Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

the member for Macarthur is nodding—combined with this deep care that they have. Like all parents, when you first go to take your child to early childhood education and care, there is a little bit of hesitancy with leaving your child somewhere. But to see what my son's learnt and how he is cared for has been incredibly important for me. One of the most touching things was that, when my son was very hard to get to have his nap—and at home we used to push him in the pram to get him to sleep—one of his educators used to basically sit, rocking him, for the entirety of his nap. The fact that she would make that time for one individual child just shows the dedication and the patience that these educators provide. It's about time that they were given the respect that they deserve by the federal government.

Early childhood education and care has been through an absolute roller-coaster ride through this pandemic when it comes to the government's stance, and nothing has brought home how incredibly important this essential service is for families, our economy and our community more than this pandemic. I probably don't need to go through it again, but, basically, at first, and throughout lockdown—and we are seeing it again now, with Sydney and much of Queensland in lockdown and another recent lockdown in Victoria—early childhood education and care has been and is an essential service that has been required to stay open. But, as people are not working, the government is not stepping in to provide help for those families this time, to cover those extra costs. Our amendment has asked that they should, but I understand that the government is going to vote against that and I think that is incredibly irresponsible.

When COVID-19 first hit, it was only after pressure from Labor that the government finally stepped up to address the issue that this essential service needed to continue and that families that were out of work at the time couldn't cope with this. They then announced that it was free child care, but they didn't back the centres in and actually support them to provide that. Finally, we've got the childcare system that we see now, which is failing families, providers and our youngest Australians.

Costs are skyrocketing at the moment, and I'm sure all of us hear this from families in our electorates. I know that I certainly do, here in the electorate of Canberra, where we have some of the highest average childcare fees in the country, and I hear, very regularly, that families are not able to work as much as they would like because they simply can't afford it.

If the government really wanted to address this—rather than address the need to have something to say about childcare—and to actually fix the system, they would have a look at Labor's policy. We announced this last October and they have followed in our footsteps by announcing something about child care, but it simply does not go far enough. It doesn't benefit the number of families that ours does and it only benefits them for a short time. Labor's policy will benefit 97 per cent of families. We see this as an important economic measure. Our policy will benefit families, regardless of the number of children, right through until their children are in school, if they're accessing out-of-school-hours care. It benefits more families for longer, it does not differentiate on the size of the family, it has no age cut-off and it applies to all children using out-of-school-hours care during primary school. Eighty-six per cent of families in the system, or over 851,000 families, will be unambiguously better off under Labor's policy. Six per cent receive approximately the same benefit under both policies and only eight per cent will be better off under the Liberal's policy.

The ABS data confirms that Scott Morrison's childcare system has completely failed in less than three years. The cost of child care is now higher than it was even under the previous childcare system, with a 0.3 per cent increase—higher than it has ever been. The data shows that childcare costs are out of control, soaring by 2.2 per cent in the past quarter alone, more than three times CPI. Really importantly, the number of parents who say that they're not working mainly due to the cost of child care has increased by 23 per cent in the last year. That's around 91,700 parents who are not working because the cost of child care is too high. They want to work but they can't. This is a handbrake on our economy that we cannot afford, particularly as we're battling a global pandemic. The data also shows that the median cost of child care has soared by 5.6 per cent in the year from 2019 to 2022, to $523 a week on average. This is not good enough for Australian families.

In contrast, Labor has a plan to bring down the cost of child care and to keep it down for 97 per cent of families. An Albanese Labor government will introduce the 'cheaper child care for working families package', which will scrap the $10,560 child care subsidy cap, which often sees women losing money from an extra day's work. It will lift the maximum child care subsidy rate to 90 per cent, increase the child care subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000. It will also task the ACCC with designing a price regulation mechanism to shed light on costs and fees, and drive them down for good. And, as I mentioned previously, we will task the Productivity Commission with looking into a universal free childcare system which, ultimately—in my view—is what this country needs.

UNICEF's new report Where do rich countries stand on childcare? ranks countries on their childcare policies, based on affordability, access, quality and parental leave. Overall, Australia ranks a dismal 37th out of 41 countries. UNICEF found that Australia is one of only eight countries where child care consumes at least a quarter of the average wage. This is simply not good enough.

There's another question for the government: they're in government now but why does their package not start until July 2022? A good thing about that is that Australians are most likely to face an election before then and they can choose between these two policies and these two alternative governments. One is doing a quick fix that benefits some families, but only while they have two or more children in child care at once. The assistance will be ripped away from them when the older child starts school. Or there's a Labor government that deeply values early childhood education and care—what this means for our youngest Australians, for families and for parents wanting to enter the workforce or to increase their hours. We value the importance of this to our economy; it's going to make it better for 97 per cent of families. Ninety-seven per cent of families would be better off under Labor's policy, and 86 per cent would be better off under ours in comparison to the Liberal's policy, which won't start until July 2022.

I would urge people, if they haven't yet done this, to go to our online calculator and look at just how much better off they would be under Labor's policy. This is an incredibly important package, and the fact that we announced it back in October shows that this is something we are deeply committed to and that we understand— and that's because we are deeply committed to Australian families and we understand what is important to them. We listen to them in our electorates. We know how important it is for people to be able to afford child care to return to work, particularly as we battle with a global pandemic. Our policy will see those families better off. It will change that conversation at the kitchen table about who's going to return to work and who can afford it, as child care becomes more affordable. This is incredibly important for children, for families, for women and for our economy.

This pandemic has really shown us how important early childhood education and care is in a range of ways, including for our community. Last week was Early Learning Matters Week, and I had the pleasure of visiting Goodstart Early Learning at ANU. I wanted to go there to thank the educators for everything that they do, but I was honoured to also be asked to open their community food pantry. I think that this shows just how embedded these centres are in our community. They've opened a pantry—a local business built and donated the beautiful pantry, with the food also donated by local businesses, the O'Connor IGA and the O'Connor pharmacy, and by parents—because they had noticed the need in the community since the pandemic, probably including a lot of students from ANU and people in that vicinity who were needing help with these things, as well as families at the centre. And so, on a week that was about celebrating them, they decided to make it about something for their community. I think that says everything we need to know about early childhood education and care and how important it is within our communities.

Again, I thank those wonderful educators in my electorate and around the country. And I urge the government to think again about supporting our amendment to ensure that families can meet the costs of child care while in lockdown—a lockdown that so many Australians are now facing because this federal government has failed on the two jobs it had: to manage a vaccination rollout and to get a national quarantine system that was functioning well. If not for that failure, we would not be in this lockdown now.

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