Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Assistant Minister for Education. Will the minister inform the House what the government is doing to ensure more flexible, affordable and accessible child care for Australian families in the budget? How does this compare with other approaches?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to take a question from the member for Leichhardt. Labor's flexibility trials have continued to be a flop. These were much-touted attempts by the previous government to demonstrate that parents need flexibility in child care. I am not sure why they needed an expensive $1.3 million measure to prove something we have always known, which is that parents want flexible, affordable child care. Unfortunately, only 244 families have so far accessed the pilot program. Seven of the initial trial sites are not providing flexible care, so it is the most inflexible 'flexibility trial' you could possibly imagine. Many parents were asked to enrolment mid-year, which is about the time when you are already well and truly settled in the childcare centre that you have chosen for your child. It was another expensive Labor mess.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Isaacs will desist!

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a tattered Labor legacy in child care the Labor Party have left us. In fact, the only thing right about Labor's childcare policy was its title 'Labor's Affordable Child Care Plan.' In fact, they sat on their hands while childcare costs went up and affordability went down. Who can forget the double drop-off where 260 centres were promised and only 38 were built? What about the introduction of a new framework, which was just as much about red tape as it ever was about quality? We appreciate the quality, we sign off on the quality, but we do not sign off on the red tape that comes with it. In centre after centre that I go into I see trained, passionate, intelligent preschool teachers locked in an office, just filling in the paperwork. If the children want an exercise where they make a cake, they have to do a risk assessment on the hand-held beaters. That is just one example. Paperwork after paperwork, all shoved in a corner, all archived for 21 years, with no coherent narrative, no plan—just one dog's breakfast of a policy after another. And then, on the eve of the election—

Ms Kate Ellis interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Adelaide will desist!

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the member for Adelaide yelled as hard at the tactics committee, as she does at me, she might get a question up. On the eve of the election we saw another expensive bandaid, the Early Years Quality Fund—a Labor union slush fund—which was in fact scrambled by the member for Adelaide for United Voice to hand out in the streets of her electorate. She was worried about her vote. This was just a union slush fund.

Honourable members interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exchanges across the chamber will cease.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This was just a union slush fund. We have a Productivity Commission inquiry into how to fix up Labor's mess. Labor put politics before parents. What a shameful legacy for Australia's children.