Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) Family Day Care (FDC) is a flexible, quality early education program in Australia that:

  (i) provides flexible programs that cater to the needs of thousands of working parents;

  (ii) operates under the National Quality Framework; and

  (iii) currently has the capacity to care and educate children in their own homes; and

(b) the Government:

  (i) is cutting $157 million and implementing changes to the Community Support Program (CSP) that will remove the funding of over 80 per cent of FDC services around Australia; and

  (ii) informed the FDC sector that the program changes would only impact new applicants, then introduced a budget proposal to apply the new guidelines to all services; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) genuinely consult with FDC providers about what sensible rule changes are needed, if any; and

(b) re-instate CSP funding for all FDC services currently funded under the program.

The benefits of family day care cannot be understated. Family day care provides flexible, quality education programs in Australia and is already utilised by 94,000 families and over 130,000 children. It is delivered by 14,000 educators, 99 per cent of whom are women. In Australia, most family day care operates as small businesses run by women who support other women returning to work or education. These family day care services are monitored and supervised by family day care coordination services around the country. Family day care educators provide access to affordable programs that cater to the needs of thousands of working families, including families who have non-standard work hours and rely on the flexibility family day care.

Family day care services are particularly important to regional communities such as the many small towns in my electorate of Bendigo. This is because in these centres there is less available long day care. In many regional towns, particularly the smaller ones, they may not have long day care services. Hence the reason that family day care is a good alternative. In my electorate of Bendigo family day care provides services to families living in small towns such as Newstead and Taradale, as well as the area of Harcourt and other small towns like Heathcote. These families would not otherwise have access to the limited childcare services available in larger towns just up the road. Family day care services provide a cost-effective option to people who are working part-time and who may not be able to afford or need long day care services. As stipulated by the national quality framework, family day care provides the low staff-to-child ratios that are required, in a homelike environment which is critical to supporting children and nurturing them at their youngest ages. The benefits of supporting high-quality childcare has now been well-established not just by experts in the field but also by economists and by our education system. What we need as a country is our government's support for a wide range of services to support our youngest Australians.

We need a well-funded, well resourced family day care network to underpin a strong early childhood education sector. It provides an alternative for those who cannot access long day care services. The implications of the cuts proposed by the government cannot be underestimated. As I said, there are about 130,000 children currently in the care of around 14,000 family day care workers, and the cuts of $150 million proposed in the budget will remove 80 per cent of the services that help coordinate and ensure the quality of care that is required. This means that educators will either have to close their small business or seek to develop a relationship with the remaining schemes that are in operation under scarce resources. To ensure quality within the family day care system, we need these networks to exist.

I am sure that speakers from the government side will outline problems that have occurred. I understand those problems but, rather than axing the whole system, we need to support these services and ensure the quality that remains. The cuts proposed in the budget will deny access to a diverse range of childcare options. It will mean that vulnerable children will have less opportunity to attend formal, organised family day care early childhood education. Cutting funding is another example of how this Liberal government is totally out of touch with the needs of families and with the needs of women, particularly those in regional areas like mine. The implications of these cuts on workers and families cannot be underestimated, and that is why I call on the government to reinstate the funding, to consult broadly with the sector and to put forward real reforms that will only strengthen the family day care sector.

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

Is the motion seconded?

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Karen McNamara (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a strong advocate and supporter of family day care in my electorate of Dobell and the Central Coast. With over 38,000 commuters daily leaving the region for work, I understand the need for reputable and reliable childcare services, and family day care makes up part of this important service. I know firsthand the value of childcare providers, especially family day care, better than most, as a working mother of two boys. My sons attended day care from six months right until they finished school. I greatly admire and appreciate the dedication, the patience and the enthusiasm of childcare staff. Their genuine love of their chosen profession meant that I knew that my children were in safe hands.

I regularly meet with Child and Family Services Wyong Shire Inc., an FDC in Dobell who have discussed with me the impacts of changes in this federal funding on their organisation. This is an organisation that provides a critical service to my electorate of Dobell. This organisation is well supported, diligently run and proactive in ensuring its financial sustainability. To ensure they can remain sustainable in the future following the implementation of changes to the Community Support Program funding, they have been responsible and assertive in making hard choices and changes to their organisation to ensure their continued success, and for that I commend them. In my role as their elected representative, I aim to do as much as I can to support them with these changes, to be a voice for them when needed and to provide practical solutions for the way forward.

I feel that, in my role not only as a politician but as a supporter and previous user of childcare services, it is my responsibility to address incorrect and irresponsible statements suggested in this motion. This issue is not about cutting funding to family day care; it is about being fiscally responsible and sustainable while providing help and services to those people that make our community what it is.

The intent of the Community Support Program funding is to provide operational support to organisations to assist them to establish or maintain services in areas where the needs of the community are unable to be met. It was not designed to be used as an income stream to prop up unsustainable services. These changes mean that equity and fairness for all providers are experienced across Australia.

A 2012 audit showed that 71 per cent of Community Support Program funding was going to FDC services, despite them caring for only 10 per cent of the children in approved care. This is inequitable, especially since the intention for the funding was for operators in regional and remote areas, and now the majority of family day care services are in metropolitan regions and not in regional areas such as Dobell. New FDC services in metropolitan areas have grown 74 per cent since 2011, with FDC services in regional areas decreasing.

This change in funding does not impact a service operator's ability to open or expand an FDC service, nor does it impact on the ability for a service to provide care for families. This funding is not received by the educators or the parents but by the operators of the service. Funding remains available; however, it is now capped to ensure fairness. It also aligns the family day care sector with other service types, such as long day care and outside-school-hours care, who are required to adhere to more stringent and rigid regulations. It is essential that we have a strong, robust family day care sector if we are to successfully deliver a childcare system that is flexible, accessible and affordable.

The change to this funding was not considered lightly. A business development package was developed with peak bodies in the family day care sector, and there are procedures in place to make this transition as smooth as possible. As a result of growth in the family day care sector, the Community Support Program budget has been exceeded, and it is as simple as that. It is about balancing the budget and making sure that the operators who are doing the right thing are recognised and supported and that those doing the wrong thing are made accountable. It is not about cutting funding.

Consultation and the provision of an open and transparent dialogue have been a large component of these changes. This engagement with family day care providers has not changed. Neither has the fact that the Community Support Program funding is unsustainable in its current format and has, unfortunately, been subjected to rorting by a few, to the detriment of operators who do the right thing. Family day care is an essential service that I will continue to support, especially for my electorate of Dobell.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion moved by the member for Bendigo, and I congratulate her on raising this because it is a really important issue. Unlike the member for Dobell, I acknowledge that there has been $157 million cut from the program. No matter how you say it, $157 million ripped out a family day care is a cut. Family day care is a grass roots childcare service. It is the most affordable child care and the easiest to access. At a time when the government is focusing on child care, it is important to acknowledge the impact that a $157 million cut will have on child care. I also call on the government to reverse that cut when it is considering its childcare package. Family day care availability will be impacted on and the costs of childcare bills will increase. That is important to me and my electorate, as it is to all other members and their electorates, and it will have the greatest impact on regional areas.

I would like to run through the new facts and figures in relation to how this cut will impact on the Shortland electorate. It is one of the more disadvantaged electorates within Australia. These figures are approved by the ABS. This grassroots service of family day care provides 165,000 children across Australia with child care. On the Central Coast of New South Wales in Lake Macquarie it provides child care to 900 children. Many of those children receive their family day care from these organisations which support 98,000 families in Australia and 719 families in Lake Macquarie. This support enables the parents of those children to receive family day care for their children so that they can go to work or undertake study, just as this government is calling on.

This cut is really mean-spirited. I think that those on the other side need to acknowledge that and reverse this decision to cut funding through the Family Support Program, a program that is designed to address disadvantage. The areas of the greatest disadvantage are those that depend on family day care the most. These are also areas where there are high levels of domestic violence, single-parent families and unemployment. These are all issues that impact on my electorate.

Lake Macquarie City Council, which is the provider in the Lake Macquarie part of my electorate, will lose $300,000 from the Community Support Program from 30 June this year when the Department of Education will stop all community support contracts for family day care providers. Then they must reapply for funding. Family day care in Lake Macquarie is provided by Lake Macquarie council and currently operates with an average of 261 places. This is equivalent to 6.5 childcare centres. This is something that we cannot afford to lose. It is cost-neutral, and the council relies on approximately $300,000 to deliver this program.

It was interesting to hear the member for Dobell speak before me on Wyong Shire. I have spoken to Child and Family Services, and they are not happy about this cut. The member for Dobell talked about hard choices. Well, these are hard choices that are impacting on the ability of this service to provide child care to children across the area. Over 600 families in this area rely on family day care, and it is an area of great disadvantage.

I call on this Abbott government to reverse this decision. The government is looking at child care. Let's make it affordable, let's make it accessible and let's reverse this decision. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about yesterday's debate! The Community Support Program argument has been around for 12 months. Just last week, we actually had a Productivity Commission report deliver one of the most extensive analyses of the childcare sector in Australia, and it is absolutely absent from the debate today. Why would we detain this place for half an hour to debate the topic of child care and ignore the obvious—that this is a coalition government prepared to look after Australian families and access to child care? We get a motion from an opposition member—whom I do regard—about last year's issue, the Community Support Program.

This has been around for 12 months. It could have been debated, litigated and relitigated on any day of the parliamentary session, but we get it immediately after the Productivity Commission report is dropped. It is clearly a smokescreen. These are an opposition with no idea about the future of child care. They have no idea about the affordability issues created by their own reforms, no idea about the variable access to childcare services that exists in this country between inner metro expensive childcare provision and outer metro, with, in many cases, oversupply and a glut of places, and then regional areas, where often setting up child care is not even viable.

They are the big questions that we commissioned the Productivity Commission to consider, and that is what we were hoping we could have a national debate on: this very complex area where we effectively now recognise that child care is the first part of education. The problem is that we invented government departments before we realised just how important child care is. Well, we know that now, and we have an education department struggling to support child care, a federal government unsure of what more it can do apart from paying rebates and benefits, and then ultimately a realisation that you cannot raise the quality of childcare interventions without increasing wages. There is not an easy way to pay parents a rebate and guarantee that high-quality child care is adequately remunerated.

So the challenge here for the Productivity Commission—not an easy one; let us be honest—was to look at these four areas of access, affordability, quality and of course wages and remuneration for young childcare educators and to get all of that right. It will not be easy, but dabbling in the community support package—the one area that, frankly, was being misused and abused—is not the way to look at this challenge. What we had were family day care centres doing what was obvious: applying for this money because they could, applying because there was a Labor government unable to make a tough decision on community support, and basically getting twice as much as was fair. Let us remember that they are already paid $5.47 per hour per place compared to $4.10 in a long-day-care centre. Then they are applying for an extra 70c to $1.42 on top of that. So clearly we are not addressing the issues of lack of access; we are not necessarily addressing the issues of flexibility; we are not seeing any new centres being set up where they are not viable; and we are seeing nearly 70 per cent of the Community Support Program taken by just 10 per cent of the providers! How is that fair?

I say to the opposition: tell me about all the childcare operators that set up in regional and remote Australia under your government thanks to intelligent use of this package? A big zero! They cannot point to that evidence at all. The Community Support Program just became a cross-subsidisation mechanism because it was available to family day care centres even though there was another one around the corner. These were tough decisions that a Labor government would never make. This was the seepage of money away from where it is meant to be spent, for the families who most need it, to whoever filled out the form successfully. That is not going to lead to a better childcare system.

I am grateful that we have gone to the Productivity Commission and said, 'Give us a platform to start the debate.' It is not the government's model; it is the Productivity Commission's report. It is just a starting point. But what is obvious today is that these are a federal opposition unable to engage in that debate in any sort of meaningful or constructive way, when they come here and simply relitigate last year's issue about a Community Support Program, which they are unhappy with because they knocked on a couple of doors and found that someone or some body complained that they were not getting enough cross-subsidisation anymore. Well, I tell you what: the sector is way more important than that. To have a federal opposition trying to stand up for the continued support of family day care in areas where it is not utterly essential—regional, remote or where otherwise the service is not viable—simply shows a Labor Party that is not interested in the complex needs of Australian families.

Australian families want to know, first, that the most disadvantaged families in Australia can get access to child care and, second, that many of those poor parents who otherwise would not be getting those children ready for school will have a chance for their children to have some sort of formal preschool education. Third, if you are working shiftwork or long hours, you want to know that there is a service in that remote area, but the misuse of this Community Support Program ensured that there was not. That is what the Labor Party let down in government. They have continued to oppose it from their position in opposition.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to hear the member for Bowman say that the government now know, 18 months into their term, about the importance of child care, because for the last 18 months they have been ripping the guts out of it. In fact, they have cut child care by $1 billion over the last 18 months. That equates to $1,287 for every family that uses care. I say to the member for Bowman: this is not last year's issue. The parliament might have dealt with it last year. The parliament might have dealt with cutting a billion dollars out of child care in MYEFO and the budget. It might be in the past for them. But, for families that go to work today and put their children into child care, it is today's issue and tomorrow's issue and next week's issue and the week after's issue: $1 billion cut from child care over the last 18 months.

The Prime Minister claimed a couple of weeks ago that 'good government starts today'—on day 521 of the government's term. Well, for child care, it still has not started. The Prime Minister also said at the same time that their focus would be on families, that they had discovered how important families are and the reality for families. Well, as far as families are concerned, the focus is still not on them, and it will not be on them until these cuts are well and truly reversed.

With the government, the old saying, 'It's not what they say; it's what they do,' is as true as it could ever be. There probably has not been a government in the history of Australia where it is more true that you cannot pay attention to what they say at all, you cannot pay attention to the rhetoric; you have to look at what they do. And let us look at what they have done for child care: a $450 million cut to outside-school-hours care in MYEFO, a $235 million cut to the targeted childcare benefit that helps low- and middle-income families, a $105 million cut to the childcare rebate, cancellation of federal funding for all Indigenous child and family centres—all Indigenous child and family centres. These are not something that belongs in the past but something that affects those families today. They have cut programs to increase childcare places, including the accessibility fund. The HECS-HELP benefit which includes subsidies for early childhood education degrees has been cut by $87 million, and federal funding for preschool is uncertain from next year, so that $1 billion does not include the cuts that may be coming there. These total $1 billion in cuts to child care over the last year and a half.

The Productivity Commission report is a good thing. I understand that the draft came in in October last year, so we have been waiting a good year and a half since the election for the Productivity Commission report, and it is a good thing that it has been done. On this side of the House, we are well and truly looking forward to going through that report very, very carefully and working cooperatively with the government to improve services for families.

But I do say that, whenever you look at the rhetoric of the government, you have to look at what they have done. It is not just the cuts they have made; it is the incompetence that they have displayed in implementing those changes. In the family day care sector, for example, they originally said before the election that the changes would not affect any family day care providers that were already in existence. And then, when they did it, they did include those family day care centres. In fact, in Western Sydney, Family Day Care Australia says that all family day care services currently in existence in Western Sydney which look after individual educators will lose their funding—all of them, every single one, in Western Sydney. In spite of the words of the government, what they said, which was that their funding would be exempted from the cuts they were making, was not true. What they did was announce cuts to those family day care providers. Every single one in Western Sydney will lose its funding—every single one.

Then they found out, as governments do, that a small number of people in that sector were rorting the system. So they introduced new rules that prevented a family day care educator from claiming funding for their own children. Then, the day before that was due to be implemented, they realised that mistake and reversed that decision—leaving small businesses and families scrambling to figure out what they would do, only to have that appalling decision reversed the day before. The level of incompetence matches the savageness of the cuts, and I urge the government to reverse the decision.

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

I rise to support the member for Bendigo's motion. I agree with the member for Bendigo that family day care forms a vital part of Australia's diverse childcare mix. Over the past year, I have visited several family day care services in my electorate. Without fail, the educators are dedicated and enthusiastic, their premises are well-set up and professional and the children benefit from personalised attention in a home environment. That is why it is disappointing that we are in the situation we are today, as a result of Labor totally dropping the ball.

The Community Support Program, or CSP, is an operational payment paid direct to family day care services. Its original intent was to help childcare services get established in areas where they might otherwise be unviable, such as disadvantaged, regional and remote communities—many of which of course are in my area of Leichhardt throughout the Cape York region. Labor, over a three-year period, allowed the CSP allocated budget to blow out by almost $200 million—a sign, I guess, of standard Labor budgetary initiatives—and, of course, took no action whatsoever to address it. Even worse, they ignored an audit which showed that family day care was receiving 71 per cent of the total CSP budget. This was driven very much by a union organisation called United Voice, which seemed to get the overwhelming majority of the funding even though they only had about 10 per cent of the kids in their care—and, of course, others who were not affiliated with them missed out very, very badly. How could they possibly, under any circumstances, think this was sustainable?

Yet again, we are left to clean up Labor's mess. Yes, we are changing eligibility criteria for family day care services for CSP funding from 1 July this year. Support will be targeted to services in disadvantaged, regional and remote communities to ensure funding is better targeted to where it is most needed. I am not pretending that these changes are not significant. In my electorate of Leichhardt, two regional FDC services in Weipa and Cooktown were to have been very adversely affected as the guidelines did not take into account the fact that they are 650 kilometres apart on a predominantly unsealed road. Fortunately, the then Assistant Minister for Education, Sussan Ley, came with me to visit to both these services, and she recognised that it was impossible for parents to only access one of these valuable services. We were able to ask the Department to work with both the services, helping them to put in place a business plan that would result in their long term sustainability. In November, Weipa Family Day Care announced that it would not be closing its doors, which is great news for that community. I understand that Cooktown are still working through the process and I am hopeful that they will be able to resolve their financial challenges.

There is no doubt that there are many dedicated people working in family day care. Unfortunately, it is also true that much of the overspend has been driven by noncompliance by FDC services. Here, however, I would like to caution that we do not 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'. In Cairns, Kara Preston from Kara Kingfisher Creek Family Day Care wrote to me, as her situation illustrates how important it is to have some flexibility. Kara's husband is a full-time serving defence member in our region. They have two girls, aged six and nine, and occasionally Kara needs to find care for them so she can attend compulsory personal development training of a minimum of 10 hours a year. During these times, she accesses another family day care educator. Kara says that, in a bid to crack down on what is known as 'child-swapping', the government is penalising those who genuinely, on occasion, need to get care for their own kids. She says:

While I understand that the government has to crack down on fraud within the sector I don't understand why they are labelling all of us fraudsters.

Why doesn't the government close down the offending FDC Schemes and deregister the offending educators?

I was pleased to hear from Minister Morrison that the introduction of these changes has been postponed, and I welcome further consideration with the FDC sector to avoid any unintended consequences for legitimate operators and families who depend on them. I have also written to the minister and offered to host a roundtable for the FDC educators such as Kara Preston in Cairns. At the end of the day, we need a childcare system that is more affordable and targeted and will benefit all Australian families. Taxpayer resources must be spent in the best way to enable families to stay at work, get back to work and give their children the best possible start in life.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise proudly in support of the member for Bendigo's excellent motion around supporting family day care. What we have seen on the other side has been a litany of misrepresentation and untruths; a desperate and sad attack on the workforce of these centres; union bashing at its extreme; and an attack on a government, the previous government, that has been out of power for 18 months. This government seriously thinks that it can skate by by attacking a government that is well and truly in the past, instead of taking responsibility for its own actions. It says a lot about a group of people that they are attacking some of the lowest paid and most devoted professionals in our workforce—that is, our childcare workers—because that is what you do when you attack the union that represents them.

The truth is that the debate around family day care is embedded in the broader debate about what this government's agenda is on child care, and this government's agenda is to cut over $1 billion from it. We heard a previous speaker talking about the Productivity Commission's review and the important contribution that will make. That is absolutely fine, but why cut $1 billion before you receive that report? That shows this government's lack of commitment to the sector, and it is a cut that is in clear contravention of a promise given before the last election, when the then opposition leader, now the current Prime Minister—for this week at least—wrote to the childcare centres and said, 'I am determined to help make child care more accessible and affordable for parents,' in black and white—in writing. We are supposed to believe what he writes rather than what he says. It is a clear broken promise when you look at last year's budget.

The tragedy is that this will have a massive impact on families around this country. Ninety-eight thousand families use family day care—that is 165,000 children—and it employs 25,000 workers. The $157 million cut we are talking about represents a $1,500 increase in childcare costs for the average family in this system—a $1,500 increase. That is a massive and outrageous impost when the Prime Minister made a clear promise before the last election.

We are talking about regional areas. Well, I am proud to represent a regional area, and the impact will be felt very keenly in my area. Lake Macquarie City Council oversees a system of family day care centres that will suffer; 719 families with 900 kids in family day care will suffer; 260 staff in those centres will suffer; and 90 small businesses will suffer. The 'party of small business' over there is attacking small business as we speak.

The truth is that the government just does not get it. We have heard the new minister, Minister Morrison, talking about child care and have seen him being all cuddly and having his feet in the ocean at Cronulla, trying to reshape his image. He is very keen to talk about the workforce participation benefits of child care, and that is absolutely right. But I have not heard him once talk about the early childhood education aspect of child care. Study after study has shown that the first five years of a child's life are the most important in giving them a start in life—in giving them education. This government just does not address that issue.

We have also heard attacks on the rorting. Well, their changes will not end the rorts. What they will do is assist the fly-by-nighters. They will result in a race to the bottom for family day care, and it will be the centres doing the right thing that will suffer the most.

We have also heard slippery weasel words that this is a change in criteria. That is all it is—a change in criteria! The truth is that their own federal Department of Education has estimated that 80 per cent of family day care centres currently receiving support through this program will be denied assistance—80 per cent. That is a cut in anyone's language. Eighty per cent of family day care centres will lose out because of this $157 million cut, part of the broader $1 billion cut to child care represented by this government.

So, yes, the Productivity Commission report was very important, and I am keenly looking forward to seeing the government's response, but they are starting a long way behind. They are starting $1 billion behind. They are starting behind with an attack on regional families, on regional kids, stopping kids in my area getting the best start in life. I am proud to stand up for those communities. I will fight long and hard to support child care in my region of extreme childcare shortage. We are not the inner city; we are a regional area where people work long hours and need this childcare assistance. So I will fight for my region, I will fight for my families and I will fight for my kids getting the best possible assistance. All those on the other side care about is cutting funding from this, bashing the workforce and bashing previous governments. They are all excuses and no answers.

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Anyone sitting in the gallery or listening to this broadcast today must wonder, as the ball gets batted from one side of the chamber to the other, this one blaming and putting figures up, what this is all about. Of course, it should be about the education of children. It should be about participation. It should be about ensuring the taxpayer dollar is actually well used. In other words, when you put $1 of taxpayers' money in on behalf of the Australian community, you have an expectation that it will be used in an efficient, effective and honest way. We heard the member for Charlton and others this morning almost wave away that fraud is somehow—I will not say forgivable—just one of those consequences that occurs with Commonwealth funding. I used to be the minister and introduced a range of fraud detection because every dollar we spend in this area, like in every other aspect of government, should be used as productively as we possibly can.

The motion refers to consultation, and I want to thank April and the early childhood educators on the Sunshine Coast who met with me before Christmas. We sat down in the backyard with the kids there and chatted about the issues. They were as disturbed as I was to learn the extent of some of the fraud that is being perpetrated in this area, because every dollar that goes in an inappropriate manner means that there is a child, a parent and a family that need those resources, all of which are limited because Commonwealth taxes are actually limited. There is no money tree. The money has to come out of one Australians pocket to go to another, and that includes for things such as early childhood education and child care. Those parents and I sat down and worked through. The undertaking was that we would take back to government their suggestions about how this could be done better. In other words, to ensure the safeguards are in place for children to be cared for.

I come at this not only as an MP and former minister but also as a parent who over the years has used family day care and long daycare centres, who has seen the argument between the families who claim that, if you are a for-profit centre, that somehow is a lesser value than those that are not for profit. My experience is that the overwhelming majority of people in this sector do it because they love the job, they love the children they work with and they want to make a difference.

Yes, there are a lot of small businesses in this sector. The family daycare sector is one that is actually meeting the market because it has the flexibility which is now replicated in our workforce. No longer do we all work nine to five Monday to Friday. These families that have other families' children in their homes do so and provide the flexibility that those parents need. It gives them the chance to connect with the labour force. It gives the children the chance to have the education that the member for Charlton spoke of. All of those things are possible but cannot be done without the right checks and balances in place and cannot be done without ensuring that quality of service is maintained.

I will speak briefly on a couple of the points that were raised here today. A lot has been said by those opposite of the $157 million. $157 million is a lot of money—it is more than most of us can ever dream of—but in political terms it seems to be just chicken feed. But the reality is that buys a lot of child care, and in this particular case the $157 million was a Labor commitment that was not ongoing, so that these centres and businesses could plan for the future, but a sugar hit of three years. What Minister Morrison is about to undertake after the Productivity Commission is the hard work that is required in this area.

It is simply not good enough for either side of this chamber to stand in here and say, 'We spent more taxpayers' money than the other side.' What we ask is: what are the gains and improvements? For all of the extra increases in CCB and rebate that the Labor Party introduced there was no increase to the productivity of the workforce participation rate as a result of that. So why do we do it?

Let us ensure that the taxpayers' money we will spend in this place goes towards ensuring that we have the most productive workforce, the highest quality education, money not rorted and that we work together to ensure families have the flexibility and options they need. It is about choice: the choice to stay at home and look after your own children, and the choice to use the services of a family day-care early-childhood educator or a long-day-care centre. I commend the motion to the House.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very proud to be standing in the House today defending family day care from the savage cuts that have been implemented by this government. I want to start by saying how angry I am on behalf of my community, and the families who live in Hotham, for the $1 billion we are seeing cut from child-care supports in this country and, specifically, the $157 million going right to the heart of the family day-care provision.

For those in the community or watching at home who do not know, family day care is the provision of day care in the setting of someone's family home. It is usually a mum whose own children have started school. The mum takes in kids, using her vast experience in child care and early childhood education, and looks after other people's children from that community.

You can imagine, from what I have described, that two of the most fantastic things about family day care are the flexibility that mums can provide, when they have just a family home and a small number of kids to look after, and the affordability of it, which is important to so many families around the country.

What this cut being implemented by the coalition means is that a family with a child in family day care will see costs rise from somewhere around $1,200 to $1,800 a year. This is a serious amount of money. It is the sum of money that will drive a lot of families accessing family day care to cheaper alternatives.

I am particularly passionate about family day care because we have used family day care in my family. I work odd hours as a member of parliament. My partner, at the time, was working shift work and we had a little baby. We used family day care because of the benefits that made it such a great care option for so many families. We needed someone who would be able to look after our child, a little bit, out of hours. Our son at the time was very young, and we really loved the idea of him being looked after by one carer in someone's family home.

It is for these reasons that there are thousands of families right across the country who are relying on family day care to fit in with their needs. What we are seeing today is that flexibility and affordability being cut and under attack by the cuts being executed here. It is pretty concerning, because we are getting mixed messages from this government. It is not, though, the first time we have seen it.

We saw the minister on television yesterday talking in very soothing tones about what he is planning to do on child care. At the same time, we see cuts. The minister talks about the need for flexibility and affordability, yet he makes a cut of $157 million to the most flexible and affordable type of child care in our system.

Family day care is good for families. Gone are the days when people had one person in the household working from nine till five and the other person staying at stay home looking after the kids. Families do not look like that very much anymore. What we see is people working very unusual hours. With the increasing casualisation of the workforce in Australia, lots of families are having to deal with situations where parents work on the weekends or after what would be normal working hours. We also know that the majority of Australian families now see both parents doing some level of work. This is why we see a growing need in the community for flexible and affordable child care. Yet what are the government doing? They are making cuts to the very type of child care that people have a growing need for.

Family day care is great for Australian women. We know that there are lots of mums who want to go back to work once they have had their children and we should be trying to help them do that, if that is what they want to do. We know that under today's child-care settings a mum who goes back to work on the minimum wage full-time will earn somewhere around $3.50 to $5 for every hour she works. At the very same time, this cut is seeing the cost associated with going back to work increase—effectively, we are making it harder for mums to go back to work when they want to do that. This is absolutely moving in the wrong direction, and that is why we oppose it.

We hear rhetoric on the other side of the House that these people care about families, but what do we see in their actions? We see them cut the school kids bonus, out-of-hours care, child-care rebate and family tax benefit—and try to put a new tax on going to the GP. Now there is $1 billion of cuts in child care. They have lost the trust of the Australian community. We do not trust them on these child-care cuts.

Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would imagine every parent in Australia would agree that quality child care is best when they have to work or study. It is critically important. The only care available while studying for my degree, with no extended family around, was family day care.

There is an absolute necessity for government support to continue family day-are services well into the future. At the moment, that could be a risk. It is so typical of Labor to shout out their throwaway lines about funding cuts. Just where do they think the money is coming from? Is it well targeted? Does it meet the criteria of community need for remote and regional child care?

The purpose of the Community Support Program is to assist with operational expenses for eligible child-care services and improve access in areas where it is difficult to meet the needs of that community—not as family day-care financial income. Family day-care funding has not been available for parents' own children for many years. This is not new, and Labor is spreading falsehoods that the current changes have introduced this. This program can set up assistance for new family day care, ongoing support for day-to-day expenses, and grants to help the coordinators support the educators and actually achieve the outcomes of better care. This, of course, is an investment in the future of our children and must be done in a thorough, ethical and businesslike manner. After all, it is taxpayers' dollars that are being spent.

In 2012 the Australian National Audit Office recommended that the CSP be targeted because family day care accounted for 71 per cent of the total expenditure but only 10 per cent of the children in approved care. This is a red-flag statistic and should have alerted the previous government that there was a problem. Labor say the problems in this sector are for the current government. Have they no idea about legacy debt? It just shows their lack of financial understanding. Childcare costs increased by more than 50 per cent under the last government, and this did not translate into more parents in the workforce or in study. Something is seriously wrong, and it must be addressed, especially as the current figures show a still increasing demand yet not increasing work participation.

Yes, the eligibility criteria for family day care will be tighter, and this is aimed towards better assistance availability for regional and remote areas and areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, where this service may not otherwise be viable. That is the aim of the program. This is the most logical solution, and it will truly assist parents in affected areas like Gilmore to return to study or find work. That is the aim—assisting parents in areas where child care is difficult to get. It should also be noted that family day care providers already receiving the sustainability assistance will not be affected by the proposed changes due to the different payment and calculation methods for this funding.

The Australian government is determined to have a sustainable system of child care that is flexible to help shift-workers or people with unusual study patterns; affordable so parents really feel it is an economic choice to return to work; and accessible, particularly in regional areas where there is not a day care centre just around the corner. We must make sure our child care operates in a system that is sustainable, and it is reassuring to see the recommendations of the Productivity Commission and how they too may add to the formula to assist families and children in our community. The cap in funding will at least give free-of-charge coordinators a fixed budget. Their planning can be more directed and they can provide the care that is so essential to communities just like those in Gilmore.

The business development package is an essential part of this application of eligibility assessment. While I know the family day care service in the Shoalhaven is one that could be used as an example of a well-run community service business, there are others without that systemised approach, and the development package should be a tremendous asset for their ongoing future. We have a model of educator excellence, and this can be repeated in many other areas. It is essential that this funding is specifically directed to families and children in regional areas rather than in urban areas. Family day care is an essential part of the Community Support Program. We on this side absolutely recognise the importance of it. We want it to go forward to the future. We want it to be affordable. We want it to be available. At the current levels it is actually sucking dollars out of the budget. In a couple of years it will be gone and that particular program will not be available to parents.

Debate adjourned.