Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to call on the parliament to acknowledge the importance of supporting Australian families, including through access to quality, affordable and accessible child care. I do this today in what is perhaps an uncommon tone for this parliament during a matter of public importance debate. I am seeking to outline the cooperative approach that the opposition intend to take with the government on this issue and the reasons why we see it as so critically important that we continue to see progress and reform in this area.

We on this side of the House know that child care is incredibly important to Australian families. We know that it matters every single day in the lives of over 775,000 families who rely upon our childcare system. It matters to the more than 1.1 million Australian children in care. What happens with childcare policy has a direct impact on those children in long day care, on those children in family day care and on those children in out of school hours care. It is with each and every one of these children and their families in mind that I rise to speak today.

I also rise because we on this side of the House know that Labor have an incredibly proud record when it comes to supporting the early childhood sector. We have been the party of reform when it comes to early childhood and child care. Back in the Whitlam government in 1972 it was Labor that introduced the first Child Care Act. Under the Hawke government in 1984 Labor introduced fee relief for Australian parents. Of course under the Rudd and Gillard governments we increased the childcare rebate to 50 per cent, we introduced the policy of universal access to preschool and kindergarten for Australian children and we worked with all of the state and territory governments, of every political persuasion, to agree upon the National Quality Framework and ensure that Australian children get the best start in life.

We want to continue to play a constructive role in an area we are deeply committed to. We want to work with the government as they compile their response to the Productivity Commission and recognise the importance of that work to Australian families. The Minister for Social Services, who is at the table, has invited me to meet with him and put forward our views and concerns going forward. We do appreciate the nature in which that has been engaged. We know we need to continue to carefully reform our early childhood education and care sector. We will be working with the government to ensure that their response takes into account the best interests of Australian children, the feedback from this vitally important sector and an assessment of the impact on families of any of the changes.

We on this side of the House have absolutely no intention of repeating the sort of obstructionism that we did deal with from those opposite when they were in opposition. We saw firsthand many members who sit opposite now oppose the National Quality Framework. We saw from those opposite statements about how wrong we were to pursue universal access and try to increase the hours that four-year-olds received in our kindergartens and preschools. In perhaps the most extreme example we saw those opposite not only vote against our measure to pause the cap on the childcare rebate but indeed the now Prime Minister write to every single childcare centre in Australia outlining how damaging that measure would be, only to then be elected to government and extend the very same measure in his very first budget.

That is not the game we will play. We will be better. We will remain focused on the needs of Australian families. Unfortunately perhaps for those opposite, that does not mean we intend to sit back and let them entirely off the hook and give them free rein to do whatever they want in this space. We have seen the government do some dreadful things in this area, particularly in the last budget. There are some serious concerns remaining about the cuts they have announced. We would not be doing our job if we did not continue to point out those concerns whilst also working constructively on how we can help them to do better in the future.

We will not turn a blind eye and we will not stay silent when families and educators rely on us to point out the impact of the $1 billion in cuts. At the same time this government did not prioritise child care in the last budget they cut $1 billion and yet managed to find over $2½ million to hand to big polluters and over $1 billion to give to multinational corporations by reopening tax loopholes. There are still some damaging cuts on the table, including the $157 million cut to the family day care sector, which we do raise because as recently as last week I was with the member for Watson when I spoke to some of the providers in Western Sydney about the impact that the $35 a week price increase is going to have on their families. We also know that there are still proposed cuts to the childcare benefit before this parliament.

If the government want to be taken seriously and if they want a conversation with Australian families in good faith, we hope they intend to do better, to reassess these priorities and to look at ways they can come up with a package that in the very least remedies the damage of the last budget. We hope that the new minister will distance himself from that record of his immediate predecessor. I have said to the new minister, both publicly and indeed privately, that we do welcome some of the measures he has announced—the support for the National Quality Framework and walking away from the ill-considered regulations that the previous minister announced about family day carer's children—and we hope we will continue to see improvement in this sector.

As our policy work continues Labor have outlined the principles by which we will judge both the government and our own policies moving forward. We are committed to the following principles. Principle No. 1 is that any childcare package must be based on the dual policy pillars of increasing workforce participation and promoting the best interests of Australian children. It is incredibly important in this debate that, whilst there is a lot of focus on workforce participation—as well there should be—we do not lose sight of those who do not have a voice in this debate, and that is Australian children.

Principle No. 2 is that reform must address affordability issues and the out-of-pocket costs of Australian families, not just limit government costs. This is an important point because I have lost count of how many times in the last year or so I have heard members opposite parrot the albeit misleading statistics that the previous minister had circulated to them about childcare fee increases under our government. There has been a lot of focus on that from those opposite. But what I have never once heard them mention is the out-of-pocket costs of Australian parents. And there is an important difference. When we were in government we worked hard to reduce the out-of-pocket burden on Australian parents from what it was under the Howard government. We did that, of course, by increasing the childcare rebate.

It is important that we focus on the realities of the burden that is being placed on the family budget. We know that those opposite have not released the same transparent information that we regularly put out on out-of-pocket costs and the rate of disposable income that parents were spending on their childcare fees. With proposals from the Productivity Commission which are based around a benchmark price, not necessarily the actual price that Australian parents are paying, we think it is incredibly important that we remain focused on affordability.

Thirdly, we believe that a restructured system must improve the accessibility of child care and give due consideration to the impacts that reform will have on investment decisions and waiting lists. This is a very complicated sector. You cannot just change one thing without it impacting on a range of other decisions. We as a parliament need to make sure we reduce waiting lists, not continue to see them blow out. Fourth, recognition needs to be given to the sector's current and future critical workforce issues. Ultimately we on this side of the House know that we would not have a childcare sector if we did not have the hardworking, valued professionals who work there each and every day.

So we are hopeful that we can see damage remedied and some real improvement to child care in Australia. We have got a really proud record of achievement in this area, but I would not for one moment suggest that we do not need to be trying to constantly improve the system. We know that, if we were starting from scratch, nobody would come up with the system that we currently have. We need to continually work together to make sure that we can do better for Australian families. That is something each and every one of us on this side is absolutely committed to. We hope that we can work cooperatively to come up with some real solutions and make sure that the sorts of attacks we saw in the last budget are discontinued and we see much better from this minister than we saw from his predecessor.

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