Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Early childhood education is a fundamental part of development. For most it is the first educational experience which drives learning and intellectual, social and emotional development. But it has become abundantly clear that the Abbott government does not recognise this with its attack on access to affordable child care. The government has failed to provide certainty for the universal access to early childhood education initiative and plans to rip up the child care benefit. In my electorate, more than 3,500 families currently rely on the child care benefit. For these families across the Geelong region, many parents will be left with no support and child care costs will potentially skyrocket. Across Australia it is estimated this will impact more than half a million families.

The universal access to child care initiative was established in 2008 in recognition that the provision of strong and effective support to children and families in their most formative years significantly advances learning and development. The invaluable initiative enables every child to access 15 hours a week of a quality early childhood educational program in the year before they commence formal schooling.

If the Abbott government turns its back on universal access, the initiative will only be able to maintain the provision of 10 hours of kindergarten. The research here is clear. Ten hours a week is simply inadequate to promote the learning and development this initiative is designed to foster. The removal of federal funding from this vital program would be a move of blatant disregard for the irrefutable evidence which demonstrates a direct correlation between preschool attendance and stronger social and educational outcomes.

On top of this concern, the Abbott government's first budget seeks to deprive hundreds—thousands, really—of Geelong families of the child care benefit which provides an essential helping hand in enabling low and middle income families to afford the cost of child care. By freezing the eligible income thresholds a huge number of families will be denied access to the benefit while child care costs are expected to grow by an alarmingly high seven per cent a year. This heartless and ill-considered move will force many parents to remove their children from early education, making this essential service even less accessible for struggling families.

Recently I met with Councillor Kylie Fisher, the community development portfolio holder of the City of Greater Geelong, about the impact of this move on the city, and the city is deeply concerned. This attack on early education comes at a time when the City of Greater Geelong has invested $30 million in children's services infrastructure to meet the growing needs of our community. This improved infrastructure for Geelong's child care services will go underutilised if parents are unable to afford to access to early education in the first instance. The ramifications of making child care inaccessible go beyond failing to deliver for our children. It will mean parents are unable to take up employment opportunities and trained child care professionals will lose the jobs they have worked hard to qualify for. This is undeniably a situation which no responsible government can allow to occur.