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

I move:

That the amendment be agreed to.

I would like to update the House on the progress of this piece of legislation and, hopefully, illuminate the appalling and disgraceful behaviour of the Labor opposition in terms of this bill. The Labor Party made it clear in the other place earlier today that they will not support both measures of the bill.

We note that the opposition in the other place has moved an amendment today to remove the childcare benefit component of this bill. They did not do it in the lower house when they had the opportunity last week. The shadow minister grandstanded and carried on and explained why the entire bill was nonsense.

Labor keeps repeating this made-up figure which they call our cuts to child care. In fact, there have been no cuts. In the childcare benefit measures of this bill there is a measure to pause the indexation of the two thresholds at which families become eligible to childcare benefit, but the amount of childcare benefit—the dollar amount of benefit that families receive per hour of care—will continue to be indexed. In debating the bill in the lower house member after member opposite talked about the cuts in this benefit—all of it completely incorrect. I again want to reassure Australian families that those cuts are not taking place. Those figures were invented by the member for Adelaide as the shadow minister.

In the Senate, the opposition moved an amendment this morning to remove the childcare benefit component. They moved the amendment which allowed the childcare rebate component of this bill to pass. It is important to distinguish between the two because we have had to bring Labor's childcare rebate threshold clause back into the parliament, over a year after Labor announced it. It was in Labor's 2013-14 budget that they would freeze the threshold of the childcare rebate for three years—making it their freeze for a total of six years. It was their measure alone. Unfortunately, they did not complete the legislative task but they took the savings of $106 million from that measure.

As I said at the time, the Treasurer, the member for Lilley, was absolutely desperate to make the budget that he had announced would be, I think, his fourth surplus—he knew it was going to be a deficit—as small a deficit as possible. So they took the savings, froze the childcare rebate for a further three years but did not introduce the legislation. They did not let the rubber hit the road and do the responsible thing.

So we had no choice but to bring the legislation back. In the lower house the member for Adelaide, as the shadow minister, refused even to consider it. As I said, there were a lot of histrionics and a lot of nonsense spoken, but quietly in the Senate the opposition moved the amendment. They did half the decent thing; to do the decent thing would have been to pass our entire bill. Obviously humiliated, and recognising that perhaps they owed some responsibility to do the right thing about a measure that was, after all, theirs, they moved an amendment in the Senate. So the freezing of the threshold for the childcare rebate will pass, if it passes as it comes back to the House now.

We accept that in order to secure the savings that Labor announced in the 2013 budget we will need to separate these measures. So the government will agree to the amendment moved by Labor in the Senate to remove schedule 1, item 2, page 3, lines 7 to 13. But we will hold Labor to their actions in government by agreeing to this amendment and seeing Labor's childcare rebate measure passed by this parliament. We give notice, in doing so, that we intend to reintroduce the childcare benefit measures as a bill in the House of Representatives as soon as possible.

It gives us no pleasure to have inherited the debt and deficit that we have from Labor. It gives us no pleasure, as a party concerned about the pressures on families in terms of their income and the availability of childcare. This is one small measure in a childcare policy agenda; it relates more to fixing up Labor's budget mess. We are doing many things in terms of creating a better and more sustainable future for parents and families and childcare that matches family circumstances. But we make no apologies, once again, for addressing the debt left to us by Labor—the $1 billion in interest paid every month—and we will introduce the childcare benefit measure again into the House of Representatives. We will do to right thing by the Australian people.

Question agreed to.