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

My question is to the Minister for Social Services.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

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

The member will resume his seat. We will have silence to hear the question from the member for Longman.

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

Will the minister inform the House of the importance of being able to achieve savings in social services in order to fund changes to welfare and child care that will support Australian families?

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

I thank the member for his question and for the great job he does in chairing the social services committee for the government members, who take a keen interest in all these matters. He knows, like all members on this side know and I would hope all members on the other side know, that it takes eight out of 10 income tax payers going to work every single day to pay for our $150 billion social services welfare bill. Eight out of 10 Australians going to work are going to work every day to pay that bill. They need to get value for that spend. They want to make sure that it is going to the people who need it most.

This includes the approximately $7 billion that we currently spend on childcare assistance, where the taxpayer currently picks up two thirds of the bill that is paid for childcare services in this country. Childcare expenditure is rising at a rate of 6.7 per cent per year, and that is expected to continue with no changes if we were not to touch the system currently. That is what it would increase at over the next 10 years. This is not including the changes that have been put forward by the Productivity Commission, which has recommended a simpler, more targeted and fairer system that helps families stay in work and get in work when they have children. It does not include that. The cost of that is in excess of the budget and forward estimates as currently laid out by the government. It also does not include funding for the universal access regime, which is looked after by my colleague, the Minister for Education and Training, which has cost the government some $400 million.

If we are going to be able to fund improvements in these areas, we do need to come to an agreement—and I acknowledge the shadow minister in this area for working with the government and speaking about these issues—about the composition of potential packages. But as we both know, the hard work that is necessary in getting agreement on these matters is that we have to agree on how they are funded. We need to be up-front with each other about how much these things cost and what is funded.

There has been commentary lately on the cost of universal access and whether it will continue to be funded beyond 30 June this year, which this government has funded. But we should note also that the universal access funding was not provided for under the previous government in their last budget—in their 2013-14 budget. If I go to the figures, in 2015-16 the allocation for universal access in the budget was zero. In 2016-17 it was zero. We have to work together on the solutions, but we have to work together on the funding and we need to be honest about what these funding challenges are. If we can do that, I think we can do some good things for Australian families, but I think we have to be up-front about at what cost, and we cannot just go on shovelling money out the door.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.