Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

As has been said, as an opposition we supported the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022. But I want to focus on one of the issues raised by the member for Moncrieff for the government to consider, given this childcare legislation and potential future childcare legislation, and that is the question: who have you forgotten? We've heard about issues around access and workforce, and so I ask: who is not covered by your childcare legislation, and where will the additional 9,000 people needed to fill the extra demand actually come from? Having the places available or not having the places available but simply increasing the rebate that will increase the amount of time that children will spend in child care will require additional staff. Where will the 9,000 people needed to fill the extra demand for those extra days actually come from? Where is the plan that the government should have for the thin markets that exist in rural and remote areas?

I'm a proud rural member of this place. Many of the families who are desperate for child care live in regional and more remote parts of Australia, and they are equally desperate to get child care for their children. But there isn't funding in this bill for additional places. The funding is for existing places. Where is the funding for those additional places that are desperately needed and the services that are desperately needed? As I said, not one cent has been allocated to additional childcare places. We've heard about childcare deserts and that 50 per cent of areas that need those extra childcare places are in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. I have regional, remote and rural areas in my patch, and I want particularly to focus on one today, and that is the Augusta area.

Augusta is a tiny town, and I want to acknowledge the years of work put in by Kylie Lucas and Jasmine Meagher and the other fabulous women and mothers who have been trying to get child care in Augusta. Their first goal was to have a facility so that the community would be able to offer child care in such a centre, and I've been assisting them through that process. They were seeking support from the Augusta-Margaret River shire to upgrade a facility so as to offer child care in the first instance, but there hasn't been a serious commitment to this. In the absence of serious funding from the local government for this childcare facility, I suggested that they use the funding provided by the federal government through the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program that we put in place, and that the funding be used for this purpose. I note that Labor has not provided the phase 3 extension, funded by the coalition in our last budget, to these local governments at this point. So that isn't an avenue that's currently available for the Augusta Margaret River shire and for these wonderful women to be able to provide child care for their children in Augusta for the first time.

So I ask the government: when these families get their facility once those premises are available, when will they be able to access the childcare subsidy? It's not available under this legislation. However, this legislation contains childcare fee support for families earning up to $530,000 a year. Now, how do I explain that, and how does the government explain that, to the families who can't access child care at all? That's another question that Labor needs to answer around who's missing out in this legislation. And childcare fees may have increased since they introduced their legislation. So I'll keep working with those mothers and the families in Augusta. I would say to the government— (Time expired)

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