Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On election night, I spoke about the great mission of Labor governments to widen further the doors of opportunity for Australians, and that is precisely what this legislation, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022, is aimed at doing. When I had the great honour of becoming the Leader of the Labor Party, I put this reform at the centre of my first budget reply. At the time, it received vociferous opposition from the then government. They said that it was outrageous to suggest we should remove the cap on the childcare rebate, before they eventually made some small steps towards it themselves. They said that it was irresponsible to support wealthier people to receive more childcare support from the government, and they reversed their usual rhetoric about class envy in the way that they approached our announcement. We did so because, if you look at how we do two tasks at once—address cost-of-living pressures and do it in a way which boosts productivity and which doesn't put pressure on inflation—there is no better reform than the one that will pass the parliament today.

Just six months to the day, yesterday, after we were sworn in, we are passing a centrepiece of what we took to the Australian people in May and what we campaigned for over such a long period of time. Indeed, I well recall members of the media suggesting to me that we were visiting too many early learning centres. 'Why are we back, talking about child care again?' We did talk about it for the entire term, and we'll continue to talk about it as we see these reforms make a difference, because this is about economic reform. It was never about welfare. When any of our children decide to go to the local public school, universality in the public school system, just as in our public health system, doesn't require your credit card. It requires either just your Medicare card or just all children mixing. One of the ways you maintain social support for programs is through the principle of universality. When an issue is not about welfare but is about access and opportunity for all, then I see early learning as being part of that. Why is it that so many parents will say to you that they are better off once their child, little John or little Mary, reaches the age of five? All of a sudden they have better economic circumstances, but it makes no sense whatsoever for that to be the case—and it's not the case in most advanced economies in the OECD if we look at best practice.

The benefit of this reform is that it will boost workforce participation of women. It will add many thousands of full-time equivalents to the workforce at a time when we have skills shortages out there. The second benefit is that it will boost productivity by removing the disincentive for women in particular to work a fourth or a fifth day. It will enable them to enhance the careers that they have going forward. That will lead not just to higher incomes and boosts in productivity for their work.

It will also ensure that their retirement incomes are higher. It will enhance the productivity of businesses, enhance the income of working women and families and make a difference to governments' fiscal circumstances in the future. We know that the greatest rising source of poverty is older women who find themselves by themselves. They have the highest rate of increase in homelessness. We need to address the retirement incomes of women.

So, this is good for the youngest Australians but, in the future, it will be good the oldest Australians as well. That's why it has such strong support from the business community. But it's also good for our young ones. Over 90 per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years of life—over 90 per cent. If you can give people that good start in life it will, at a time when Australia is falling down on all of the indices of educational attainment, make an incredible difference to them, as well as straight out education in the traditional sense. One of the learning experiences that our youngest Australians get from early learning centres is that they learn to engage. They get that social learning that is so important—how to cooperate, how to share, how to engage with people for the first time. So, giving our kids the best start in life, boosting our economy, boosting productivity, boosting equity is what this legislation is about.

I want to thank and congratulate the ministers for their fine work on this. I also want to thank people out there like the Parenthood and other organisations who have been relentless in their support for this legislation. They've gone out there and said that this is a reform that really matters to them. I also want to thank those educators who've welcomed us into centres in every state and territory of the country I have been in and who work every day, underpaid and undervalued. They do that work because of their commitment and the sense of satisfaction that they get out of it, but they have been universal in their support for this reform.

There's more to do, but this is a great start as a part of what my government has seen as a priority, which is delivering on the commitments that we took to the Australian people and that we received a mandate for. The Australian people voted for change on 21 May, and today they have it, and, as a result, our future youngest Australians will benefit, families will benefit and our economy will benefit as well.

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