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

Labor, through this motion, want to talk about their report card on education. So let's talk about it. In 2010 they promised Australians they would build 260 childcare centres to make child care more accessible. Do you know how many they delivered? A measly 38—a clear broken promise to families. In one year alone they tried to rip out over $2.8 billion from higher education as well, claiming they were attempting to achieve a surplus. Let me tell you, you can't achieve a surplus when you're about to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the tax bill, which will in turn harm the economy and revenue coming into government coffers.

We all know that, when the Leader of the Opposition makes a promise, someone else has to pay for it, and it's not him. It's hardworking Australians who will foot the bill, though higher taxes, just like with Labor's disgusting raid on retirees' savings. In that instance, we have another half-baked policy that people will have to pay for. Labor's latest preschool policy also doesn't add up, which is a common occurrence. Labor's Early Years Quality Fund has been described as a deeply flawed and inequitable policy that was used as a front to blatantly boost union membership in the childcare sector. The PwC report on this clearly shows that Labor's Early Years Quality Fund was never going to achieve its claimed objectives.

Our government has instead guaranteed preschool funding, with an extra $440 million, while we work with states and territories to improve preschool attendance rates for disadvantaged and Indigenous children through our next funding round. Where are Labor on this issue? Despite the opposition, our government's landmark childcare reforms also came into effect this year and are delivering more support for more families and children to get access to the support and early learning they need. The coalition is providing record funding for child care and, despite the rubbish from those opposite, the coalition has guaranteed funding for four-year-old child care and child care more generally, as well as giving 348,000 children access to 15 hours of early learning per year. Over the course of the next four years, childcare funding will also grow from $8.34 billion a year to $9.88 billion a year in 2021-22, a total of $36.6 billion over the next four years. Our government's reforms to the childcare subsidy are also the most significant reforms to the early education and childcare system in 40 years. This new childcare package is providing more access to subsidised child care to more families as well as greater financial support to the families who earn the least, with subsidies of up to 85 per cent. Our new child subsidy had also driven down out-of-pocket costs for parents. For example, ABS's September CPI data saw an 11.8 per cent decrease in out-of-pocket childcare costs.

In addition to this, the Liberal-National government is fully funding the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority, at around $13.5 million a year for two years until 30 June 2020, so that it can continue to assist all governments and the sector to produce quality outcomes for children. This government is working with providers who have raised issues to address them as they arise. Around one million Australian families who are balancing work and parental responsibilities are benefitting from the package.

We are committed to providing quality and affordable child care and we are delivering on that. We will continue to negotiate for further funding and further assurances around preschool attendance rates for disadvantaged and Indigenous children through our next funding round for kinder. We are committed to quality and we are committed to affordable child care and to funding the 15 hours of kinder, giving children access to early learning. Our commitment is one I'm personally supportive of, having raised this in my maiden speech and having a three-year-old who will be going to four-year-old kinder next year.

Labor, in comparison, have made many promises before. They promised to make child care more affordable, but, by the time they left office in 2013, they'd increased childcare fees by 53 per cent—an extra $73 a week in fees for the average family; that's $3,500 a year for families. What makes anyone think they won't do it again if they get back into government?

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