Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. We have heard from many speakers on this side of the zombie measures that are contained in this bill—measures from that dreadful budget back in 2014 that are now, seemingly, linked to whether or not this government will support increases in funding to child care. I actually do not want to talk about the zombie measures today. In fact, I think it is quite sad, really, that we are not having a discussion today specifically about child care. The fact that the government has linked these measures means that we have so much to say and so many people in our communities to defend that we are, quite rightly, concentrating on those areas. Many people on this side have already done so, but today I want to have the conversation that we should be having, which is specifically about child care.

I have often quite openly said to people in my community that, if as a government you had to pick one thing to make a difference in 2050, it would be educating zero-to-five-year-olds. Children who are born today will be in their mid-30s in 2050, and whether or not they are able to manage a world that is growing now will depend entirely on whether or not they are given every possible advantage in their first five years of life. Ninety per cent of the development of a child's brain occurs in the first five years of life, and, if you get that wrong, 12 years of schooling does not make up for it. It is incredibly important. On this side of the House, we see child care being not just about workforce participation but about what benefits the child. I believe in this childcare package this government has got the balance wrong. I would like to be in here having a debate about that and having community consultation about it so that we can adjust the balance between what a working family needs now and what the community will need in the mid- to long term. They are the two aspects of child care: whether we are providing it so that more women can join the workforce, which is incredibly important, and families can manage their work and family life balance better now, which is also incredibly important; or providing it to ensure that our children have the best possible opportunity to grow up and flourish.

All of the research shows that, if you are going to invest in the zero-to-fives in any section of the community, the investment has the biggest return for the community as a whole and for the person when it is directed towards those children who are most vulnerable—children whose parents do not have the skills or may have intellectual disabilities, drug and alcohol problems or other issues that prevent them from being the best parents they can be. We know that, if you put the effort into those children, the impact on them is phenomenal and the return to the taxpayer in the long term is also incredible. In fact, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report in 2014 found that the long-term gains in productivity from children who participate in quality child care are even greater than the gains from increased workforce participation by their parents. When looking at children in disadvantaged families who were receiving no formal early childhood education, it was shown that engaging them in early childhood education and care would boost Australia's GDP by a further $13.3 billion by 2050.

So there are very good economic reasons to invest in the early education of the most vulnerable children in our community, and there are also, of course, reasons to do that for the benefit of the children themselves. Yet this childcare package actually takes support from the most vulnerable in our community. It lessens the assistance for families that are really struggling with raising their children and earning a living, with the lack of flexibility that families quite often have. This package actually takes from them.

I want to walk through how it does that, because this is an extraordinarily complex piece of work. The government claims that this simplifies child care. It actually does not. It is incredibly complex, and nearly every stakeholder that is worth listening to when it comes to early childhood education says exactly that.

Currently, the childcare-benefit activity test gives families 48 hours, or four days, of subsidised care per fortnight without undertaking any activity. That means that any child, whether the parents work or not, can have two days per week, because that is considered to be the amount that you need for a child to bond with the other children and the early childhood educators and to feel stable. That is what a child needs: two days per week. And that is what the current activity test gives. It gives 100 hours of subsidised care per fortnight if both parents undertake activity of more than 30 hours per fortnight. It is a bit complex, but essentially it guarantees two days to every child.

Under the new activity test, families will receive 36 hours per fortnight when both parents undertake activities for eight to 16 hours per fortnight. That is the first tier. In the second tier, it provides double that if parents work from 16 to 48 hours per fortnight, and it provides 100 hours if parents work 48 hours plus per fortnight. There are three separate tiers.

A person, for example, who has casual work—and I will just stop for a minute there when I mention casual work and say that this activity test is really quite good if you are in permanent work and you sit a few thousand dollars on one side or the other of the tier so that you know you are going to be in that tier for the full year. If your work is stable and nothing happens in the year, this could be quite good for you. But an increasing number of people in our communities, not just in regional areas but in city areas as well, do not have the luxury of permanent full-time work or even permanent part-time work. Their work is quite sporadic. It is quite casual.

I have doorknocked areas of my electorate where I have found children who were eight or nine years of age at home on their own. They came to the door and unlocked the door in some cases, which worried me greatly, even more than seeing them home alone. When I phoned their parents later, I found parents who were finding out at eight in the morning whether they were working that day. These were not parents who had the ability to say no because they could not get child care for their children.

We have people in our communities who live very sporadic lives. They do not know when they are going to work. They take the work when they can. They do not have the flexibility of going in and out of child care. In order to be able to take the work, they have to take the days of child care because, if they give those days up, they cannot get their children back in. Those two days of child care that were available under the old system allowed parents to say to an employer: 'I can work Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Thursday and Friday I can put my children into child care, and on Saturday and Sunday my partner can look after the kids while I go to work.' They were able to organise their days because of that.

Now, that certainty of those two days is gone. The fallback position for parents who do not meet the activity test is 12 hours. Now, 12 hours is not two days; it is one, because long-day centres are open for 10 hours. That is it. They are open for 10 hours, and, if you do not take them for 10 hours, another parent will. So that is one day. That is not sufficient for parents who work those unstable kinds of work patterns to organise their lives, and it is not enough for a child to bond and feel secure and develop a pattern with the carers and the other children, so it is actually not good for anybody, but that is what we have got at the moment.

I want you to consider too what it means for a parent who sits somewhere in the middle, someone who works 16 hours a fortnight, so they are entitled to 36 hours per fortnight, or, even better, they work 18 hours per fortnight, and it has been fairly stable, so they are entitled to 72 hours per fortnight, and then something happens. Their partner gets sick, or their child gets sick; they have to take a few weeks off, and suddenly they fall into the lower tier. What if that happens towards the end of the year? What kind of debt do you have if you have been claiming 72 hours per fortnight quite legitimately and then something happens in your life that changes, and suddenly you are only entitled to 36 hours per fortnight? You get one of those robo-debts and it is real, not because of any fault of your own but because your working life was not stable enough to work within these artificial tiers that this government has created for parents to work in.

It is 36 hours of child care for eight to 16 hours per fortnight; 72 hours for 16 to 48 hours; and 100 hours per fortnight when both parents undertake activities for 48 hours per fortnight or more. That is quite confusing, but then you add the extra layer of how much you earn in those hours. If you earn up to $65,710 per family, you get a subsidy rate of 85 per cent. If you earn from $65,000 to about $170,000, it tapers down. Over $170,000 and up to $250,000, it is a 50 per cent subsidy rate. Again, it is good to taper, and the government here, you can see, is trying to reduce the subsidy to those who earn more. It has moved the subsidy into those with stable employment in the middle range, and that is not a bad thing.

But just consider if you are a parent trying to return to work. You are not working at the moment, but you are seeking work. Someone offers you two days work this week on short notice, and you cannot get child care. Of course you cannot get child care. Parents who are trying to return to work hit their head up against this barrier that they actually have to be working in order to get the childcare subsidy, and they cannot work unless they have the child care. If a parent is in that sort of situation for two weeks, they might manage to find a way around it if they are suddenly offered permanent part-time work. But, if they are in and out through casual work for several months while they try to work their way back into the workforce, how does this help them do that at all?

This system is actually a barrier for them, not an aid. That is the discussion we should be having here. If this is actually about workforce participation, it is only actually helping those who already have secure, permanent patterns of work. It is a barrier to anybody trying to move into the workforce and it is a barrier for those many people who work in the casual world, where the work comes and goes around work patterns that they do not have control over.

You can imagine what happens if you are claiming the 85 per cent subsidy, so as a family you are getting $63,000 or whatever a year, and then something happens that pushes you into another taper rate. Your partner gets extra work and earns an extra $20,000 a year, then suddenly you are not entitled to the 85 per cent and you are only entitled to 65 per cent. You have got a debt because you did the right thing. This is a ridiculous system. This does not recognise in any way the world we live in today. It does not recognise at all the world we live in today.

Every stakeholder who is worth talking to has said exactly that. This is the Social Policy Research Centre from the University of New South Wales:

There are no measures in the package that will make LDC (long day care) more flexible – indeed, many of the new rules … will make it more rigid.

  …   …   …

… the new, three-tiered activity test introduces a level of complexity never seen before in the Australian childcare system.

  …   …   …

… the Bill introduces provisions that will increase the complexity and reduce accessibility and affordability for some of the most vulnerable children and families.

This is where I go back to my first point: parents who are in this precarious situation are already incredibly stressed as families. They already are the parents who have got so much else on their minds that it becomes difficult to pay attention to their children in the way that you need to if you want your child to reach the age of two with all of their needs met, which is incidentally what you need to do if you want your child to be highly creative. They need to reach that level of two assuming that whatever they need is just going to be there so that they can explore and be creative as adults. It is done by the time they are two. It is all over.

Parents who are in this kind of precarious situation, where they do not know where their next hours of work are coming from, have trouble finding time for the family to be together because their work lives are moving around. Even deciding to have breakfast together on Wednesday becomes difficult. Those parents need to have the support that stable, good quality early education gives them and their children. This bill takes it from them. They have it now; if this bill passes, it will be not just the zombie measures but also the childcare package that actually hit the most vulnerable in our community.

I believe the hearts of those on the other side are in the right place; I really do believe that they are trying to improve the childcare system, but they just have not. Please, separate it out: take the zombie measures out and let us have a real debate about what is best for children and what is best for our community in terms of the capacity of our children to grow up and be productive, creative and well-balanced adults. That is our job in this place: to consider both sides of the coin and get it right so that when these children turned out to be adults, they can build a better society for themselves.

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