Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

It's quite extraordinary. Two weeks ago, here in this place, in his budget-in-reply speech, the Leader of the Opposition said:

So our long term goal, and the mission we will set for the Productivity Commission, which will be asked to report in the first term of a Labor government, is to investigate moving to a 90 per cent subsidy for child care for every Australian family.

That was said in the budget reply speech two weeks ago. Yet now we have the shadow minister up here not even mentioning that mission. Why would that have disappeared from the rhetoric of those opposite? Why would that disappear? Do you know what that means? That means that a family that earns $1 million and has two children in centre based day care for 30 hours a week, who currently receive nothing in childcare subsidy, will receive a taxpayer subsidy of $561 a week. That's over $28,000 a year for not one extra minute of work. So I'm wondering: why didn't the shadow minister mention this? Why has this mission—this mission!—just disappeared from their rhetoric? Why has it? Because the penny's dropped, after two weeks, that it is a policy which has no friends.

It reminds me of that other policy that we never hear about anymore—the one about offering a wage subsidy. When we had an MPI a couple of weeks ago, I think it was on the day of the Leader of the Opposition's budget-in-reply speech, I asked: could we please find out what is happening to that policy? Because we know the shadow minister, when it came out, was sort of like, 'Where does this come from?' The shadow minister for employment wasn't quite sure where it came from. But Bob Carr was fairly clear about what he thought of it:

One policy was simply bad: a government subsidy for the wages of childcare workers. The idea that taxpayers should subsidise wages in one sector has no precedent in the programs of state Labor governments, and it shouldn’t. The notion is open-ended: it could be pressed for workers in other community services.

He finishes by saying:

It was expensive: $10 billion over a decade.

We haven't heard from those opposite. Is that still your policy or not? We're waiting to hear. That one's worth $10 billion. The other one is worth $6 billion baked in, and of course—

Ms Rowland interjecting—

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