Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I'll tell you one lot of price increases that they don't want us to talk about—that's the 40 per cent increase in childcare costs that occurred on their watch. There's one set of price increases that they don't want to talk about. We have already implemented policies which are going to address the 40 per cent increase in childcare costs that they were very happy to see occur on their watch. One of the first priorities that we addressed when coming into government was to ensure that households could make a choice of whether they wanted to go back to work three days, four days or five days a week, because we are addressing the price increases in child care by ensuring that the majority of Australian households can afford to pay for child care.

I can understand that the Leader of the House got a bit jumpy when I was talking about negotiations, and we are concerned to ensure that low-paid workers are able to access a bargaining stream which enables them to negotiate fairly. I can understand why the Leader of the House is very jumpy whenever we talk about negotiations, because the last negotiation he was involved in didn't go so well. He was able to provide $27 million worth of taxpayer money for a block of land worth only $3 million in Leppington, so whenever we talk about negotiations he gets very jumpy over there, because the last negotiation he was involved in didn't go very well at all. (Time expired)

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