Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. We will hear the Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, Mr Turnbull, say that this bill is about reforming the childcare system so to make it easier to work and so people can afford child care. What he will not tell you is at least one in three families will be worse off. That is one in three. Go down to the local shops and choose, out of all the families that you see passing you, which one out of three you are going make worse off.

Under the new activity test, 150,000 families will be worse off. Most of those families will obviously come from low socio-economic backgrounds and some of the most disadvantaged parts of Australia—some of whom I have the very great privilege of representing in this place. The government want to take the activity test from two days access to just one day. These rules will make it more difficult to secure child care for children whose parents are part-time or casual workers, meaning that many working mums and dads who need more childcare assistance at the moment will actually end up with less. The 300 Budget Based Funded childcare programs, which service mainly rural, remote and Indigenous communities, are facing the axe. More than half of families accessing these services will face an increase in their fees of $4.40 per hour. That might not seem a lot to those on the government benches, but, when you add it up over multiple hours and often multiple children, it is a lot. The increase in fees across the course of just one day can be the difference between having food on the table at the end of the week or not.

I mentioned penalty rates before; I am going to come back to it now. For a family that are already facing a $77-a-week pay cut out of their weekly pay packet—their take-home pay—the government want them to now spend more money on child care. This will be the impact of the changes, and I think that, sadly, too few people on the government side of this chamber are willing to face up to that reality. Clearly, not enough people around the decision-making table truly understand how these increased costs will hurt families. That assumes that their childcare centre is even able to remain open. Modelling by Deloitte Access Economics shows that two-thirds of early childhood education services will have their funding cut and many will have to close their doors. When the Closing the gap report was handed down, we saw a Prime Minister talk the talk. Now, he is walking away from the very people that he stood in this chamber saying that he supported.

The experts have warned of the consequences. The deputy chairperson of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care has said:

These changes will diminish our kids' potential to make a smooth transition to school, compounding the likelihood of intergenerational disempowerment and unemployment. Children will fall behind before they have even started … and suffer greater risks of removal into out-of-home care.

I am not an expert on the Closing the gap report, but I have read it. If the government bothered to read what was contained in that, those things that SNAICC is saying are going to affect our young children are some of those targets that we seek to improve for our Indigenous communities. The government claim to take seriously the issues of Closing the Gap, but they do not take seriously a plan to close that gap. It is absolutely unbelievable. False sincerity is one thing, but the people in this country are slowly starting to wake up to this very poor excuse of a government.

My message to the Prime Minister is clear: hands off low-income families, early childhood education and our Indigenous early childhood educations services. You cannot make all these cuts and think young kids will not be affected. You cannot slash the payments and the support and think you will not put serious pressure on parents who are doing it as tough as they are, especially when we cut the take-home pay by up to $77. These are real people, who are in pain, which this government is very well inflicting on them.

The legacy of 1.5 million families being worse off as a result of this decision is not one I would be proud of in government. In the interests of these Australian families I call on the government to reconsider, because the families are already doing it tough. They are trying hard and are struggling to get by and they do not deserve the callous cuts that will only make it harder for them. In fact, the Prime Minister has no legacy to leave behind, as was evidenced yesterday by his lack of an answer in question time. He could not point to his greatest achievement. He was offered the opportunity a couple of times to provide an answer, and I think on a TV program over the weekend. I am happy to assist the Prime Minister, because I would like to be helpful where I can. His greatest achievement, to him—and I will spell it out very slowly—is to buy his way into this place and cling to power by the skin of his teeth, not by providing leadership on the things that matter to working Australians. There are no prizes for guessing: most ordinary Australians are not obsessed with the 18C legislation changes and they are not obsessed with mentioning Bill Shorten, Labor and the unions 150,000 times, like we see on the other side in this place every single day. They are concerned with things like cuts to child care and access.

The Prime Minister and his Liberal team want to reduce the amount of time for which children can have access to child care. That absolutely is not an achievement. When we talk about child care it is very important to remember what this actually is. Yes, it is a service to which mum and dad can drop their kids off in the morning, then go to work, earn a day's pay and then come home at the end of the day. But speaking as an early child care educator and someone who has studied primary school education, the years 0 to 7 are the most critical years for development and children. The neuroplasticity of the brain is still developing and they are still forming pathways through their brains through those connections. So early-childhood education is incredibly important for kids because it actually enables them to be educated, to have peer-to-peer mentoring with their playmates, they learn through experimentation and they learn from quality childcare educators. That is something this government just does not see the value in.

We are always asked by those on the opposite side want our plans are. They are so obsessed by us they want to know what we would do in this situation, because they actually do not have a plan their own. We will stand up for the children of this country and do whatever we can to make sure that this government does not reduce the time they can spend on getting an early education. I do not know how the Liberal members, by cutting access for families, expect us as a nation to have improved educational outcomes. I understand that they have an ideological obsession with attacking low-income families, but in a practical sense how do they actually see this working? Cutting access to early-childhood education, or child care as we are calling it in here, is actually going to disadvantage us as a nation, when we are trying to educate these children for the future.

We have a social safety net in this country for the most vulnerable families, because we value everybody getting a fair go. We know that when our neighbour and our neighbour's kids are looked after and doing well the rest of us are looked after and are doing well. What does it say for us as leaders in here if we are not supporting low-income families and those who most need access to child care, by cutting it away. We have recognised for a long time that these kinds of measures keep kids away from crime, keep local economies afloat and give dignity to all Australians, which is actually a human right. So, educating our young people is important, and it is important to every single Australian.

The government seems to forget that, so I am quite happy to speak on this today and provide a very timely reminder for them. In the end, the people they are going to cut this from will suffer, and the communities around them will suffer the most. It is something this government ought to remember but they seem to ignore it quite casually here on a daily basis. Their cruel cuts are unending and I believe there is absolutely no shame. So, here we are again, defending our lowest paid most vulnerable families and children. This government is desperate to cut money in any way they can from people who are already disadvantaged, and the community is waking up to their agenda. They still want to press on with this idea of $50 billion for big business, which has been proven this week to add $4 billion of debt in interest to the bottom line.

On the childcare package, the desperate attempt to link the dud policy with the vicious cuts has been called out for what it is, even though they have decoupled it now. As a mother I have accessed preschool and child care and my children's lives have been enriched by that experience. The Turnbull Liberals are holding Australian families to ransom. It is an attack on low-income families, who are actually doing their best to build a better life for themselves. As a member of this House I would not seek to do that to any child in this country, whether their family and $65,000 a year for $165,000 a year. I expect that this government would have some decency and ensure that our most vulnerable Australians are not going to be left behind.

See this speech in context