Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Throughout the last election campaign I had many conversations with people right across my electorate, and the one thing that always got them excited was our plan for delivering cheaper and more accessible child care. Today, we can finally begin to deliver this election commitment with this bill. When this bill passes, some 6,500 families within McEwen will directly benefit from these reforms. It's not only an election promise but also a cost-of-living measure introduced by this government to give more Australians and their families a fair go. It has the added benefit of producing a significant productivity dividend that we're able to measure, and sets the groundwork for other election commitments, such as working to close the gender pay gap and the retirement income gap, and starting work on Closing the Gap measures for Indigenous Australians, which the last government neglected to do.

The bill means 96 per cent of families will be better off. Numerically, that's around 1.2 million families receiving benefits from these reforms. Considering how childcare costs increased by 41 per cent over the past eight years, these reforms alleviate some of the financial burden that many young families are facing. Labor are making sure that we are working with Australians to guarantee everyone can make ends meet. From July next year we will help families by increasing subsidy rates for any family earning less than $530,000 a year, and we will lift the childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families with a combined income of under $80,000. The bill supports more families who have more than one child under five in child care by keeping the higher childcare subsidy rates for those in that position.

Additionally, under these proposed changes, families with combined incomes of $120,000 with one child in care will save up to $1,780 in the first year of this plan. This means no family will be worse off under Labor's new childcare plan. The legislation not only benefits families but also specifically benefits the children of Australia, giving more opportunity for Australian children to access early education. This improves children's readiness for primary school, and we've seen that students who access early education have improved school and learning outcomes. Labor are focused on delivering our children the best opportunities because, put simply, they are our future.

These reforms will not only help families with daily living costs but also give parents more flexibility to return to work if they would like to do so. This unlocks skilled workers to come back and participate in the workforce, increasing economic productivity. According to the ABS, some 73,000 workers want to return to the workforce but are unable to because of childcare responsibilities, which were only exacerbated by the cost of the early learning system. We want to re-engage those workers and present more opportunity for them to have stable employment if that is something that they want.

The legislation allows parents with primary care to take on more secure work without worrying about the effects that it might have to their subsidy claims. Under the current system, if the primary care worker works more than three days a week, they are often worse off due to the financial penalties they face by not having access to the childcare subsidy, meaning that household budgets must always take a hit and that it is increasingly difficult to balance work, life and family needs. Families are put in a position of having difficult conversations on whose career is to be put on hold or who will take on more insecure work. The impacts affect us all. Like a lot of grandparents, my wife had to drop a day of work per week to look after our two beautiful granddaughters, Ava and Lacey, so my daughter could get full-time work. The cost of child care meant she was actually going to lose money by going to work. There are many families across places like Wallan, Whittlesea, Doreen and Mernda where people are paying up to $3,000 a month in child care. That is more than mortgages. That can't happen. It has got to stop. We have got to address this problem, which has been allowed to fester for the last nine years without any support from the previous government.

As I've mentioned, both parents increasingly share the load of parenting responsibilities, but the fact of the matter is that women are still expected to shoulder most of the child's caring responsibility. The cheaper childcare scheme will help us tackle the economic insecurity that face mainly women when they start a family by giving them more opportunity for their children to get to early learning. Currently, women are at a disadvantage, with the system creating a situation where women must often take on more insecure work or work less, often in casual roles. It means they miss out on benefits that full-time and contract work can provide, including paid leave, increased contribution to their superannuation and the ability to gain other benefits. This all contributes to the gender pay and retirement income gap. We can't begin to fix these gaps until we fix our broken childcare system and lay the foundations to tackle these issues.

We're also committed to fixing the failings of the previous government by providing more support to First Nations children and families. In 2020-21, for the first time since the targets were established, and specifically on Closing the Gap target No. 4, developmental readiness for school, this nation's progress had gone backwards. We can't let that happen again. That is a national shame. To remedy this, we are providing 36 hours of subsidised early childhood education a fortnight, no matter the level of the family's activity. We will help improve overall First Nations children's readiness for future schooling.

We are committed to building a brighter future for all Australians and to providing everyone with more opportunity, whether it be for our children or our families, or participation in the economy. That means closing the gap for Indigenous Australians. It means implementing a multifaceted approach to closing gender and retirement income pay gaps. We know that increased accessibility to our early learning system will increase demand in a sector that we already need to entice people to enter and to come back to. We've heard a lot today about wages and conditions. Let's remember we were the ones that were standing up to support early childhood teachers to come back into the system, to give them the dignity and the respect that they deserve for doing such an important job. That's one of the stark differences between us on this side and the members of the Liberal and National parties.

We know that increased accessibility to our early learning system will increase demand, and that's why Labor is introducing these measures in the bill, such as further discounting of childcare fees for early childhood and care workers. We're supporting this legislation with the commitment to another election promise—465,000 TAFE places to meet current and future needs, especially when the care economy is based on shortages that were identified by the National Skills Commission.

We heard previous speakers on that side of the chamber talk about 'early education deserts', places where you can't get child care. But the only thing they never said is 'In nine years of government we did nothing to fix that.' That's the interesting bit. Suddenly all these problems, according to them, have happened since the election. Before that, it was all rosy. We know that this has been a problem. We have areas where there are 700 kids that can't get access to child care. This has not just happened now that a new, decent government is in place. This was happening beforehand, and the results of the previous government's failure are what we are dealing with today. It's the one consistent thing that we can say since coming to government: we are here cleaning up their mess.

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