Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister advise the House how the government is supporting families that want to have a go through measures announced in this budget?

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

I thank the member for Wright for his question. He will be pleased to know, as will the electors of Wright, that the budget is giving choices to families who choose and need to work in this country. That is what the budget is doing. We are doing that through our $3½ billion Jobs for Families package, which includes the childcare safety net, which ensures that vulnerable and disadvantaged families all around the country will have access to childcare support and will not be neglected or ignored as a result of previous failures of policy in this area. He will be pleased to know about the universal access funding for preschools that was cut by those opposite when they were in government, in the forward estimates, and that we restored, putting $840 million in this budget to support those families. He will be particularly pleased to know about the youth allowance changes, abolishing the family assets test and the family assets actual means test, and the changes to the treatment of the family pool, which will affect 30,000 rural families in this country, supporting their choices where their children are going into education.

If you respect the taxpayer, you really have to know how to pay for your policies. I note that the shadow minister agrees with that, because she was asked by David Speers, and she said this:

We certainly can understand that for many families child care is very expensive …

David Speers said:

That's got to be paid for somehow though.

She said:

It does have to be paid for somehow …

Somehow—how? How do you plan to pay for this? We have a plan to pay for it and it is a plan that those opposite oppose, and that is through changes to family tax benefits and through those measures. But, as the Prime Minister has already said, when those opposite were in government they put through this parliament $15 billion worth of cuts to family tax benefits, and they have the hide to come in here and make criticisms of the savings which will actually give choices to families who want to be in work and stay in work.

The most galling of them is the issue of the changes they made to parenting payments. They said when someone's child turned six they should go off the parenting payment and go onto the Newstart allowance. This is what the Leader of the Opposition said about that measure:

These reforms will result in fairer and more consistent treatment of income support recipients.

So they ripped $700 million in parenting payments from those who had their children turning six and then they come in here and lecture us about savings that are actually going to help more children be in child care and their families be in work.

You have got to know how to pay for your policies. You cannot go out announcing policies that you cannot pay for. The Leader of the Opposition is a budget smuggler. That is what he is! He thinks he can announce policies and not have to pay for them. You cannot pay for welfare with magic welfare dust that you just sprinkle around the country. It is a fraud.