Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Labor amendment to the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Subsidy) Bill 2021. Australia's childcare system is fundamentally broken. It doesn't work for families and it doesn't work for the economy or for the country. It's holding back our productivity and stopping particularly women, who are usually the ones forced to stay at home when a couple can't afford both parents to go to work. It's holding people back from participating in the workforce to the extent that they would want to. Since the Liberals were elected eight long years ago, childcare fees in this country have risen by more than 36 per cent. In fact, their own education department—these are the government's own figures—predicts costs will rise by an average of 4.1 per cent over the next four years. This is in an environment of record-low wage growth. Let's be really clear, this is the government's economic policy: hold wages down—low wages are a deliberate design feature of the economy, as the government's former finance minister told us—and let childcare fees rise by four per cent. That's hurting families and puts a squeeze on them. The government have really dropped the ball when it comes to child care.

This bill implements one part of Labor's childcare policy. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I thank the government for finally recognising what we've been saying—that the childcare cap is bad policy. It's bad for families, especially women locked out of the workforce as I said, and it's bad for the economy. But the change doesn't start until July next year. It also fails to fix numerous problems in the system. Australia needs real reform of child care this year—now. There is no reason whatsoever that the government couldn't implement this change now. Labor said last year in the budget reply that we would have done it from 1 July this year.

The bill also does nothing for 75 per cent of families. Labor has a plan for cheaper child care for working families. This would see 97 per cent of Australian families better off. It would bring the cost of child care down and keep it down. Labor's plan would support more families for longer. Importantly, our plan has no age cut-off. It does not differentiate on the size of the family. You only get a reward from the government for that short time that you have two or more kids in care crossing over. Our plan applies to all primary-school-age children using outside-school-hours care.

The Liberals' childcare policy, if you can even call it a policy, is a stunt. It's half-baked. It's the sort of plan you have when you don't actually have a plan or want to have a plan, to try and trick people into thinking you were doing something. Compared to the government's policies—we've done the analysis, and it's been independently verified—Labor's plan would better support 86 per cent of Australian families. Only eight per cent of families would be better off under the government's policy.

As has been said, families will be able to compare plans when they vote. There's going to be an election before the government's plan comes into effect, so people can choose. There are two plans on the table: the Liberals' childcare plan that gives less support to fewer families and Labor's plan to give more support to more families for longer. Importantly, our plan isn't just good for families; it would boost Australia's economic growth, our GDP, by more than three times than the Liberals' effort because it would unlock the potential for both parents, if they want to—it's a family's choice—to participate in the workforce.

It's funny, isn't it? You can tell when the Liberals really don't want to talk about something, because, if there's one thing the Prime Minister is good at, it's having his photo taken and popping up, making announcements. Has anyone seen the Prime Minister near a childcare centre for months? I don't think it's something that the government wants to talk about. They really don't want to talk about child care, because they know, when Australians focus on the government's plan and Labor's plan, which one they'll choose. It's clear as day. If the government were really committed to their plan, they'd have their ministers and the Prime Minister all over the childcare centres. Photos of them with little kids would be everywhere. We're not seeing those photos. That's more telling than anything from this government.

The bill also does nothing to deal with the unfair impacts of lockdowns on families with kids in child care. For the last 18 months families across Australia have done the right thing and adhered to lockdowns and restrictions. Millions of Australians are doing it tough right now, including in your electorate, Deputy Speaker Freelander, in south-west Sydney. They're doing the right thing by staying home, balancing their work, difficult as it is, with children at home, and keeping their communities safe. But, for too many Australian families, doing the right thing has come with a very high price tag, because the government, in effect, has made families in many lockdowns pay for child care that they can't access.

That's the real issue right now. It's not copying a bit of Labor's policy in a half-hearted way that might come into effect next July. That's not actually the issue the parliament needs to be dealing with right now. Right now we have a confusing and inconsistent regime to support families and the childcare sector struggling through COVID lockdowns through much of the country. The rules are different and the support is different every time there's a lockdown. There's no predictability or certainty. It's up to random government whim whether they'll extend support or whether they'll extend some relief for that particular lockdown.

Sydneysiders have now rightly been exempted from fees, a couple weeks in, in their seemingly never-ending lockdown, but Victorians and South Australians were not given this relief this year. We need consistency and certainty. So Labor will move a technical amendment so that, when a lockdown or a stay-at-home order is announced, centres will automatically have the ability to waive the gap fees, so that there will not be random ministerial discretion for the incompetent ministers in government over there but certainty that people can plan on. We heard the Prime Minister tell us that his fourth economic response plan—his fourth or fifth set of rules he's made up—is to give businesses a little bit more certainty, so why not child care, childcare centres and families?

But, as I've said, action is now urgent. The childcare cap should be abolished now, not in a year. Action would also deal with the manifestly unfair situation that has particularly affected people in my home state of Victoria. Mark my words: if the government doesn't fix this, late this financial year the people in New South Wales are going to experience the bill shock that thousands of Victorians have experienced. Nothing was done by the government.

Take Radmila in my electorate. She has a two-year-old and a four-year-old. I know her well. I've helped her family with many issues over the last few years. She was told by the government, during Melbourne's months of lockdown last year, that she could keep her place in the childcare centre, so she did so in good faith. Of course, she wasn't actually able to use the spot during the lockdowns. She had to care for her kids at home and try to work full time. But, after Melbourne's lockdowns, late in the financial year, about last March, she opened the mail, and there was a letter from Centrelink, telling her—shocked—that her annual childcare subsidy was used up and that she'd now have to pay full fees for the rest of the financial year. The government didn't warn parents that they were using their childcare subsidy during the lockdowns and that that was going to hurt them later in the financial year. It never crossed their mind that, when they didn't have kids in the childcare centre for month after month after month, the government would be sneakily trotting this up towards the annual childcare subsidy, 'This is going to happen in New South Wales.' Radmila didn't have a spare, lazy $10,000 to cover two months of childcare fees without the subsidy, funnily enough. She had to pull her child out of care and try to work from home, full time, doing her professional job, with her child running around as well as caring for her other child and her profoundly disabled child, which has been the subject of other speeches and media attention—the NDIS, which is another disaster story under this government.

This change has affected thousands of families. The Herald Sun covered it. The government said, 'Let's not worry about it; it's only a few thousand families.' The Liberals effectively took these families' childcare rebates and used them to prop up the childcare sector, which was banned from getting JobKeeper. If you're a billionaire in this country, you'll get $12 billion from the government spread across businesses to increase their profits, but if you're a family or a struggling childcare centre, you don't get JobKeeper, and you don't get support from the government. In effect, they privatised their recovery and support for the sector by stealing the rebates from individuals who would need them later in the year and used them to prop up the sector because they didn't give them JobKeeper. It meant that, when the restrictions were raised, families reached the annual cap and were hit with fees they couldn't afford. They need to fix this or the same thing is going to happen in New South Wales. Then again, given the double standard treatment that Victorians are used to from this government, from the Prime Minister for New South Wales, it would be no surprise if they cotton on and fix it for gold standard Gladys and leave Victorians paying the bill. The government used Radmila's money to keep the childcare facilities open. Why did she pay the price when her children were at home with her?

Child care is vital. Almost 300,000 Australians are not in the labour force due to caring for children. I will just make a little aside. I feel uncomfortable making many of these speeches talking about child care. I passionately believe that early learning is the right language. This is about early childhood education. I understand that the community, the shorthand is child care, but I think I need to put on the record that early childhood education is what we need to be thinking about when making these investments. This is not means-tested welfare like the government continues to maintain. We need to change this country's mindset and move away from the notion that this is somehow childminding, like babysitting. This is investing in the next generation. We know that, from all the research and the scientists—and I know that you're a paediatrician, Deputy Speaker, and you're passionate about this—investing in those critical early years of a child's development, with structured early learning, gives the children the best possible chance in their life. It's also one of the best investments that we can make as a country, 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, to have a smarter, more productive Australia. We invest in babies and children now.

Labor's approach is visionary. It's transforming means-tested child care that's measured as welfare, as the government sees it, into a universal system, a universal entitlement. As I said, 97 per cent of families will be better off under our system. We don't assess a parent's income and have all these sliding scales if you want to send your kid to a primary school or a government secondary school. So why can't we, as a country, transform the so-called childcare system into an early childhood education system that stands up alongside all the other parts of our education system?

Of course, the government, in their party room, as we heard through the newspaper, are still debating the merits of whether we should even make these investments. We had Liberal and National MPs saying: 'Isn't investing more in child care just outsourcing parenting?' Women might be forced to work.' I don't envy the women in the coalition party room. I listened to some of the speeches earlier. I particularly acknowledge the measured contribution of the member for Curtin. She acknowledged the different sides of the debate very respectfully. She used facts and evidence to put an argument on the table—an argument that really should not have to be made in the year 2021—to try and bring some of male colleagues in the government party room, given those ridiculous comments that were leaked to the media, and cajole them gently with facts and evidence. The barrier to women's participation: if both parents want to go to the workforce, they can end up spending 40, 50, 60 per cent of any extra dollar they earn. In some cases, they can spend up to 80, 90 per cent. Why would you go to work to earn effectively 10 per cent of whatever the wage is, with the rest going back to child care? We can change this.

The bill only highlights that this government does not care about working families. They're half-hearted about the change. They've just stolen one little bit of Labor's policy without actually understanding it's the whole package that makes that visionary transformation in the system. In March, Labor proposed an amendment that would automatically exempt services from charging families to keep their doors open. The government voted it down. For the sake of working families, I really hope they won't make the same mistake again—in their arrogance and their refusal to accept a good idea from Labor. Remember they said no to wage subsidies at the start of the pandemic, then a couple of weeks later they went, 'Oh, actually, maybe we need a wage subsidy.' They designed it badly to give away billions of dollars to companies to increase their profits, but we credit them for finally taking up our idea. You could save families a lot of pain by learning from your mistakes and taking a good idea when you see one. Support our amendment.

In closing, at the next election Australian families will have the chance to vote and to choose between the two plans: Labor's plan, which provides more help to more families for longer and that 97 per cent of families will benefit from, or the government's plan.

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