Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is crisis after crisis, as the member for Wright interjects. It is crisis after crisis, and we heard a bit of that in question time today.

Unfortunately, Labor has failed to address the supply-side constraints, and in fact I think they've made it worse through this bill. Over the last three years, Labor has failed to meaningfully address supply-side constraints. Modelling from the Productivity Commission shows that most of the children affected by the activity test changes live in major cities. Families in thin markets and childcare deserts, who have little or no access at all to child care, will be the most disadvantaged by this move. That's a concern. When we've got a bill that's going to adversely impact regional and remote communities, of course the coalition are going to be deeply concerned about that. We think it's not thought through properly, and we're hoping that the Senate committee that's looking into these issues will have the opportunity to analyse that properly—to do a proper assessment about what the impacts are really going to be. What does this mean for supply? Particularly, what does it mean for supply in regional and remote communities or areas where there are, for other reasons, childcare deserts?

One of those areas is the islands in my electorate. I'm blessed to have the Southern Moreton Bay Islands and North Stradbroke Island in my electorate. We've got one child care looking after all the Southern Moreton Bay Islands. Petrae McLean and her team do a wonderful job, but, unfortunately, they get very little support from any level of government in the work that they do. They're often dealing with kids with very complex needs from one of the lowest socioeconomic brackets that we have within Queensland. Yes, we are a stone's throw from the centre of Brisbane, but there is some real disadvantage there. I would like to see the federal government provide a lot more support to centres like that, who are operating on the fringes of our major cities, taking on serious challenges, and doing it with such commitment and with such care for our kids.

We also have concern about the lack of flexibility in these changes. Families have a right to choose what their work life and family life look like, and the coalition respects this choice. Labor's three-day guarantee does nothing for families who choose to remain at home and raise their children until primary school or families who use flexible arrangements such as grandparents or nannies, but, of course, all Australians are going to have to pay for the changes. The bill also does nothing for parents who need flexibility, such as families who do shiftwork or work non-standard hours.

We're also very concerned about the discrepancy in the costings on this bill. We believe the figure of $426.7 million over five years is very undercooked and the true impact of removing the activity test may not be fully known. The department has been unable to advise how many families are eligible for the CCS but are not enrolling their children or how many families are completely disengaged from the CCS. So it's total guesswork. It seems that they haven't actually got the understanding of what the impact of this policy is going to be, so it becomes very difficult to actually put a dollar figure on it. It seems that, in the final week of parliament, we're just trying to push these things through without having a proper sense of the cost. And, of course, the costings don't account for the groups that I mentioned earlier.

What we do know is that the Productivity Commission's 2024 A path to universal early childhood education and care report costed the complete removal of the activity test at $2.3 billion per year. That is a long way from $426.7 million over five years, which is the estimated impact—$2.3 billion per year is obviously a lot more than that. The PC's modelling suggested the complete removal of the activity test would increase hours of early childhood education by four per cent. It also estimated it would lead to a 0.9 per cent decrease in hours worked by sole parents and primary-care parents in coupled families. So we've got very serious concerns about what this is going to cost the taxpayers.

We're also concerned about what this is going to mean for parents in terms of affordability. Some sections of the community have labelled the three-day guarantee a cost-of-living measure, but, in reality, it is nothing of the sort. Since Labor came to power, the cost of child care has increased by 22.3 per cent, and this is the lived experience of myself and many other parents of early childhood education students. You get a lovely subsidy increase, and what happens immediately? You get an email from the childcare provider that says, 'We've upped our fees to match that,' and more. The real impact is that it has gone up by 22.3 per cent in this term. The last time Labor was in government, the cost of child care skyrocketed by 53 per cent in six years—my goodness! I'm glad I didn't have kids in child care over that period. Maybe the deputy speaker did. Since Labor's Cheaper Child Care policy came into effect, out-of-pocket costs have increased by 12.7 per cent. That's certainly the message from constituents that I'm hearing loud and clear, particularly from the mums at the various childcare centres that I visit.

The majority of families accessing CCS will not see a reduction in their childcare costs because of this legislation. I think in the final few minutes of my contribution, what I might like to do is just quickly reflect on the LNP's record in this regard, because, really, I think the Australian people are going to have to make an assessment. Potentially, this could be the second-last sitting day of the term—we'll see. Very shortly, the Australian people will have to make an assessment as to who is going to look after their best interests in this area of policy. When we were last in government, we almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23, and locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergarteners. We made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years. More than 1.3 million children had access to the Child Care Subsidy, from about one million families. Under the coalition, 280,000 more children were in early education since the start of the coalition's time in government, and our targeted extra support introduced in March 2022 made a real difference. Childcare costs actually came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022.

Because of that—some would say largely because of this—we saw women's workforce participation reach record highs at 62.3 per cent in May 2022, compared to 58.7 per cent when the coalition came to government. When you consider that record and you consider all the changes that were made over the course of those nine years and the impact that was able to have in that sector, and you look at the cost increases that we've seen since this government has come in, despite its strong rhetoric, I think we can make a clear distinction between these records. We're concerned that this bill won't do anything to get the government where it needs to go in reforming this system.

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