Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to tell the House that I was recently visited by Kids at Home Family Day Care and by Family Day Care Queensland, each of whom are gravely concerned about the state of family day care funding and child care funding in this country generally. We know that in the Abbott government's first budget—the worst budget in the history of Federation, I might say—there was about $1 billion worth of cuts in child care, and they had the gall to make those cuts in the middle of the Productivity Commission inquiry into child care. They have ignored that to make those cuts to child care funding and they had the gall to do it at a time when they try to claim that they are all about child care. We know better. Those cuts to child care are an outrage; they are great disgrace. I have people from family day care coming to see me concerned about whether emergency services workers are going to be able to get the day care that they need. They cannot use long day care in traditional child care centres. They have shift work. They cannot predict when a bushfire might happen or when a flood might happen or when a cyclone might happen, which is what just happened in Queensland, as everyone in this House ought to know. We had emergency services personnel in Rockhampton and Yeppoon who rely on family day care, who need family day care. That mob over there—cuts to child care funding; cuts to family day care funding. It is an utter disgrace and they ought to be ashamed.