David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Sydney proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s attempt to give the appearance of creating child care places while leaving parents and providers to struggle with a failing system plagued by chronic shortages and rising costs.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australian parents who are struggling to find child care, and struggling to afford it when they do find it, were hanging out for relief in Tuesday night’s budget. They had been listening to the Treasurer for weeks saying, ‘Watch this space.’ They have seen the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs on TV saying, ‘Watch this space, we are going to do a whole heap for parents in this year’s budget.’ They were holding their breath hoping that the problems they have had in finding places and, when they do find places, affording those places would be solved in this year’s budget. In fact, you cannot blame them for having those hopes. The Treasurer said in March this year at the Press Club:

We ought to be looking at making this the most female friendly place on earth ... But, if there are areas where we can improve these things I would want to see that and that is going to involve work family balance.

The most important thing this government can do to help families balance their work and caring responsibilities is to offer affordable, quality child care in places where parents need it. This is the test that this budget has failed. It has been a sad disappointment for parents. It has been a con.

I have seen some pretty terrible advertising over the years. I have seen some pretty dodgy things advertised. I remember the slimming tea that model Sam Fox used to advertise in the papers. I remember the Fat Blaster ads that said weight would drop off the minute people started taking Fat Blaster. The best one that I remember, though, from when I was a kid is the sea monkeys. Do people remember the sea monkeys? They used to be advertised on the back page of Mad magazine. There was a picture of little merpeople—mermen and merwomen—in little castles and they were swimming around having a great time. So many kids sent their money in for those sea monkeys and, I will tell you, when they got them they were terribly disappointed.

This is the sea monkey budget when it comes to child care. Parents had been promised 25,000 extra places. What are they going to see? They will see not a single extra place and not a single dollar off the cost of child care. Do you know why? The reason is that the Treasurer does not understand child-care shortages and the minister in charge of child care cannot be bothered explaining it. I hope the minister actually understands what the problem is. I hope the problem is that he cannot convince the Treasurer. We see a Treasurer who just does not get it and a minister who cannot deliver to the people he should be fighting for.

The government were looking for a headline such as: ‘A big number of places, 25,000 extra places.’ Wouldn’t that be good? We’ve shortages. What did they do to get that headline? They announced a dodgy policy of uncapping family day care places and out of school hours care places. The problem has never been capping in these areas. There is not, and has not been, a cap in long day care and yet there are shortages all around the country. Why would you take the system that has delivered shortages all around the country in long day care and apply that to all of child care and somehow think that that is going to solve the problem? The government said, ‘Oh, I know, we will take the system that does not work in one area and apply it to all of child care and that is going to solve the problem.’ What kind of madness is it to take the system that already does not work and extend it to solve shortages?

I think that a lot of people find the different types of child care a little bit confusing, especially if they have not had kids in child care for a long time or do not have children at all. The charitable view, of course, is that the Treasurer is one of these people, but I will explain it to him. Family day care is when a carer takes children into their own home. Often four, five or sometimes more children are looked after in the carer’s own home. They get about $4 an hour for each child. Someone who is providing family day care in their own home would earn about $480 a week gross for looking after, say, five children under the age of five for five days a week. Is it any wonder that people are not queueing out the door to be family day carers when this is the value that we place on their hard work? That is family day care.

What is long day care and how is it different? Long day care is care in child-care centres—the sort of centre you see down the street. The smaller ones might have 30 kids. The big ones might have 90; some might have 100. That is centre based long day care. That applies to babies of usually six weeks up to children of school age. That is a different thing. The Treasurer needs to understand that there is family day care and long day care—and then there is out of school hours care. That is for school age children.

Ann Corcoran (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know. You would think this is obvious, but the Treasurer obviously does not get it. Out of school hours care is for school age children. It can be a couple of hours before school, a couple of hours after school or vacation care. It does not take a genius to work out that out of school hours care is the cheapest to provide. Family day care is pretty cheap to provide because you are not building child-care centres, it is in the carer’s own home, and we are not paying them very well. Long day care is quite expensive to provide but—guess what?—it is the type of care that parents need and want right now. There are city areas where you cannot find a long day care place and there are regional areas where you cannot find a long day care place, and this government will not invest a single extra cent in building long day care facilities or providing extra long day care places.

The reason the government have tried to con parents is that the message has finally come through to them that there are child-care shortages, that parents are crying out for extra child care that they cannot find and they cannot afford the child care once they do find it. The government were rushing around in a panic: ‘What can we do on child care?’ What have they done? They have gone for the cheap political fix. Parents around Australia will be disappointed this week because they know that the government do not value their kids or their workforce participation. The government are not interested in allowing skilled workers to return to the workforce and they are not interested in providing the child care that those workers need to work and that people want for their kids so that they get a great educational start in life.

One of the reasons these places will never be delivered is that we have a chronic shortage of family day care workers. There is a chronic shortage of all child-care workers. The minister said it himself on the Insight program a couple of weeks ago:

… right now, things like family day care are actually going under-utilised, something like 30,000 places around Australia are available and aren’t being used.

Why are they not being used? They are not being used because they cannot be delivered to parents as there are not the carers to deliver the places. Linda Latham, CEO of the National Family Day Care Council, said, ‘You can have all the theoretical places in the world, but if you can’t find carers then they remain political promises.’ I would go a step further and say they are empty political promises. These places will not be delivered because there is a shortage of family day care workers. If you already have 30,000 places in the system that cannot be delivered because of a shortage of workers, then how will taking the cap off places get more people into the system, deliver more places to parents and get more kids into care? It is the most illogical piece of policy tomfoolery I have ever seen.

I will tell you something else about why these places will not be delivered. The government have taken money instead of providing extra support for family day care. If this were their chosen method of providing child care—the method they wanted to promote to parents—wouldn’t you think they would show it some support? You would think they would help out the family day care schemes. The exact opposite is true. Over the last year the federal government have cut funding to family day care schemes by about 25 per cent, on average, nationally. The schemes which support and regulate family day care workers play a coordinating role. They offer support, training and replacement workers when the usual worker wants to go on holidays and all the rest of it. They have been cut.

Look at the Illawarra family day care scheme in Wollongong run by the Uniting Church. The member for Throsby knows all about that. The federal government is cutting this scheme by $33,000 per annum. You cannot find the family day care workers now to deliver the undelivered places in the system. What is the solution? Is it to improve the conditions of the workers? Is it to improve the support they get through their family day care scheme? No. The government’s solution is to cut the funding of the coordinating schemes. The Daylesford Community Child Care Centre, which used to offer family day care, lost about $80,000 worth of operational funding last year and was told to stop providing family day care. That is the minister’s solution to the child-care problem.

The government attempts to grab a headline by looking for an announcement that has a big number attached. It does not matter whether the places will ever be delivered, it does not matter whether parents will ever receive the help they need and it does not matter whether kids will ever get into care—look for the big number for the headline. At the same time as you are trying to con parents into believing you will do something for them in child care you are taking money off the schemes that you think will deliver the extra places. How does that work?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney will address her comments through the chair.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a bit of new spending for child care in this budget. Guess what? There is some extra money for advertising. Isn’t that terrific? Isn’t it amazing that the government are advertising the 30 per cent rebate on out-of-pocket child-care expenses that was announced during the 2004 election campaign, but it has not yet been delivered. Not a single cent of the 30 per cent rebate on out-of-pocket child-care expenses has yet been delivered. Parents around the country are struggling with very high fees—the parents whom today the minister is calling whingers in the paper. He is implying that anyone who talks about child-care affordability obviously just wants free child care: ‘They are just a bunch of whingers. People paying 400 bucks a week, people paying more than private school fees for their child care, are just whingers. They want free child care. They want everything free.’

Not a single cent of the 30 per cent rebate that was promised in the 2004 election has yet been seen by parents. When it is finally paid later this year, parents will be receiving a rebate on money that they expended in 2004. Two years later they will get a few bucks back on money they spent in 2004. Big deal! These parents are struggling from week to week to pay the child-care fees, the increased cost of petrol and their higher mortgage fees. They are struggling because their wages are not secure anymore and because they do not know what will be in their pay packets next week. The government’s solution to high child-care fees is a top one: ‘In two years time we might give you a bit of money back.’ The money does not go to all parents who have their kids in child care. If your kids are in preschool, you do not get the money. If your kids are in a Montessori preschool, you do not get the money. If you are a single mum on a low income or a sole parent trying to start up a business, you do not get the money. If you spend more than $65 a day, you do not get the money. This budget has been a con on parents. It is no wonder parents are angry. It is no wonder they are disappointed. They need real places, they need affordable places and they need places where their kids live and where they work. This budget delivers none of that.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad that the opposition spokesman just got put out of her misery, because clearly, first of all, she knows nothing about child care. Her facts are incorrect and her arguments are incoherent—in fact, her arguments are contradictory. We will point out all of those things and explain to her, because the public actually knows that what the Howard government delivered yesterday is on the back of a record of doubling the actual number of child-care places in Australia since 1996.

There is no disputing that today there is in excess of 600,000 child-care places operating in Australia—real places, real children being looked after in the child-care sector, allowing mums to go back to work and allowing people to have fulfilling lives. Those parents, by and large, are receiving child-care benefit paid for by the Howard government and they will receive the child-care tax rebate. That is because the system is working.

Back in Labor’s day, 1995 and before, there were 300,000 places. Believe it or not, we all know that things go up through inflation as the years go on, but today Australian families are using less of their after-tax income on child care than they were 10 years ago. It is actually cheaper today, as a percentage of your net income, to have your child in child care than it was under a Labor government 10 years ago.

Let us deal with some of the comments from the member for Sydney, the shadow minister. Today she has said that uncapping places for family day care was a hollow promise—that it was a shonk by the coalition on the public. Why was it that on budget day—not budget night—she said that she believed the government should ‘lift the cap on outside school hours care places’? So here we have, two or three days ago, the shadow minister saying—

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s hypocrisy!

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hypocrisy! Now there’s a word we have heard today in question time: hypocrisy. Here she goes. On one day the member for Sydney says that we should uncap outside school hours places, and we do. Two days later, because she could not deliver it—the Labor Party could not deliver it, would not have any capacity to deliver it, particularly when they were running deficit budgets—she turns around and tries to tell the public it is some sort of a sham. The reality is that I can prove to her how already there are providers out there turning their minds to the very issue of how to handle and how to provide additional outside school hours care and family day care.

Here is a question for you. The member for Sydney asked why it is that there have not been enough family day care workers. Unlike long day care, which has expanded exponentially—and that is a good thing, I am sure those on both sides of the House would agree, because it means more places for family—the one sector of child care that has been capped and has been monopolistic has been family day care. It is a part of history that we have allocated artificial boundaries, which go back to the Labor Party days, that say that one operator, and no-one else, can provide family day care and, if they are not able to attract anyone, too bad.

One of the problems that we had that this government fixed was not the mum out there providing the care—she gets paid for what she delivers—but the family day care coordinator who has a monopolistic control over a particular area. There are 250-odd of them around Australia. They actually got paid on the number of places that were allocated to them, whether or not they filled them. So they had no real reason or motivation to get extra people.

The federal government recognised this, worked with the National Family Day Care Council and came up with a policy—which the shadow minister was part of—championing the fact that we are out there to get 1,200 additional workers. I do not recall the member for Sydney, when we were at Luna Park in Sydney, saying to the family day carers there, ‘This is a load of rubbish, there’s no chance this will succeed; you people are wasting your time and effort.’ She triumphed it and said, ‘This is a good thing.’ I will tell you why, Mr Deputy Speaker: because the coalition government is going to assist 1,200 additional workers to access $1,500 to start their own business, to be able to help adjust the needs in their houses. So there will be safety provisions and appropriate learning facilities in their own homes so family day carers can start their own business.

We also had two more contrary arguments, as we have had consistently from the member for Sydney. Today she mentioned child care of $400 a week, but then she bemoaned what a family day carer gets paid. A family day carer gets paid by the parent and child-care benefit. The figure that the member for Sydney quoted was $4 an hour—$40 a day, $200 a week. The federal government, with its CCB, will pay more than $3 of that $4, which means the parent will be out of pocket by less than $10 a day. Ten dollars by five is $50—nothing like your $500. And she wonders why the federal government wants to be responsible and say, ‘Let’s uncap it; let’s get rid of the red tape; let’s allow people to operate where and when they want to operate and let’s meet the market.’ But am I on my own? In fact, first and foremost: is she on her own?

The member for Sydney said back on 14 April that she would welcome new places. Today she tells us that they are a scam. On budget day she said, ‘It would be good if we lifted outside school hours places.’ Now that we have done it she says that it is no good. We also have the member for Lilley, the shadow Treasurer, referring to outside school hours places, saying: ‘It’s still capped; they should be uncapped.’ When did he make that statement? It was 9 May, budget day. They are not uncapped anymore.

In Nundah, a part of the member for Swan’s electorate, or in any suburb of Sydney, when a parent came to their local member and said, ‘Look, I am struggling; I want to go back to work and I need an after-school-care place,’ there would have been a round six months down the track and you would have to go through a lot of red tape. The government has removed the red tape. Now the member for Sydney you can sit there with some confidence and say: ‘Not a problem. I will get the money, we can make this happen. We can operate. Let’s get the school to work with us’—communities working with government, hand in hand, to deliver places where and when they are needed and supported by the federal government.

Before this announcement we completed a round and we asked the Australian public, through advertisements right around the country, who would like additional outside school hours care. If, as the member for Sydney carps on about, 175,000 places were needed out there, we may have 175,000 applications—maybe a few more, maybe a few less. But, no, we got in the order of 19,000. Do you know what, Member for Sydney? As a result of this policy initiative, every single one of those places that meets the safety criteria—which I am sure you would never argue with—and is an appropriate learning facility will be funded from 1 July. They will not have to wait for another six months. Isn’t that a good thing? Guess what, Member for Sydney? They all have staff. Those places will happen, and that is a good thing.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Plibersek interjecting

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She sits here saying, ‘Good.’ I hope you are learning something here and that you recognise the failure of the Labor Party’s poorly coupled together policies at the last election. The embarrassment of the last leadership challenge occurred just a few weeks ago—the leadership challenge you have when you are not having one, when the Labor Party coupled together yet another policy failing—and the Labor Party now recognises that what the coalition has done and what the Treasurer announced on budget night was a new landmark for Australian families—99 per cent of child care in this country now unlimited.

Just so the member for Sydney and those opposite fully understand, I will put it into more simple terms. That means that no matter what figures we have in the budget—$25,000 is what we have budgeted for—if the demand is bigger than we have budgeted for, the federal Howard government will fund it. No child will be without child care as a result of a lack of funding from the Howard government. That has never happened before in government policy. That is an enormous step forward.

What does the industry have to say about the proposals? I heard the member for Sydney refer to Linda Latham, CEO of the National Family Day Care Council. Her comment about the budget in relation to this was, ‘This is great for family day care.’ It does not get much simpler than that; it is not very ambiguous—‘Great for family day care’. Sallyanne Atkinson, from ABC Learning Centres, which is the largest provider of child care, said:

Under a combination of tax breaks and a boost to services, child care is now more affordable.

I will go on. Childs Family Kindergarten, which do not have the concerns of the Labor Party that they will not be able to get staff, said:

It is very hard to get more than nine or 10 places under the current criteria. This will help make it more viable.

Camp Australia have equally positive comments, which they sent to one of our members. In fact, they sent their comments to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs congratulating the government and thanking it for the removal of the cap on approved child-care benefit places and for the end of red tape. I congratulate the member for Dunkley, because clearly he has worked with this local constituent group in the area of Langwarrin, who make reference to a particular area there that will benefit from this. This is about individuals. This is about families and communities who will benefit. Here is a reputable organisation whose logo is ‘We make kids smile’. The reality is that, as a result of these initiatives, they will be able to put more smiles on more children’s faces.

Here is a good one: Go Bananas, over in Western Australia, congratulated Dr Mal Washer, a good mate of mine who is up here. He has been out there working very hard to secure outside school hours care places. They said:

I would like to congratulate you and your department for changing the child-care funding structure, particularly in outside school hours care. The recent changes you have made will provide opportunities for new services to be established, which will address a real and significant need Australia-wide. We believe the changes just announced will reduce the red tape involved in establishing dedicated outside school hours care services and will enable more mothers in particular to enter the workforce.

That is exactly what the Howard government is about. It is about removing red tape. It is about getting government out of the process and putting money in the hands of people who will provide these services. It is about getting rid of the things that have not worked, like the monopolistic approaches where we have had only one family day care service in any one area, and about giving a chance to people. But the Labor Party’s idea before the last election was, ‘We’ll create 8,000 new outside school hours care places.’ That was it—8,000. Ever since then, they have carped on about it not being enough. Even though the federal government committed 80,000 and the Labor Party committed 8,000, they said it was not enough. So on one hand they say something but they cannot physically deliver it.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Plibersek interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney must understand that, if the chair warns, she will not get another opportunity.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The President of the ACTU said that we should have 1,000 new long day care centres. Not too many people in this House and perhaps not too many people in the gallery appreciate really how much it costs to set up a long day care centre. It is between $1½ million and $2½ million. Sometimes it is as high as $3 million, depending on where it is. That is the sort of money that it takes to set up a long day care centre.

The ACTU—remember that they are the bosses of the ALP; they are the ones who drive the economic policy—have said, ‘We want a thousand of them.’ That is in excess of $2,000 million of capital. There was no mention of where they were going to get the staff from, yet the member for Sydney comes in here and says, ‘You’re not going to get the staff.’ Let me assure you that, if we were leaving it up to the unions, we would not be able to get the staff. I will guarantee you.  I have great faith in the people who run family day care. They will show innovation to the people who are running long day care—people in churches and other organisations who in the past have been locked out of this. They are coming on board and they will provide quality places.

That brings me to a couple of other initiatives in the budget, one being cost effectiveness and affordability. Mr Deputy Speaker, I tell you who this government is concerned about: those people coming into the labour market for the first time—people who might be saying: ‘Right, we’re going to make that big decision. How am I going to do this? I have to put the children into child care.’ There is a cost there and we acknowledge that. Whilst the government will give them the tax rebate and give them child-care benefit, we will also give those people JET. For those who do not know what JET is, it basically pays the gap. So we say that the government will pick up the tab and give the individual the incentive so they can go forward and join the labour market, become a taxpayer and, in doing so, show a new way to their children that welfare is not the answer but work is.

The Howard government is all about incentive. It is about innovation. It is about driving forward. We have demonstrated that by supporting families 100 per cent in this budget. It is quite different from the Labor Party, which are in a muddled mess going around in ever decreasing circles saying that they want outside school hours care uncapped, complaining when we do it and saying you cannot get jobs. We know why: because there were over one million unemployed under Labor. They are the kings of unemployment. This government delivers for Australian families. It will deliver child-care places and it will drive this economy further forward by ensuring that women have the opportunities that they deserve. Labor will deny them those opportunities.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this matter of public importance and speak on behalf of the many families within my home state and, in particular, those in Adelaide’s western suburbs, who are doing it tough—battling to raise their families, buy a home, pay the bills and continue in paid employment to fund it all. These families need two incomes to get by and maybe, just maybe, build for their family’s future. This all becomes so much harder without access to quality, well-staffed and affordable child care.

The government has put the problems with child care on the backburner for too long. The government has ignored constant warnings by parliamentary members, particularly on this side of the House, about the issues surrounding insufficient, untargeted and unorganised funding to this vital service in the community. Hundreds of thousands of children miss out on the valuable preschool play and education for the simple reason that their parents cannot afford it.

After 10 long years of the Howard government, child care is becoming a luxury, not an entitlement for all children. Child-care fees are climbing rapidly at five times the rate of the consumer price index, with some parents forced to pay over $100 per day. The federal government has failed to put funds into long day care places and is focusing mainly on after school care, which it controls in a very restrictive way, so that those who need to access these places are those who are least likely to get them.

There is a high level of concern in my electorate of Hindmarsh about the government’s poor handling of child care. At a recent child-care forum, which I and my colleague the member for Sydney held in my electorate of Hindmarsh, one of the participants noted that there were extremely poor conditions in some centres and that at a particular centre there were 20 toddlers in one room. Others at the forum commented on the pool of underused places and how, even where places were available, the federal government had made it so hard to access them that people were having to wait two years to take them up.

There was also a high level of concern at the forum about the lack of properly targeted funding. With no federal government interest in planning, we have massive shortages across most of the country, with some pockets of oversupply. In my electorate alone, there is an average waiting period of two years, with 100 names listed at just about every child-care centre that I have spoken to. My colleague the member for Sydney and others have repeatedly pointed out that the government’s poor planning has caused almost 100,000 places—that is, 30,000 family day care places and 67,000 outside school hours places announced in previous budgets—to remain either unallocated or unused. This is a direct result of the poor targeting and planning of funding in this area by this government. The government has failed to recognise that family day care is the least used type of child care. In fact, most parents need and use long day care. It is these places that are needed to get willing workers to return to the workforce.

The fact that these 100,000 places have not been filled is also due to the lack of child-care workers. The government has done nothing to address the shortage of quality and qualified staff. Its attacks on higher education in recent years further restricts students from taking up places in university child-care courses. With the 25 per cent increase in higher education fees and the average child-care worker’s salary among the lowest of all occupations, no-one could blame students for not wanting to take on an inflated study debt to support a career in such a low-paid and undersupported industry.

The government has focused its funding on family day care. Family day care workers are ridiculously poorly paid and undervalued. The average family day care worker earns on average just $4 per hour, per child, and has around four children to look after at any one time. This means a typical family day care worker earns only around $480 a week before tax.

At the forum that we held in my electorate, concerns were raised about the lack of qualified staff. The quality of the centres available was also of grave concern to the people who attended the forum. At the moment, the federal government does not enforce standards relating to educational development or mandate that services offer educational programs. This situation needs to change.

While parents have to take lengthy amounts of time out of the workforce, the nation loses skilled people who are willing to work but for a lack of child-care availability. With a skills shortage, this country cannot afford to have able and willing skilled workers out of the workforce for excessive periods of time. When these workers return, they require retraining and reskilling. There is no need to import skilled workers from overseas when there are capable mums and dads ready to work and to be retrained.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures in February demonstrating that the lack of affordable child care is harming the Australian economy. The figures indicated that more than 250,000 women wanted to work but were unable to because of a lack of suitable or affordable child care.

My own family experience in the late 1980s—we were some of the lucky ones by today’s standards—was that we were able to find suitable care for our two boys. Thankfully, we were able to find child care in our area, in the western suburbs of Adelaide. And thank heavens we did. It would not have been a lifestyle choice of whether we had a one- or two-income family; it would not have been a choice of whether we had personal convictions about whether my wife or I should stay at home to look after our youngest child; and it would not have been a choice of whether we could afford to eat and pay the bills at that point of time in our lives. We had to work—both of us—and thank goodness the situation was as it was then.

The industry, the availability and the affordability were different from what is the case now. If we had been in the situation faced by hundreds of thousands of families today, we would have been quite literally—and I will use the term—stuffed. It was a central issue to us then, as it is to many Australian families today who are struggling to pay their bills and to ensure that they build the foundations of their family and home for the future.

But the government’s budget shows that it is again sidelining this very important issue. More than a quarter of a million women waiting to return to the workforce will find little assistance in this budget. The government is focusing on providing places in family day care, ignoring the fact that the number of people using this type of care has been declining. In fact, family day care attendance decreased by 6.6 per cent between 2002 and 2004. Long day care places are needed to allow the return to work of the much needed skilled parents who want to work and are ready to work. This government has badly let down those parents and the rest of the community, which would benefit from their economic participation.

With the exorbitant and ever-increasing cost of child care, small tax cuts will not greatly assist families. Child-care fees are rising five times faster than the average rise in the cost of all other goods and services. With the cost of the weekly grocery bill rising—not to mention the impact of high petrol prices—little money is left over in the family budget for child care. Under the Howard government’s watch, child-care fees have jumped by 66 per cent over the last four years alone, and Australian families cannot bear this increase in costs much longer.

In households throughout the nation, neither mums nor dads can afford to take five years out of the workforce; they need to work to make ends meet now and they also need to build up their super for later years in retirement. With the current lack of child-care support they have no choice but to sacrifice many of their prime working years and, in the long run, lose out financially with depleted superannuation savings.

This government has failed to realise that it makes economic sense to adequately fund child care. The total economic benefit of every dollar spent on child care has been calculated at $8.11. The amount of income generated by every dollar spent on child care is $5.63. The amount returned to government for every dollar spent on child care is $1.86. With the government getting a greater return for every dollar spent on child care, it bewilders me why it has had a stifled and haphazard approach to child-care funding. Quite simply, there is no sensible economic reason not to fund child care properly.

We on this side of the House are appalled by the half-hearted way the government is dealing with this issue and we know that a carefully planned approach is required to ensure that quality, affordable and accessible child care is available to all the Australian families who desperately need their kids to be looked after while they are at work. This government’s attempt to give the appearance of creating child-care places, while leaving parents and providers to struggle with a failing system plagued by chronic shortages and rising costs, is a shameful act. Child care affects every young couple starting out; they need affordable child care. Child care is a necessity, not a luxury, for the many Australian parents with children who are working in order to pay higher mortgages and higher petrol prices. (Time expired)

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for putting the member for Hindmarsh out of his misery. The one thing I share with members on the opposite side is great relief; we were all hoping the member for Hindmarsh would finish reading without too many errors. It was interesting that the member for Hindmarsh said tax cuts will not assist. Is this a hint about tonight’s budget reply? Is the Labor Party again going to oppose tax cuts for families?

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Laurie Ferguson interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Reid is in a very dangerous position.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney and the member for Hindmarsh keep on criticising the government in very broad terms. But where is Labor’s plan? It is nowhere to be seen. They hide away from the fact that child-care places have doubled from 300,000 to 600,000 under this government. I was seriously underwhelmed and embarrassed by the limp performance of the member for Sydney. She seemed to have not much to say. She started reciting a story about lost childhood dreams and her disappointment about sea monkeys and then went into a slow and laborious explanation of the different forms of child care available in Australia today. It was quite embarrassing.

The problem the member for Sydney and the members opposite have is that they are genuine in their desire to ensure that these new child-care initiatives fail. They want the child-care initiatives to fail. They want the economy to fail. They want interest rates to go through the roof. They are sick and tired and miserable that things are going so well for Australians. Under this government, we have had a record increase in wages and 1.7 million jobs have been created. This government has done more for child care than the Labor Party has ever dreamed of. If, as the Labor Party claims, things are so bad, where is its plan? There is no plan; there is just whingeing and whining and a generally pathetic attempt at some sort of debate from the opposite side. The Australian people deserve more. The Australian people deserve an opposition that can deliver alternative policies and some sort of credibility.

But we all saw them on Tuesday night when the Treasurer delivered his budget. You could see the long faces. The Leader of the Opposition was so depressed that his face was almost on the floor. Members of the opposition were looking at each other not knowing what to do because this was a bumper budget. I have heard five budgets delivered in this place as the member for Indi, and this was the best I have seen. That is why the opposition have to concoct problems and nitpick. That is why they are criticising the child-care proposals in this budget. They will not stop because they have nothing else to do. But I suggest that they focus on providing some real alternatives and some real opposition, because that is what we need under our Westminster system.

You can imagine the scene this morning. The opposition’s tactics committee would have been huddled around desperately looking for an angle—an argument—to attack this bumper budget. But they could not find one and they came up with these pathetic, limp responses from the member for Sydney and the member for Hindmarsh. It is absolutely unbelievable. They sit there wearing badges of a different colour depending on which lobby group or union is holding them to ransom that particular sitting week, but they do not do the hard yakka and actually provide some real alternatives.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Rudd interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith is in a very risky position too. He has been warned.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Lilley retired hurt. They were missing in action. They retreated and returned to the pavilion because they knew that they could not mount a meaningful, relevant attack against this year’s budget, the pinnacle of economic achievement. The member for Sydney has accused the government of giving the appearance of creating child-care places. I have spoken before of the hypocrisy of the Labor Party sisterhood, but this statement by the member for Sydney less than two months ago absolutely reeks of it. She said:

We are worried that the system for allocating and reallocating places is rigid and slow ... Parents around the country might be without a child-care place simply because the allocation system lags behind new demand.

She went on to say:

... they—

referring to the department—

do not know where the shortages are.

This budget has solved that problem. Parents know where the shortages are and demand will decide where new child-care places will be created. Parental demand will decide where outside school hours care places will be created and where family day care places will be created, just as family demand currently dictates that for long day care. But do we hear any reminder from the member for Sydney about what she really wanted, given that she repeated those statements even this week? We heard nothing because, quite conveniently, the member for Sydney cannot find it in herself to say anything positive. The Australian public know that there is something wrong with even a whining, whingeing opposition when it cannot find a single good thing to say about this budget and its extraordinary new reforms and additional funding for child care. While the Australian public—or some of them—were glued to their televisions watching the budget speech and cheering it on, the opposition were thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, what are we going to do now? How are we going to respond to this?’

The member for Hindmarsh talked about the costs of child care. In real terms, the costs are lower than they were under Labor, as recent reports have shown. But that is not going to be admitted by the Labor Party, although it would do their credibility a lot of good if they were to do so. It would do the member for Sydney’s credibility some good if she were to admit the truth that many Australians know. Everyone else says the emperor has no clothes, but the member for Sydney still thinks that the Labor Party has credibility.

What this government is doing, particularly after Tuesday night, is allocating more places for child care flexibly, to cater for the demands and needs of families. That means that 99 per cent of child-care places will remain uncapped. It is quite simple: where there is demand that demand will be funded by the federal government. This is an extraordinary improvement in child care. This is something that was not expected by families, and I know and hope that it will be embraced by many families around the country. Services will be able to be set up or be expanded to meet demand where it occurs, provided of course that they meet all the licensing, quality and other requirements in each state.

If the member for Sydney is so concerned about a lack of capital investment in child-care places, perhaps she should suggest that state Labor governments, who control the planning laws in their respective states, come up with some sort of developer contribution for new housing estates to cater for community based child care. But, no, there is never any criticism, there are never any calls for assistance and there is never any vision on that perspective shown by the member for Sydney to try to involve state governments in any way. We have heard about some of the current problems and restrictions with outside school hours care and family day care places. These will exist no longer, and I call on the member for Sydney to actually admit that there is much good news in the budget on child-care places.

The Labor Party talk a lot about child care and women, but they have absolutely no concrete plans for child care in the future. What an absolute disgrace that reeks of unashamed hypocrisy. They talk about caring about women in the workforce, but they even relegate their women politicians to the pathetic category of tokens through quotas. Sadly, that is what we have come to expect from the main opposition party in this country. Where was the child-care benefit under Labor? Let us look at their past. It is nowhere to be seen. Where was the child-care tax rebate under Labor? Nowhere to be seen. Yet they still cannot bring themselves to say, ‘This 30 per cent child-care rebate of up to $4,000 per child per annum on out-of-pocket costs will be a terrific help to families in meeting the costs of child care.’ The Labor Party actually opposed legislation that would have enabled unused child-care places in the previous system to be reallocated to ease bottlenecks in areas of need. So they can whinge and whine and complain, but it is all empty. It is all aimed at filling in the gap of a lack of policy. It is all aimed at filling in the gap of a lack of an alternative budget that the Leader of the Opposition will struggle to deliver tonight. The facts are on the table. This government has committed an extra $120.5 million over four years for the child-care package. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion is concluded.