Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question which goes to a range of issues with regard to this budget and expenditures. I understand the point that you are making about child care and I have visited a number of childcare facilities in my own electorate after this budget—and in fact many of them were mightily pleased with what had been done. Particularly, they found that there was an immense amount of confusion in the variety of payment and subsidies that were available prior to the decision that we are very much hoping would pass through the Senate and which is instituted in this budget.

In terms of increasing that participation, I might just preface what I am about to say by saying that the childcare reforms and jobs and families package are very much directed at participation per se. Obviously, this is a very large ongoing subsidy that is provided by the taxpayer in the area of child care. What we have done is look at ways in which we can make that most thoroughly purposive where the purpose is to engage, support and incentivise mothers to return to work.

When we look at the data in Australia about mothers returning to work, it has been very positive but, equally, when we look at qualitative research, departmental research and things that Productivity Commission has engaged in, it is quite clear that one of the largest, if not the largest, roadblocks in terms of returning to work for a mother is the availability and affordability of child care.

There has also been a very interesting report—I think I stated in the other place—from the United Kingdom which tracks data over several decades from the 1960s to try and interpret how it is that families become better off, become wealthier, increase their standard of living and their household wealth. What it found was that the largest single driver over that period of time was the ability for the female in the family to go back to work and contribute to family income. So women re-entering the workforce or entering the workforce for the first time was the single biggest driver in increased family prosperity in the United Kingdom.

What was even more interesting was that as a driver of family prosperity, it was much higher in the LMI—lower middle income—families than any other cohort. Indeed, what it showed was that the single biggest driver of increasing family prosperity in the UK over several decades, particularly in the types of families that need the greatest assistance, was in women returning to the workforce.

Looking at the packages that we have put in this budget, I will just mention two: the partnership agreement on homelessness, which I will come to in a moment and which I think is very important in this space but, first of all, the child care, jobs and family package. What we have engaged in in this budget is a complete reformulation administratively of the system and in directing what are very considerable amounts of taxpayer's money. Child care will now be an additional subsidy of $3.5 billion, and the way in which that subsidy is going to be allocated is that families between $65,000 and $175,000 will in effect be $30 a week better off, which will represent a subsidy of around about 85 per cent of the total amount of child care. Importantly, this is up to an hourly fee cap, which we very much trust will minimise and reduce some of the exorbitance that had grown up in some childcare centres' fees in some areas where there was a supply problem. Above the $170,000 level, there is again a very significant amount of subsidy—around about the 50 per cent mark, but that will be capped at $10,000 per child for incomes above $180,000.

Sitting beneath that very good and high-level subsidy is going to be a childcare safety net package—$327.7 million—that is going to support 95,000 disadvantaged children, with $168 million going to go specifically to families of children at risk of neglect, irrespective of whether parents meet the activity test, which I will come to in a moment. There is also an $840 million payment to early childhood education that will provide access to 600 hours of preschool per year funding, guaranteed to be indexed for the first time. All of that contributes to a scenario where it is going to be easier, simpler and cheaper for mums to return to the workforce—or, indeed, to enter the workforce for the first time—whether they are single mums or mums in a standard two-parent family. We have determined that that is the single best way to increase family prosperity and thereby increase children's chances for a much more productive future.

I might finish by looking very quickly at that $230 million National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. That has been extended for two years to 2017, and for the first time ever there has been a clear focus driven into that program to ensure that the funds are properly allocated and prioritised to front-line services to women and children who have experienced domestic or family violence. Again, that has been a generally successful program in conjunction with the states, but for the first time ever the focus will clearly be on women. The very ironic thing that happens in issues of family and domestic violence is that it is almost invariably the case that it is the woman who has to leave the family home after experiencing family violence. That in itself is something that we all need to work to reverse. (Time expired)

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