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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Adelaide proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The importance of supporting Australian families with affordable, quality and accessible child care.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to call on the parliament to acknowledge the importance of supporting Australian families, including through access to quality, affordable and accessible child care. I do this today in what is perhaps an uncommon tone for this parliament during a matter of public importance debate. I am seeking to outline the cooperative approach that the opposition intend to take with the government on this issue and the reasons why we see it as so critically important that we continue to see progress and reform in this area.

We on this side of the House know that child care is incredibly important to Australian families. We know that it matters every single day in the lives of over 775,000 families who rely upon our childcare system. It matters to the more than 1.1 million Australian children in care. What happens with childcare policy has a direct impact on those children in long day care, on those children in family day care and on those children in out of school hours care. It is with each and every one of these children and their families in mind that I rise to speak today.

I also rise because we on this side of the House know that Labor have an incredibly proud record when it comes to supporting the early childhood sector. We have been the party of reform when it comes to early childhood and child care. Back in the Whitlam government in 1972 it was Labor that introduced the first Child Care Act. Under the Hawke government in 1984 Labor introduced fee relief for Australian parents. Of course under the Rudd and Gillard governments we increased the childcare rebate to 50 per cent, we introduced the policy of universal access to preschool and kindergarten for Australian children and we worked with all of the state and territory governments, of every political persuasion, to agree upon the National Quality Framework and ensure that Australian children get the best start in life.

We want to continue to play a constructive role in an area we are deeply committed to. We want to work with the government as they compile their response to the Productivity Commission and recognise the importance of that work to Australian families. The Minister for Social Services, who is at the table, has invited me to meet with him and put forward our views and concerns going forward. We do appreciate the nature in which that has been engaged. We know we need to continue to carefully reform our early childhood education and care sector. We will be working with the government to ensure that their response takes into account the best interests of Australian children, the feedback from this vitally important sector and an assessment of the impact on families of any of the changes.

We on this side of the House have absolutely no intention of repeating the sort of obstructionism that we did deal with from those opposite when they were in opposition. We saw firsthand many members who sit opposite now oppose the National Quality Framework. We saw from those opposite statements about how wrong we were to pursue universal access and try to increase the hours that four-year-olds received in our kindergartens and preschools. In perhaps the most extreme example we saw those opposite not only vote against our measure to pause the cap on the childcare rebate but indeed the now Prime Minister write to every single childcare centre in Australia outlining how damaging that measure would be, only to then be elected to government and extend the very same measure in his very first budget.

That is not the game we will play. We will be better. We will remain focused on the needs of Australian families. Unfortunately perhaps for those opposite, that does not mean we intend to sit back and let them entirely off the hook and give them free rein to do whatever they want in this space. We have seen the government do some dreadful things in this area, particularly in the last budget. There are some serious concerns remaining about the cuts they have announced. We would not be doing our job if we did not continue to point out those concerns whilst also working constructively on how we can help them to do better in the future.

We will not turn a blind eye and we will not stay silent when families and educators rely on us to point out the impact of the $1 billion in cuts. At the same time this government did not prioritise child care in the last budget they cut $1 billion and yet managed to find over $2½ million to hand to big polluters and over $1 billion to give to multinational corporations by reopening tax loopholes. There are still some damaging cuts on the table, including the $157 million cut to the family day care sector, which we do raise because as recently as last week I was with the member for Watson when I spoke to some of the providers in Western Sydney about the impact that the $35 a week price increase is going to have on their families. We also know that there are still proposed cuts to the childcare benefit before this parliament.

If the government want to be taken seriously and if they want a conversation with Australian families in good faith, we hope they intend to do better, to reassess these priorities and to look at ways they can come up with a package that in the very least remedies the damage of the last budget. We hope that the new minister will distance himself from that record of his immediate predecessor. I have said to the new minister, both publicly and indeed privately, that we do welcome some of the measures he has announced—the support for the National Quality Framework and walking away from the ill-considered regulations that the previous minister announced about family day carer's children—and we hope we will continue to see improvement in this sector.

As our policy work continues Labor have outlined the principles by which we will judge both the government and our own policies moving forward. We are committed to the following principles. Principle No. 1 is that any childcare package must be based on the dual policy pillars of increasing workforce participation and promoting the best interests of Australian children. It is incredibly important in this debate that, whilst there is a lot of focus on workforce participation—as well there should be—we do not lose sight of those who do not have a voice in this debate, and that is Australian children.

Principle No. 2 is that reform must address affordability issues and the out-of-pocket costs of Australian families, not just limit government costs. This is an important point because I have lost count of how many times in the last year or so I have heard members opposite parrot the albeit misleading statistics that the previous minister had circulated to them about childcare fee increases under our government. There has been a lot of focus on that from those opposite. But what I have never once heard them mention is the out-of-pocket costs of Australian parents. And there is an important difference. When we were in government we worked hard to reduce the out-of-pocket burden on Australian parents from what it was under the Howard government. We did that, of course, by increasing the childcare rebate.

It is important that we focus on the realities of the burden that is being placed on the family budget. We know that those opposite have not released the same transparent information that we regularly put out on out-of-pocket costs and the rate of disposable income that parents were spending on their childcare fees. With proposals from the Productivity Commission which are based around a benchmark price, not necessarily the actual price that Australian parents are paying, we think it is incredibly important that we remain focused on affordability.

Thirdly, we believe that a restructured system must improve the accessibility of child care and give due consideration to the impacts that reform will have on investment decisions and waiting lists. This is a very complicated sector. You cannot just change one thing without it impacting on a range of other decisions. We as a parliament need to make sure we reduce waiting lists, not continue to see them blow out. Fourth, recognition needs to be given to the sector's current and future critical workforce issues. Ultimately we on this side of the House know that we would not have a childcare sector if we did not have the hardworking, valued professionals who work there each and every day.

So we are hopeful that we can see damage remedied and some real improvement to child care in Australia. We have got a really proud record of achievement in this area, but I would not for one moment suggest that we do not need to be trying to constantly improve the system. We know that, if we were starting from scratch, nobody would come up with the system that we currently have. We need to continually work together to make sure that we can do better for Australian families. That is something each and every one of us on this side is absolutely committed to. We hope that we can work cooperatively to come up with some real solutions and make sure that the sorts of attacks we saw in the last budget are discontinued and we see much better from this minister than we saw from his predecessor.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak on this genuine matter of public importance. I welcome the approach taken by the shadow minister. I will not be seeking to make any political points in this debate. I want to acknowledge the work of the former minister, Minister Ley, who is now the Minister for Health, and thank her for the tremendous work she did in this role. It is disappointing that, in what I would see as a bipartisan debate, we would engage in denigrating the minister.

But putting that to one side, I want to focus in this contribution on the challenges that are ahead. Australian families want us to just fix the problem. That is what they want to see. They do not want to hear about pointscoring backwards and forwards—what they did, what we did—and all those sorts of things. They are just not interested. They just want to see a better system. The goal that we have is quality, affordable care which gives children the best start in life and helps parents to stay in work and get back to work when they have children. That is what we are seeking to achieve. Quality care. Absolutely. Affordable care. Absolutely. And, as the shadow minister said, accessibility is tied up in those issues. Absolutely.

Quality improvements have been made and they should be maintained. The National Quality Framework has contributed to the quality of service delivery in the child care and early learning sector. But it has come at a cost. We have to acknowledge that these changes have come at a cost. The Productivity Commission report does go into some detail on those matters of increased cost. It actually goes further to say that perhaps the regulatory hand in what I would call 'out of non-core hours' of child care goes too far and stymies the ability to provide affordable care outside those non-core hours. It makes a number of recommendations in these areas. I commend those recommendations to state and territory governments because that is where those regulations now sit. Quality does come at a cost, but quality is important to families in terms of who is looking after their children.

But having dealt substantively with the issue of quality, the focus now must really be to ensure that this care can be affordable and available. The Productivity Commission report released last week, which was initiated by the government and the former Minister Ley, ensures that we can have a comprehensive look into the myriad of issues contributing to the delivery and affordability of child care for Australian families. That report puts forward a host of recommendations which the government will consider as we move to finalise a new package in relation to child care, a package that we will continue to work on with the opposition, with the crossbench members of both this House and the other place, with the sector and, most importantly, families. At the end of the day, the reason we spend $7 billion in this area is to help families and their children. They are the ones we are seeking to assist. This is not an industry subsidy. This is not a wage subsidy for those working in the sector. This whole policy is about trying to ensure that families who are confronting the challenges they have to maintain a standard of living and provide for their children are in the best possible position to make a decision that they can stay in work and go back to work.

For many Australian families there is no choice about whether they get to stay home and care for the children, if one of them chooses to do that, or go back to work. Many, many families simply do not have that choice because they need both incomes to ensure that they can maintain the support and aspirations they have for their children as they grow up. So we want to empower those families. We want to help them as they sit around their kitchen table and work through the issues when they have children and, after they have children, when they say, 'How can we go back to work and how can we do it in a way that will enable us to maintain the quality of life that we have as a family and that we aspire to in the future for our family?'

We want to make that process simpler. We want to make it more affordable. We want to make that decision easier for families as they work through this.

This is a system which, if you had started from scratch, as the shadow minister said, would not look this way. It certainly would not look this way, not unlike the broader social services spend—$150 billion a year, with eight out of 10 income tax payers required to pay the bill for welfare in this country every day. We have got to get more out of that expenditure than we are getting now, because it includes what we pay—around $7 billion a year—in the area of support for child care.

The commission has made a very important point, and that is that it must be targeted. It must be targeted to those who need it most, in relation to these decisions that they have to make. That means middle- to low-income families. They are the ones where these economic issues are going to be most impacting on their decisions. That is not to say that those on higher incomes are not impacted by these economic issues as well. Their needs must also be addressed in the government's package. But it is those middle- to lower income families, families on less than $180,000 a year, working to provide the best for their children's future, who need to be very much in our minds as we make these decisions.

The other thing it is about is work. Yes, there are absolutely important issues around early learning and the importance of that for young children. That is acknowledged, I would hope, by every member of this House. And, yes, there are absolutely issues that go to disadvantage in the community and children who may need to be supported into child care for reasons other than economic participation. They should be addressed by different measures, but the subsidy that is provided through these programs has to be about work. Where people are earning or learning, where they are making the effort to go and seek work and to be able to be in the workforce—single mums, single dads, two-income families trying to stay as two income families—that is why it should be there, not to hand out heavily subsidised childcare services to those who are not in the business of earning or learning or wanting to be earning or learning. There has to be a closer nexus in how we work these subsidies. It needs to be tied to a very clear purpose.

We need to ensure that the measures that we are engaged in are anti-inflationary—do not drive up the costs—because costs have been rising. Costs rose under the previous government. They continue to rise under this government. We need to make sure that the way we deliver payments in this sector, the way we deliver the support, does not just continue to rise up the costs. The benchmark price as put forward by the Productivity Commission is imperfect, but the idea of a benchmark price and how that can be set is a matter worthy of consideration, and we must continue to work through it.

We cannot have a system which basically just gives a blank cheque to prices in a sector where we are providing the level of support we are. There has to be an understanding the taxpayer is going to provide for a particular type of service. It is not going to extend to whatever service providers may wish to provide. There is a core element to this. It must be flexible, to understand the modern dynamics of the workplace and the various jobs people are in. They might be firefighters, police officers, nurses or others who have a very different working environment to most Australians in terms of shift work and things of that nature.

There are families who have children with disabilities that have quite specific needs, and the commission makes many recommendations in those areas but particularly recognises the contribution that can be made through home based care—often referred to as nannies, but I think it goes more broadly than that—and the need to provide support to a service in an area which is registered, which has appropriate regulatory controls and ensures that those sorts of options are available to Australia families.

It needs to be accessible, I agree. The commission report demonstrates that the accessibility issue that needs to be managed is very, very patchy. You cannot take a 'one size fits all' approach, as the programs that have been provided to date have and, frankly, they have failed. We need to have a more bespoke, more targeted way of ensuring that we are addressing these issues of accessibility in how we spend the taxpayers' dollars.

We need to remember that we have a diverse range of service providers in this area: profit, not-for-profit, government providers. They all do an important job, but let us remember that it is the private sector operators who make up over half of the places that are there. They are the ones building the new centres, substantively, and, interestingly, for families in disadvantaged areas it is actually private sector operators who are offering lower prices than operators from the other services. But they are all important and they all need to be part of it. The most important thing is that it needs to be funded, and that is where the opposition and the government will have to come to some agreement so we can pursue this issue together. (Time expired)

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the tone that the minister has brought to the debate today. I know that the shadow minister supports this tone of engagement, because the minister is right that Australian families, Australian parents, care about outcomes, not political games here. It is in our overwhelming national interest, however, to encourage as many women as possible to return to the workforce after having children. The evidence on how to make this happen is clear. Unsurprisingly, when making a decision about whether to return to the workforce after having children, Australian families get together and they weigh up the costs and the benefits of that decision. They look at how much they would earn after tax from returning to work, and they weigh that against how much they would have to pay for child care in order to do so. In this respect, the Grattan Institute has noted:

… there is very good evidence that the major influences on female workforce participation are marginal tax rates and the net costs of childcare.

It is not rocket science. However—and we should bring this to account in a spirit of engagement—during the last five years the focus of those opposite in this area has been on an expensive and inefficient paid parental leave scheme, against overwhelming evidence that the big game in female workforce participation is child care. Frankly, it shows how out of touch the Prime Minister was with how parents and families make decisions about how to care for their children and how to return to the workforce.

In 2009 the Productivity Commission noted, in its report Paid maternity, paternity and parental leave, about paid parental leave:

Full replacement wages … would be very costly and … would have few incremental labour supply benefits.

Similarly, the Grattan Institute has made it clear:

… international experience suggests that government support for childcare has about double the impact of spending on parental leave.

We hear now, however, that the government wants to start to engage with the main game and is seeking the support of the Labor Party. This is welcome news and we welcome the spirit of engagement. We welcome the government to the real debate that parents and families care about in this space. We want to work with the government to reform this sector so that Australian families will be better off and so that children can get the best start in life.

We will work constructively on any measure the government comes up with to repair the damage caused by their last budget and we will do it in good faith. We say this because this is a debate that we in the Labor Party have been having since Whitlam. Whitlam was the pioneer of federal involvement in early childhood development. He recognised the importance of supporting community childhood centres and introduced the Child Care Act in 1972. Since then, Labor has introduced fee relief for parents under the Hawke government as well as the childcare rebate and the National Quality Framework, a very important part of this debate in ensuring the quality of care and the developmental effects that our children are getting out of their time in child care.

We are willing to work with the government but we want to work towards bettering our system, not dismantling it. We will hold the government to account for their cuts to child care in the last budget and we will also resist any attempt by this government to further attack the essential services that Australian families rely on. I know that the Hobsons Bay City Council in my electorate met on Tuesday night of this week to discuss ways to meet the shortfall in government funding for family day care services. The options were not pretty; and, as the largest provider in the area, it spells danger for families in our local community.

While we want to work with the government towards a better childcare system, we cannot forget that the government has cut $157 million from family day care services. We cannot forget that the government has cut $450 million to outside school hours care. We cannot forget that the government has cut $105 million to the childcare rebate. We cannot forget that the government has cut subsidies for early childhood education degrees. We cannot forget that the government has cut federal funding for all Indigenous child and family centres. And we will not forget that this government has cut, in total, $1 billion in childcare funding. So we welcome the government to the real debate in this place, and we hope that they enter the debate about funding changes to our system to enable women to return to the workforce so that we can lift our female workforce participation rate up to the higher levels amongst OECD countries instead of the lower levels we have today. And we hope they will support efforts to fund a system that supports quality and investment in our children and investment in our human capital for the next century—investment that will particularly bring disadvantaged families and children along to try to bridge the gap of disadvantage that we currently see in the system.

I say this very genuinely: the minister is right that families do not care about the politics in this place. They care about outcomes for parents, for families and for children. We will engage in this debate in a spirit of good faith and will seek to deliver an outcome, in partnership with the government, that meets these principles.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the debate that we are having here at the dispatch box today about the importance of child care in our national economy and the importance of child care for families right across this country. I congratulate the shadow minister for bringing forward this motion, and I also congratulate my colleague the Minister for Social Services for the very inclusive way he has gone about tackling one of the great challenges that we face as a nation: the challenge to make sure that for the $7 billion that the government spends on supporting families we get the very best outcomes for those families. We want to focus on getting accessible and affordable child care, we want parents to be happy with the quality of that child care, and we want it to be the child care they need to ensure that they can participate in working life if that is their choice.

We know that the best form of welfare is a job, and the minister delivered an excellent speech to the Press Club only the other day that spoke about these elements. We know, however, that the participation rates for some people—particularly for women aged between 25 and 44—is much lower than in comparable countries in the OECD. We lag behind Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States. One of the critical questions we have to ask ourselves is: why is this? Why does Australia lag behind these other countries? Why is our labour force participation for women so much lower? I think the first and most obvious answer is that we have not yet been able to crack the issue of affordable and accessible child care.

Beyond that, the Productivity Commission, which has done such excellent work in the final delivery of their report, has highlighted another aspect which I think is a huge impediment particularly for women getting back into the workforce; that is, the interaction between our tax and transfer system and how women, in particular, are making the choice as to whether or not it is worth it to go back to work. The Productivity Commission highlighted in its interim report that in 2012-13 over 70 per cent of families who used approved early childhood education and care services also received another government payment. This payment was, on average, one of four types of payment, and the commission looked at the interaction between the way these payments work, the childcare situation and why it is that families sometimes make the choice not to return to work. They looked at the effective marginal tax rates of people in different scenarios. I am going to outline one particular scenario that I think illustrates this point, and that is the scenario of a single mother, Nicola, and her two-and-three-year-old children. Nicola earns $31.54 per hour and sends her children to long day care at a cost of $88 per day per child. When she thinks about providing for her family, she has to think about how working will affect her eligibility for the parenting payment, the family tax benefit part A, the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate. Of course, she has to think about the income tax system as well.

Scarily, the commission's analysis shows that she faces an effective marginal tax rate of 38.6 per cent in working a solitary day. The effective marginal tax rate if she works a second day rises to 66.5 per cent and to 76.3 per cent on the third day. The killer, though, is that on the fourth day that rises to 111.5 per cent on that day. At this point, Nicola is financially better off to stay at home rather than to work.

Clearly, these are complex issues; clearly, the interaction forms part of a disincentive for people to get back into the workforce; and, clearly, this is an issue the Productivity Commission has highlighted and an issue that the government needs to address. I welcome the spirit of cooperation that we have heard in the chamber here today from those opposite, and I look forward to working with them to be able to deliver the very best outcome for Australian families.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the parliamentary secretary for her words, and I join my colleagues on this matter of public importance. I really do welcome the tone of this debate and the subject of this debate being a matter of public importance. I spoke earlier in the week on this exact topic in an adjournment speech and made some very similar remarks to those of the parliamentary secretary.

I would like to start by saying that, if we are going to have this national conversation about child care, we need to put some landmarks in about where we are. I apologise if some of my early comments may seem to be critical of the government, but we do need to get to a space where we can have this conversation before it begins. I welcome the rhetoric from the government and the way it has changed—we on this side of the House all do. It has been framed with the change of minister, a change of portfolio and a response to the Productivity Commission's report. But I have some concerns about that change in portfolio—that the educative matters in early childcare education and care are not being given the seriousness that they deserve.

I cannot ignore the cuts that have come. I wonder, too, if this congeniality and collegiality coming from across the chamber is not in response to the community outrage and the sector outrage that I have had communicated to me in Lalor about the cuts in that first budget. I do think we need to put that marker down before we can really start this serious conversation, and I call on the budget to reverse those cuts if they are serious about wanting to have this conversation.

I do join my colleagues the member for Adelaide and the member for Gellibrand to say that I am willing to assist in this conversation. As an educator, as someone with experience around learning and around children's milestones, I am willing to assist—like the sector, the families and the educators are willing to assist government to get this right. But, of course, I am a little bit wary. I am a little bit wary when I hear some of the rhetoric that is still coming across. It is not an industry subsidy. It is not a wages subsidy. I am listening really carefully, because the first part of a conversation is to listen—and I am listening really carefully, and I have some concerns. I have some concerns that we are separating quality from the educative function of early child care so early in this national conversation—because that is what is important. The quality framework has improved this system. It has professionalised this sector. Monitoring childhood milestones, childhood learning, childhood language development, cognitive development, emotional development and physical development is red tape. Unless we get agreement on that, this conversation, for me, cannot go forward.

I refer to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report of September 2014, and I bring to the chamber's attention that this is not just a question of child welfare or of women's participation and men's participation in the workforce. This is a question of our future. This is about our economic future. This is about developing a vision that is going to see a smarter Australia. This is about our economic future and building the workforce of the future. This is about the early start we give our children across the sector. It is about including all children and their needs. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers report suggested that the projected benefit to the gross domestic product in increased participation of vulnerable children in early childhood 'education'—I make that clear; I am not talking about child minding and babysitting—is worth $13.3 billion.

So this is a really important conversation. Of course it is important because it is about the children. Of course it is important for me as a feminist, because it is about female participation in the workforce. But it is also important for our country for us going forward that we come to grips with the importance of education, that we see early childcare education not through the lens as a cost but through the lens as an investment in this country's future. We need to get to a space where we can really have that conversation and stop the rhetoric about burden and as if having children looked after is a release for the parents to go to work. Those things are part of this conversation; they are not all of this conversation.

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

As somebody who has sat in this parliament for nearly five years now—I might not look like I have been here for five years, but it is nearly five years—there are many moments where you feel deeply let down by the quality of the debate and the partisan politics that infiltrates this place on an almost daily basis. But, when you see a motion, it gives you enormous hope. Perhaps that it is political naivety, but it gives me enormous hope that we can come here as the elected representatives of the Australian people and work together to formulate policies that will make this country as good as it can be. Ultimately, that is why we should all be in this place—to make this country as good as it can be.

The former speaker, a member of the Labor Party, said that the rhetoric about 'a burden on our society' degrades that level of debate, and I think she is absolutely right. We do face a challenge as a nation, but we do not have to frame that challenge as a burden; we should look for the opportunity in how we meet that challenge. It is true: as the youngest person in this place, I worry about the future a lot. Today there are about 7½ people working for every person that is not and, according to the Productivity Commission, by about 2050, that will only be 2½. Of course that is a challenge—not a burden but a challenge.

But there are amazing opportunities. We are in the middle of a growing region with nearly a billion people coming into the middle-class, and we have some of the most intelligent, capable and aspirational people in the world living in this country. If we can get more women who have made the great decision to have a family to go back into the workforce, that will be a great thing for our society and our country. If we can have more women being economic contributors to our country after they have had a family and pay tax, we grow the economic pie for all Australians.

This policy challenge, I think we all agree on both sides of the chamber, is: we want to see as many women as possible go back into the workforce after they have children. We want to make sure that the next generation of Australians have the highest-quality level of child care and an educational experience. We want to have the best possible social outcomes in any policy that we bring before this place.

This is a great test for us as elected members—as a government and as an opposition—as to how we face the reform task for our nation. If we can achieve something collectively on this policy, there is enormous hope and optimism for what we can achieve in other policy areas—economic policy—for our country.

On the journey that we have had around this issue, there is a lot of agreement already. We agree that we need to have the highest-quality child care possible for our children. We have achieved that to a great extent with the reforms of the former government, but those reforms have come at a cost. We have to be realistic about this. If we are to have the world's best-quality child care, it comes at a cost. If we want more women to go back into the workforce after they have children, we need to make it as affordable and accessible as possible. Accessibility will be a big challenge for a big country with not many people across a very, very large land space.

On affordability, I think we can achieve an enormous amount, if we work collectively. I would say to all members, but particularly members in the opposition: let's seize the moment that we have now to run at that reform task and work collectively to achieve an affordable and very effective childcare system.

The Productivity Commission have put out a good report, working from almost a budget neutral position—$200 million in additional expenditure. I would say to members opposite—and members on this side: if we are to seize that opportunity, if we are to have this affordable, effective system, we have to be able to fund it. Let's work together—and that means the Labor Party putting funding options on the table—so that we can fund this world-class system. That is the challenge we all face, and I hope we are up to it.

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

I want to acknowledge the contribution of the member for Longman and the others who have spoken in what has been a really good debate and probably one of the few times in this House that I have felt there is a sense of civility and united purpose behind what we are here to discuss.

I want to make a contribution today as a member of parliament, as the member for Hotham representing my constituents but also as a working mum. We have tried just about every type of childcare arrangement you can find in our household. We have had occasional care. We have had family day care. We have had traditional child care. I have been a stay-at-home mum, and my partner has been a stay-at-home-dad. I have sat on waiting lists for months. I have been in situations where I cannot find the child care that I need.

Just as a young person in this chamber can give special insight into youth issues and someone from business can give insight into what is happening in the private sector, as a user of this system, I can give a little insight into the challenges. I want to say to the parents out there who may be listening: we get it. There are people in this chamber who are struggling with these very issues—the circumstances may be wildly different—but we understand that this issue cuts right to the heart of how you live your life every day as a family. We take that responsibility very seriously, and I think that is why we are seeing this level of civility in the chamber this afternoon.

As a Labor person, I think we have a really proud history in bringing the importance of early childhood education to the fore. Today there is general recognition across most of the policy world and out in the general community that early childhood education is of critical importance. It was Gough Whitlam back in the seventies who started the national conversation about this subject. It was Gough Whitlam who put this on the agenda of the national government. Since then you have seen successive Labor governments try to adapt the system to changing times. I think we will see this conversation about changing times continue.

I want to provide a couple of reflections on some things that I think are changing and things that we need to adapt the system to. Before I do that, I want to acknowledge the important work that the current shadow minister has done in this space. We have heard the words of the member for Lalor about the importance of quality. That is of critical importance. Early childhood education is not just about looking after kids while mums go to work. That is very important, but we cannot forget the critical importance of those early years of education. The shadow minister has been the one to put quality on the table time and time again when we have this debate, and I was pleased to hear her do so again this afternoon.

I want to acknowledge that we know families have changed. One of the reasons why we are having this discussion about child care and how we deal with early childhood education is that we are continuing to see these trends. Single-parent households are a much bigger feature of our lives and our economy than they were 20 or 30 years ago. We see the economic imperative of that, and some of other speakers have talked about the importance of improving female workforce participation—which I know many in this chamber will be aware of—and the Grattan Institute has suggested it is a bigger economic growth lever for this country than tax reform. Just think about the standard, length and detailed debate that we have about tax in this country versus early childhood education. Again, this is one reason why we welcome this debate.

I also wish to talk about the growing notion of the importance of early learning. It is very important to us in particular, as Labor people, because of the social justice angle to this. We know that young Australians who are entering early learning are about twice as likely to develop developmental delays when they come from a low-income household versus a high-income household. We also know that early learning is the key to trying to address these disadvantages. So some of the work of the academics in these areas suggests that just one dollar that we spend on a child in early learning is worth the equivalent of $7 of spending later in life. So this is a really important way for us to ensure that we have equal opportunity for Australians. I know, again, that this is something that we share—in a general sense, perhaps—with those on the other side of the House.

I am very pleased to hear the overtures of the minister, and we have heard that our shadow minister has said that she is very comfortable going into these discussions with an open mind. But I do want to put on notice that the early signs that I see about policy development in this area do give me a little bit of cause for concern. We have heard the government talk at length about their commitment to families, but there are certain budget measures, including $1 billion in cuts to child care, that I am not sure are supporting that sentiment. We have heard those on the other side of the House talk about the importance of supporting women. Again, I am not sure the evidence lines up there. But I will say, in the context of the bipartisanship, that I am keen to work with the government on this issue. (Time expired)

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very pleasing to see that we have an outbreak of cooperation here this afternoon, both in sentiment and in substance. There appears to be furious agreement that child care is a worthy social phenomenon. It is self evident. Child care is so important, because children themselves are important. They are our greatest asset, whether as a parent or collectively as a nation. So we do look after them. Good parents do so instinctively.

The other issue that is important for the nation is female workforce participation, because we are an ageing population and we need more people in the workforce if our economy is to grow, and there are vast skills in the female workforce. It is also important for families, because it is not a question of whether it is good for the economy of the nation; it is vital and important for a family that they have a second income just to cope with mortgages, which in the capital cities and metro areas are enormously expensive. Even in the regions, mortgages are expensive. So parents have no choice; they need to work. It is also important for the health and wellbeing of mothers to use the skills that they have learnt in years of training, in either vocational training or higher ed.

Child care itself is vitally important for the child, because, as previous speakers have outlined, there are much better outcomes for the child if they have been exposed to early learning in the year before they go to school. I do not think there is any argument from this side about the benefits of that: they are learning social skills and preparing themselves for the socialisation that needs to be in place for a child to learn effectively. Some children have no siblings at home. We have smaller families now. In generations past, you got looked after by your older brothers and sisters; you mixed with your older brothers and sisters. But, with one or two children in a family, children of many single-child families need to go to day care, family day care or long day care—whatever the situation—to get those social skills. It can also be good for the family itself, because going to day care in any shape or form is an oasis of calm, logic and reason for some families who are challenged with a pretty chaotic situation at home.

But the reality of economics jumps in everywhere in life, particularly when we have massive deficits and debts to cope with. If we were a company, they would call us trading whilst insolvent. So we have to do things as best we can with that valuable $7 billion and a bit more. We need to countenance all sorts of ways to get those children into the early learning space and to get women back into the workforce.

It is ironic that we put a financial limit on childcare benefits and rebates for those that are working, because they are the people that we really need to get in there. You can claim your car as a cost of your employment if you are a small business man, or all your tools, computers or office costs, because if you do not have those costs your business cannot work. If you are a small business woman, you cannot work if you have childcare responsibilities. So why isn't child care up to a certain limit, when a woman is working, counted as a tax deduction or a cost of doing business? We need to consider those things. If someone is working at home so that the other person can go out to work, why isn't income splitting allowed if it means you are not drawing on the Commonwealth purse to subsidise child care.

We need to consider these things when we have limited fiscal ability to get children into care. What is better than day care is their own mum, but a lot of these mothers need to work, because life is really expensive. The cost of living is expensive. We thoroughly look forward to getting a good resolution to this important issue. (Time expired)

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I really welcome the opportunity to speak on this MPI and to join my other colleagues on what is a very important issue. Child care is a very, very important issue in my electorate of Calwell. Whilst I would like to note that I understand that taxpayers, in the last financial year, have spent some $5.7 billion in supporting some one million families with the cost of child care, I also want to make the point that thousands of those families are my constituents. I cannot emphasise enough the significance and the importance of child care in Calwell, and in particular quality and affordable child care.

I am very privileged to have many wonderful childcare centres operating in my electorate, and I have enjoyed over the years, and continue to enjoy, visiting them. In particular, I like to listen to their concerns. I talk to the parents, and I get a lot of feedback from them. One of the things that I hear a lot from my constituents is that they want their members of parliament—me in their case, and my other colleagues in this case—and, indeed, governments to respond adequately and appropriately to the childcare needs of their local families.

I stress the point that affordability, accessibility and, above all, quality of childcare provision is a priority. It is a priority for my constituents, and I believe it is a priority for a large number of Australian families. In my case, in the case of the people who live in my electorate, a large number of them are from non-English-speaking backgrounds and also on the lower socioeconomic end of the spectrum; therefore, affordability becomes a major issue. My local mums and dads obviously rely on a childcare system that they can afford and that they can have confidence in. They want to be able to leave their children in an environment which is safe, where they feel their children are being cared for and where it is a childcare system that is not just a holding pattern until pick-up time for the kids.

The working families in my electorate need child care because they have to work. They have to work because they have to balance their budgets. Many of them, of course, choose to work as well. Many of my constituents are shift workers or rostered workers. Many of them need to improve their skills and further their education in order to be able to broaden their job opportunities. So the whole issue of balancing work, family and childcare is critical. It is an ongoing and ever-present concern in the federal seat of Calwell.

So my local families and my childcare providers I am certain would look forward to this very constructive debate, especially in light of the release of the Productivity Commission's report, and I join with my colleagues and in particular the shadow minister in participating in this conversation with the government, in looking at ways we can assist the government in putting together a package that should respond to the needs of ordinary Australian families. I join with my colleagues to make the point that there have been measures in the budget—I make reference to the $1 billion cut to child care—that obviously are of concern and are certainly of concern to the families in my electorate. I make the point that the $450 million cut to the Outside School Hours Care program is a considerable concern to the people in my electorate. The $157 million cut to the family daycare services, which will see an increase in fees of about $35 per week is a problem to an electorate that is, as I said, on the lower socioeconomic spectrum. We are obviously very concerned about legislation that is still in the parliament and looks to the $235 million cut to targeted childcare benefits that were aimed to help lower- and middle-income families. It will be families in my electorate who will be directly affected in the event that that legislation is passed.

Child care is an issue that rightfully all of us should be concerned about. We should be concerned about giving our constituents—in particular the women in our electorates—opportunities to return to work. We also should be mindful that child care is a precursor to successful education.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a lot of love in this chamber, and it is great to be part of this debate. I would like to start off my contribution by congratulating both the member for Adelaide and the member for Higgins, who are both pregnant with their first child and due to give birth very soon. They are about to face the challenge that so many working women have faced: how to stay in the workforce while caring for children, how to manage work commitments and also be a great mum. It is a juggle. I also acknowledge the wonderful work of the member for Hotham, who has a young son. I have been chatting to her about how she manages, and she is doing a terrific job under very difficult circumstances.

I share with my parliamentary colleagues today in welcoming the tone of this debate. I want to particularly congratulate the Minister for Social Services on his speech yesterday, on his approach today in the House. I also will not be responding to some of the criticisms, because I feel that in this debate we need to focus on the positives. There has been much said in the Productivity Commission report that is incredibly positive, and I have to say that, as the mother of nine-year-old Jeremy, I too, like the member for Hotham, have tried every sort of child care—long day care, au pairs, nannies, family, friends, after-school care. It is very challenging, and I really do welcome the increased focus on flexibility. I think that is perhaps one area where the previous government did not have enough focus; in this modern-day age we do not live in a nine-to-five world. Particularly for parents with more than one child in long day care, it is incredibly expensive. We need to make sure we give families the best option.

I want to comment in relation to universal access. I welcome our support of universal access and also the national quality framework. With the former minister we had a wonderful visit to Colac. We met with Kathy Thomson from the Millville Child Care Centre, and she emphasised how important this was to her. I can tell you I was disappointed to hear of the criticisms of the former minister, the Assistant Minister for Education, because Sussan Ley ha done an incredible job in initiating this Productivity Commission report and in recognising what modern families want and need. She has listened, and we as a government recognise how important quality care is.

I also welcome the focus on targeting those who need child care the most, and we do that with a great deal of compassion. We understand that we need to focus on low- and middle-income families, the families that perhaps have fallen through the cracks. Under the Labor Party the cost of child care went up by some 50 per cent, and it did not help families get back to work. We recognise that for low- and middle-income earners it is so incredibly important to give them every opportunity to work because for so many families it is necessary. It is vital to give their families every opportunity to give their children a great future.

We know, of course, that in some respects we are lagging behind other OECD nations when it comes to women in the workforce, particularly women with children under the age of five. But we also recognise that it is also very challenging for sole parents.

I have a truncated time today—of course, I realise that, Madam Speaker. I very much welcome our government's support and the emphasis on affordable, quality and accessible child care. I welcome the very positive nature of this debate and I look forward to working with the minister and members on both sides to deliver a great solution for the $7 billion that we are spending each year.