Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

) ( ): My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the government's reforms to improve the quality of child care for Australian families and support childcare workers?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Latrobe for her question. I know in an electorate like hers, home to so many families who are seeking to balance work and family life and who are very reliant on local childcare services, that she is incredibly familiar with the struggle it can be for people to get the child care they need and also to meet the cost of that child care. As a government we have always understood the pressures on families when children are very small and people are trying to mix work, family life and care for children, which is why we have increased support to help families with childcare costs. The way the former government did this was completely unsatisfactory, so we have moved to assist people with their out-of-pocket costs by increasing the childcare rebate to 50 per cent and by making sure that we have increased the maximum amount that people can get to $7,500. We have also understood that for families it is not just the costs; it is also the quality, that people want to make sure that their very precious children are well cared for. So we have had a clear focus on quality standards and early education in childcare centres.

Now the government is in a position to announce that it is going further. We are ensuring that there are trials of new flexibility models for child care. We understand that many families engage in work—they might be police officers, they might be firefighters, they might be nurses—which requires them to work shifts in establishments that necessarily work 24/7. So we are devoting resources to ensure that we can trial some models of flexibility to meet the work and family life balance of people with those kinds of jobs.

Today we are also announcing a new $300-million investment to help us with investment into childcare workers. People want to know that workers in childcare centres are appropriately rewarded for their work and they certainly want to know that there is a strategy for staff retention in the industry which means they do not face the circumstance where every time they drop their child off there is a new worker in the childcare centre, that they see childcare staff on a continuous basis, making sure they have a bond with the children they care for. This is the aim of what the government has announced today. We believe it is very important for staff in childcare centres. We believe it is very important, too, for parents, for families who rely on quality child care. We are very proud as a government to announce it because we believe it will make a real difference.