Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

First, I want to echo the words of the opposition leader. They were shocking and terrible allegations that we all read about yesterday. Like any parent, when you read them it's that sinking feeling in your stomach. I want to echo his words and thank the work of the AFP and the police that are involved in that investigation. They, too, will struggle for many years, I'm sure, with the trauma of what they've done.

I will move to families. I commend the member for Parramatta. As one of the government ministers said today, he's very distinguished and accomplished. He gave some extraordinarily impressive numbers. The wonderful thing about numbers is that the numbers are the numbers, but they don't exist in the real world. This is sometimes the problem in this House. We talk about the numbers and we don't talk about the real world. He was very quick to talk about those inflation numbers.

There were a couple of things that happened in the world around that time. We talk about things that happened in the real world. I think most of us remember COVID. COVID existed. They don't remember COVID. COVID didn't exist in 2020 at all. It had no impact on the numbers that the member for Parramatta referenced. It was all the government of the day. COVID didn't exist and didn't have any impact on any of the economic challenges that we faced at that time. The invasion of Ukraine apparently did not happen in this world. The Treasurer likes to talk about that one-quarter that had significant inflation. That was the quarter that Russia invaded Ukraine—shock, horror! That's what it's about with this government. It's all about spin. It's not about dealing with what's happening in the real world.

Child care is another issue that is significant for many families. I'm fortunate in my electorate of Casey that we've got a wonderful organisation called Mums of the Hills. It was founded by Belinda after she fell off a ladder and was injured. She had a moment of realisation that she was completely isolated at home. She'd just moved into the Dandenong Ranges.

She was lucky that she wasn't seriously hurt, but she had a moment of realisation that, if she had been incapacitated when she'd fallen, she had no-one to call and no help nearby. Her husband was working in the city. She realised that she was all alone at that moment, so she created an online community called Mums of the Hills. That community has grown to over 6,000 mums supporting each other in the Dandenong Ranges, the Yarra Valley and all of the outer east of Victoria.

It's a valuable organisation. They've just moved from the online world to the real world and created their new hub in Belgrave. That's going to give mums a place to go for support and refuge. Belinda has done an amazing job supporting so many people. What she does so well is advocate for them in the challenges they have. I've been fortunate to get to know her since being the candidate and the member for Casey. Senator Hume and I visited her just a few weeks ago to talk about some of the challenges that mums are having in the Dandenong Ranges, the Yarra Valley and all through Casey. The first issue she raised was the childcare desert that exists in our community, particularly in long day care. This is really important because if mums are unable to have their children in care all day they can't leave the Dandenongs to go to work in the city, which is an hour away. It's impacting them, so we need to continue to create more places. If there is more supply, then prices will go down.

I spoke to Belinda today because I wanted her first-hand information on this. She talked about an ABC article that identified this startling figure: there are between 15.43 and 15.87 children competing for every one childcare place in our community. In my remaining time I want to talk about prices. The prices families are paying are not going down. They're going up. One family has gone from paying $162 per day to $175 per day. They are $8 a day worse off after the increase in the subsidy. Another family has had a $13 a day increase, from $129 to $142 a day. Another, a $65 a week increase—now $157 per day, up from $142 per day. In the real world families are paying more for child care, and they know it. They've been let down by this government, which has plenty of political— (Time expired)

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