Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against this nonsense matter of public importance claiming that the government is failing to invest in the early years of Australian children. This is at a time when the Turnbull coalition government has been investing more and more into child care, preschool and kindy. In Dunkley, for example, there are 5,618 families who are benefitting from our new childcare package—a childcare package where nearly one million families nationwide benefit by our $2.5 billion increase in early childhood education over the next four years. For example, as part of this package, we increased the rebate to 85 per cent for 370,000 families earning below $67,000. We've also removed the annual rebate cap for low- to middle-income earners and increased the cap to $10,190 for those earning above $187,000. The typical family across Australia will be $1,300 better off per child per year. But what did Labor do? They voted against these reforms.

With preschool, as well, we've committed $870 million in 2018-19 to ensure that more than 340,000 children each year have access to 15 hours of preschool a week. Unfortunately, state and federal Labor are making disgraceful claims that we will eliminate or cut preschool funding from 2020. This is absolutely disgraceful, and it is playing political football with kids' lives. It is playing with the lives of kids, parents, educators and local preschool operators and staff, who continue to contact my office because of these false claims. As the father of a daughter who'll be four in 2020 and who'll use preschool in that year, I am particularly disturbed by these false claims. It is incorrect that the federal government won't be funding kinders from 2020, nor are there any cuts in place. The fact is that the current national partnership agreement ends in 2020. But that just means a new partnership agreement is, and will be, negotiated with the states and territories and put in place before then for 2020 onwards. In this new partnership agreement, we are focusing on incorporating measures to encourage greater levels of preschool attendance.

Unfortunately, as I've noted, the state Labor government, along with federal Labor here, has put out information claiming that the end of one partnership agreement means the end of funding. That is simply not true. As I've said, not only is the government interested in continuing and enhancing this funding, but I am interested too. I am interested as a person who spoke of the critical importance of early childhood education in my maiden speech. I am interested as a person who, through my own initiative, has been recently delivering books from local Frankston author Jeannette Rowe with a message to not only childcare operators but parents at preschools, kindergartens and childcare centres to promote early education and early reading. And I am interested as a person who has supported an organisation called 123Read2Me in my electorate, which is a local charity giving free books to those in need, promoting early childhood reading. I've helped them fund a new car to help them deliver free books to children in need. I am passionate about early childhood education at all the places I've visited—preschools, kindergartens and childcare centres—particularly in the last few weeks but throughout all my time as the member for Dunkley.

So this MPI is a continual scare campaign, and it is utterly disgraceful. As Minister Birmingham has said for months, we extended the national partnership to give us time to develop a new funding model from 2020 onwards that addresses the serious attendance issues with the current model, where one in three children don't attend for the full 15 hours, with non-attendance even worse amongst children in high-disadvantage cohorts. It seems that those opposite are not as caring as we are about attendance at preschool. We will work with the states and territories to make sure that future agreements address these serious issues around attendance in preschool so that children are prepared for a flying start at school.

The member for Kingsford Smith referred to TheAustralian Financial Review having confirmed the budget paper. These are points that the minister actually sent through at the time, noting that this is not true. The story has actually been running for months across Australia as various union groups try to push it with local newspapers. 'That's a saving of more than $440 million,' it said. No— (Time expired)

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