Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Today, I speak in support of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. I support this bill because it's another step towards an Australia where all children and their parents can access the child care they need, when they want to. Child care is good for kids, and it's good for parents. Wide-ranging benefits come when government supports an accessible and affordable childcare system. For children, it supports their cognitive, social and emotional development and prepares them for the challenges that life throws at all of us.

One of the greatest indicators of success in the first year of school is the quality of the educators and the education in child care. For parents and caregivers, it helps make it easier to balance parenthood and work. This benefits the whole community, because so many mums and dads work in vital jobs in our regions, whether that be nursing, teaching, psychology, running a small business, or so many other jobs and professions.

This bill is going to see more children receive life-changing early education by guaranteeing all families at least three days of subsidised child care each week, regardless of the parents' activity level. Families that undertake work, study or training for more than 48 hours per fortnight will be guaranteed 100 hours of childcare subsidies each fortnight. Over 67,000 families in Australia will have their childcare entitlements increased under this bill. It will benefit low-income families especially, by saving them on average $1,460 per year.

The three-day guarantee of child care under the bill replaces the activity test. The activity test required a parent to work, study or volunteer to qualify for their childcare subsidy. It's been around since 2018 but evidence shows it is simply failing to achieve its objective. The Australian Institute of Family Studies found that it is not increasing parent workforce participation as it intended and, instead, has operated to disproportionately exclude vulnerable children from accessing child care. It's a handbrake on intergenerational equity and it hurts our most vulnerable families. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission—the ACCC—the Productivity Commission, the government's Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce have all recommended the activity test be rethought. The proposed reforms to the activity test to deliver the three-day guarantee also back in calls from Thrive by Five and the Parenthood—two groups that I want to knowledge for their tireless work in advocating for universal child care. I unequivocally support removing the activity test. As an independent member of parliament and conscientious legislator, when I see evidence that shows a policy doesn't stack up, I back legislation that says, 'Well, let us stop this.' Every child must be able to access all the social, cognitive and emotional benefits that come with child care, regardless of their parents' employment situation. Let's remember that providing a childcare subsidy is first and foremost about ensuring a child has the best start to life.

This bill is a positive step towards making child care more affordable to families, but making child care affordable is only one piece of the puzzle and achieves very little if there aren't any childcare places available. Across the country, nearly six million Australians live in a childcare desert, meaning that there are more than three children per available childcare space. This is being felt the most in rural and regional Australia, where we're experiencing childcare deserts at nearly double the rate of major cities. According to the ACCC, in inner-regional areas like Wodonga, Benalla and Wangaratta in my electorate, there are three times the number of waitlist places held by children under two years old than there are places offered. So this is real for us.

Since being elected to the parliament in 2019, I've noticed a substantial increase in constituents contacting my office about their experiences with child care, and their dominant experience is childcare shortage. Again and again, I'm hearing of years-long waitlists and hour-long commutes, forcing parents and particularly mothers to scale back their hours at work or not go back to work at all. I'm hearing of GPs who can't work because they can't find childcare places. This is one of the reasons we have GP shortages right now. The waitlists for a childcare place are ridiculously long. Parents are putting their children's names down for childcare places eight weeks into pregnancies, and, when their children are 12 months old or older, there still aren't places for them. Take Megan from Laceby in my electorate. Megan has been waiting more than two years for a childcare place to become available at her nearest centre in Wangaratta. When my office spoke to her yesterday, she said she's actually given up on finding a spot near home and, instead, is driving her daughter to Benalla—an hour round trip—twice a day. Not having a childcare place for parents, especially women and mothers, has detrimental career and income impacts. Hannah in Wodonga had attained high standing in her profession—and a mortgage. When she and her husband had their first child, they'd prepared as best they could and put themselves on waiting lists in the early stages of pregnancy. So you can imagine their shock when the time came to go back to work and they could only get care three days a week. Keep in mind that in Wodonga there are 2.4 children for every available childcare place. Because extra care could not be found, Hannah had to reduce her work to four days a week. Like with many couples, Hannah earns less than her male partner. Therefore, they made the decision that she will work part time instead of him. So Hannah's income has been reduced by 20 per cent each every week. She is missing out on 20 per cent of her superannuation. This is why we need childcare systems that work for all of us, but especially for mothers.

I hear from mums driving their children 20, 40 or 60 kilometres to neighbouring towns just so they can find a centre with availability. In Wangaratta, Amy is studying to be a nurse. There are not enough childcare places in Wangaratta to accommodate her son. She says:

Twice a week, I drive 50 kilometres—about 40 minutes each way—to Yarrawonga. I study at the library in Yarrawonga while my son is at daycare, as the driving time and cost would add up if I returned to Wangaratta.

Day in, day out, Amy is having to make hard decisions about cost and time versus care and connection, and, like with so many families, Amy is pushed to the brink of burnout because her family cannot access the child care they need.

I'm also hearing from childcare providers who are trying to solve these problems and make child care more available. This includes local governments, which are increasingly taking on the role of providing child care in regional towns because the private market is failing. Local governments are stepping in to fill the gap but are being hamstrung by the increasing cost of providing high-quality care and the cost of building the infrastructure needed to run a childcare centre. Alpine Shire Council in my electorate is currently seeking funding to redevelop the Myrtleford Mountain View Children's Centre, which is currently unfit for purpose with insufficient capacity. They want to redevelop the centre to increase capacity to 160 childcare places, which would have an enormously positive impact for families on the waiting list as this small town and its surrounds continue to grow. Next door to Alpine is Indigo Shire Council, which is also asking for support for the Beechworth Early Years Hub to build a modern kindergarten and childcare facility in Beechworth to address significant service demand and infrastructure challenges.

What all these stories show is that we simply do not have enough supply of childcare places in regional Australia. While I support changes to the childcare subsidy that make care more affordable for families, it simply won't benefit people in my electorate if they can't access care in the first place. Like me, the government recognises there is no silver bullet to fixing our childcare deserts, and that's why we must focus on increasing supply in the regions, growing the workforce and supporting the viability and sustainability of existing services.

I acknowledge the government have made a start in all these areas. Late last year, the parliament passed a 15 per cent wage rise for early educators, and the bill before us is a long-awaited measure to ensure more families can access subsidised child care, making it much more affordable. The government have also started to tackle the infrastructure problem by announcing a $1 billion Building Early Education Fund, the BEEF, to build more than 160 new childcare centres and deliver 12,000 additional places in areas of shortage. The BEEF includes $500 million in grants for not-for-profit childcare providers and state and local governments to establish new services and increase the capacity of existing services. The National Farmers Federation backs the government's Building Early Education Fund because regional towns will need it the most. They are calling on the coalition to support the BEEF, but it's a mystery why they won't. If they truly supported regional Australia, as they claim, the National Party—and I have the minister right here—would be calling for it to be beefed up even further.

The $500 million for the grants to build or expand services will deliver only a 1.7 per cent increase in childcare places nationwide. This is hardly going to shift the dial for Indi, and it won't meaningfully address existing shortages, let alone the increased demand that will result from the bill before us now. I want to see the BEEF deliver more for regional areas, and I urge the government and the coalition, for that matter, to commit to doubling the BEEF grants to $1 billion. This would be an investment in our children's future commensurate to the scale of the challenge before us. If this government are serious about making childcare universal, they cannot do it without regional Australia. Report after report is clear that to grow access to child care in regional Australia, you must invest in supply, and you must invest in the workforce. So, as the government rolls out funds under the BEEF, I will be watching closely to ensure that it is distributed fairly, because this government have a shaky record with previous programs delivering childcare funding.

The Community Child Care Fund supports providers with operational expenses to keep their doors open, particularly areas that are disadvantaged—regional and remote and Indigenous communities. But the fourth round of the Community Child Care Fund saw 75 per cent of funding disappear from my electorate of Indi. This is funding that supports care outside school hours in places like Yackandandah, Whitfield, Greta, Benalla, Moyhu, Mount Beauty and Rutherglen. Some of these services have received this funding for more than a decade, and to lose it so suddenly has come as a shock to principals, families, educators and businesses.

I met with the minister as soon as my office discovered the extent of the issue, and I subsequently asked the minister in question time what the government is doing to ensure that these services in my electorate don't close. I made it absolutely clear that we could not lose the services. It would hurt these rural communities. Fortunately, I've now helped to secure emergency funding for five of these services, and I thank the minister's department for the response to the collapse in funding in my electorate. But I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, and I call on the government to move the program from a competitive grant process to a demand-driven non-competitive system. This would mean all providers that can prove that they require government support should receive government support.

This bill alone is not enough. It's simply one step among many that we must take if we're to truly fix our childcare system in Australia. I urge the government and the coalition to do more when it comes to fixing the childcare deserts in regional communities like mine. Doubling the Building Early Education Fund grants to $1 billion would be a jolly good start. We must also change the Community Child Care Fund to a demand-driven program that means that regional and remote communities don't have to compete in competitive funding rounds just to keep their vital childcare services and centres open.

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