Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Talk about yesterday's debate! The Community Support Program argument has been around for 12 months. Just last week, we actually had a Productivity Commission report deliver one of the most extensive analyses of the childcare sector in Australia, and it is absolutely absent from the debate today. Why would we detain this place for half an hour to debate the topic of child care and ignore the obvious—that this is a coalition government prepared to look after Australian families and access to child care? We get a motion from an opposition member—whom I do regard—about last year's issue, the Community Support Program.

This has been around for 12 months. It could have been debated, litigated and relitigated on any day of the parliamentary session, but we get it immediately after the Productivity Commission report is dropped. It is clearly a smokescreen. These are an opposition with no idea about the future of child care. They have no idea about the affordability issues created by their own reforms, no idea about the variable access to childcare services that exists in this country between inner metro expensive childcare provision and outer metro, with, in many cases, oversupply and a glut of places, and then regional areas, where often setting up child care is not even viable.

They are the big questions that we commissioned the Productivity Commission to consider, and that is what we were hoping we could have a national debate on: this very complex area where we effectively now recognise that child care is the first part of education. The problem is that we invented government departments before we realised just how important child care is. Well, we know that now, and we have an education department struggling to support child care, a federal government unsure of what more it can do apart from paying rebates and benefits, and then ultimately a realisation that you cannot raise the quality of childcare interventions without increasing wages. There is not an easy way to pay parents a rebate and guarantee that high-quality child care is adequately remunerated.

So the challenge here for the Productivity Commission—not an easy one; let us be honest—was to look at these four areas of access, affordability, quality and of course wages and remuneration for young childcare educators and to get all of that right. It will not be easy, but dabbling in the community support package—the one area that, frankly, was being misused and abused—is not the way to look at this challenge. What we had were family day care centres doing what was obvious: applying for this money because they could, applying because there was a Labor government unable to make a tough decision on community support, and basically getting twice as much as was fair. Let us remember that they are already paid $5.47 per hour per place compared to $4.10 in a long-day-care centre. Then they are applying for an extra 70c to $1.42 on top of that. So clearly we are not addressing the issues of lack of access; we are not necessarily addressing the issues of flexibility; we are not seeing any new centres being set up where they are not viable; and we are seeing nearly 70 per cent of the Community Support Program taken by just 10 per cent of the providers! How is that fair?

I say to the opposition: tell me about all the childcare operators that set up in regional and remote Australia under your government thanks to intelligent use of this package? A big zero! They cannot point to that evidence at all. The Community Support Program just became a cross-subsidisation mechanism because it was available to family day care centres even though there was another one around the corner. These were tough decisions that a Labor government would never make. This was the seepage of money away from where it is meant to be spent, for the families who most need it, to whoever filled out the form successfully. That is not going to lead to a better childcare system.

I am grateful that we have gone to the Productivity Commission and said, 'Give us a platform to start the debate.' It is not the government's model; it is the Productivity Commission's report. It is just a starting point. But what is obvious today is that these are a federal opposition unable to engage in that debate in any sort of meaningful or constructive way, when they come here and simply relitigate last year's issue about a Community Support Program, which they are unhappy with because they knocked on a couple of doors and found that someone or some body complained that they were not getting enough cross-subsidisation anymore. Well, I tell you what: the sector is way more important than that. To have a federal opposition trying to stand up for the continued support of family day care in areas where it is not utterly essential—regional, remote or where otherwise the service is not viable—simply shows a Labor Party that is not interested in the complex needs of Australian families.

Australian families want to know, first, that the most disadvantaged families in Australia can get access to child care and, second, that many of those poor parents who otherwise would not be getting those children ready for school will have a chance for their children to have some sort of formal preschool education. Third, if you are working shiftwork or long hours, you want to know that there is a service in that remote area, but the misuse of this Community Support Program ensured that there was not. That is what the Labor Party let down in government. They have continued to oppose it from their position in opposition.

See this speech in context