Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

After it all went wrong—sorry, I missed that interjection from the minister at the table.

A government member interjecting—

Oh, okay. I'll take that interjection. After it all went wrong and it couldn't be salvaged, the Morrison government's response was to snap back to the old, expensive, Morrison-designed childcare subsidy scheme—the one that he designed when he was the minister. We already have one of the most expensive childcare schemes in the world. What does that mean? On average, child care costs between 30 and 40 per cent of the average household income in Australia, which seems like a lot when you compare it to the OECD, where the average is just 11 per cent. This is because we have a system that has seen children as a burden rather than as something to be invested in. We know that childcare fees are soaring; they've increased 35.9 per cent since 2013. So that's on this government's watch, on the coalition's watch. We know that childcare costs are locking parents out of the workforce. That's bad for families, and it's bad for the economy. Why is it bad for the economy? Because there are simple productivity gains that come from giving women 'a room of their own'—putting women back into the workforce, tapping into the skills and expertise that our schools and TAFEs and universities have created.

We have almost 300,000 Australians not participating in the labour force due to the fact they're caring for children, and many of them—most of them, I would suggest—are women. The number of parents who say they are not working mainly due to the cost of child care has skyrocketed by 23 per cent. We know it's too expensive and we know it needs to be fixed. But the Morrison government, sadly, has no plan to fix it. Maybe if the coalition government listened to women a little bit more they might have a better understanding of how families—

An honourable member interjecting—

Maybe if you had 10,000 women out the front of Parliament House you might make the effort to go out and listen to them. Maybe they've got something to say. I don't know.

An honourable member interjecting—

Who knows? There certainly seemed to be some pretty passionate people out the front of Parliament House on Monday when I went out there.

So, maybe if they listened to women a bit more they would find out how families are being impacted by child care that is unaffordable. We know that paying for that fourth or fifth day can be a cruel burden on families. Labor has a plan to make child care more affordable for families, so more parents can get back into the workforce. Our cheaper child care for working families plan will scrap the $10,560 childcare subsidy cap, which currently sees women paying to work for the extra day of work. It will lift the maximum subsidy rate to 90 per cent and will increase the childcare subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000.

It's important that the cost of child care goes down, but it is even more important that the cost of child care stays down. Labor will task the ACCC with designing a price regulation mechanism to shed light on costs and fees and drive them down for good. We will also ask the Productivity Commission to conduct a comprehensive review of the sector with the aim of implementing a universal 90 per cent subsidy for all families. That's a good plan. It's a sensible plan. It will reward working families and allow more second-income earners, who are usually women, to work more and contribute to our economic recovery. We have a plan to fix Morrison's broken childcare system. The coalition government is just patching up a broken system. I support this bill and the amendment moved by the shadow minister, the member for Kingston.

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