Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the report of the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services inquiry titled Balancing work and family responsibilities. I do so with a feeling of great disappointment. I say that because I think all members of the committee participated in the inquiry with genuine enthusiasm. This was going to be a report into the most important issue in the lives of so many Australian families and, as I will discuss later, an important matter for the Australian economy as well.

Parliamentary committees play a special role. I know from my experience that members often begin an inquiry with very different views but in the course of the inquiry both sides move closer to recommendations which can be agreed on. Consensus is more often than not the outcome of inquiries. But I regret to say that, in the later stages of this inquiry, there was a breakdown in the accord that had existed and, in the end, members of the committee went their own ways. Labor members have taken the step of including a dissenting report which, given the very limited time that we had to put it together, expresses the very different views held by the Labor members of the committee.

This is in no way a bipartisan report. The process of deliberation on the report excluded Labor members from the most important recommendations. The end result is an ill-considered report which flies in the face of the expert advice contained in the Econtech report—a report commissioned by the committee at a cost of $17,000. It is now clear that the committee chair had already reached the conclusion that we see in recommendation 18—that is, allowing tax deductions for child care. The consultants were asked to look at the effect of replacing the current 30 per cent rebate for child care with a general tax deduction and extend the fringe benefits tax exemption for employer funded child care. That report found that this would cost $500 million a year, with an increase in income tax collected of only $1 million or a net cost of $499 million. Less a saving from removing existing arrangements, the net cost would be $218 million.

Econtech also found that low-income earners would decrease their hours worked and be worse off. The chair went back to Econtech to change the model. This time she wanted the childcare benefit to remain and parents to be given the option of claiming the childcare tax rebate or a tax deduction. The result was that the cost blew out to $262 million. The committee report concludes that this is affordable and believes that a significant number of Australians will be better off. But the Econtech report makes it clear that tax-deductible child care only leaves parents on incomes above $75,000 a year better off. There is no benefit to families with lower incomes. The greatest benefit goes to those on incomes above $150,000 where a higher marginal tax rate applies. While the childcare tax rebate is capped at $12,000 a year, the recommendation does not cap deductible childcare expenses. If nanny care is deductible, as the report recommends, the greatest benefit will go to those families who can afford the high cost of nanny care. This is nothing but welfare for the wealthy.

The report does say that the cost to revenue should be regarded as investing to stimulate greater full-time female participation, and particularly targeting tertiary-qualified mothers to rejoin the full-time workforce. But it ignores the fact that full-time tertiary-qualified nurses and teachers with incomes of less than $75,000 would not benefit at all.

I take this opportunity to say to the member for Mackellar that I personally agree with much of her view that child care should be considered tax-deductible, but as I have just said, that would lead to greater benefit going to higher income earners. The member for Mackellar does attempt to justify that proposal, but I cannot accept that higher income families should pay less than middle-income families for child care. I can agree to tax deductibility so long as it is capped at the same rate as the childcare rebate, which is capped at the 30c in the dollar rate. For that matter, I can even accept other forms of child care, such as employed nannies and, to some extent, where their position is strictly related to child care, I could even accept au pair arrangements, subject to appropriate qualifications and defined working conditions. But, as I said, I could only accept those arrangements if there was a cap on the amount that could be claimed as a tax deduction, and that cap would be equivalent to the childcare tax rebate. I did not have the opportunity to put that proposal to the committee. We may never know if my suggestions might have been accepted by a majority of committee members. That is part of the opportunity that was lost through the rushed deliberations on this report, and it was not the only lost opportunity.

The focus on government assistance for child care left some of the more important issues out in the cold. The most important of these is the question of flexibility for working parents. The report suggests that the government’s Work Choices legislation provides the basis for flexibility in work hours. But the evidence given to the committee suggests that much stronger initiatives must be taken to give real flexibility to working parents. Opposition members were attracted to the right-to-request laws in Britain. While we have not yet seen the results of these laws, they do recognise that flexibility is a two-way street. Parents must be able to request flexible work conditions without prejudice. As we face severe skill shortages, more and more employers will be forced to rethink the flexibility of their work operations and the need to fit in with the family requirements of their employees. We may need a legislative framework to give greater certainty to all working families.

The second issue of flexibility is that of child care. There is an ongoing debate in this country about the need for more child-care places. I find that strange, when I get fliers in my letterbox telling me of vacancies at child-care centres in Western Sydney. When I speak to mothers about access to child care, they tell me about shortages on particular days and the impossibility of getting care at short notice. Where a parent may be asked to work an additional day in a week, they often have to refuse because there is no vacancy at their child-care centre on that day. Casual and part-time workers can find their life thrown into chaos if they are asked to change their work roster. They cannot change their child care as easily as an employer can shuffle work rosters.

Another issue which was not given the consideration it deserved was the interaction of the range of family assistance measures. If the committee had modelled the cut-off for family tax benefit part A, it would have found that it produces an effective marginal tax rate which is a disincentive for working parents, such as teachers and nurses. I know from the experience of my own daughter, who is a teacher, that she is better off working two days a week rather than three. If she increased her working hours by 50 per cent she would be worse off. But these issues are not addressed in the report.

Balancing work and family issues is important to our nation, not just for the barbecue-stopper effect on families; it is crucial to the economy. The Access Economics research shows that increasing female participation in the workforce can produce greater economic growth than tax reform and almost as much as national competition policy. This is the real challenge that the report overlooks. If we do not get the policy right when it comes to balancing work and family, our economy will suffer. We will find ourselves facing severe shortages in many areas of skill. I mentioned the nursing and teaching professions—both areas where a large proportion of the workforce is approaching retirement. Getting the right policy settings to maximise the participation of parents with young families is crucial to achieving this outcome, but this report cannot be taken as a serious contribution to that policy debate. Sadly, this report looks at gimmicks rather than solutions. It has been a wasted opportunity.

I add my thanks to the outstanding committee staff. They worked hours that were far from family friendly. We are fortunate to have highly skilled and dedicated staff to advise and assist our parliamentary committee, but we must manage those resources effectively to get the full benefit of their contribution. (Time expired)

Alan Cadman (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could not disagree more with the previous speaker about the value of this report. It contains a heap of invaluable information. Evidence and submissions have been gathered Australia-wide and they say a range of things that are a rich resource for anybody interested in developing the policies relating to families, particularly the relationship between families and the workplace. So I am delighted to speak to this report.

Of course there were varying opinions about what would be the best results for families with children—particularly children under the age of five, because it emerged that generally around Australia, where children are of school age, the parents can make easier decisions. It is the under-five-year-olds who need the attention of policy makers and for us to provide the easiest opportunity for families with children. In particular, I guess most families look at the option for the female partner to participate in the workplace. From all the research that we saw during the inquiry, this is the point of greatest stress within families: just balancing that relationship—usually with the mother—between the needs of the children and the need to work.

I do not think we really investigated why mothers work. There are a range of reasons and they are obvious. Fulfilment and personal development are important. Providing additional finance into the family is significant. There are a whole range of reasons that vary from family to family. So to try to prejudge what is best in each individual situation from a policy making point of view is something that is likely to lead to a judgemental approach or a rigid approach that restricts the choice generally available to mothers. But the situation is no different where the father is the one who is the caregiver for young children. The evidence indicates that both of them experience the same sorts of problems in managing the needs of young children, the needs of the family and their own personal aspirations or personal fulfilment.

So the conclusion that I reached very early in the inquiry was that to give maximum choice in each individual situation was the most desirable policy outcome that we could achieve. And, in part, the committee achieved that. There are a lot of ideas about how this can be done. Unfortunately, the member for Fowler seems to have taken—as she does with a number of reports—objection to some of the presentation of the report. She usually does that at the last minute, and that is a great shame because she made a valuable contribution during the discussion and formulation of the report and its recommendations. But in this instance it was obvious that to give mothers in particular absolute maximum choice and flexibility in the decision between working and being at home with young children was the key both to happy families and to the maximum productivity in the workplace.

In those countries internationally where that flexibility is available, the workforce numbers of women have increased rapidly. Their involvement in the workforce is at a maximum and yet their care of children is also at a peak. So we have the desirable combination of these two things, where women have maximum participation in the workforce and maximum care of their children at home. Those figures internationally are irrefutable.

So this committee set out to put forward a number of proposals for government consideration. Non-formal care figured, in-home figured, formal care was considered, the normal preschool care was considered. All the prospects and ranges of family day care, long day care, short day care, were all canvassed by the committee and evidence taken. The result of that evidence is set out in the report in the recommendations also. The concept of tax deductibility is canvassed and presented. The concept of in-home care is canvassed and presented.

I came to a conclusion, a little differently to most committee members—and my views are expressed in part of the report—that it would be best indeed if we were to provide for families the capacity, where the children are under the age of five, to be able to increase the family tax rebate part A. By that we apply a means test to the process and we allow maximum benefit to those families choosing to use non-formal care. The government’s programs at the moment restrict benefits basically to formal care of children. No doubt the educators in our midst would say that that is the best—kids under the age of five need to be educated. I do not believe that that is necessarily the wish of all parents, because many of them prefer children to have a delightful infancy where there is not too much formal structure but a socialising program within their lives whereby through experience they gain knowledge and exposure to others.

So, in my view, the most desirable approach with young children is where they have a loving and caring home life wherever possible and the maximum experience in socialising and in a range of environments. So the choice for parents as to the most desirable form of child care is something that should be left to the parents. We are in a somewhat prescriptive environment at the moment where government says that formal child care is the one that we will support. Probably to gain maximum result and choice, it was better to broaden that.

I consider that where there are young children in the home, if you look at the statistics and the tax, the giving and taking of various benefits—childcare rebates, childcare allowances, the impact of part A and part B of the family tax rebate—and all of the comings and goings and input of those various concessions from government, it works differently for different family compositions and income. So it is my view that, instead of trying to prescribe what should be done, we should make the choice factors important.

What has happened is that for mothers working more than about 15 hours per week, the loss of benefits almost equals their income provided it is a modest income. High fliers—barristers and people like that—can survive. They can pay the high family care rates. But for the average family, a family that could be called, say, the policeman and the hairdresser, the cost of child care can be quite expensive. What people do—and I have spoken to many—is use relatives for part care: they may use formal care for part of their needs and long day care or some other form. Some of these forms of child care are not supported by government policies, and this report raises the need for government to broaden the recognition of child care such as in-home care, family care where there is a registration process so that, in fact, a reasonable and appropriate form of child care can be selected by parents.

To do that, some additional resources are necessary for the family. In weighing up whether it should be tax cuts or tax deductions for child care or whether it should be some other form, it comes down to the fact that it is far better to leave the choice to parents and to change the family tax benefit part A to allow families with children under the age of five to have a family tax rebate of approximately $4,700. That will give about $50 per week per family to be able to select the sort of child care that they want. What will that buy? That will buy the opportunity for mum to get some additional funding to look after the children or for the family long day care centre to be used. It will give maximum choice. This is an invaluable report. It provides lots of information and, unlike the member for Fowler, I welcome its tabling. I thank the chair for her contribution and the members of staff of the committee for their involvement as well.

Harry Quick (Franklin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the longest-serving member of the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, I have much pleasure in speaking to yet another report put out by this marvellous committee, chaired by the honourable member for Mackellar, Mrs Bronwyn Bishop. The good thing about this committee—I think it is the best committee in the House—is that we tackle the real issues, issues that impact on each and every family in Australia.

So many committees talk about esoteric things, but this committee in its report talks about work and families—something that is impacting on every family right across the nation, from southern parts of Tasmania to the Northern Territory, where we visited the defence forces. Because of the excellent work of the committee and the superb work of the secretariat, we saw it warts and all. No-one escaped our scrutiny. We put out a report and, sadly, I think it was fobbed off by the government. In marginalising the report the government said, ‘The recommendations really aren’t worthy of consideration.’ To my mind, we have been given a bit of a bum steer.

When you talk to constituents in your electorate, you find that they are under pressure to pay the mortgage. There has been a move to part-time work and the casualisation of our workforce. There is an emphasis on children staying at school longer in order to get qualifications. You virtually need to complete year 12 to become a hairdresser. Once you could leave school at 14 or 15, get an apprenticeship and be set for life. The priesthood is about the only occupation where you are guaranteed to be there until you die. Everything else is part-time, casual or contract work. Families are under enormous pressure to pay for their house, establish their family, establish a job and develop some credit rating so that they can go along to the bank and get their lives organised.

I want to cite one example. We have all been given an extra staff member. We have four now, so we have flexibility in our relief budget. I am using my extra position to enable someone that I taught in grade 6—God knows how many years ago—to get back into the workforce. Jo-Anne Munro—or Jo-Anne Leslie as she is called now, since she married—has three young children. She decided she was going to stay at home and provide her children with the resource of having a mother on hand. But the pressure on the family and the decline in the number of hours her husband was able to work meant that, like all families, they required extra income to buy a few extra things, perhaps a second car to enable her to have some flexibility.

Because her husband is working, Jo-Anne does not qualify for support under Job Futures or Job Network, so she is on her own. She has to organise a new set of clothes and is coming to work for me a couple of days a week. She has not been in the workforce for over six years. There is no support. She has to organise child care. Once we had the JET program where, if you were returning to the workforce, there was some capacity for government agencies to at least assist you and find some child care. She lives in a far-flung region of my electorate and has to have a second car to enable her to go to work.

With the privatisation of child care, we now have a situation where, as she is interested in work, she has to organise child care and transport. It is all based on her children because she does not want the kids to be latchkey kids. She wants to be there to pick them up after school. I have arranged for her to have flexible working hours to give her that capacity. But then she comes up against the childcare bureaucracy that says: ‘If you only want a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there, we’re not really interested. It’s either half a day or a full day. Take it or leave it.’

Luckily in Tasmania we have not been inflicted with what I call the mainland disease. We have community based child care in Tasmania. It is wonderful because there is that understanding—being community based—that you ought to have the capacity to be flexible. They have some places to enable that to happen. In Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth they are not interested. ABC, or whatever they call themselves these days—they are a multimillion-dollar concern gobbling up childcare centres all around the world—are in it for a buck.

One of the key things in our recommendations is that we ought to bite the bullet. Because each family is different, there ought to be different scenarios so that families can have the capacity to be productive. Joanne has not been in work for six years. She is working around her kids; she is trying to stabilise the family and give them some additional things. It is a totally different situation from that of the lawyers we met in Sydney who are earning six-figure sums. They have different needs and capacities. They might be interested in tax relief. All that Jo-Anne wants is the opportunity to gain some capacity to get back into the workforce and earn a few extra dollars while ensuring that her kids have the same sort of mothering that they had when she was at home, while allowing her to have that wherewithal.

This report, like all other reports, is pretty bipartisan. We had some disagreements about Work Choices, AWAs, certified agreements and the like, but I think that, deep in our hearts, we were of the mind that we ought to provide each and every family, either the mother or the father, who wants to get back into the workforce with the capacity to do so. Whether it is an au pair or a nanny in some of the affluent suburbs of Sydney, whether it is tax deductibility or whether it is having flexibility in child care, all of these things ought to be made available. I am not too sure how we should do it, but for goodness sake, in this day and age we ought to be able to come up with some recommendations. I think we have done so.

As I said at the outset, I think that with this report it has been a matter of saying, ‘It’s all too hard; it’s not in the great scheme of things.’ Within the guts of this report I know there is the wherewithal to sort this problem out once and for all. If we do not sort it out, even though unemployment is down to 4½ per cent or whatever it is now, we still have tens of thousands of people who are not working at 100 per cent capacity. They want to do so; they have to do so. We heard evidence of the pressure on families to pay the mortgage, and of families breaking up because of the conflict over the capacity of one partner or the other to earn enough money to pay some of the ridiculous mortgages in the five big capital cities.

I am disappointed that more speakers, apart from those of us who are members of the committee, are not going to speak on this issue. I think that each and every member, all 150 of us, ought to be talking about this. If I could do a quick headcount, I would like to know how many of the 150 members have even bothered to read the report. We have been wandering around the country, as this wonderful committee does, taking evidence from the high fliers, from our military, and from people with basically the seat out of their pants. They are all crying out for solutions. I would urge each and every member who is not on the committee to read this wonderful report.

The committee secretariat are present in the gallery. I mentioned earlier in my speech how much we appreciate the wonderful work they have done—above and beyond the call of duty, as always. To James and the secretariat, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart. This will be my last year in this place. As I said at the outset, I am the longest-serving member of this committee. I have appreciated the camaraderie and the way you have supported us. To the chairman, I say: well done. I know you have had a few black marks against you. We have not always agreed. But, as I said, this is a wonderful report and it ought to be implemented. There should be an onus on each and every one of us to ensure that all members read it and try to ensure that something is done in order to get families into work and being productive.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the mover of the original motion, I seek leave to speak without closing the debate.

Leave granted.

Thank you very much. I thank the honourable member for Franklin for his words about the report Balancing work and family. As people listen to debate on the report, they will see that one thing in common is that everybody is passionate about the calls for child care to meet the needs of individuals, not for individuals to meet the needs of a system. I do not think ever before has such a comprehensive report been presented to the parliament, bringing together an enormous amount of evidence that we took from all around Australia, hearing from over 200 people, having over 200 submissions, having Access Economics do the macromodelling to see the impact on the economy as a whole if we saw a greater participation of women in full-time work and having Econtech do the micromodelling so that we would know the impact on the budget and on individuals.

The thing that came out loud and clear in this inquiry is that the CCB and the CCTR, which stand for childcare benefit and childcare tax rebate, which are the fundamentals of the current policy, do not meet adequately the needs of individuals who require child care. There is a need for a greater flexibility in child care—a need for the benefits that are paid to cover a greater variety of child care that suits the need of parents rather than being paid out into basically centre based care.

The value of the childcare benefit is $1.6 billion. I will give you an indication of the way in which it is paid. ABC Learning Centres have been mentioned here, and ABC Learning Centres have become an important provider in the area of child care. They showed in their annual report that their net revenue was $592 million, but, if you then look at the amount of money that is paid out in CCB—and bear in mind that most of it is paid directly to a childcare centre—their share of that money is $300 million. In other words, half of their income comes directly from the taxpayer via the CCB.

On the other hand, the childcare tax rebate has been shown to be a vast underspend. The rebate was set so that you could get a maximum rebate of $4,000 a year. That means you would have to spend $12,000, but you would have to spend it in such a way that it was in approved child care—that narrow definition. The bottom line is that, instead of many parents being able to claim that $4,000 rebate, which is a 30 per cent rebate, and get it back, the average rebate paid is $813. That is not because parents are not spending the money; it is because they are spending it on child care that suits them and their arrangements, but the government policy presently does not cover that sort of child care.

One instance of that is in-home care. There is an in-home government program for in-home care, but it is a very small program. It is dealing with parents who have multiple-birth children, people in isolation—it has very strict criteria, and there are only 7,000 families on that program. Before the inquiry, it had been frozen. I am very pleased to say that, after we brought down the report, the program was opened up again. So that was an immediate good outcome.

Clearly, the in-home care program can suit many people. It can suit shiftworkers, anyone who is a policeman, an ambulance worker, a flight attendant or a nurse—anyone who is called out at hours when centre based care is not available. For instance, there are only 21 centre based care childcare centres in the entire country that are open at weekends, but only eight of them are open on Saturday and Sunday. So automatically, out of the umpteen thousand places that are available, clearly, if you are not a regular nine to five type worker, you are out of luck. Consider the pressure that is put on usually the mum, who has to get up, pack the lunches, get the kids washed and dressed, race one off to a childcare centre in one particular area, race another one off to a different area and perhaps one off to school as well. If you could arrange to have care in your home, how much easier that burden would become. So in-home care has to be an option, and it can be various families sharing. But we put in a restriction. We said the in-home carer must have a level II certificate and must be registered with the government’s Family Assistance Office.

The government has another very good policy which says that if you have not finished year 12 and you are 25 or over you can get a $3,000 voucher. With that $3,000 voucher, you can go and get training in any number of suitable courses being taught, usually at TAFE or in the private sector equivalent of TAFE, and you can become qualified. Interestingly enough, towards the end of the inquiry I launched such a course for in-home carers. I am very pleased to tell you that I am informed by the provider of that course that it is now officially recognised by the government. You can get your $3,000 voucher and take it to that provider and you can learn to be an in-home carer and get a level II certificate, which will mean you will qualify under the restriction in our report.

The question of tax deductibility has come up as an issue for some in giving preference to people who are greater income earners than others. For this reason the Econtech research was very important. We wanted no losers. So the recommendation is that the CCB and the CCTR remain. You can go on claiming those or you can have tax deductibility, but you cannot have both. You can choose which will suit your needs best, but it is not carte blanche. If one parent is working five days a week and one parent is working two days a week, you can only claim the tax deduction for two days, not for five, and it must be for the production of assessable income. That seems to me pretty fair.

The bottom line is that you can get a tax deduction for your computer, your steelcapped boots, your motor car and your mobile phone but not for fundamental child care, which is necessary to produce assessable income. I have to tell you that, from my mail and from the people who have contacted me, there is enormous support for this proposition because it is seen as being equitable for women. It is a fundamental equity question. But it also has enormous benefits for the economy. Access Economics said that if we see a growth in the full-time participation of women that will equate to a growth of between 2.4 and 4.4 per cent in national income, which is greater than tax reform—that is, the introduction of the GST—and just under competition policy. That is a huge benefit for the nation.

Econtech said that the total cost of implementing this policy would be $262 million. When I look at the Treasury documents I see that already, for the year 2006-07, the underspend for child care is $280 million. It is estimated in 2007-08 to be $305 million and in 2008-09 to be $330 million. That is the underspend. That figure of $262 million is certainly affordable. When you realise that we are already returning $16.9 billion, by way of tax deductions for which people claim work related expenses and other deductions, I reckon $262 million is pretty affordable.

We received a very interesting paper from somebody at FaCSIA. It pointed out that, at the very least, for every dollar the government have invested in assisting parents with child care the government get back in tax $1.86. In other words, for every dollar that they are putting into helping parents they are getting a return on that investment. That is the conservative end of the estimate. Some people say it is eight times the value.

The bottom line is that the government have done some very good things with regard to child care, but what is needed is flexibility. They admit it with regard to Work Choices. Flexibility is needed. We need flexibility so that mums in particular, but dads too, can choose what sort of care they want for their kids and can have an option in what is good for them. Thank you very much to the secretariat, who did a fantastic job, and thank you to the other members of the committee, who worked very hard.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ten minutes is a very short time to traverse some of the very significant issues touched on in this very important inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services into balancing work and family responsibilities. The inquiry took some 18 months. There were 25 public hearings in all states. Over 200 witnesses made submissions at those hearings and on top of that there were some several hundred written submissions. It is a great pity that the possibility of coming to some bipartisan conclusions at the end of this lengthy process was derailed at the very last minute, despite the magnificent efforts of the secretariat. It is a pity that the report that comes before you, even though there is consensus about a range of very important issues, came to different conclusions and recommendations. I want to touch on some of those.

Despite great social changes, women’s labour force participation continues to be far more sensitive to the presence of children than men’s, thus reinforcing the historical role of women in our society as bearing the primary responsibility for managing family life, although that is changing. Though the traditional family model of the male breadwinner at work and the female homemaker at home looking after the family now represents only the minority of couple families—around 30 per cent—it is of course women who have had to make the major adjustments in balancing work and family life. We spent a lot of time debating and considering those issues and the barriers that prevent their full participation in the workforce.

It is fair to say that, in the submissions to the inquiry about the barriers to women’s workforce participation, child care was probably the most commonly raised issue of all. Cost and availability figured highly, as did the need for greater choice and flexibility in child care. I agree with some of the proposals that were alluded to in the remarks of the chair, including the need for greater flexibility and greater choice in childcare provision. I think we have to move away from the one-size-fits-all model.

I continue to be amazed at comments made by senior Treasury officials and even comments made by both the Treasurer and the minister. They seem to imply that there is not a crisis in childcare provision. In fact, a recent Treasury report claimed:

... contrary to popular perceptions, there is not an emerging crisis in the sector; supply is generally keeping pace with demand and child care has remained affordable.

I think part of the problem that we have in responding to issues of genuine community concern is the apparent ability of bureaucrats at all senior levels to walk around with their ears closed and not hear what the community is saying. It is a pity these Treasury officials did not come along and hear what the witnesses were saying or did not read the submissions.

The point of view expressed to our inquiry backs up the recent findings of the Productivity Commission. So you have two reports—one from Treasury and one from the Productivity Commission—coming up with quite different conclusions. The Productivity Commission report released just a matter of weeks ago was certainly in accord with the views that we were hearing. As the chair of our committee said in the news the other day:

CHILDCARE is neither cheap nor easy to find, and the cost and scarcity of places keeps women out of the work force ...

She is absolutely right.

The Productivity Commission report confirms the view not only of the chair but of everybody who participated on the committee. The report found that parents of almost 200,000 children who needed additional child care were unable to get it. The most common reason parents were seeking additional child care was work related. The main reasons parents were unable to access additional formal care were: lack of available places, 33.6 per cent; the child care was not flexible enough to meet their needs, 30.7 per cent; and it was too expensive, 16.4 per cent. I urge the Treasurer and the minister to look at those findings in the Productivity Commission report because they certainly confirm the submissions received by the committee.

We know that the average fee for centre based care is now around $233 and that the average weekly fee in family day care is $214 per week—and they are averages. We know from submissions that, in the inner city at least, child care can cost as much as $110 a day. In the last couple of days, recently released ABS data shows that childcare costs have increased substantially more than the CPI—even more than the price of bananas and fuel over the past five years. We all know as politicians the pressure that fuel and fruit costs have had on the average family household budget because we hear about it constantly from our electorates. Increases in childcare costs are outstripping increases in the price of petrol and fruit.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Including fees at ABC Learning Centres.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. As my colleague says, including fees at ABC Learning Centres. The issue of family-friendly or lack of family-friendly workplaces was also aired during the course of the inquiry. This is an issue on which there was a divergence of opinion which led to different recommendations being proposed. The majority believed the farcical notion that flexibility in industrial relations and individual bargaining will produce better outcomes for women, that all we need is cultural change and that we should leave it to individuals to negotiate their own arrangements. The dissenting report, with which I concur, points out the need, based on historical practice, for appropriate legislation and regulation to ensure that family-friendly provisions are spread across the board and do not just remain the preserve of professional people and people who can argue for and negotiate their own employment conditions.

Historically, in Australia, the reason why we have provisions such as parental leave, carers leave and maternity leave is because we were able to spread these benefits through running test cases before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. With the new Work Choices legislation, we will not have the opportunity to spread such provisions across the board and people will increasingly have to rely on what they can negotiate. Reliance on individual negotiation is starkly revealed as not producing outcomes for all, when you consider that only 27.6 per cent of women who work in the private sector today are entitled to any form of paid maternity leave. Our view has always been that, in a society as wealthy as ours, in a society which needs increased participation by women at work, and in a society where demography is destiny, if we really want to be serious about our very low rates of participation by women of child-bearing age and mothers in the workforce, we need to do more.

In that regard I would draw the government’s and the minister’s attention to some of the suggestions that I believe should be carried out. We should expand the safety net in the Work Choices legislation to incorporate family-friendly provisions; we should guarantee the payment of penalty rates, shift loadings and overtime; we should restore the right of national test cases to be handled by the Industrial Relations Commission; we should introduce legislation along the lines of the United Kingdom part-time workers regulations which ensure that part-time workers are not treated less favourably in their terms and conditions of employment; and we should investigate the reasons for the very high levels of casual employment among women and the options for their conversion to permanent part-time work. We should support a right to request legislation which would extend parental leave and regular part-time work based on the UK model which would help families to better balance employment and domestic roles.

A lot of issues are traversed in the report. I regret that we were not able to reach bipartisan recommendations but I would urge the government to appreciate that Australia’s female participation rate is only moderate by OECD standards and particularly low among mums and women over 55. It is time that the government took these issues and the concerns of the community more seriously in terms of their policy framework and the expenditure to deal with the real issues that are out there in the community.

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to, in principle, support the recommendations. I have made a clarifying statement in the report, and I will talk about that in a few minutes. First of all, I would like to comment about the Australian government’s commitment—which has already been demonstrated—to improve workforce participation and employment prospects for all Australians over their lifetimes. Workplace relations, social security and taxation policies have worked to complement a way to support Australian families. Many initiatives support Australian families over their life cycle, including those who care for others, by facilitating choice for families in their work and care arrangements. These initiatives include the maternity payment, the family tax benefit, the childcare benefit, the childcare tax rebate and funding for a range of childcare initiatives, as well as the carers allowance and payment. The maternity payment, for example, is where mothers of newborns are entitled to a non-means-tested maternity payment currently worth $4,000 to assist them meet their parenting needs. This will increase to $5,000 in July 2008.

In the 2006-07 budget, a number of assistance measures for families were delivered. They include $993.3 million over four years to raise the amount that families can earn to $40,000 before their family tax benefit part A payments begin to be affected; extension of the large family supplement to families with three or more children—previously four or more children—at a cost of $496.7 million; $60.2 million over four years to remove the cap on outside school hours care places and family day care places, and this was particularly significant for suburbs in outer Western Sydney; and an extra $9.4 million in 2006-07 for jobs, education and training—JET—childcare plus continued top-up funding of $3.7 million per year in 2009-10. This is a great initiative which assists parents on income support with childcare costs while they develop skills needed in the workforce.

I will talk in a few minutes about a number of the recommendations that I think the government should look at but, referring to my clarifying statement, I particularly want to say that recommendations 16 and 17, while they in part may be of benefit, may allow higher income earners or the wealthy who have the capacity to pay higher childcare costs and pay for more expensive options to get a greater tax benefit than those on lower incomes with a lesser capacity to pay for those more expensive options in child care. In principle, if this was to be looked at, I would like there to be some cap in place and some additional assistance given to people on lower incomes and those on middle incomes whose budgets may be more stretched and who will have less choice.

Looking at the recommendations, I would particularly like to highlight the second recommendation. That is significant in that it will encourage the Department of Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs to fund a public information campaign aimed at both men and women on the effects of age and late partnering and fertility. It became apparent from a number of submissions that this would be of great benefit. I also strongly support recommendation 3.

I want to move to recommendation 10, which says: ‘As a priority, the Australian government target adults in jobless households with a goal of helping them obtain paid employment to break the cycle of disadvantage in Australia.’ This government has spent more than any other government in creating innovative and supportive structures that tackle this issue with Welfare to Work and programs such as the personal support program, but this is something that we need to continually look at to see how we can creatively invest, particularly for people who have been caught in generational cycles of unemployment.

Recommendation 11 refers to in-home care. I would particularly like to focus on this because I think it is important that the in-home care program, which is already an initiative of this government, is expanded further. There has been a review of in-home care carried out by government. I think it is critical that this kind of care is more flexible and expanded in a way to meet the needs, particularly of two-income families and where there are shiftworkers—in many cases in Western Sydney, both parents are engaged in shiftwork. My husband, for example, is a shiftworker and my travel here I think could be called shiftwork. I think where two parents are trying to juggle family and shiftwork for an organisation, it is critical that we expand this kind of service and look at expanding how rebates and CCB are made available to these families.

I also think it is important to note that one of the challenges for people accessing child care, particularly where there is a second income and a part-time or casual employee being the second income earner, in the structured environment of a childcare centre is that they often have to pay for days when they may not be working. So they have to pay and register a child for Wednesday even though they may be working only some Wednesdays. So I think in-home care, for example, may be a way in which the government could expand accessibility and flexibility for these kinds of workers where they could access child care on a more casual basis. This would create further flexibility for families, particularly where the second income earner is working on a casual or even a part-time basis—a permanent part-time job—that requires them to work varying hours week to week. This increasing flexibility is called for as families and the workplace make changes and adapt to one another.

I will look briefly at recommendation 15 where it talks about fringe benefits tax being removed from all child care so that all or any childcare provision made by employers to assist employees is exempt inclusive of salary sacrificing arrangements for child care. I particularly support this recommendation. Again, I would like to reiterate that many income earners and families could benefit from a tax rebate. How this is administered with improved accessibility and flexibility for middle- and low-income earners and benefiting all families I think is critical.

David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the report which has been tabled. Whilst many of the previous speakers have covered a range of issues, particularly those pertaining to child care—and that was certainly one of the things that came through strongly—there is another aspect to the report which is captured in recommendation 3. I plan to spend the time allocated to me today talking specifically to recommendation 3 of the report. This recommendation is that:

The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Attorney General’s Department establish the following additions to the relationship education components of the Family Relationships Services program …

That is, programs to be offered at different stages of relationships and a multimedia campaign to highlight the availability of these courses and the benefits of attending and completing them.

Why do I choose to focus specifically on this part of a report that deals with balancing work and family? It is predominantly because much of the feedback that we had from people throughout this inquiry ties in with feedback that we have had through many other forums; that is, that there are a range of factors which place stress on relationships and therefore on families—so work conditions and the ability to have things like child care, the ability to have flexibility at the workplace so that you can make adequate arrangements for your families—and contribute to stresses in families. Likewise, the strength of family and the ability to communicate within a family unit about these issues contributes significantly to a person’s resilience to succeed in the workplace, stay there and negotiate for those more flexible conditions.

So the two areas are intertwined, particularly when you also look at the value of family to the community and the impact of family dysfunction and breakdown. This is a recommendation which I strongly encourage the government to take up. It is not a new idea. The government has been supporting marriage and family through its family services program for the last four decades. The program began with grants to organisations offering marriage counselling services back in the 1960s. Over the years it has expanded and developed, but also, in certain areas, it has contracted in the amount of people who have availed themselves of the service and the impact that it has had.

Probably the last serious look at this issue was in 1998 with the report To have and to hold, which had a look at the area of marriage in a community and some of the things that were required to keep marriages together. One of those things, in chapter 4, was looking at the factors contributing to marriage and relationship breakdown. Some of the significant and important reasons included work related problems, as well as some of the other issues around poor communication skills. What we have found through a number of studies in the United Kingdom, in Europe, America and here in Australia is that the ability for couples to communicate and to have a framework to communicate effectively is a key plank in making sure that their relationship and their marriage, for those who are married, last.

Gottman and other people who have done research in this area talk about the fact that all couples will face conflict, and that, for couples to survive that conflict and those issues, they need a framework within which they are given the motivation to work through the issues. Importantly, they need the skills to establish the framework that works for them as a family. There is a very good paper put out by the Australian Institute of Family Studies that looks at why good marriages last. This whole area of relationship education is a very important component of that.

I think it is telling that in 1998, when this report To have and to hold was written, FaCS—as it was named then—was giving $3.5 million per annum for preventative marriage and relationship education programs. In 2003-04, the amount given to the same programs was $3.5 million. So despite the fact that the need is escalating, that there is an even greater evidence base to highlight that this is an area that will help families stay together and, importantly, help them gain the skills to balance work and family life, we have not seen a significant increase in funding.

As part of the rollout of the family relationship centres and the reform of the family law system, I am pleased to note that there was a significant boost to the Family Relationship Services Program. I have literally come to this place from a meeting with a number of providers of family relationship centres. On the one hand I am very pleased to report that their feedback is that the uptake has been very positive from a broad section of the community and that the outcomes have been positive. But on the other hand their consistent comment—not only today, but from other FRCs that I have spoken to—is that they need more investment in resources and materials. They need good quality audiovisual materials so that they can get community groups to facilitate courses in the area of communication skills, conflict resolution and the sort of relationship skills to help families cope in achieving this work-life balance. They need that, and they need another expansion of FRSP programs. They said the content is good though, so those who access it love it, it is very effective, but the amount of people who come to them seeking this is on the rise.

I strongly support recommendation 3 and, as the government considers this report, I would certainly ask that it goes back and considers a number of other reports as well as budget submissions that have gone in separately, from me and from others—including recommendations coming out of the family relationship centre task force. This has been calling consistently, for nearly a decade, for an increased investment in this area, particularly innovative ways to make sure that we capture and utilise the broad community resource that is there through community groups, through faith based groups, even in the workplace.

There are many employers, some in South Australia, who have approached me looking at how we can use resources from the family relationship centres to provide this kind of education in the workplace. They recognise that it will help employees in their workplace to manage relationships and resolve conflict, but also they recognise that, as these employees take these skills home, it will help them manage that balance of work and family life. This will not only keep the families together, but the flow-on for the employer is that they will become a more productive employee.

This is inextricably linked to the positive outcomes that this report is seeking to find pathways towards. Whilst it may not immediately appear to be a recommendation that this report would lead to, when most of the focus has been on child care, I believe it is fundamental that the government give serious attention to this recommendation. I certainly look forward to a boost in this area.

Debate (on motion by Mr Neville) adjourned.