Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The late Christopher Hitchens was once at a forum talking about global poverty, and he said:

The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women.

We know that where we give women in particular more choice to go back to work—and it's about choice—productivity lifts and prosperity lifts. A key part of that choice is effective child care and affordable child care.

Our family has been very lucky. We haven't had to spend as much on child care as other families; we've leaned heavily on parents who happen to live nearby. But not everyone has that choice, for a variety of reasons—they've moved interstate, their parents have passed on or they're not capable or able. An affordable, effective childcare scheme is key to workplace productivity, fairness, opportunity and prosperity.

But, like the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, the energy crisis—if all these things could be solved by good intentions and the headline of an act, I think this parliament would not have much work to do. That's as easy as it is, apparently: 'You want to fix housing? Come and vote for the housing bill. You want to fix energy? Vote for our energy bill. You want to fix child care? Come and vote for our childcare bill.' That seems to be the extent of the solution: just come and vote for the bill with the title. It's a PR move. It's a move driven by public relations and spin rather than actual substance in dealing with the policy.

The member for Cowper, before me, was very passionate and emphasised he is from a regional area. To be fair, there are people on both sides from regional areas. As someone in metropolitan Melbourne, Bendigo is a regional area! My good friend here from South Australia is from a very large regional area. These problems are particularly manifest in regional areas. Again, people living in regional areas are less likely to draw on the luxuries I had of grandparents living nearby because, for work and other reasons, they've had to move to a particular part of Australia.

The member for Moncrieff has put this motion together, and I congratulate her for it. Let's go to some key parts of it, because it's important to recognise what we are debating:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) the Government's Cheaper Child Care policy has driven up the cost of early childhood education and care for families—

That's a fact. It has driven up the costs, and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise. Again, good intentions don't lead to good policy if you haven't done the work—

(b) families are reporting increases to the cost of their daily fees in excess of $20 per day;

For some in this place, who earn the salaries we do—we all got a pay increase recently, but most Australians didn't. That is a lot of extra money for them to find every day—

(c) the Government's inability to manage the cost of living crisis—

Again, the childcare crisis is a subset of the overall inability to manage the economy, to keep interest rates down, to keep energy costs down and to keep the entire cost of living down, including food on the table—

(d) the Government's inaction to address workforce shortages—

Again, this isn't with the benefit of hindsight; this was all flagged by the shadow minister and members here with me. It was obvious there would be workforce shortages. The work was not done—

(e) families continue to be unable to access early childhood education and care, particularly in regional and rural areas.

I tell you what: even in metropolitan areas, you are seeing families struggle to find an affordable place in a childcare centre. That's not good for prosperity, productivity, fairness or opportunity, despite what the heading says.

Again, the member for Cowper raised a good point—he raised it passionately—about the issue of housing. You can't solve the workforce shortages if people don't have somewhere to live, and underneath so many of the problems that Australians are facing is a government that is not seriously addressing housing. It is doing it through the headline of an act. That's it: just a headline or a bill that hasn't passed yet. So we call on the government to take this seriously, move beyond the talking points, move beyond the spin and actually solve problems for Australians.

See this speech in context