Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party, Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I will come to that shortly. I want to preface my comments with respect to a number of matters that members have raised, particularly with respect to child care. There have been a number of wild statements made by those opposite, which are very unfortunate, particularly the selective misquoting of Dr Baxter, who is the deputy secretary for early childhood and child care. And, of course, in the quote that those opposite use, they conveniently omit the end of her statement, which says: 'out of pocket costs in that period are still 3.2 per cent lower than they were prior to the introduction of the CCS in July 2018.' The point is that out-of-pockets cost are still 3.2 per cent lower since the childcare package began in July 2018.

I think we need to remember that it was this government that actually saved the childcare sector during the recent pandemic. And, we know, because as local members, we saw those lines outside Centrelink and those folks were calling our offices, asking: what can the government to do to help? We answered the call with $900 million of additional funding during the COVID-19 crisis. Obviously, that crisis is still here and we're still watching it, but $900 million was what it took to keep the childcare sector going. So we won't be lectured by those opposite on what's needed for child care.

The member opposite asked would we be adopting their policy? No, we won't. That's the answer to the question; no, we won't. We will not be adopting their policies. We were there when the Australian people needed us, and we enabled 99 per cent of 13,400 services to remain open and viable. Given the circumstances, that's an incredible achievement. And in country Australia, $391 million was provided to 3,334 services in regional and remote areas. And in this budget that has just been handed down, we have a record $9.2 billion in funding for child care. We have saved this sector. There's record funding in this budget, and we recently announced additional support for Victoria's regional childcare sector, with around 700 services sharing in estimated $55.8 million from the early childhood education and care recovery payment.

We know that the federal government wasn't responsible for what happened down in Victoria, the Victorian government was. It was very unfortunate, the whole hotel quarantine fiasco, but we were there when Victorians needed us, when the childcare sector needed us, and we are still there working in that sector. It's a very important point to make that when the childcare sector was on the brink of destruction, it was this government, with $900 million, that came to the rescue. We won't be lectured by those opposite on what our policies should be. We won't take any notice of their selective misquoting of Dr Baxter, which is very misleading.

My friends opposite also mentioned funding for the Clontarf Foundation. It's very important that we touch on that topic, because $39.8 million is going to the Clontarf Foundation to support an additional 2,000 places in their existing program by December 2022. That funding builds on the existing funding for Clontarf provided by the National Indigenous Australians Agency, the NIAA.

In respect of funding to support Indigenous girls in education, the NIAA provides more than $55 million in funding to 12 organisations via the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, or IAS. We will invest a total of $5.5 billion, through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school-funding loading, over 2018 to 2029. This funding is expected to benefit 234,000 students in 2020, so we are supporting this very important work and supporting education for Indigenous boys and girls. In my own electorate, we have a Girls Academy and a Clontarf academy. I see the wonderful work they're both doing and the differences that they're making to the lives of these young Australians. I'm very supportive of it.

This budget is a budget that has underpinned educational opportunities in Australia. And it's very important that we keep doing that, particularly, as those opposite know, although they were interjecting earlier when I was trying to make the point, as we've been through drought, we've been through bushfire and now we've been through COVID-19. I'm immensely proud of this budget. It's an excellent budget that delivers for Australians under the most trying and difficult circumstances. As I've just said, 2020 has been a year like no other. In my own electorate, we have seen bushfire— (Time expired)

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