Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Assistant Minister for Education. Will the minister inform the House of the impact of the world's biggest carbon tax on the childcare sector. Minister, how will repealing the tax help reduce costs in this vital sector?

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

I thank the member for Longman for his question and recognise that he keeps in close contact with both the childcare providers and the parents in his electorate. He knows the strains that they are facing in providing a high quality childcare product for families under the cost increases that were left to them by the Labor government. Let's not forget that under the previous minister, the member for Adelaide, fees skyrocketed by 53 per cent. The member for Adelaide at one stage said that fees would go up by 57c a week and then amended that to $8 a week. But, in fact, the 53 per cent under Labor's six years in government is a shocking legacy to have left people with. Labor's own regulatory authority said that a 75-place centre would face increases of $140,000 a year, just in the admin costs alone.

As if the red tape were not bad enough, we have the carbon tax on top of that. One childcare provider in Queensland told me recently it would add about $1,000 a centre. That is not an inconsiderable amount. Centres are paralysed by the red tape that they are operating under. Many of them are small businesses and many of them know the difficulties of managing their balance sheets when they have this impost on top of everything else. Who can forget Earth Hour, when one of Labor's regulatory authorities marked a centre down for turning out the lights! They get hit when they turn the lights off, and they get hit when they turn the lights on because of the carbon tax impost on their electricity bill. We understand that children need to be in air conditioned comfort—we recognise that. Whether you are in the member for Longman's electorate in Queensland where the temperature is 35 degrees, or you are in Tasmania where it is minus 3½ degrees, cooling and heating adds considerably to the cost of providing high quality child care for the nation's children.

Labor is no longer in government but parents and childcare centres are still paying the price for the carbon tax. Let us come back to the small family businesses that we are talking about. Labor does not care about balance sheets. Remember that the balance sheet when they came into government showed $45 billion in net assets; when they left government there was $162 billion of net debt—a $206 billion deterioration in the nation's balance sheet over six years in government. They do not care about the balance sheets of Australian families or the difficulties that centres are operating under or the pressures that everybody faces. It is time to scrap the carbon tax, stop this silly filibuster in the Senate and remember, front and centre, that we in the government have families and small businesses at the heart of what we do.