Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the shadow minister for early childhood education, amongst other things, I rise in this debate to provide the coalition’s general support for the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009. The bill essentially provides for a number of what seem to be general housekeeping amendments to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999. The Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care has generally already outlined the main changes being made by this bill, and the coalition will support it.

I would like to have a closer look, though, at one specific change being made. That is the amendment that will enforce the provision in the bill which imposes civil penalties on childcare operators who breach their obligations in relation to when and how they notify their intention to cease operations, specifically breaching the rule that requires 30 days notice to be given before a centre can close. This is an important amendment.

We have seen over the past few months a situation where a large operator, ABC Learning Centres, collapsed leaving many thousands of parents, carers and, most importantly, children facing great uncertainty. They faced a situation where they did not know if their centre would close, change ownership or remain open. For many families with children in care this type of situation did cause great deal of stress. In a very real and personal sense, this stress was brought home to me recently when I was contacted by parents from the ABC Learning Centre at Altona North in the electorate Gellibrand, located just five minutes from the electoral boundary of the Minister for Education and member for Lalor, Julia Gillard.

ABC Altona North was one of the ABC Learning Centres which was deemed to be unviable under the ABC Learning business model. It became part of the 241 centres in the ABC2 Group which was controlled by the government appointed receivers, PPB, and for which a buyer would hopefully be found. Last month, on 15 April, PPB announced that, of the original 241 centres in the ABC2 Group, buyers had been found for 210. Altona North was listed as ‘new operator identified—negotiations continuing’. On 5 May it was announced that Sydenham Preschool Trust would take over the Altona North centre and operations would continue as normal. However, on 8 May, parents at the centre were informed that the centre would close as of 15 May. Parents were given seven days notice to find alternative care arrangements. An email that I received from one of the mothers at the centre sums up her distress. She said—and this is not a full quote:

The closure of this centre and the provision of one weeks notice represent an exceedingly unacceptable situation. I fail to understand how it can be allowed to happen in this country.

The process that was undertaken to reach this decision has been thoroughly unacceptable:

• Neither the parents, children, careers nor affected community members, that are part of this creche have been involved in this decision or contacted to provide their opinion/thoughts. To make a decision about the future of this creche based solely on property value, head account, and financial records is to treat this as solely a business transaction and to ignore the human element.
• Even in reaching a commercial business decision, options such as our willingness to pay higher fees or contribute time and other resources have not been canvassed.
• The centre is fully occupied and recently renovated. I cannot accept that there is no means to profitably sustain its operation. I suspect that it has been decided that it not sufficiently profitable to continue; which is a level of greed that should not be tolerated in this society.

Communication throughout the period has been inadequate:

• The only means of communication provided has been printed emails left in my son’s pigeon hole at creche. Decisions have been made that have a huge emotional, financial and logistical impact on my family and not a single person responsible or involved in this process has had the decency to address this issue with me in person. No one has had the integrity or strength of character to talk to me directly.
• Based on the assurances given in the communications provided to us we have made decisions that have now put us in a worse position. We have rejected places at other creches where we would be happy to send him; where our waiting list position had finally resulted in an offer for care, and we are no longer on the waiting list.

The alternative childcare options and support provided during this process have not been adequate:

• That someone could consider one week’s notice sufficient to allow a family to make such a significant change is absurd. To think that I’d be happy to place my child in any child care centre is unacceptable.

That is just a glimpse of part of the frustration and the distress caused to one mother in one centre who received very little notice that it would cease operations.

The Minister for Education has said publicly on numerous occasions that centres cannot close without giving parents 30 days notice, and yet here is an example of a centre which was being assisted by government funds and run by the government appointed receiver giving parents seven days notice to find alternative care. Needless to say, the tightening of the provisions to impose civil penalties on operators who breach this 30-days notice requirement is a good thing and will be welcomed by parents. I wonder, though, what would have happened if Altona North had closed after this legislation was passed by the parliament. Would the civil penalties have been imposed on the minister, being the person ultimately responsible for the closure?

It is my view that this bill should have included a provision to ensure childcare operators provide 30 days notice to parents of children attending a centre which, for whatever reason, has to close its doors. We know how these closures affect families; we saw the evidence of it on the news every night for weeks. The children are the reason that these centres exist and in this industry more than any other there needs to be stability and certainty.

Over the past few days I have been working on an amendment to this bill that would specifically provide for the notification of parents. However, in discussions with the parliamentary secretary last night, I was assured that the department already has the power to specify the form, manner and way in which the childcare service provider must notify that they are ceasing operations. The department has apparently already trialled a form for such notice, and the parliamentary secretary assures me that the standardised notice of cessation forms will ensure parents receive at least 30 days notice. I accept her assurances and will therefore not be moving an amendment to that effect.

However, it must be noted that the case of Altona North ABC shows that the parliamentary secretary and the minister really have not been on top of things and they have not ensured that what they promised parents has been adhered to. The minister has said time and time again over the past six months that there was a legal requirement for services to provide at least 30 days notice to parents before closure, but exactly what has been done to ensure that is enforced? Nothing that we know of.

While I take the parliamentary secretary at her word on this matter, I will be monitoring very closely the operation of the new notice of cessation forms to ensure that the government’s rhetoric matches the outcome at least on this occasion. The Rudd government has shown a somewhat dismissive attitude to the childcare system, seemingly happy to hide behind the ABC situation rather than provide genuine national leadership on the future direction of the industry. Such a dismissive attitude is exemplified by the very quiet binning of the government’s promise to build 260 childcare centres around the country.

For those who remember, there was such fanfare in 2007 when Labor’s Affordable Child Care Plan—not my words, words used by the Labor Party to describe the policy—was announced and we were told that under this plan 260 additional childcare centres around the country would be built. After 18 months, the government has budgeted, at a cost of $114.5 million, for 38 centres. Of those 38 only five or six are at any type of planning stage—not one has yet been completed. The coalition has called repeatedly for the Rudd government to answer the questions: who is going to pay for the other 222? Where will they be built? How much will they cost? Will they contribute to the problem of oversupply in some areas? Exactly when will the promise be delivered in full? These are very valid questions that need to be asked.

This government makes the very simple criticism that any questions asked of its policies are negative, not helpful and un-Australian. That is not so. I say to members opposite: it is a fundamental responsibility of opposition to look at and scrutinise the policies and expenditure of government to ensure that they are in accordance with the interests of the Australian population and with what the government has promised it would do. To do nothing, to blindly pass every single bill and decision without comment or scrutiny, would be letting the Australian people down. The opposition would not be doing its job in our system of government of doing its bit to hold the government accountable. That is irrespective of which political party is in government. To have a strong, healthy democracy that delivers results and solutions for the Australian people and Australian families and, in this instance, Australian families with children in care, the opposition must be on its toes and doing its job. The government needs to accept constructive criticism because that will only help it do its job better. We know anyone without any checks and balances in doing their job is likely to do a lesser job than they otherwise would.

On budget night, Julia Gillard’s ministerial statement on education contained a quiet, two-line reference saying that:

The remaining up to 222 early learning and care centres will be considered when the child care market is settled and based on the experience of the priority centres.

For an issue which formed such a significant part of the government’s early childhood policy, this is certainly a significant backflip. The collapse of ABC Learning has raised all sorts of demand and supply issues within the childcare industry. In order to provide some certainty in the childcare market, the industry’s main requirement now is to have some idea where the demand hotspots and chronic undersupply are actually located.

The government has not helped this uncertainty; in fact, it has contributed to it by refusing to release the childcare vacancy data which was last released publicly under the Howard government in April 2007. I will take this opportunity, as we canvass a range of childcare issues in this bill, to once again implore the minister and parliamentary secretary to do something about providing an indication of vacancy rates in the childcare sector. This is one of the most crucial things the government can do to help with the future planning and viability of the sector. The sector has effectively been flying blind without these figures since April 2007. Alarmingly, the utilisation rate in long day care in the 2006 childcare census was 74 per cent, down from 85 per cent in the 2004 census. That is a dramatic drop in just two years. Now it has been three years and we do not know what the situation currently is.

As I understand it, the government will no longer conduct the census, as it collects very similar data through the new Child Care Management System. I note that the parliamentary secretary announced on the fifth of this month that the CCMS is now fully operational. If that is the case, surely this means that the government can now provide an accurate indication of utilisation rates within every centre across the country. While I concede this does not present the full story on oversupply and undersupply, it is an important and significant indicator. There is growing anecdotal evidence that there is an oversupply in some areas, just as there is a shortage in others. What the industry needs is a clearer picture.

You really have to wonder why the government continue to be so very, very reluctant to reveal the data on vacancy rates. They collect it electronically every single week. It seems to some of us that their reluctance is tied in with their promise to build these 260 new childcare centres. So now the government in the budget papers, on what they considered to be their very clear and unequivocal election promise, have created even greater uncertainty. We have seen a promise of 260 centres and now we have seen a backflip on this promise. The actions of the government, by refusing to release the vacancy data, are contributing to this uncertainty and instability. They have indicated that they may revisit the issue of the 260 centres when there is greater certainty in the childcare market. But if they do not help create greater certainty by releasing vacancy data then they will not be helping the industry and they certainly will not be helping themselves get back on track with their election promises. The two-line reference on budget night seems like a pretty good ‘out clause’ if you ask me. I do not believe the government have any intention of revisiting that particular election promise.

Despite the concerns that I have raised today over the government’s handling of child care generally over the past 18 months, the opposition will support this bill because it is essentially a housekeeping bill. I thank the parliamentary secretary and her office for making some of the departmental officers available for a briefing and also for the written reassurances on the issue of the 30-day notification for parents. I commend the bill to the House.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009. Before I start talking about the substance of the bill, I note that it is interesting that the member for Indi talked about an unacceptable situation. I will tell you what was an unacceptable situation: one of the first acts of the Howard government was to disinvest in childcare centres in this country. It is a fact that the Howard government spent one-fifth of what our OECD colleagues did when it came to funding for education in the early childhood sector. That is a fact. They underinvested in the area.

It is also a fact that it was on their watch that the ABC Learning Centres debacle emerged and grew and grew. The ABC Learning Centres situation—the catastrophe that the Rudd Labor government had to deal with—happened on the watch, and with the consent, approval and approbation, of the Howard coalition government. We have had to fix that up. Because the member for Indi mentioned the ABC Learning Centres, in the course of this speech I am going to go through and show how the government has worked in an early, decisive and constructive way with the sector, with the court appointed receivers and with the families affected to ensure good outcomes across the country for the 120,000 children in the 1,000 ABC Learning Centres across the country which were put in jeopardy. I am going to give the example of just one centre, in the largest suburb in my electorate, where the outcome was favourable; indeed, it was a terrific outcome for the local community.

The amendments in the legislation before the House are quite technical, but they do go towards improving the accountability, administration and accessibility of the sector. In the second reading speech on this bill, the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Childcare said the following:

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009 … marks another step along this government’s path to accessible, affordable, high-quality child care for Australian children, their parents and carers.

This bill is about the three pillars: administration, accessibility and accountability. It is about ensuring that our children, from the cradle to the creche and to the primary schools that they will attend, get the kind of education and care that we believe is appropriate in a fair, just and prosperous country.

As I said, the changes in the bill are quite technical, but they are important. For example, the change of the name of the rebate from the ‘childcare tax rebate’ to the ‘childcare rebate’ is simply a statement of reality. It is no longer a tax offset; it is a benefit through the Family Assistance Office. So it makes it more comprehensible to the public and they know it is not a tax rebate but in fact a benefit. The substitution of the childcare rebate on the death of a parent or guardian is a sensible outcome. It is sad for children when their parents or guardians pass on, so it is important to ensure that the individual who assumes the care, control and what we used to call the custody of a child receives the CCR entitlement to assist them in providing the basic necessities of life for that child.

It is important that we ensure the recovery of debt where there is a debt owed to the Commonwealth in the form of a CCR overpayment. These amendments require that you take into consideration also the fact that we introduced quarterly CCR payments from July 2008. The civil penalties are appropriate, through regulation under family assistance law. Imposing civil penalties and issuing infringement notices is important to ensure rigorous accountability in the sector. If the matter goes to court, we know that the courts have a discretion to review the infringement notices issued and to take into consideration the nature and character of the organisation—its size, for example—in determining whether a penalty should be upheld or an alternative penalty imposed. But it is important that there be a civil penalty regime to deal with noncompliance.

The amendments with respect to the childcare rebate for the final quarter are also prudent and appropriate. This will allow the final CCR quarterly payment to be withheld until an individual taxpayer knows what their taxable income will actually be so that, when the final payment is made, there will be no overpayment or underpayment. It is important that people who deal with the Family Assistance Office ensure that they advise the office of any overpayments or underpayments so that they can adequately adjust their income and the government knows what the true situation is for the purposes of the provision of child care and out-of-pocket expenses.

It is important that these recipients, who may or may not be listening, understand that we do have two types of benefit. We have childcare benefit, which is a payment by the Australian government, which helps individuals with respect to the cost of child care. It can be taken as a lump sum or as reduced childcare fees, and that is dependent on a person’s income, the type of care used, whether it is approved or registered, the amount of care used, whether they pass work, training or study tests, and the number of children in their care. I would encourage all those people who may be listening to log on to the website www.mychild.gov.au to find out more information in relation to that. The second type of benefit, if I can put it that way, is the childcare tax rebate, which we are renaming, as I said. It is a payment made to the individual by the Australian government to help the family with the costs of child care. It is separate from the CCB. To be eligible for this rebate, you must have used an approved childcare centre and be eligible for the CCB, even if entitled at the zero rate. There is no income test for this type of rebate. If you are eligible for the CCB, you can get this as well. (Quorum formed)

The member for McPherson, who is the shadow spokesperson for ageing, seems to simply not be interested in children. There were 120,000 children at ABC Learning Centres across the country whose places were in jeopardy. The security of their families in terms of finance was in jeopardy and their arrangements in terms of family life were in jeopardy. And what do we get today? We get quorum calls. They are not interested in this topic. The fact that they want to call quorums on us during debate on an important bill like this indicates their lack of sensitivity in relation to this issue and their lack of understanding of the necessity of certainty in business and of the certainty that is required by the many people who use childcare centres across the country. They are a necessity in family life in this day and age. It is a disgrace that the opposition should engage in the type of juvenile action that we have seen time and time again today.

We have fulfilled our election commitment and we will continue to be assiduous in fulfilling our election commitments. The member for Indi should have a good look at the election commitments that we made in relation to areas of her portfolio if she thinks that we are not doing so. Unlike the opposition, we tell the people of Australia upfront what we are going to do, and we do it.

When it comes to the childcare tax rebate, we made an election commitment to increase it to 50 per cent to benefit families across the country and pay it quarterly, and that is what we have done. We did it from 1 July 2008. That makes an appreciable difference in the financial security and to the livelihoods of people across the country. That is important.

The opposition failed to do anything of the sort during their tenure. The member for Indi talked about what we are doing in terms of help for Australian families in the area of child care. I thought that she was here on budget night, but she must not have been. For her benefit, I will go through a few of our plans with respect to child care. The Rudd government is investing $12.8 billion over the next four years to help 800,000 Australian children in child care. We are investing $2.5 million to provide a childcare estimator to help families make decisions about this. The childcare tax rebate will provide $4.4 billion over four years to assist working families with childcare costs. The CCB will deliver $8.4 billion over four years to reduce childcare fees. We are 100 per cent committed to quality child care for the people of Australia.

When the childcare problems emerged with respect to the ABC Learning Centres, we acted in the way that was necessary in the circumstances. On 6 November 2008, ABC Learning, Australia’s largest provider of child care, entered voluntary administration. The government stepped in with a support package of $22 million to ensure that the centres would continue to operate while the receiver, McGrathNicol, undertook a review of its operations. The government’s childcare industry taskforce met with the receivers and assisted the review of the operational data of each centre. The government immediately set up a dedicated information hotline to provide basic information to parents and employees about the announcement. It provided necessary information on the website, mychild.gov.au. This provided invaluable assistance to parents in these circumstances.

In December, the receiver announced that 720 centres would continue to operate as ABC1 and that 55 would close with children being accommodated in neighbouring centres. A further 262, including 21 defence centres, were not viable. The government provided a further package of $34 million for these non-viable centres, known as the ABC2 group, which became the subject of an expression of interest and which were run by the court appointed received, PPB. On 13 March 2009, the Deputy Prime Minister noted PPB’s progress as they commenced the exchange of contracts for the first tranche of centres. At that time, it became clear that the number and complexity of the offers meant that PPB required an extension of its appointment to mid-May 2009. You can see that the government got involved in this issue to support working families across the country.

On 15 April 2009 PPB announced the outcome of the expression of interest for ABC2 centres and specified that 200 centres would continue to operate with new operators; 19 centres would close, as no new operator had been found, however alternative child care had been identified in neighbouring centres for all of the children; four centres had closed during the EOI; eight centres would continue to be reviewed by PPB; the 21 defence sites would move to a new management arrangement with B4Kids; the 75 new operators of the centres were a mix of small and big, and private and not-for-profit organisations; and it was expected that about 85 per cent of the staff would be retained in all the circumstances, which is a good outcome for the staff. The ABC1 centres remain in the control of the ABC receiver McGrathNicol. A process to determine their future is yet to be announced.

So from the position we had in November last year when we had to step in after the failure of the Howard government, where it appeared 1,000 childcare centres would be in jeopardy, we are now in the position where just a handful of centres remain unresolved. Approximately 120,000 children have certainty. There is certainty for their families. There is certainty for the staff. There is certainty for the businesses for which the parents work. The government has worked in a dedicated and determined fashion to ensure stability in the childcare sector following the upheaval caused by ABC Learning Centres’ voluntary administration.

Locally, an expression of the government’s commitment can be found at the Brassall Shopping Centre, where an ABC centre was at risk of closure. With increased demand for child care across Ipswich we saw Bush Kidz Day Care open its doors to replace the ABC Learning Centre on 11 May 2009. Bush Kidz refused to accept that closures in the Ipswich community were necessary. There was a united and tenacious team, led by Bush Kidz area director Ms Lolita Brennan and the family owners and operators of Bush Kidz: Mrs Ronelle Kearney, Mr John Kearney and Mr Brent Stokes. They joined with the centre owners and the Brassall Shopping Centre management to secure the centre’s future. Mr Stokes said:

The support and encouragement from everyone has made this possible.

He also said:

We could not have achieved this without the tremendous support from the Federal Member for Blair, Mr Shayne Neumann M.P., the State Member for Ipswich West, Mr Wayne Wendt M.P., and Councillor Cheryl Bromage—

I might add, all of whom, including me, have their offices at the Brassall Shopping Centre.

Bush Kidz is committed to working closely with their new colleagues, including the current Brassall childcare centre director, Kylie Smith, and her fantastic team, to ensure all staff employment and enrolments for existing families remain secure. Bush Kidz is a wonderful organisation. It is a multi award-winning childcare service. It received the 2008 Business Achievers Award in Tuition, Training and Children’s Services and the Commonwealth Bank’s Small Business Champion Award in 2008.

We have seen an increase in enrolments by approximately five per cent since Bush Kidz have taken over and it is estimated that in the next few weeks there will be another 17 per cent increase. This is a fantastic outcome that would not have happened without the support of the Rudd Labor government. (Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Reading the second reading speech for the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009 delivered by the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Childcare I was interested to see how she summed up the bill. She said:

… this bill is about administration, accessibility and accountability—what I could call the AAA rating.

That was a fairly nifty use of the English language. I certainly would not in this House want to in any way, shape or form suggest that the parliamentary secretary was less than sincere in supporting the purposes of this bill for the reasons she outlined.

When I look at what the bill seeks to do, it seems that any reasonable person would have to support the bill, and that is what the Liberal-National opposition are doing in the House today. The bill will make changes to allow the final quarterly payment of the childcare tax rebate to be withheld until a parent’s taxable income is determined for that financial year. The government has advised us that the reason for this is to reduce the number of families who are overpaid or underpaid. That certainly makes a lot of sense and appears to be logical.

The bill also seeks to align the operation of the CCR provisions with the childcare benefits in the case of a deceased individual. That means that, if an individual who received CCR payments passes on and the child continues to attend approved care, the payments can continue to be received by another approved adult who takes over guardianship of the child. Again, no-one could object to that provision.

The bill allows for those people who have been assessed at a zero rate for the CCB to request a review of their entitlements within two years of the relevant year that they received the zero rating. Where a variation to the CCB is made as a result of the review, an automatic review will be done in relation to the CCR payments. Again, that is not unreasonable.

Civil penalties are imposed on childcare operators who breach their obligations in relation to when and how they notify their intention to cease operations. My understanding is that the current provisions provide that 30 days notice be given before a centre can close. Yet, only about 14 days ago, the ABC centre at Altona North in Victoria—a centre to which the government appointed receivers and on 5 May said would remain open, with final negotiations to be completed—announced that it would close and parents were given only six days notice. So six days notice was given but the law requires 30 days notice. It is understandable that the government would seek to impose civil penalties on childcare providers who breach their legal obligations.

Logically, also, the childcare tax rebate is being renamed as the childcare rebate because the payment is now made as a quarterly payment through family assistance legislation rather than as a tax offset under taxation legislation.

I have held a view for a very long time that the cost of child care for a working person is as much a cost of earning assessable income as would be the purchase of tools by a tradesman or the purchase of reference books by an accountant or a lawyer. I must say that this is not Liberal-National opposition policy and it is certainly not government policy. But I have had a view that childcare expenses ought to be fully tax deductible and that that way there would be a linkage between it and the cost of producing the assessable income. The linkage would mean that before the income is actually assessed for tax the cost of producing that income would be taken into account and the person’s taxable income would therefore be reduced by the amount of the childcare payment.

For a whole range of reasons, including equity and the fact that there are people who are not in the paid workforce but who benefit from child care—and I accept that as well—this view of mine has not been adopted by any major political party. But I do think that as far as working people are concerned it makes a very fair case for childcare costs to be fully tax deductible and then, for those people who need child care for other reasons, the law as it currently stands could well be actioned with respect to those people. We will just have to wait and see whether anyone ever picks this up. But I find it quite amazing that many people who are in the paid workforce do not actually object to the fact that they are not receiving as a tax deduction the full cost of what they pay out. If they did not pay that out they would not be able to earn the assessable income because, in many cases, they would not be able to go to work.

Having said that, this is a bill that does enjoy the support of the opposition as well as the government. The bill includes housekeeping measures as well as amendments that the government would want us to accept as a result of the failure of ABC Learning. It is also a bit of a worry that you can have one operator who controls such a large section of the industry, as we saw with respect to ABC Learning. I suppose it does not really matter who controls the centres, but when you have a market failure, as occurred with respect to ABC Learning, clearly that has an incredible impact. We saw the action by the government, which was forced on the government, to ensure that those families who relied on ABC Learning were not left entirely in the lurch. The government, I believe, could well have handled the ABC Learning fiasco much better, but that is history—we are not discussing the ABC Learning fiasco in the debate on this particular bill. Because this bill, when you look at it as a freestanding bill, is worthy of support I am very happy to commend it to the chamber.

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank those members of the House who have contributed to this debate. I particularly thank the member for Blair for his very comprehensive appreciation of everything that the government is doing in this important area of early learning. The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009 continues to strengthen childcare governance. The bill builds on the comprehensive package of childcare initiatives that was passed last year through the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Budget and Other Measures) Act 2008.

Our first step is to rename the rebate as the childcare rebate in recognition that the payment is now made through the Family Assistance Office. We are creating a debt recovery provision so that if a person’s childcare rebate exceeds the entitlement determined at the end of the income year the difference is a recoverable debt.

We are taking further steps to simplify the calculation of the rebate for the income year and we will pay the rebate to an individual in substitution for someone who has died. Measures contained in this bill will also strengthen the compliance framework.

We are enabling the extension of the civil penalty and infringement notice regime through regulations and we are tightening the link between a service and an operator to hold operators liable for meeting the obligations imposed on their service.

We are introducing a power to request information when a childcare service has notified that it is ceasing operations. In particular, this power will introduce a requirement for an operator of an approved childcare service that is ceasing operations to notify the department in the form, manner and way specified by the secretary. Within that notice we intend to include a requirement for a service operator to provide evidence of the written advice of their intention to close and the fact that they have sent it to the families of the children enrolled at that centre. This change will work in concert with the amendments that allow the imposition of civil penalties through regulation. For example, regulations could be put in place so that a civil penalty would apply in a case where an operator failed to provide evidence of written advice of their intention to close to the families of children enrolled at that centre.

Through these measures we will continue to protect the government’s investment in child care. Last year the government delivered on its commitments to child care. We said we would do more. Through this bill we are doing more and we will continue to do more to meet the childcare needs of the Australian community.

I note that this bill is making a number of technical amendments to improve the operation of Australia’s childcare sector, but in the debate I noticed that the member for Indi also made a number of comments regarding ABC Learning. In particular, she raised the issue of problems in relation to one centre at Altona North. I want to put on the record the fact that PPB, the court appointed receiver, wrote to all families involved in the Altona North centre about the receivership process on three occasions—families received letters on three occasions. It is of course regrettable that this centre is closing; however, alternative local care is available and has been offered to all the affected families and children. Nonetheless, I certainly concede that this has been stressful for families, and particularly for employees.

But I would like to take a minute to put this into perspective. Given what the outcome could have been last year, when the vast empire that was ABC Learning went into receivership—an empire that extended to 1,084 centres—and we were faced with the possible loss of tens of thousands of childcare places, for a start, the management by the government and the receivers has been remarkable. Today I note the member for Indi spoke about what parents need. In cleaning up the mess of the ABC corporate collapse, I think the Rudd government has shown the ultimate concern and respect for the children, for the parents and for all of the employees involved. Throughout, we have acted to provide stability and certainty.

As I said in my second reading speech, this bill looks to improve the administration and accessibility of childcare entitlements and the accountability of the childcare service operators. It is clearly a step in learning the lessons of ABC Learning to ensure that this mistake is never repeated. I note as well, though, that the member for Indi—remarkably, really—said that the government was not on top of things. I have to say, it requires spectacular front to make that claim, when you consider that the member for Indi was a member of the previous government and, during the Howard years, the entity that became known as ABC Learning grew unchecked. We saw unchecked commercial growth. When it went into receivership last year we had to clean up the mess. We have done that and we are acting in many other areas. We have very ambitious plans with regard to early learning. I note that the member for Indi made no mention of these things. We are acting on quality early learning. We are acting on ratios. We are making an unprecedented commitment and investment in training. And, most importantly, we have acted on affordability. Today we heard from the member for Blair, who made the point that we acted on our first promise in the budget last year and introduced the 50 per cent rebate—that is, 50 per cent of all out-of-pocket expenses. That has made child care more affordable than it has ever been.

I will finish on one other important point, something we did not promise in the election campaign. In this budget, during what is going to be a very difficult year, we have done the best possible thing for parents right across the country: we aim to introduce a universal system of paid paternity leave, something that the Howard government never managed to do during the long boom years. We have very big ambitions in early learning. I think it is time the opposition got on board.

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care) Bill 2009 fundamentally strengthens governance in child care. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.