Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Early Childhood Education and Care Coronavirus Response and Other Measures) Bill 2021 because it enables me to speak on an issue that is critically important not only to families in my electorate, for men and women and their children, but for the economic response that's required and for economic support for families right across the country. I'll be brief in my remarks today, because I'm aware of other speakers—including the crossbench—who want to contribute on this legislation, and I think it is important for all voices to be heard. In my brief remarks, I'll pick up a couple of points that other speakers have touched on.

Child care was essential during the pandemic, and no one doubted that—except for the government, who barred a third of childcare businesses from accessing JobKeeper. These essential workers were expected to go to work and risk their health so that healthcare workers could go and save lives. They were expected to do all of this for half the pay. It's clear that the government considered some essential workers to be less important than others, and we know that, disproportionately, those were women.

It's not as though everything was fine for childcare businesses before the COVID pandemic. Back in 2019 I spoke to locals who sent their children to an early learning centre in the suburb of Bellbird Park, and they said that workers were sounding the alarm back then and early educators were already raising their voices about what was happening in the sector. Businesses were struggling to pay their workers, and women, in particular, were living pay cheque to pay cheque. Whilst the government might boast that 98 per cent of childcare services stayed open during COVID-19, it won't admit the fact that a quarter of these services were losing money every day they stayed open, because they understood that they had a job to do and a service to provide.

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, just knew how to make an impressive announcement, but he pulled it off at the expense of businesses who struggled to deliver this promise with a lot less funding. Then this government had the nerve to blame the providers, threatening their funding if they didn't provide enough places and hours, even though it knew it was financially unviable. So it set up a hotline and encouraged families to dob in early learning providers. This is not how you look after essential workers.

I want to touch briefly on childcare fees. This is a critical issue that the Labor Party, under the leadership of Anthony Albanese and our shadow minister Amanda Rishworth, have been championing. I'm so proud to be part of a party that has outstanding leadership and is putting forward bold initiatives to change the conversation about child care, to change the conversation about how we look at it as an economic and productivity issue—about how we can see more people in the workplace and, quite rightly, see more women being productive in the economy and adding their skill sets and abilities to our society.

I support the move to exempt childcare services from collecting the childcare gap fees from families during COVID-imposed lockdowns. If families choose to stay home and keep their children out of childcare during snap lockdowns, centres shouldn't be legally obligated to charge them gap fees. When Brisbane went into lockdown in January, a number of families came to me about this, saying that they felt that it was unfair and that they were being ripped off. The same thing happened after lockdowns in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. When we raised these concerns, the minister gave a commitment to granting exemptions. The Prime Minister's office said: 'No, we don't care. If you're not paying for services you are not receiving, we're not on your side.'

We know that childcare is becoming increasingly unaffordable in this country, we know that we have some of the most expensive fees in our region, and this is having a direct impact on household budgets. In the Oxley electorate, where the average income is a little over $1,700 a week, the average price of five days of child care is $523 a week. Around 15,000 children are currently in child care. If that goes up four per cent next year, families will be paying $543.92. Twenty dollars a week might not seem like much to those families but, when you calculate it, they'll end up losing just over $1,000 a year. For many of them, this will be enough to see one parent drop back to part-time work because they can't afford to have their child in care five days a week. They won't do this because they want to; they'll do it because the government is forcing them. We've all met with parents and we've all me with individuals who say, 'I'd like to do more but there's no point doing it because all I'm doing is paying the childcare fees.' We want to change that. We know, without a doubt, that for the majority of families, the person who will be forced out of full-time work will be the mother. Typically, women are the second income earners.

The Prime Minister's supposed once-in-a-generation reform to make child care more affordable has failed. It's failed to support early learning centres, it's failed to support families—particularly female second income earners, discouraging them from working more than three days a week. On one hand, the government says it's all for a stronger economic recovery, yet it's crafting childcare policy that makes it harder for 50 per cent of the workforce to work full-time and contribute more to our economy. We know Labor's plan will scrap the $10,560 childcare subsidy to stop women from losing money if they choose to work that extra day of work. It'll lift the maximum childcare subsidy to 90 per cent and increase childcare subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000. Fixing the Morrison government's broken childcare system will put us on the right path to build a stronger economy and to have stronger and happier families. I'll continue to champion this on behalf of families in my electorate and I know every single member on this side of the chamber will continue to do so.

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