Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

whilst still providing sufficient financial support to those families most in need. The package, when viewed overall, is designed to drive greater employment and to ensure that more families, more mothers, can afford to have child care and be in work. I note that the member for Jagajaga said on one occasion—and I just find it a very characteristically eloquent quote, but I cannot lay my hands on it—that the most important thing that working families need is employment. The member for Jagajaga talked about the importance of child care, particularly the affordability of child care for women in lower paid jobs, and the recalibration of the childcare package is designed to do just that. The member for Jagajaga, who is an acknowledged—at least a self-acknowledged—expert in this area, and I do not doubt it, said that something like this has to be paid for, and it has to be paid for somehow. The changes are designed to pay for what is an improved package that is designed to target benefits at people on lower incomes and ensure that more mothers are able to go to work and to have their kids looked after in child care, enabling them so to do. So that is the objective.

With respect to the member for Jagajaga, she knows that what we have done is crafted a package that will pay for it.

Mr Albanese interjecting—

See this speech in context