Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Parents with children in early education, or in before- and after-school care, know more about the challenges of rising costs than many of us. This is why our cheaper childcare policy is so vital. It's to make it more affordable for families to allow their children the chance to have a quality early learning experience, which, we know, will pay so many dividends in years to come. It's a long time since my children were in school or preschool, but I well remember that juggle. There's nothing worse than having to do that juggle, with the additional complications of a complex system where you're actually penalised if you work more days. That's the sort of thing that we want to see an end to, and this legislation, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022, will do that.

The cost of early learning has jumped by a whopping 41 per cent in just the last eight years, under the watch of those opposite. This legislation will lead to the costs being cut for more than a million families. Ninety-six per cent of families who are currently using early education and care will be better off under these changes, and no family will be worse off. This is a really significant way to help people combat, at one level, the rising costs and challenges that their budgets are facing.

For the electorate of Macquarie, which I'm so proud to represent, this will affect more than 6,000 families who are already accessing early learning, and there'll be more who'll take advantage of it once the costs are lowered. We've got 112 locations in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury, with 101 providers. They are an amazing group of people who provide excellent supportive care. You know, when you're caring for and educating kids, you're also dealing with lots of parents, and sometimes those parents need a bit of care, too, as they juggle their responsibilities. More than half of the childcare services in my electorate are run as not-for-profits; they're community-run or they're school based. So that paints a picture of where some of the benefits of this are going to flow through to and where parents are going to be able to be well supported.

Now, why is this needed? I often get people of my generation asking: 'Why do you even need this? What is the problem that they face?' To get a picture of it, we only have to talk to people in their 20s or 30s with kids. These are families where the discussions weigh up the cost of care against the bonus of working an extra day or two, where the opportunity for extra work might mean that not a single extra dollar comes in the door because of the way it changes a subsidy for the care of the children. About 60 per cent of Australian women who have children under the age of six are working part-time in paid work rather than full-time. The cost of child care is a massive roadblock, stopping a lot of Australians from going back to paid work. That's because, often, working the fourth or fifth day is gobbled up in childcare costs. If it's a promotion you're being offered, the additional pay can see people lose subsidies and end up not financially better off in any way, and, potentially, worse off.

According to the Bureau of Statistics, last year 73,000 people who wanted work didn't look for work because they couldn't make childcare costs work for them. Well, this will change that. If we can make child care cheaper, it will mean more Australian families—and, in particular, a lot of Australian mums—can go back to work. In this chamber I think we've heard that we're talking about a million hours of person-power being freed up, potentially—the equivalent of 37,000 full-time jobs. Now, that's something that businesses in my community would welcome, because they are desperately looking for skilled workers at the moment. What that means is that, in the 2023-24 financial year, this could make a real difference for them.

So this is a government that's looking to the future. It's making decisions now that we know will take a little bit of time to flow through. It will also take a lot of adjustment, in terms of how the system is run. We need to give the system time to do it and get up to speed. I recall reading that when those opposite made changes to the childcare system it took 50 weeks for the systems to be able to be adapted to them, so these things need time. We'll be working to do ours by 1 July next year.

It is a big and important reform. And it's not just going to benefit parents and those businesses who will have access to more workers. It's also going to be great for kids, because it means there are going to be more kids better prepared for school. All the research shows how important these formative years are. It's a time when play and music and games can help with development. Early learning is also a place where developmental problems can be identified and dealt with quickly. In my family, one of my kids, at about the age of three, had a speech issue that was picked up by his educators, and, thanks to early intervention, it was quickly addressed before he went to school. It wasn't something that he had to be teased about at school. It was something that was able to be looked after through incredible work by a speech pathologist. This is what early education does. It prepares children for school and prepares them for life, and we know that when we invest in these early years we get really great outcomes.

As a parent, I saw the benefits of quality early learning, and, fortunately, as the federal member for Macquarie, I get to see it now as well in places like Euroka Children's Centre at Blaxland. It's a community based service for children from six weeks to six years, which, like so many similar services in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, runs on a tight budget so that it's as affordable as possible for families. I am delighted that, as we promised during the election, last night's budget contained my election commitment of $20,000 for improvements to the backyard play space for this childcare centre. When I visited in March, they were thinking of things like slides and a rock wall and scrambling nets—creating a space where kids can safely be brave. This is the power of quality early education. So this is good for children, it's good for parents and it's good for our economy.

Let's just go over a few of the details here. From July 2023, we will lift the maximum childcare subsidy, the CCS, rate to 90 per cent for families with a combined income of under $80,000 and increase the subsidy rates for families earning less than $530,000, so many families are going to benefit. We'll keep the higher CCS rate for families with multiple children aged five and under in care. It's not just for your first child; it's for your second and your third and even your fourth. The plan for cheaper child care will make child care more affordable for, as I said, around one million, in fact 1.26 million, families. Here's an example. A family on a combined income of $120,000, with one child in care, will save $1,780 in the first year of this plan. So this is a genuine saving to people's budgets.

The bill also helps families make more informed choices, because it puts in some measures to deter fraud. That's an extra thing that we've added. One thing that I know will resonate with a lot of workers in the sector is that, in order to help retain and attract workers, the bill also allows providers to offer discounted childcare fees for early childhood education and care workers. That's a really sensible thing to do when we know that getting the workforce is a really key part of it.

I do want to acknowledge that, as we've heard in this chamber, finding a place in a centre can be a real challenge for parents. Only two days ago, I was on the phone to a mum from Sackville, who had been at the end of her tether trying to find a place. She's been trying to work from home, with a young child, and she feels huge relief that she's found a place for that child next year. They'd had orientation, and it was all looking really good. That is a positive outcome, but there are many families where this is a huge struggle. That's one of the reasons why we need to now support centres to be able to expand and to skill up the workforce. That is why I am so proud of our announcement of 1,469 new places at university being quarantined for early education training. That will be nearly 1,500 people moving through that training process. We will not have them tomorrow but we will have them. We also have a significant number of fee-free TAFE places for all our areas of skill shortage, of which childcare workers is definitely one. So there are things in place. We're not just standing here saying: 'Oh, it's a problem. No-one has done anything about it for the last 10 years. Gee, it's too hard for us.' We're recognising that there has been an issue and there has not been the work done. We're prepared to do the work. We know there's going to be some time for those workers to flow through and come online, but we'll be supporting centres so that people in the Macdonald Valley and Wisemans will hopefully have an easier time than they have had in trying to revive an early learning centre.

I want to take a quick moment to give a shout-out to two incredible women in the Blue Mountains, Sarah O'Carrigan and Dr Jenna Condie, who looked at the problem of not being able to find a childcare centre and set up Bub Hub Mountains, a co-working creche space. I've visited it in Winmalee. It uses existing OOSH facilities and brings mums together. There is a shared way of caring for the kids. This is a really innovative way of going about it, and I really take my hat off to these women. They knew they wanted to work. They knew that it was hard to do it in a way that worked for them. They have come up with a design, and they're piloting it to see how well it works for other mums. This is women solving women's problems, and this legislation is driven very much by the women on this side of the House but also by all the men who are dads and want to see a really fair deal for families with young kids. I'm very pleased to be supporting our Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022.

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