Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dunkley for her question and for her support for the constituents of the Dunkley, and I make it very clear, through her, to those constituents that the government has had the interests of the people of Dunkley at heart throughout the pandemic that Victoria is experiencing. This is one of the reasons why we have extended special help to Victorian childcare centres and Victorian families throughout this pandemic.

If I were measuring the success of the childcare system, I would look at a couple of things. I would look at whether the system itself is operating, whether operators have jobs, whether centres remain open, whether parents have access to affordable child care, whether out-of-pocket costs are going down and whether affordability is a key priority. I can tell you that this government ticks every single box. I can reassure the constituents of Dunkley and indeed all of Australia that we have done this properly. We have done this well—unlike the Labor Party, who have waffled on about, 'In the first term of a Labor government we might have an investigation and we hope we might one day get to 90 per cent, but we don't know because we are not actually coming out with anything solid or anything concrete, even though we've had a long time.'

Mr Albanese interjecting—

Well, you said—

Opposition members interjecting—

Yes, so what we've had to do is estimate this policy based on the Leader of the Opposition's words. But it's really, really important—

See this speech in context