Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Do you know what's really stressful? Organising child care. It's really stressful. You've got little kids, so you probably don't get that much sleep—I know I didn't. You're trying to work out whether you can find child care that lines up with the days you work or the hours you work, how you're going to get there, how you're going to make sure you get the kids there safely and pick them up safely, how it's going to line up with your breastfeeding schedule if your child's still breastfeeding, whether you're going to need to pump at work and then organise frozen breast milk, whether you're going to have to switch your child to formula and whether you really want to do that. And then, on top of that, is the child going to have a good time at child care? Are they going to make friends there? Are they going to feel lonely there? Are they going to miss you? How are you going to feel when you drop them off for the first time, if they're crying or if they're not crying?

All these things are so stressful, but we do them because we actually need to have child care in place, for a whole range of reasons. The first reason is so that we can go back to work—and that's parents; I'm not just talking about mothers but parents who are on parental leave, who are organising child care so that they can get back to work. I'm talking about paid work. Child care is work. Parenting is work. But this is so you can get back into your paid employment. The second reason is so that your children get the benefits of early learning, the benefits of being with other kids and the benefits of being with professional educators who will develop them and who will make sure they get a really great early learning experience. So, we do it because child care is actually really important. It's crucial. In fact, as the Leader of the Opposition said, we know how important early learning is to kids' brain development and to kids' capacity later in life. We know that early learning is really important. For all of those reasons, child care is fundamental to making sure that our society can operate well, that parents can work and that children get the chance for early learning.

On top of all the stresses I mentioned at the beginning, one of the biggest stresses, if not the biggest stress, is the cost of child care. It's incredibly difficult for a young family to manage the cost of child care. It's very clear to us in Labor that you need to ease the burden on working families when it comes to the cost of child care. This is not a matter that is clear to the Liberal and National parties, who are in government. It's not a matter that's clear to the Prime Minister. It's a matter that we've had to drag them into understanding. Certainly the pandemic, particularly the first wave of lockdowns, really exposed some of the weaknesses in the way the childcare system is set up here in Australia. But there were massive problems before that. It's hard to use, it's hard for parents to navigate sometimes, but what's really hard is bearing the cost. As I said, this is apparent to Labor and has been for a very long time.

Throughout our history we have understood the importance of early learning. In fact, if you go back to Gough Whitlam's speeches in 1969 and 1972—those terrific Graham Freudenberg speeches; may he rest in peace, and may Gough rest in peace—you'll see that Gough was recognising the importance of early learning when he put forward his case to lead a government here in Australia. This is something that Labor knows. We've got an intuition about it. We know it inherently, because we are connected to the working lives of people. For the same reason, the Liberals and Nationals don't really get it. They don't really understand the pressures on working families, because they're not in the same way connected.

So, it was no surprise to me and no surprise, I think, to a lot of people on the Labor side when Anthony Albanese, very early in his time as the Leader of the Labor Party, made a significant policy commitment in relation to child care. It was a significant policy commitment that goes to making sure that we get the workforce participation benefits of an easy-to-use, affordable, accessible childcare system and also recognising implicitly the importance of early learning to children. That's why I was unsurprised that it was one of Labor's first real major commitments under Anthony Albanese's leadership. I was also delighted by it.

The fact is that this country needs affordable child care. Women need it, men need it and children need it. We all need it. Even if you don't have kids of an age to be in child care, you need the childcare system to operate, because our economy depends on improving workforce participation, on making sure that we don't waste any of the potential of the talent that our people have because for some reason it's uneconomic for them to go to work because of the cost of child care. We all need for Australia to have a good childcare system, just like we all need Australia to have all those other really important services that knit our society together, that give us cohesion and that maximise the opportunities that we all have as Australians, that maximise the opportunities that we have to make sure that talent is able to flourish and that people reach their full potential. Child care is important to working families, but it's important to everyone as well, for those reasons—for the direct and indirect benefits that we as a nation get from having a good quality, affordable, accessible childcare system that's responsive to workforce needs as well as responsive to children's needs.

Anthony's announcement, quite a while ago now, was to make 97 per cent of families that are using child care better off and no families worse off. It's a very important, landmark policy because it would make child care more affordable and alleviate some of the stress that parents are facing, particularly now, particularly in difficult economic times and difficult times more generally—alleviating that stress, investing in the nation, investing in increasing workforce participation, investing in our people and making sure people have those opportunities. As I said, I think the government was a little bit bemused by our childcare announcement. They didn't really get why we would do it or why it was important. But now they have belatedly come up with some childcare policy of their own, and here we are debating a bill to give effect to that policy.

As I said, Labor's policy makes 97 per cent of families better off and leaves no families worse off. The Liberal's policy is much narrower and assists many fewer families. In fact, 860,000 families are better off under Labor's policy than under the Liberal's policy. And it's not surprising, because the thing you've got to know about the Liberal Party and National Party policy, the legislation we're debating today, the Morrison government approach, is that the benefits they want to provide get taken away the minute your oldest child is in school. The minute your oldest child is old enough for school, you don't really get the benefit of this policy.

I think the Australian people are going to see through this. They're going to see that it's a bit of a fig leaf. The government know they've got to have some sort of childcare policy, because they've seen the popularity of our cheaper childcare policy. But they don't really want to do it properly, because they don't really get it. So they've come up with this fig leaf and they've put it in the parliament, and then they've done nothing but spin, spin, spin. We all know this government is all spin, no substance. We all know that it's led by a prime minister who has been known for a very long time for being all about the marketing, not about the delivery. This is a government that makes big announcements and then doesn't deliver on them. That's their modus operandi, isn't it? So we know that spin is their default approach to the world—and haven't they been trying to spin this policy as a good childcare policy? But I think Australians will work out very quickly that it's Labor's childcare plan that will provide more support to more families for longer.

With both of these policies set to start in July 2022, Australian families are going to go to the ballot box at the next election deciding between the following two election commitments: childcare policy that leaves 97 per cent of families better off and no families worse off, or the Liberal's very pale imitation. Families out there who are really feeling that stress, that pressure on the household budget, are sitting around the kitchen table thinking: 'How do we manage to sort out our budget? What can we keep? What has to go?'

Child care doesn't need to be this much of a burden. We can actually do better as a nation and provide good, sound childcare policy and a good, sound childcare system that delivers terrific early learning, that helps the next generation, and at the same time is responsive to parents' needs and allows them into the workforce without having to make terribly difficult decisions—the sort of decision where you think, 'If I pick up a third or a fourth day of work, does the additional income I get for that additional day of work get cancelled out by the amount of additional money I have to pay for child care?' These are considerations that people are having to take into account every single day. They are decisions that people are having to make: 'Do I go back to work and effectively not get paid for it, because the money gets put straight into the additional childcare costs, and in doing so not really see much of an improvement in our living standards right now? Or do I not go back to work, not pick up the additional day of work, and perhaps miss out on opportunities—opportunities for training, opportunities to work on important projects, opportunities for promotion—therefore affecting my future earnings as a consequence of me not picking up this additional work?' There is a chance of greater future earnings, perhaps, or alternatively a definite failure to get paid for the additional day because the money goes straight into additional childcare costs.

These are the decisions that people are having to make, and why should they have to? It's so counterproductive for us as a country. Don't we want our best and brightest to be able to go into paid employment if that's their choice? Why should that choice be taken away from them by inadequate childcare support? It shouldn't be. That's why this government really needs to lift its game when it comes to early learning in this country. They need to appreciate the pressure that families are under and appreciate the value of early learning.

Since I'm on the topic, might I also say they need to better value the work that early learning educators are doing every day. Throughout this pandemic, early learning educators and other staff of early learning centres, kindergartens, childcare centres—everyone connected to early learning—has been doing an incredible job at turning up to work and caring for the children of essential workers during lockdowns. They've absolutely been on the frontline in our community, being in a position where they don't necessarily get the choice to stay safe at home like so many of us. So many of us get to stay safe at home during the lockdown periods. There are so many people in our community who do not get that choice and must go out to work because they're an essential worker. Early learning educators have shown how valuable they are, the work that they're willing to do and the sacrifices that they're willing to make throughout this pandemic period. I know that every member of this House would be so grateful to educators and to others involved in child care for the work that they have done. I certainly am. I pay tribute to all of the early learning educators and all of those in the childcare and kindergarten sector in my community. There are far too many to list them.

If anyone is interested, as before the lockdown, my staff and I have been getting around the early learning services as much as we can. Check it out on my social media. We were very lucky to drop in to a kindergarten just the other day for Early Learning Matters Week to thank that particular kindy for the work that they were doing, but that is replicated in kindergartens and childcare centres throughout the electorate of Griffith, just as it is throughout our great nation. I thank those people for all the sacrifices they're making and all the work that they're doing to care for our precious little ones. I know that people really appreciate it.

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