others, who did such a tremendous job in this policy area.

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