Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When most Australians looked at a press release from the Liberal Party on 18 March that 'the government would ensure Australian families can access affordable child care when and where they needed it', few Australians would have interpreted that as being in line with the government's conduct since then. What we have seen is a slashing of $1 billion from the childcare area of this nation, and more particularly today, a week after an action exposed the way in which the budget most particularly hurt Australians of lower incomes, we address one particular facet of this—family day care.

Family day care is accented towards those people who work on weekends, work shifts; they are the people who particularly need this. It comes at a time when we have seen the diminishment of their wages through a tax on penalty rates and weekend rates. In New South Wales—I cannot speak about other states—it is also particularly utilised by Indigenous families. It is specified that a significant number of family day care centre providers—30 per cent in fact—cater for children with disabilities.

The quotes in regard to the value of this are manifest. Julia Davison, the CEO of Good Start Early Learning commented:

We have a situation today, where Christian Community Aid Family Day Care service manager Janice Francis can comment:

That is the outcome of government policies.

It has also been noted widely that an area particularly affected will be western Sydney. It is estimated that nationally 80 per cent of services throughout the country will be assaulted by these changes in a very real financial fashion. But out in western Sydney, 133 centres face some form of contraction of their income through these changes.

I cite locally the situation of the Campbelltown City Council. Its Liberal-Liberal Democrat controlled majority faces some very unattractive options according to their own indicators. The options they have as a result of these federal government Liberal policies are, one, to cover the cost, unbudgeted for, through their own resources; two, to pass on the cost to user parents; or, three, to discontinue the services and sack employees and educators in that sector.

I cite comments from Ms Mona Kelada from Eagle Vale—a person affected directly by this—who says, 'Should these changes take effect in their current form and time frame, the families who use my service will face potentially unaffordable fee increases or worse. If our community cannot sustain fee increases, our service may be forced to close its doors. Without family day care I will no longer be able to provide family day care, and my small business will be forced to close, leaving the families who use my service without care and me unemployed.'

It is estimated that the maximum amount of money that Campbelltown City Council would obtain in the best-case scenario is $250,000. Last year the cost was in the area of $330,000. So we see a long-term provider that has been in the provision area since 1977, who was an option other than commercial operations, being very seriously threatened.

The situation is contrasted with the other initiative of the government. When they can cut $1 billion from child care in general and they can slash $157 million from family day care, they can find—despite the dire warnings about the budget—$5.5 billion to provide parental leave for more wealthy Australians. So what we see in Campbelltown and Liverpool is a major threat to the viability of family day care centres.

Mr Hutchinson interjecting—

I know that the speaker on the opposite side of the chamber is a very passionate defender of the parental leave policy—one of the few in the government, it seems, who is still supportive—but obviously there have been very serious attacks on family day care. It is a threat to people that they will not have a service. We have a situation where all the organisations in the country that are interested in children and in the service have denounced this and called for further consultation and change.

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