Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the amendment made to the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022 by the member for Moncrieff, and I will speak to the bill and the amendments. My question, to start with, is: where is the detail from the Albanese government on this bill? Where is the plan to address the current workforce shortage and pressures being faced by educators? Where is the plan to address access to care, with many parents struggling to find a place for their child? Where is the plan to address thin markets and childcare deserts, where there are little to no services?

The term 'childcare desert' is worth highlighting. A report from the Mitchell Institute showed that around one-third of Australians live in a childcare desert. A childcare desert is described as being one place for every three children. Nine million Australians live in a place where only one in three children can actually access a place in child care. It's a game of musical chairs, and when the music stops, two children miss out. Labor are throwing $4.5 billion at child care, but not one cent is going to creating additional places or services. What good is a subsidy if there is no service? In our childcare deserts, parents need an oasis. The Albanese government has given them a mirage, a vision of how they could be benefited that is, in truth, just that: a vision, with nothing of substance. This issue is particularly pertinent in my electorate of Mallee. I have seven towns in dire need of a childcare service. Birchip needs child care. Boort needs child care. Cohuna needs child care. Murtoa, Pyramid Hill, Rainbow and Wedderburn all need child care.

The Prime Minister spoke yesterday in this very chamber about how this bill allows parents to return to work. Does he even understand the practicality of that claim? I have people in Mallee who want to go back to work, professionals who offer their towns vital experience and skills, but can't, simply because there is no place for them to leave their children. In fact, Labor has not only ignored the need for services in Mallee but deliberately scrapped funding that would have provided this in the form of the Building Better Regions Fund round 6. For example, the Yarriambiack Shire had submitted an application to fund a childcare centre in Murtoa. How does this bill help them build the services their community needs? It's simple. It does not. This government has shown no appetite to ensure extra places are created to meet the growing demand. But that's only one flaw in Labor's policy.

Let's not forget the existing pressure on the workforce itself. Early childhood educators have been under pressure for a couple of years. They worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic, and now, on the other side, workers are leaving the sector for other careers. Many educators have raised low wages, mental health issues, unappreciation, increase in red tape and burnout as their top concerns. There are currently 7,200 vacancies in this sector. We've asked the government several times how many additional educators will be needed under this policy, and it's failed to answer every single time. This government is getting good at not answering questions. Goodstart Early Learning, the largest not-for-profit provider, estimates an additional 9,000 educators will be needed by July 2023 to match the influx of children expected under this policy. Where are those educators coming from? The government has been doing a lot of talking in this space but clearly no listening.

In 2019, the Labor Party campaigned on a platform of higher wages for early educators. Now, in government, they seem to have dropped that. Instead of delivering higher wages, which they now have the power to do, they point to their fee-free TAFE places. This doesn't deliver the immediate relief to the workforce that is required. Solutions are needed now. Educators aren't happy about this, and, in turn, they are leaving the sector. This leaves childcare centres understaffed and short, and, in the end, it's our children who miss out.

Many centres are already capping enrolments and asking families to keep their kids at home because they don't have the staff to operate at full capacity. An increasing number of centres are applying for waivers because they can't retain teachers, who leave the sector for better pay and conditions in the education sector. It goes back to Labor offering a subsidy over actually helping the service be provided to the level it needs to be. With more children set to enter the sector from July 2023, how will the government ensure there is a workforce to meet those needs? Instead they offer this flawed policy that is going to benefit higher income earners over lower income earners.

Currently, families with a combined income of up to $355,000 are eligible for a childcare subsidy. Labor's bill will blow that out to $532,000. The government has done no modelling on whether increasing the threshold to $532,000 will actually increase the number of hours worked by those families or if it will actually increase the number of days they put their child in care. They can't tell us what the families in those brackets currently do, whether they access care five days a week or whether they use a mix of informal and formal arrangements or whether there is a stay-at-home parent. The bill will have taxpayers forking out an additional $22,524 for a family on a combined income of $360,000 a year with a minimum of two kids. Compare that with a family earning a combined income of $80,000. Taxpayers will fork out $2,488 a year for them. It's clear the government has done no due diligence on this policy and next to no modelling to show what the outcomes of this policy will be. It just heightens Labor's proven inability to mitigate cost-of-living pressures for ordinary Australians.

Australians know Labor cannot manage money. The last time Labor was in government, childcare fees skyrocketed by 53 per cent in just six years. Out-of-pocket costs are already rising, and fees will most likely rise before 1 July 2023, which may erode a significant amount of the increased subsidies before they're even in place. During our time in government, the coalition kept out-of-pocket costs low. The latest CPI data, from June 2022, showed that childcare costs came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022.

Labor has no plans to address rising out-of-pocket costs or rising cost-of-living pressures in child care—or anywhere, for that matter. The 12-month $10.8 million ACCC inquiry they have announced is too little too late. This inquiry will do nothing to alleviate current pressures in the sector, including workforce and access. The ACCC inquiry doesn't start until 1 January 2023 and won't report back until the end of next year. That means they will do nothing to address rising costs until 2024 at the earliest. Australian families cannot wait that long. They need relief now. With early education costs set to increase under this government, Australian families deserve to know if they will really be better off under Labor.

It's time the government focused less on politics and more on a plan to ensure a strong economy that supports Australian workers and families. It's what we did, after all. The model is right there for Labor to look at. We almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23, locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergartens, and made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years. More than 1.3 million children, from around one million families, have access to the childcare subsidy. As a result of measures under the coalition, 280,000 more children are in early childhood education. We abolished the annual cap on the childcare subsidy. Around 90 per cent of families using the subsidy are currently eligible for a subsidy of between 50 and 85 per cent. Since March 2022, we have provided a higher subsidy of up to 95 per cent for families with multiple children in early childhood education, increasing workforce participation and cheaper access to care. Our targeted extra support, introduced in March 2022, made a real difference. Childcare costs came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022. We saw women's workforce participation reach record highs at 62.3 per cent in May, compared to 58.7 when Labor left office.

Our communities, our families and our children deserve better than what the Labor government are offering. We walked the walk, while Labor simply talk the talk.

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