Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the government's Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022. Before I speak about the substance of what will be for many families in Boothby a transformational policy, I want to tell this chamber a story. It's a story familiar to thousands of Australian families, but with a slight twist.

My experience of motherhood is in some ways slightly unusual but in others very familiar. I had an established career when my former husband and I decided to start a family together, and my intention was to work as late into the pregnancy as possible, take maternity leave and then return to work sometime later on. However, this all happened a lot faster than I had planned, when I discovered I was pregnant with triplets. A triplet pregnancy puts a fair strain on your body. Consequently I ended up going on maternity leave at 18 weeks of pregnancy because I could barely walk. Going on maternity leave 20 weeks earlier than planned obviously puts a pressure on the family budget, as did suddenly having three babies instead of the usual one. Three times the cost of nappies, three times the cost of formula—you get the idea.

My babies came home with me a couple of weeks after they were born, and we were on the four-hour sleep cycle that parents of newborns know so well. As someone who valued her career, I still wanted to return to work in some capacity. I also needed a bit of a break from doing the same thing every four hours, to keep my sanity. So I returned to work two days a week at a nearby town, working as a rural project officer in the medical industry. It was really interesting, worthwhile work and reasonably paid. But three lots of childcare fees really bites into the family budget. Between child care, tax, and petrol to drive to work, I calculated that I was taking home an extra $20 a month. From memory, a packet of 60 nappies cost about $20 in the year 2000, and we would go through more than a packet a week. So, while every extra dollar helps, my $20 didn't contribute very much to the additional costs.

There were other benefits to me going back to work. Staying home with three newborns—preemies—24/7 on a four-hourly sleep cycle was overwhelming, and, when they were very small and couldn't sit up in a pram by themselves, I couldn't even leave the house by myself. The opportunity to work on something different from my role as a mother and have adult conversations was very valuable in helping me maintain my mental health in those early days. In retrospect, it also helped me to continue my career without paying the 'mummy price'—having a gap in my resume that would set my career progression back. And, as I was working in a rural area at the time, and there weren't too many other people with my background and skill set in the local area, I was also meeting a local skills need.

Despite the novelty factor that a triplet birth gives my story, my experience is one shared by many families. For that reason, I cannot commend this bill highly enough. First and foremost, once this legislation is fully implemented, child care will be cheaper for 96 per cent of Australian families. Passage of this bill will mean that 1.26 million Australian families will be able to access cheaper child care. In my electorate of Boothby, approximately 7,300 families will be better off, and, crucially, none will be worse off because of this bill. At a time when, as the Treasurer rightly noted last night, the cost of running a household and raising a family is going up, cheaper child care will be very welcome. That $20 packet of 60 nappies now costs around $35, and of course that's only the start. Over the past eight years, childcare costs increased by a whopping 41 per cent. It's absolutely no surprise to any of us here to hear that families are doing it very tough. That's where this plan for cheaper child care fits perfectly, for this key cost-of-living relief measure will not only benefit the family budget directly but also deliver social and economic dividends.

All the research tells us that one of the key strategies to tackle intergenerational poverty is intervention in the early childhood years. Children who access early childhood education are given an opportunity to learn through play and to develop social skills and developmental patterns that they simply don't get otherwise. And, as in my own example, it can be a huge relief for many new mothers.

But this is also a reform that will tackle gender inequalities that continue in this country. We know it is most often women who experience the greater disruption in their careers for taking time out to care for children. The 'mummy gap' and the 'mummy track' set back career progression for women. We pay the mummy price. This is partly illustrated by the fact that Australian women are more than twice as likely as men to work part time because of their caring responsibilities. Now, it's absolutely true that for many women this is precisely how they wish to structure their home and work life. But we also know that for many other women the cost of child care is simply too high for them to work as much as they would like to. If we make child care cheaper, it gives more families, and particularly women, greater choice in how they structure their family responsibilities.

This also points to the way in which this reform is a key economic reform. Given the global and local economic circumstances the Treasurer outlined, the government has had to be extremely strategic and targeted in the types of cost-of-living relief measures we are implementing, to make sure they build productivity and don't feed inflation.

We know that women's workforce participation is a huge untapped potential resource in the Australian economy. Female workforce participation was 57 per cent in 2005. Seventeen years later it has slightly improved to 62 per cent. That's five per cent in 17 years! Boosting women's workforce participation would help with one of the greatest economic challenges I hear from businesses when I'm out and about in Boothby. Pretty much every business I speak to, large and small, no matter what the sector, tells me about the skills shortage. They are crying out for workers, and this skills shortage has a very real impact on their viability and their ability to grow their businesses, and so it has a very real impact on our economy. One of the clear strategies to address this shortage is to tap into those people already in our community who want to work and who would work if we could remove the barriers. We know the impact childcare fees have on women when they are making decisions about whether to go back to work. If we make child care cheaper, at this bill does, businesses potentially gain access to thousands of workers. Treasury estimates that the measures in this bill will allow Australian women with young children to work up to 1.4 million additional hours per week in 2023-24 alone, and that's equivalent to an extra 37,000 full-time workers, at a time when industries across our economy in our community are crying out for staff.

There is one more really important factor that we should not overlook. Women returning to work has another financial benefit to their own long-term financial security. We know that women over 55 is the fastest growing demographic experiencing homelessness and poverty, and I can tell you that, when I worked in the homelessness sector, these women arrived at the doors of the shelter, and if they have any superannuation it was so small. This is partly due to low wages in the caring professions, but it's also partly due to interrupted careers. Long periods off work mean there are no contributions to their superannuation during those periods, and, by removing the financial barrier of childcare costs and enabling women to choose to return to work if they so choose, those women will also be contributing to their superannuation balance, to their own financial security.

This bill is a key piece of legislation taken to the last election, and I'm thrilled that we are here now, within the first six months, introducing it to parliament. It will benefit women, it will benefit families, it will benefit children, it will benefit businesses and it will benefit the economy. I commend this bill to the House.

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