Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bennelong for his question and wish him well in his first speech in just about half an hour's time. Anyone that has children in child care knows how expensive it is. It's gone up by 41 per cent just in the last eight years. One of the most important commitments that we made at the election was to cut the cost of child care. This week, I'll introduce legislation to implement that commitment. It will cut the cost of child care for more than one million Australian families. That's good for children, it's good for parents and it's good for our economy.

For our children, it will mean they are better prepared for school. For parents, for mums in particular, it will make it easier to do more paid work if they want to. A lot of Australians want to work more, but, if they do, a lot of that pay is gobbled up in childcare costs, so it means that it's not worth it. This helps explain why 60 per cent of mums with children under the age of six are working part time rather than full time. If you make child care cheaper, that helps parents who want to work to work more hours and more days. For our economy, that means thousands more skilled workers. Treasury estimates that this will add up to 37,000 extra full-time workers to the economy in 2023-24. During the election, we also promised to get the ACCC to conduct an inquiry into childcare costs, and last week the Treasurer and I announced that this inquiry will start on 1 January. The ACCC will provide its interim findings before 1 July next year and it will deliver its final report by the end of next year.

Finally, the legislation that I'll introduce this week will also include another important measure. Last year, for the first time ever, progress towards the Closing the Gap target for school readiness for Indigenous children went backwards. The gap is getting bigger, not smaller. We've got to turn this around. We all know how important access to early childhood education is in making sure that our children are ready for school.

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