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

As I was stating prior to question time, in this legislation the introduction of the new complicated activity test would actually remove the current entitlement of all children in Australia to access two days of early education. And we know that this new activity test would see around 150,000 families effectively worse off. This test effectively slashes subsidised access in half for many of those children, and it removes eligibility completely for some children in families with non-working parents. Well Labor say that we should not punish vulnerable Australian children for the decisions of their parents.

The government's new 12-hour safety net for single income families is not equal to two days care, as the minister claimed. Stakeholders across the sector are calling for an increase in the available hours so that children can continue to access at least two days care. It is not just Labor; the proposed activity test in this bill and the cut to available subsidised care has been criticised broadly across the early childhood sector. This includes by the Australian Childcare Alliance, Early Childhood Australia, the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia, Early Childhood Management Services, UnitingCare, Mission Australia, Anglicare, United Voice, the Benevolent Society, Early Learning Association Australia and many, many others.

We know that it is a sad reality that child care provides some children with the safest environment they are ever in. Child care can play a really important role in early detection of abusive and neglectful environments. Removing access increases the chances of these children falling through the cracks. We urge the government: fix the flaws in the childcare proposals and Labor will happily work with them to support them through the parliament. We cannot punish the most disadvantaged Australian children.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to follow the member for Adelaide, whose speech I followed intensely. It left me aghast, quite frankly. It only takes the Labor Party to complain about a better program that actually costs less money. Maybe their allies, the Greens—dancing from the bottom of the garden—would do likewise, but to actually start complaining, as the member for Adelaide did, that this childcare package costs less than originally anticipated and is therefore a bad thing is absolutely ludicrous.

It does raise a fair question though: why is this package costing less than originally anticipated? The short answer is competence. You see, MYEFO reflected variations to the childcare forward estimates model taking into account our childcare compliance measures. As a result, we enjoy a sizeable downward variation on the childcare fee assistance estimates. That is billions of dollars in terms of the variation due to compliance measures. And yet the member for Adelaide, who is the shadow minister, no less, in this space, complains about it costing less. This is a Labor Party, which bequeathed the coalition an unprecedented deficit and debt problem up to that point, complaining that a package is going to cost less—it is better and it is going to cost less. In other words, they are yet again supporting the notion of building up more debt unnecessarily.

Members will be happy to know that over the past three years the coalition has stopped almost $1 billion of taxpayer money going to rorters and shonks. Our reforms before parliament here include new compliance measures also, such as the power to pause childcare service application for fee assistance; a new IT system that sees information shared between government agencies, making it a lot easier to transfer information and also to identify where action needs to be taken. In other words, we will be able to address excessive growth within particular childcare service types and where there are concerns about potential rorting.

If you look at the scoreboard, it says it all. Under Labor, in the two years to June 2013, how many cancellations were there in this space? None. How many suspensions maybe? None. How many fines issued? They racked up two. In the 2012-13 year, Labor carried out 523 compliance checks. In the last year, the coalition carried out 3,100 checks—just over 500 versus just over 3,000. Is it any wonder that we are seeing this government demonstrate its competence; therefore, we are seeing a variation through MYEFO for what this package will cost.

I just hope the shadow minister's comments today demonstrated an unconscious incompetence and not a conscious incompetence. Because, indeed, if she was unconsciously suggesting that families would receive less entitlements then she would be wrong; and if she was doing that purposely, she would be misleading. It is not the case. Let me state this clearly. Families' entitlements to childcare subsidies will not be affected in any way by the estimates variations. For the shadow minister to imply at all that there might be a risk not only sends fear into the very families who she purports to want to help but it also demonstrates again her desire for the children of those families to carry too much debt moving into the future. The core intent of this big omnibus bill is to improve workforce participation, especially by women, and to ensure the long-term sustainability of our entire welfare system based on careful revision of current practice with a keen eye on the need for budget repair, and repair which is fair.

The minister, when he introduced this bill, headlined the childcare measures because the potential positive impact of these measures is truly enormous. They support almost one million Australian families balance their work and parenting responsibilities. That means they are encouraging 230,000 families to take an even greater role in the workforce. That translates into productivity gains, more cash for families to use and of course more opportunities for literally hundreds of thousands of women via a deliberate emphasis on those families where return to work by women is possible, and fairness lies at the heart of these changes. Families on household incomes of $65,000 or less will receive the highest subsidy rate of 85 per cent. That is up from the current rate of 73 per cent. If a significant portion take up that opportunity to either enter the workforce or increase their hours then there is a range of positive impacts, more than just bigger pay packets for families; it also helps local businesses and helps build the broader economy.

Other measures to boost participation and to reward individual effort include a cap on the hourly rate that can be charged by providers, abolition of rebate caps for most families and an increase in the cap for higher earners from $7,500 to $10,000. These are terrific measures and they deserve to be supported by this parliament. But there is a cost, and, in line with the commitment of the coalition on funding new expenditure, this valuable positive effort to bring more women into the workforce or back to the workforce or expand their involvement in the workforce must be funded by savings, not, as members of the opposition might wish, by more taxes or higher debt.

A key element of the proposed savings is a phasing out of the now largely unnecessary end-of-year supplements for the family tax benefit parts A and B. These supplements, from 2004, compensated for an earlier situation where many families for a range of reasons were not able to predict changes to income or circumstances such as return to work and ended up in debt in order to reconcile their household cash flow under the scheme. It is comforting to know that targeted government reforms over the intervening years, including greater accuracy of income reporting, mean the need the end-of-year supplements to act as an offset has been significantly reduced. This proposed saving by the government simply reflects this new reality.

The supplements are a relic and they should go. Not only will that mean the savings they generate can fund the very positive childcare measures, it will also ensure there is room for increased payments to those families who are in the greatest need. Let me explain this by a simple example. Around 1.2 million families in receipt of family tax benefit part A will receive an extra $20 for every child up to the age of 19, which is a doubling of the increase that the government previously canvassed, and that will start on 1 July 2018.

There is a range of other measures in this bill that are squarely aimed at budget repair and the need for ongoing, steadfast, determined work on repairing the budget in the face of the strong resistance from those opposite as demonstrated by the member for Adelaide's comments. After beginning 2007 with almost a dream run of no debt, a surplus of $20 billion and $45 billion in the bank, Labor's legacy, come 2013, was debt headed to $667 billion by 2030 at an accumulated back-to-back deficit totalling $240 billion—the most dramatic deadly turnaround in the nation's finances since Federation built on serial fiscal incompetence and the sort of incompetence we heard from the member for Adelaide only minutes ago. And this fiscal incompetence saw increased year-on-year spending at a rate of 4.5 per cent. The scale of damage to the nation's public finances by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era is unprecedented and, unfortunately, it lingers.

Labor points to ongoing expansion of debt and our struggle with the persistent deficit as though they are somehow the fault of the current government. Surprise, surprise! The thing is, though—and this is what the member for Adelaide needs to remind herself and her colleagues—that Labor designed the debt truck. They are the ones who put that truck on the road, hopped in, turned it on and put their foot on the pedal to make it go as fast as it could to rack up more and more debt.

The problem is that, if you put your foot on the pedal, you do not stop and you keep racking up debt, by the time you have a responsible government, like in 2013 with the coalition, taking control of the wheel of the debt truck, you cannot suddenly put on the handbrake. If you do, the truck will turn and it will topple and you will have a hard landing. That is why we continue to bring the debt down by slowing the speed of Labor's debt truck. This bill helps with that very effort.

Now, the Labor Party and maybe some of the loonies in the Greens will remain in denial. Surprisingly, Senator Xenophon is suggesting that, rather than rely on the sorts of measures in this bill to tackle budget repair, we should instead cut defence spending. This is a senator from a state that is going to enjoy enormous benefits from defence spending in the years ahead, yet that is his solution.

Despite these problems, the coalition have managed to get $22 billion of savings through, and we have $13 billion more in this parliament. Members opposite and all non-government members in the Senate need to understand the scale of the problem we are confronting, and seek to deal with it in order to save their children and their grandchildren from paying for the spending spree of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, for fear it will be taken deep into the decades ahead.

It is our responsibility—all of us, collectively, in this the 45th Parliament of Australia. It is our generation that needs to take responsibility. This parliament needs to continue slowing down Labor's debt truck, or it will speed up and compound that Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era of folly.

Members opposite should also consider that the government is, clearly, seeking to balance the task of budget repair with fundamental fairness. The child-care improvements are not a further burden on the budget, because they are funded by carefully targeted savings achieved through administrative streamlining or by recognising the redundancy of some measures that have served their purpose. The bill passes any commonsense fairness test.

Who could sensibly argue against measures that seek to ensure we are not indefinitely paying the pensions of people who have moved outside the country permanently? Who could seriously claim that increasing the age of eligibility for Newstart allowance from 22 to 25 is somehow unreasonable, when the affected group will enjoy adequate grandfathering provisions and be able to take up benefits under a reformed youth allowance—a reformed youth allowance specifically designed to send a strong message that this Turnbull government values both earning and learning as pathways to higher employment and productivity for younger Australians?

Who could seriously argue that it is a big burden to someone under 25 who has been professionally assessed as job ready, has been assessed as having no significant barriers to taking a job and is being actively helped to get a job to wait four weeks before they can claim youth allowance? Who could seriously argue that it is not time to end another relic, the energy supplement—or carbon tax compensation, if you like—years after that tax was axed?

The measures in this bill are indeed fair. They seek to improve productivity by enhancing the child-care system and extending new opportunities to thousands of families. I support the bill and I commend it to the House.

Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do hope, Member for Fairfax, that you hang around so that you can understand that your government, which has been in for four years, has actually tripled the deficit since coming into office. If you hang around, you might hear about and understand some of the people that will actually be affected by the bill you are introducing. Obviously, I am speaking of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017.

Make no mistake, this bill has the sole purpose of stripping money from those who can least afford it. If you have never had to rely on it, Member for Fairfax, you probably would not understand what that is. It attacks pensioners, it attacks working men and women, it attacks single parents, it attacks Indigenous families, and it attacks young Australians searching for work. This government is truly shameless, and that absolute charade of a speech given just now by the member for Fairfax is more evidence.

Only a few short days ago, hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers across Australia were told they would be losing their Sunday penalty rates, resulting in a significant cut to their take-home pay. And here the Liberals are, on the very first day of parliament following that decision, once again going after the little guys. Here they are, taking money away from pensioners when we all know the age pension is barely enough to survive on now. Here they are, talking about cutting family payments and leaving 1.5 million families around Australia worse off. Shame! You should hang around, Member for Fairfax. Here they are, just weeks after this year's shameful Closing the gap report was handed down, talking about cutting Indigenous child-care and early learning programs. And here they are talking about cutting access to paid parental leave for mums and dads, who deserve to spend that valuable time with their newborn child.

There is nothing 'agile' or 'innovative' in this government's agenda—just cuts to programs designed to assist those people who actually need them. There is no progress to be made or advancement to a fairer society—just plain old boring cuts. No wonder people out there in the real world think so very little of the people in this place. This constant need to rip money away from struggling people is offensive, and it illustrates perfectly the priorities of this Liberal government.

There are a number of awful measures contained within this bill, and I want to step through each of them in the time I have to speak, because I think it is important for the people in my electorate of Lindsay to understand what this government is trying to do. Some of them will be the recipients of these cuts.

Mr Turnbull will say that this bill is about reforming the child-care system and making it easier for people to work and to afford child care. What the government will not tell you is that at least one in three families will be worse off under the new system. That has obviously been left off the talking points for the other side. In fact, almost half of all families will be either worse off or no better off, despite the government spending an extra $1.6 billion on the system by cutting a whole bunch of other important government services.

Under the new activity test, the ANU has found that 150,000 families will be worse off and many of these families will lose access to child care altogether, while 71,000 households on low incomes will have their childcare benefits cut altogether. These new rules will make it more difficult to secure child care for children whose parents are part-time and casual workers—meaning that many working mums and dads who do need more childcare assistance at the moment will end up with less.

Three hundred budget-based funded childcare programs, which mainly service rural, remote and Indigenous communities, are facing the axe. More than half of all families accessing these services will face an increase in their fees of $4.40 per hour. That might not sound like a lot of money, but when you add it up over multiple hours and multiple children, it equates to quite a lot. The increase in fees across the course of just one day can be the difference between having food on the table at the end of the week and not. And that will be the impact of these changes. I think sadly too few people on the government side of this chamber are willing to face up to that reality. Clearly not enough people around the decision-making table truly understand how these increased costs will affect families. And that is assuming their childcare centre remains open.

Modelling by Deloitte Access Economics has shown that over two-thirds of Indigenous early childhood education services will have their funding cut and may have to close their doors. This is simply a staggering position for this government to take. And the experts in the field have warned of the consequences. The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care has said:

These changes will diminish our kids' potential to make a smooth transition to school, compounding the likelihood of intergenerational disempowerment and unemployment.

Children will fall behind before they have even started and suffer greater risks of removal into out-of-home care.

It was only a little while ago that we stood in this House while the Closing the Gap report was handed down—it actually only achieved one of its targets—and this is from a government that claims to take seriously the issues around closing the gap. It is truly unbelievable.

But it does not stop there. Next on the government's hit list are pensioners. The bill contains several measures that will strip money away from struggling pensioners. It abolishes the energy supplement to new age pensioners, meaning single people will get $365 less and couples will have $550 less than before. Now I am yet to meet a single age pensioner who thinks the age pension in Australia is too high. We all know it is barely enough to survive on now, and yet this government wants to reduce it even further. And that's not all. This bill will abolish the Pensioner Education Supplement, which is a payment of between $30 and $62 per fortnight to help those people who are studying. Under this Liberal government, 41,000 pensioners will lose their education supplement—more than 75 per cent of whom will be women. And, if you are a pensioner who spends time outside of Australia for whatever reason, the Prime Minister is coming for your pocket again. This bill will reduce the current allowable threshold of time overseas by more than three-quarters from 26 weeks to just six weeks. After that, you will be at risk of having your pension docked, no matter what your reason for travel is.

Labor will not support these cruel cuts to elderly Australians because we have our priorities set right. We think it is ridiculous for this Liberal government to go after pensioners while running a protection racket for multinational companies who refuse to pay their fair share in tax. The Prime Minister and his Liberal government want to take money from the pockets of pensioners so they can give $50 billion away to big business and the big four banks—because they are clearly struggling. It is just so wrong, and the constituents I represent in Lindsay would never stand by and let this happen. So my message to the Prime Minister is clear: get your hands off pensioners and stop playing defence for tax-avoiding multinational companies, allowing them to slam dunk profits.

I would now like to move on to the impact this bill will have on families. The government is proposing a $20 increase in family tax benefit payments per fortnight, but at the same time they are taking significantly more than that away by abolishing various end-of-year supplements. Family Tax Benefit A supplement is a payment to assist with the cost of raising children and is made at the end of the financial year to ensure recipients are not left with a tax debt. Currently, it is $726 per child, and this government wants it gone. To a family struggling to get by, this supplement is sorely needed. It makes a real difference on the ground, especially to low-income families with more than one child, but under this government, Family Tax Benefit A supplement will be abolished by 2018 and Family Tax Benefit B supplement will be abolished as well, so it gets even worse—another $354 ripped out of the budget of the poorest Australian families. On top of that, the government wants to change the rules so a single parent with a child, who is 17 and still at school, will lose their Family Tax Benefit Part B entirely. That is a cut of $3,186 across the year. Imagine if that family is also getting a cut to their penalty rates.

How does this government expect families to get by? You cannot make all these cuts and think young kids will not be affected. You cannot slash payments like this and think that you will not put serious pressure on parents who are doing it tough as it is. These are real people, and the pain this government is inflicting on them is real as well. Under these changes, 1.5 million families will be worse off. That is not a legacy I would be proud of having, if I were on the other side. So in the interest of these Australian families, I call on the government to reconsider its cuts to families because they are doing it tough—they are trying hard and struggling to get by. They do not deserve these callous cuts that will only make it harder for them. The government needs to get into the business of governing and find some agile solutions to some of the problems they are facing.

When you consider the government's planned changes to the paid parental leave scheme, there is yet another cut. The Prime Minister and his Liberal government want to reduce the time new mums and dads spend with their newborn children. And along the way, they are accusing mums and dads of being 'double-dippers' and 'fraudsters' if their employment agreements include their own schemes—which, if we are being honest, have mostly been fought for and traded off against other benefits in the workplace. So this government's attack on working men and women who have secured their own employer-based schemes is unwarranted and seeks to strip away workplace conditions that have been hard-won over the past decade.

Legislating a cap of paid parental leave at 20 weeks is not only against the advice of the World Health Organisation, which recommends 26 weeks off to bond with a new baby, but it punishes men and women and their employers for doing the right thing and including paid parental leave in their employment agreements. We know that as a result of these changes by the Liberals, 70,000 new mums will be affected. On the other hand, Labor is going to stand up for working mums and dads and do what we can to ensure this government does not reduce the time they can spend with their new babies.

Another incredibly cruel measure contained in this bill is the government's plan to make young job seekers live on absolutely nothing for five weeks. I did not hear the member for Fairfax refer to this part. This is just an attack on young Australians who were not lucky enough to be born into wealthy households. We keep hearing about the policy of get rich parents from the other side—I am not even sure that is a policy. How do Liberal members on the opposite side of this chamber expect people to survive with no income for five weeks? I understand you guys have an ideological obsession with attacking low-paid workers and job seekers, but in a practical sense, how do you actually see this working? Again, the member for Fairfax did not explain this part. People will starve. They will be thrown out of their houses because they cannot pay rent and they will be unable to afford their utility bills. How are young people in that kind of situation meant to look for work? It is some kind of sick joke and it is being played out every day by this government. I refuse to believe that this is the Australia our families and forefathers have worked so hard to build.

We have a social safety net in this country because we value everyone getting a fair go. We know that, when our neighbour is starving and cannot afford to keep the lights on, all of us in the community suffer. We have recognised for a long time that our social safety net for those who are struggling to get by keeps people away from crime, keeps local economies afloat and gives dignity to all Australians, which is a basic human right. This government seems to forget that and, in the end, those who will suffer most are those in the communities that the government actively ignores on a daily basis. If five weeks without an income were not bad enough, when young people under 24 do get paid this government want to give them $48 a week less than before. These cuts are cruel and are simply unending. They have absolutely no shame in continuing these cuts against our poorest families in this country. So here we are yet again. The government are desperate to cut money in any way they can from people who are struggling to get by and the community is waking up to their agenda of making poor people poorer still while giving big businesses a $50 billion handout.

On the childcare package, the desperate attempt to link their dud of a policy with the vicious cuts I have outlined has been called out for what it is by at least 15 industry organisations and six major providers. It is an attack on low-paid workers and those doing their best to build a better life for themselves. The facts are simple: for every dollar of so-called new spending in this bill, $3.30 is being ripped from pensioners, families, new mums and dads, and young Australians. Labor will not support this bill and shame on any person in this place who does. The government are like a gang of termites at a log party when it comes to cutting the living standards of low-paid workers, families and anyone who relies on our social safety net or works for penalty rates.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to bring down the tone of this very important debate and perhaps remind the member for Lindsay that we are the government. It is very easy when you are in opposition to assume that everything we are doing is bad for the community. Indeed, it is not. We are in government and that is what we intend to do. Today I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. As we have heard outlined in this debate, this is a large package with many different elements, but the content of the package is clear. The reform package will benefit around one million of the hardest-working families here in Australia. It is a shame we did not hear about those from the member for Lindsay and other speakers on the other side. These are the people who need child care in order to work and to get ahead for their families. The government intends to match that commitment with a commitment of our own.

Family tax benefit A will be increased by $20 per fortnight for the 11,594 recipients in my electorate of Durack to help with their day-to-day costs of living. Steps are being taken to introduce a more flexible and more adaptable childcare framework that more properly reflects the nature of the modern childcare needs in Australia. The government is adapting the framework to reflect the changing nature of the work day, with more support being offered to cover childcare costs for those who are working longer hours each day or those who are working hours outside of the nine-to-five Monday-to-Friday framework, which the existing model does not support. The simple fact is that parents returning to the workforce need to return with peace of mind that their children will be looked after while they are at work. That is exactly what this package aims to do. It provides efficiency, it provides flexibility and it reflects the expectations of the modern global workforce.

Australians are competing in a global jobs marketplace which is becoming more and more competitive every day and the government is responding to that. This reform package is based around a simplification of what is currently a confusing and incredibly involved process that, unfortunately, many of our struggling, working Australians do not have the time or the energy to navigate. I can recall that feeling of confusion myself when I was using childcare providers. By simplifying the process of returning to work, we can allow our workforce to compete in that international jobs marketplace with less confusion and more certainty.

The government is in the business of making our welfare support system fair and equitable in this country. Australians expect the government to be as responsible as we possibly can be with taxpayer funds. That is their expectation and that is exactly what this legislation is about. It is a package that is designed to reward the hardworking Australians who are trying to get ahead and are supporting families and their young children. We need to strike a balance between respectful and responsible spending and a system that gives back to and supports those who are working and supporting a young family.

The main thrust of this package is, as I have stated, about simplification and flexibility. The government, after consultation with the sector and the crossbench, has determined to not reduce the family tax benefit part B rate for single parents over the age of 60 years. This is a demographic that is likely to be retired grandparents who have stepped in to help family members at a time of need. That is being responsible and it accepts that a certain part of the demography needs a helping hand. Phasing out the family tax benefit A and B end-of-year payment, which was essentially an allowance for overpayment of the family tax benefit to go towards paying down debt instead of being returned to the government, will contribute towards the childcare subsidy to allow parents to work. It will allow parents to do what they need to do to get ahead for their family.

This change is important because it supports a strong belief of this government and of this party that the best welfare you can give someone is a job—and we have heard that a lot in this chamber, particularly from this side of the House. By supporting parents to enter into the workforce through the child-care subsidy, we are enabling parents to continue their career advancement, continue with their studies and continue their volunteer work in the community. This is vitally important, because it addresses what is really one of the most significant factors preventing parents, especially mothers, from re-entering the workforce: the fear that their children will not be properly cared for if they are not there. And this is a real and tangible fear for working women—and for working men, but particularly for working mothers; I am not ashamed to say that. And it is something that I and other parents—and I see that Minister Andrews is in the House—have all experienced firsthand.

By freeing up funding for this child-care reform package through the scaling back of the Family Tax Benefit A and B end-of-year supplements, this will help to address the funding shortfall for this child-care reform package, which is the most significant of its kind. This package will deliver benefits to one million Australian families, as I said at the start, that are most in need of our assistance. The new system will be simpler, more affordable and more flexible. It will be better targeted and provide more assistance for low- and middle-income earners. It is a shame that those opposite have not focused on that aspect of it, rather than just simply reading the Labor Party talking notes.

For some, access to child care and affordable child care can mean the difference between working and not working. Better access to child care that suits the working needs and budgets of parents will help them increase their workforce participation, should they wish to do so. For many, it will mean that there is actually a financial benefit to working that extra shift or that extra bit of overtime rather than the extra money just going to pay for child care—which is, sadly, the case at the moment.

The child-care subsidy will replace the current child-care benefit and child-care rebate with a single means-tested subsidy. The subsidy will range between 85 per cent for low-income earners and 20 per cent for high-income earners. This package is most generous to those who need the most support, and I support that 100 per cent.

This government has also taken the responsible step of repealing the energy supplement which was implemented by Labor as a scheme to buy back goodwill after the introduction of the carbon tax. Well, since there is no carbon tax, there is no reason for an energy rebate to exist. This will deliver nearly $1 billion in savings, which can be much better directed into other government policies, such as the NDIS Savings Fund Special Account, which is an account that has been set up to properly address the funding shortfall in the NDIS, because—and I do not need to tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton—those opposite failed to properly fund their flagship policy when they were on this side of the chamber.

How incompetent do you have to be to not properly fund a policy platform like the NDIS—one of the most important social welfare reforms, intended to support the most vulnerable of Australians? And yet that lot over there failed to fund it and failed to plan for it. It beggars belief that this government is now left to find savings to fund the NDIS and we are getting criticised for it. This decision with respect to the energy supplement was taken on the advice from the Department of Social Services functional and efficiency review, and I think this is clear evidence that we, on this side, are not playing politics; we are being sensible with the taxpayer dollar, and it is simply commonsense responsible management of our budget bottom line. And those on the opposite side must get behind this omnibus bill so that we can start to look after the most vulnerable and get them to be supported to do the work that they want to do and support their families. I commend this bill to the House.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very important that we discuss all the full implications of this bill, which someone described as the child of Frankenstein of the 2014 budget in many ways. We have heard reference of course to the energy rebate; well, we have heard a lot from the government about soaring cost of energy—which has happened under their watch. So there has been no time when there has been a greater need for support for people dealing with those costs, which we know will come down with the greater application of renewable energy. All we need now is someone to step up and actually manage that transition and manage the grid, which is the real story.

But I particularly want to focus on one specific issue that emerges from this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. Last year, on 26 November, I travelled to Tumut as I was deeply concerned about the impact that the changes to child-care funding would have on vital services in our region in that area—the Snowy Valleys south-west slopes area. The Snowy Valleys Council had written to me stating that their mobile child-care service, Puggles, would have its funding cut, and rural and remote families in the region would not have access to quality child-care services.

I met with parents from all over that south-west slopes region who were deeply worried that the award-winning mobile child-care service that they relied on, Puggles, would no longer be available for their children. The Puggles mobile children's services van, run by the Snowy Valleys Council, has provided services to rural and remote venues across southern New South Wales for the past 16 years. The federal government was seeking to introduce the family assistance legislation amendment bill 2016; at that stage, the criteria for funding were unclear and there was no guarantee that services like Puggles would have continued to receive funding.

This year I am even more disappointed, as the government is seeking to introduce the social security omnibus bill that provides even less certainty for Puggles children's services and to the people who utilise that service. The social security omnibus bill is designed to streamline child-care arrangements as a budget savings measure, but it fails to take into account the differing circumstances of delivering services to rural and remote communities.

The Snowy Valleys Council have had modelling done on the impact that the streamlining will have on their mobile child-care services. This indicates that, if a new funding package is introduced, Puggles will have to cease servicing two of the six venues it currently services. And it is likely that increased costs will reduce enrolments at other centres owned by the council. This threatens the overall viability of that service. These changes also stand to impact the 85 children and 70 families that use the Puggles service in the region, as they will have reduced access and ultimately no access at all to this service. We know that quality child care plays such an important part in the development of young people, and for these children to have their service reduced or cut is just not good enough.

The Puggles mobile children's service ensures that our remote children are receiving six hours of early education a week. It is a recommendation that children receive 15 hours of early education a week and, as a result of the government's proposed changes, parents are seeing that their children will receive no early education—so not just not meeting the recommended levels but nothing at all.

Sheridan IngoId, a local parent speaking at the meeting that I mentioned in Tumut said, 'Puggles provides a service for our children to thrive and get early intervention and education care where otherwise they would miss out. It also serves as a hub for families to meet and socialise in our small village.' Award-winning childcare teacher, Kylie Wilesmith, who manages the Puggles children's service, stated that there was much to be lost in our area if these reforms go ahead. If passed in its current form, this policy will render many budget-based funded mobile children's services unviable, with the likely result that the early education and care of isolated children will suffer. It is deeply concerning that the mainly Aboriginal community of Brungle is set to be impacted by these changes.

The early years are the best opportunity to lay a solid foundation for a child's future. Time and money spent in the years before school have been shown to be a much more cost-effective investment than investments made at any other time. The skills that children gain as pre-schoolers form the basis for later skill development. As a result of a quality education before school, children enter school with marked differences in the cognitive, emotional, attention-related, self-regulatory, learning and social skills needed for success in the school environment, and these differences influence later academic success. Mobile children's services provide flexible, responsive, innovative services to children and families experiencing social, geographical cultural or economic isolation. The children that access services through Puggles stand to lose much more than a service; they stand to have their future negatively impacted.

It is clear from my regular community meetings in Eden-Monaro that both the New South Wales and federal coalition governments are simply out of touch on this issue. They refuse to explain their policy decisions to the community, they are too lazy to run proper community consultation processes and they are hypersensitive to criticism. While all governments should constantly monitor how efficiently funding arrangements are being delivered—and I am certainly happy to concede that—if they want to make changes, the important thing is to bring everyone along. Our mobile childcare services and parents are being left completely in the dark on this matter.

I have mentioned in the past that this is compounding the very serious body of issues that particularly the people I see in country New South Wales are really rising up to exhibit and voice their concerns over. It is building on all of the grievances that they have that have been developing over a period of time now at both the state and federal levels. We have seen what happened with the backpackers tax; the Gonski changes, meaning that the loading for regional schools and Indigenous kids is not being applied; the NBN stuff-ups that we are having in rural and regional areas; the forced mergers of our councils; the greyhounds issue; the privatisation of hospitals being mooted and the loss of funding for those regional hospitals; and electricity privatisation and all the things that we flagged that would happen with that—for example, the security issues that fell out of the Ausgrid sale and the gaming of the system now by a lot of private companies that have taken over the delivery of electricity services, which has caused a lot of the problems that we have been seeing.

We have seen the attacks on our TAFEs all around the country. In New South Wales country areas that is having a serious effect. We have seen the draconian fracking protest laws on our farmers who are worried about the impacts of GSG. And there has, of course, been the failure to come to grips with the impacts of climate change on our farmers. I was pleased to meet with our Farmers For Climate Action, who really understand both the challenges and opportunities that we have here if we get our policy settings right. There has also been the Centrelink debacle, which is playing out very badly in rural areas, where people who really depend on that personal and face-to-face support are now being targeted and persecuted by this mail-out program which has driven many of them to contemplate suicide. I am pleased that the wonderful people in my electorate offices have been effectively acting as adjuncts of Centrelink to deal with that issue. We have also seen veterans forced into the situation where they do not have the opportunity to have a face-to-face with support—forcing everyone to try to do all of these services online. We are also seeing a loss of services in banks and railway stations and the like.

But the latest blow that our country areas are facing relates to this penalty rates issues. In general terms, the impact on rural communities was spelled out in a McKell Institute study, which said that the retail and hospitality sectors account for some 18 per cent of all rural workers. The partial adjustment to these penalty rates was also looked at in that study. The average income earned by workers in retail and hospitality was evidenced to be the lowest of any industry. If you are talking about multipliers like double time et cetera, it is like the old saying 'two-fifths of bugger all'. These are very low wages that we are talking about. That multiplier effect was what enabled these people to put food on the table. In my region, a lot of people only get to work two to three days a week with these jobs. So it is absolutely critical that they have that penalty rate mechanism.

The McKell study highlighted that the income of these groups of workers, who are already the lowest income recipients in the country and in rural Australia, would be playing out dramatically through the reduction in the disposable income of those workers, because there would be less money going into the local economy. The very businesses where these workers work depend on people being able to afford to come into them to buy their coffee or to buy their food in that discretionary opportunity. That is going to really suffer a huge dent with the lack of that money flowing through the economy.

The McKell study said that a partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in workers in rural Australia losing between $370 million to $691 million per annum and in a loss in disposable income of between $174 million to $343 million per annum to local economies in rural Australia. We can imagine what the impact of that will be. Specifically in New South Wales, we are looking at the loss of between $118 million and $220 million per annum, and the impact on the local rural economies' disposable income would be in the order of up to $106 million. So we can see generally what the impact is going to be, but in relation to Eden-Monaro, one of the most vulnerable electorates in the entire nation, we know what the community feels about this because we have been extensively surveyed. In particular, only a few months ago a survey conducted by ReachTEL found that nearly 60 per cent of my community is opposed to plans to cut penalty rates, with 17 per cent undecided. It remains a very hot issue for us. The opposition to the cut was strongest amongst women, who will be deeply affected by this, and those aged between 18 and 34—as we have heard, young people will also suffer greatly. A poll also conducted by ReachTEL, of people in Queanbeyan and Canberra, found that 79 per cent supported penalty rates, with only 12 per cent opposed. So we know that in my region not only is it something that will have a massive impact but it is something that the community does not want.

If we are talking about tribunals, the ultimate tribunal for all of us in this place is the tribunal of the people—and the people have spoken loud and clear across this nation on this issue. We can talk about the acceptance of decisions, but decisions are made by tribunals all the time. It is like decisions that are made by the High Court. Decisions made by tribunals pose policy issues for this parliament and for governments. It is up to us then to deal with the challenges that decisions of tribunals might present. In this case, this is a very clear situation where a policy response is called for. What we need is a floor that preserves the ability for enterprise agreements to also adjust these matters in exchange for benefits, and that was the piece missing from the arguments put forward by the Prime Minister today. Absolutely, we accept the protection and the strength of unions to achieve agreements that deliver better outcomes for people in exchange for productivity or other trade-offs. Of course no-one is objecting to that, but what we are seeing here is the potential for a very important floor to be pulled out from under workers, which will influence the way future enterprise agreements are negotiated. So we need this situation addressed.

In the time left to me, I will also point out the local impact of the proposed move of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority from Canberra to Armidale. This is having a severe effect on my own electorate. Employees across the board are being cut from the Public Service and agricultural agencies, but we are really suffering from the impact that this will have on the capacity that the APVMA used to have, in the face of a cost-benefit analysis that showed that there was absolutely very limited benefit but plenty of cost associated with this move. We are talking about $26 million in moving costs, $157 million pulled from the local economy and a staff of 200, more than half of whom will not move. An internal strategy reveals that the government will struggle to move even 10 of the authority's 103 regulatory scientists. The specialised nature of that work means legal compliance and licensing divisions are also unlikely to move. This is having an impact on the capacity of our government to effectively service our rural industries.

One other issue that is having a big effect on rural Australia is the failure of the Black Spot Program, which the Australian National Audit Office highlighted was skewed politically. The criteria being used to determine the location of blackspots infrastructure were deeply flawed. The money is largely being spent in areas that already had some coverage and not in the areas that really need it. This is a damning record and I hope that the government starts listening to fine rural members like you, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, and addresses these issues. (Time expired)

Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 and the important benefits it brings to families in my electorate of Dunkley. This savings package was announced before my time in the parliament, in the 2015-16 budget, but it is a package that I wholeheartedly support and want to see passed through this House. This is the single largest investment in early learning and child care that this country has ever seen. We are working to ensure that every child has access to high-quality education and care but through reforms that are fairer and sustainable. It would be a disservice to our own children to implement a high-cost, sensationalist type program in the style of those opposite, only to find that there is no funding and no long-term perspective and for the program to be withdrawn again. What kind of care does this provide for our children? We need these reforms to support the nurturing of all Australian children in a responsible, sustainable and fair way. The reforms contained in the omnibus legislation ensure a high standard of child care for all children, not just those whose parents can afford it. We are enabling young parents to get back to work, to develop self-sufficiency and to provide for their families. By providing an increase in the safety net for paid parental leave and increased fortnightly rates of family payments, I am proud to say that the Turnbull coalition government is empowering young families and helping them participate in an economy that will construct their children's social environment in the future.

The Turnbull coalition government has always stated that the childcare reforms need to be paid for by the savings from the family tax benefit. The family tax benefit funding has always been for families—for children—but every dollar spent on child care must provide both a productivity lift and a participation lift to the economy. In September last year, in my electorate of Dunkley there were over 10,000 families receiving family tax benefit A and over 8,000 families receiving family tax benefit B, both figures a little over the national average for that quarter. This legislation is of great importance to my electorate and the young families who have chosen to make Dunkley their home. This legislation gives parents more choice and more opportunity to work while knowing that their child is not going to be prevented from having access to quality childcare facilities.

The Turnbull coalition government, indeed, has a plan to provide children with a high-quality early education. Some of the most important social and intellectual skills develop at an early age, particularly between the ages of zero and five. This means that, by improving our childcare system, we are setting our children up with a better start for their educational life. We believe in giving people the opportunity to get ahead—both families and the 8,530 Dunkley children currently using childcare services locally.

We have no reservations in supporting families who rely on child care to go to work. For some families, access to child care can mean the difference between working and not working. More affordable access to child care puts the opportunity of work within reach for many more families. These families are the primary beneficiaries of this legislation. These are the families who may need only a little more assistance, a little more support, to go back to work. We, the coalition, are giving them that opportunity.

I spoke in this chamber during the last sitting week about my concern for the fate of this legislation in the hands of the opposition. They have previously indicated their intention to block the savings measures. You really do have to wonder: 'Is it recklessness? Is it apathy?' Or do they just not care about families who work hard to give their children the best opportunities possible?' These reforms to social services and child care are long overdue. Labor did not support reform to family payments in the previous parliament, but I urge them to do so now.

Our reforms will give hardworking low-income families an 85 per cent subsidy. This means, for example, that a family under an income of $65,000 per year—of which there are many in Dunkley—would only pay around $15 per day at a childcare centre whose daily fees are around $100. These reforms deliver the highest rate of subsidy for those who most need it. This bill and the resulting reforms strike the right balance between efficient investments in family welfare and quality education for the children of some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The hardest-working, lowest-earning families are the ones in Labor's sights, should they oppose this legislation.

This package is expected to help more than 230,000 families to increase their involvement in paid employment, and the overall investment is estimated to benefit almost one million families. We want families to choose their child care around their work rather than limit their work hours to suit their child care. We should not be inhibiting parents and carers who seek employment and attempt to support their own families through work. This is a wonderful piece of legislation. This is about spending taxpayers' money smarter and spending on those who need it most for the greatest benefit to our communities. We, the Turnbull coalition government, understand that parents are under enormous pressure every day that goes by to make choices that are in the best interests of their families. My wife, Grace, and I are constantly seeking the best opportunities available for our 18-month-old daughter, Yasmin. So we fully appreciate and understand the importance of giving parents access to quality childcare facilities and of having the opportunities to go back to work. That is why it is with the utmost respect and sympathy that I fight for my constituents and I fight for the families of Dunkley in this chamber and on this bill today.

There are a couple of select features of this legislation that I would like to focus on a little further. First, we are abolishing the current $7,500 childcare rebate cap for families earning up to about $185,000. Second, the cap will be increased to $10,000 for families earning above this amount. There should be no limit to the amount of assistance that parents can receive in order to work more to support their families and to provide opportunities for their children. Without the successful passage of this childcare legislation, around 130,000 families are expected to hit the childcare rebate cap in 2018-19. Our reforms will mean that 90,000 of these families will no longer have to worry about a cap and a further 40,000 families will still benefit from the planned increase in the annual cap for high-income earners from $7,500 to $10,000. These amounts are for each child, meaning that families with more than one child will not be disadvantaged.

Conversely, contained in an earlier part of the omnibus legislation, an hourly fee cap will be implemented to put pressure on childcare fees to decrease. The Productivity Commission found that the average annual increase in long-day daycare fees accelerated when the childcare rebate was increased in 2008. This increase was accompanied by neither control over the artificial inflation of childcare fees nor a proportionate increase in workforce participation. Families have a right to a reference point to hold to account providers who raise their fees unnecessarily and to know what acceptable fee rates are.

The other component that I want to draw attention to is the activity test that we are implementing to ensure that the greatest assistance is given to those who need it most. Currently, recipients do not need to demonstrate any activity or need for childcare support to receive a degree of subsidised care. Therefore, in order to provide support to those families reliant on child care to work, train, study or volunteer, it is critical to distinguish between those families and the families who do not require the assistance. Assistance of this manner must be prioritised for those who need it the most. Therefore, the more hours that a parent works, studies, trains, volunteers or looks for work, the greater number of hours of subsidised child care they will be able to access. Up to 100 hours of subsidised care will be available per fortnight. This is how we, as a government, are accountable to the Australian people. Faith has been placed in us that we will use taxpayers' money in the most productive way possible, so I am very pleased that included in this legislation is a method like this that ensures the funding goes to those who need it most.

Critically, however, welfare of the children from some of the most disadvantaged families comes first. The activity test is based over a three-month period, recognising the unpredictability of casual work and irregular hours. The activity test will be waived altogether for families on incomes of $65,000 or less and for grandparents who are the primary carers. We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from quality child care and early childhood education. Central to this legislation is the consistency and quality of child care, and we will not let children from disadvantaged backgrounds—in Dunkley or elsewhere in Australia—miss out.

I am proud to be a part of the Turnbull coalition government presenting this bill. In addition to committing $840 million over 2016 and 2017 to guarantee federal support for a maximum of 600 hours of preschool in the year before a child begins formal schooling, we are providing increased access to better-quality childcare centres for thousands of families, including the 6,040 families using approved childcare providers in my electorate of Dunkley. Approximately 10,000 families in my electorate will receive an additional $20 in family tax benefits per child per fortnight, in addition to the childcare rebates and subsidies that I have been discussing. We have 105 approved childcare provider services in Dunkley looking after the early childhood education for thousands of young children, such as my daughter Yasmin—for example, Long Island child care on the edge of Frankston and Seaford; Mount Eliza House in Mount Eliza; and Good Start Early Learning in both Frankston and Langwarrin.

I am proud to be a part of a government that is ensuring all children have access to quality early learning and care and is helping thousands of parents get back to work and increase their work hours without some of the financial barriers they were subject to previously. I call on those members opposite to support this legislation for the sake of my constituents in Dunkley, for families in Dunkley, for the children in Dunkley and for families and children right across Australia.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start of this speech with a story. The story took place about 21 years ago in a rural community in southern New South Wales. I was working as a rural consultant and I had been invited to this meeting to talk about service provision in country towns. As we gathered the women together from the farms we heard the story of a father. He told us how recently he had had an accident on his farm. He had a child on his tractor. The child was hurt, so he took the child to the local hospital for attention. It was the child's mother who was the nurse on duty at the emergency centre who looked after the child. The father told this story to a group of us country people who cared about services. The father, the mother and the community asked: 'What would it take for us to have child care? What would it take for us so that a man farming on his farm and a woman working in the local town could have their children cared for by professional carers?' That story so resounded in that community that they got organised and formed a committee, as you do in country towns, and began work on designing a service that would meet the childcare needs of farm families in small rural communities.

So it is with some degree of deja vu that I stand in parliament today, 20 years after the report Country kids—who cares?: child care a work related issue for farm families was written, and say that many of the issues identified 20 years ago are still unaddressed by this legislation. So I am particularly focusing my comments today on the Jobs for Families Child Care Package. I want to make a plea to my colleagues, particularly those who represent rural communities, to pay attention to this legislation. I believe it fails to address the needs of, in particular, farm families. It fails to address the needs of working parents in small rural communities.

I have been working very closely with the minister around these issues and I would like to acknowledge and thank him and his staff and the departmental staff, who have given me a lot of time and have listened to my concerns. They have committed to me that they have paid attention and that, in the development of the guidelines associated with this legislation, they will address my concerns. But how sad it is that when we have legislation like this before the House today we have to pay attention to unwritten, unreleased guidelines and rely on the minister, who said: 'Cross my heart. Trust me, Cathy: we will address this.' I want to take this opportunity to say that that is not nearly good enough. In designing childcare packages for all Australians, we need to put the needs of rural and regional Australians front and centre. I have to say how incredibly disappointing it is when people say: 'We will make special provisions for those disadvantaged people. We will make special provisions for those who just cannot get to a childcare centre.' I say that rural and regional Australia should never be regarded as disadvantaged and particularly the farming families of rural Australia should never be regarded as disadvantaged. We are mainstream parts of this country. We work really hard to produce the commodities that make this country flourish. As families who work to do that, we deserve to have our needs front and centre of this legislation. Sadly, they are not.

I have a few things I want to talk about. One is how government goes about making sure that rural and regional Australia is front and centre. How do we design services that meet the needs of farming families? How is it that we can take into account the particular needs of this particular group that I am speaking for today? I want to take the opportunity to read a couple of case studies from the report Country kids—who cares?that was prepared 20 years ago. I want to quote Nerida. Nerida is a dairy farmer and she said: 'Dairy farming is constant work. We milk the cows twice a day for nine months of the year. Some dairy farmers milk 365 days of the year. It begins in the early morning, starting around six, and goes until eight or nine when you come home for breakfast. Then it is off to do the day's farm work, with milking again in the late afternoon. The day's farm work usually finishes around 7 pm. These hours make it difficult to get people to come in and mind the children on the farm. But it is also impossible to get to a childcare centre, if there was one.' Nerida's neighbour would occasionally look after the children. She charged X dollars an hour. The nearest child care centre was 20 kilometres away, a round trip of 40 kilometres. Nerida said: 'I refuse to drag children out of bed so early in the morning and take them 40 kilometres for child care.'

Another little case study was about Marilla. The report says: 'Marilla and her husband have three children and they live in a community that is 100 kilometres away from the nearest childcare service. Marilla has no extended family living in the area. When necessary, her husband or neighbours provide child care. But it is difficult to ask a neighbour to look after three children when she is already busy on her own farm and has two or three children of her own. She says, "If it is necessary, I split the children up between neighbours. But each trip involves me taking them 15 or 20 kilometres."

Marilla says that when shearing or tractor driving on the farm during cropping they employ a local woman to mind the two year old. 'The trips to town for appointments or for business can be a logistical nightmare. Sometimes I have to worry for a week as to how I can possibly get all of the jobs done to be back in time for the school bus. I normally only go into town once a week for shopping and farm business, and then it is incredibly stressful.'

What happened as a result of this report was that a childcare service was designed to specifically meet the needs of rural and farming families. It was called Mobile Child Care. Mobile Child Care was based in the Albury-Wodonga community childcare hub. It now employs 50 qualified staff. They have cars and they go out to the communities. They work in halls. They have renovated the community halls. They have got them all licenced. The mothers and fathers of these rural communities can now take their children to the local hall for occasional child care, long day care, after-school care—depending on what the need is. This has been a magnificent service in my local community that has really met the needs of the community. But, sadly, with the changes that are going to come in, that local service says it can no longer do what it needs to do.

The minister has said he would address it. But what is so sad about this particular bit of legislation is that it has not taken best practice into account, it has not taken the needs of agricultural industries into account, it has not taken the needs and the work of these really skilled childcare workers. So they are extraordinarily skilled people; they are not only qualified childcare workers. They go into the community, they take information with them, they provide support to the farming family and, if it is appropriate, they can refer to other services that are available. They do community development when there is a need. They can talk about how else the needs of families can be met. So these workers are, in fact, community builders. They save the government hundreds and thousands of dollars by making our rural communities work better. Sadly, they do not fit this model.

So what is wrong with this model? This model is based on what we call centre care. This model is really good if you live in a town and you have a centre base. The model is no good if you live in a small country town and you do not have a critical mass to support a centre. Many of our communities are not large enough for a centre-based child care. I really want to make sure that the minister actually understands that what he is doing meets the needs of a lot of people for sure. But there is a really significant amount of people in rural and regional Australia who are being marginalised by this change. And it is such a pity.

I want to talk a little bit about one of the things that happened in my adventures with trying to fix this up. You can imagine the angst that came to my community when they heard that the childcare legislation meant that their wonderfully loved service was no longer going to be provided. So they have been lobbying me, the member for Farrer and anyone that would listen. One of things we did was put a number of questions in writing through the system—question number 25, 'Budget-based funding services'. We asked the minister to tell us what impact study had been undertaken with this legislation so that at least we knew that when the government was making the changes it did it in full knowledge of the impact of this change. The answer came back—question number 25, answer number 5:

A Regional Australia Impact Statement was not required, as discussed with the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, because the circumstances of all families, including families in regional and remote areas, were taken into account in developing the Package upon which the legislation is based …

I would like to say: somewhere someone is not telling the full truth.

The communities that I represent are loud and clear in saying that their needs have not been taken into account. They are being asked to transition. And 'transition' is a magic word; my community says to me, 'Transition to what?' The minister tells me, 'We'll put a granting process in place and communities can apply for grants to do transition.' I say, 'Minister, there's nothing to transition to. There are no services in these towns. There's no centre. If we don't have mobile childcare services, there's nowhere to go.' While all of us love the opportunity for a grant, for those of us who live in rural and regional Australia—and, let me say, I have had 20 years of applying for grants, of demonstrating innovation and of demonstrating how my particular circumstances warrant special treatment—it is a horrible way to have to justify what is a mainstream service for the city people, which is child care. Why should rural and regional Australia have to apply for a grant and special conditions, and demonstrate innovation when we have as legitimate needs for child care as everybody else.

I was so disappointed to read that answer. I have to say to the bureaucrats involved: do not do that to me again. Undertake rural and regional impact statements. In particular, to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development: if you are undertaking major changes to the way fundamental services are provided in Australia, you must, as a matter of good governance, do the research to show how it is going to impact, and then put in place the necessary changes to make sure there are no unintended consequences that disadvantage a huge sector of the population. To that end, I have moved at an earlier time the Charter of Budget Honesty statement. And that charter, if we could bring it on to debate in this House, would do exactly that—it would make sure that every major change has an impact statement so that we understand how it is going to impact on our communities.

In bringing my comments to a close and in foreshadowing that I will be making amendments in the third reading stage of this legislation, I would like to acknowledge and thank the minister. He has certainly given me a really good hearing. I am sure that he understands my issues. I would like to acknowledge the public servants that we have met and who have given a lot of time and energy for this. I would particularly like to acknowledge the work of Anne Bowler, who is the national president of NAMS, the National Association of Mobile Services. She has worked so hard in a voluntary capacity to have these issues addressed. To Anne and all your colleagues: we began the fight 20 years ago. We will not give it up now. We know that rural and regional Australians deserve excellent service, and I will be your voice in this parliament to make sure it happens.

I would also like to acknowledge the work of Rodney Wangman, the chief executive officer of the Albury-Wodonga Community College. Rod, you have been the auspice body of the mobile childcare centre. You have seen it through 20 really good years. My commitment is that we are not going to let it go. We have a really good model, and we will continue to work with the government to make sure that in the long term we find a system that actually works for us—a place-based system, a whole-of-family system, a children's services system that acknowledges how important our children are and does not make them an add on extra, grant, innovation, apply-for system. This fight has really just begun, and I am not to let it go. (Time expired)

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 in its original form, which will deliver more affordable, flexible and accessible child care for Australian families. I am a huge supporter of the fantastic work that our local childcare centres do in my electorate of Forde. Every year I get around to visit as many centres as possible. It is a great opportunity to hear from teachers, the directors of the centres and families and gain some valuable insights into the tremendous work they are doing with those young kids in our community. It is also a great opportunity for me to support the centres and the kids by donating a number of books and other learning materials. I believe one of the most important things we can do is to give our kids a head start and encourage a love of reading. Every time I drop in to donate books I have the pleasure of taking some time with the kids, reading them a story and enjoying some fun with them in the process.

Early education starts in our local childcare centres, and every family deserves the ability to access affordable child care when they need it. The problem is the current system is no longer working. I have heard from families and childcare workers who tell me the childcare rebate just does not stretch far enough. Families are running out of the rebate too soon and it is having a negative impact on their household budgets. Many families, who have mum and dad both working to get ahead to provide for their families and pay off a mortgage, are frustrated with the current system because the rising cost of childcare fees makes working a second job almost not worth the effort. One mother told me that after paying for childcare fees and exhausting the childcare rebate she was basically working for $5 per hour and wondering, what is the point?

It is clear from the discussions I have had with many people across my community that Australians want better and more affordable child care. This government, through this package of measures, is determined to deliver it. This legislation delivers the most significant reform to the funding of early childhood education and the childcare system in 40 years. The Coalition will deliver new agreements to better target support towards hard-working Australian families who are earning the least and working the longest hours. More than one million families will benefit from the government's reforms to make childcare more affordable, flexible and accessible.

This package of measures will abolish Labor's cap on the $7,500 childcare rebate, giving more incentive to parents who want to be in the workforce to find work or to work more hours. The cap will be abolished for families earning less than around $185,000. The government will also increase the subsidy rate to 85 per cent for the lowest-earning families and taper that down so it is lower for families earning the most. This will ensure that families earning the least will benefit from the greatest percentage of childcare rebate.

The government wants families to have the freedom to choose their child care around their work, rather than limit their work hours to suit their child care. It is estimated that this reform will encourage more than 230,000 families to increase their involvement in paid employment, which will have a positive impact on our economy.

When Labor increased the rate of the childcare rebate in July 2008, childcare fees accelerated dramatically. We will seek to ensure that history does not repeat itself by putting an hourly fee cap in place. Since being in government the coalition has already brought annual childcare price increases down to around six percent, far less than the spike in fees of 14 per cent under Labor.

I am proud to say that this legislation will make Australia's childcare system more affordable, flexible and accessible. It also implements the necessary budget savings to fund these reforms in a responsible way. I have just heard the contribution in regard to the budget-based funded childcare services. We are aware that we need to ensure we provide a solution across the country. Centres in remote and rural areas, which provide tremendous service to their communities, will be transitioned over the next few years to the new model so we have a common model across the country. They will also have opportunities for some additional assistance, and overall the funding increase to those services as a result of the new changes will increase to about $110 million, compared to approximately $62 million at present. That will alleviate the concerns expressed by the member earlier. We are putting more money into those regional, rural and remote childcare centres and assisting those families.

The Australian people elected a coalition government to bring the budget back into order and to make the changes that are necessary to create opportunities for all Australians. This omnibus savings bill is part of that process. It allows us to continue the work necessary to deliver on budget reform. We cannot continue to manage a budget by borrowing. It is important that in the context of managing the budget, we seek to live within our means. As a coalition government, we have consistently indicated that the decisions and the changes we are making are designed to achieve that outcome.

We have already been forced to defer the start date of the childcare reform package for more than 12 months because of Labor's failure to support these necessary savings and yet it is the families in electorates like Forde and many others around this country, which those opposite purport to support, who are paying directly the price for Labor's intransigence in blocking these changes. We can no longer live off the credit card of future generations, and that means funding childcare reforms with savings from the family tax benefit. The family tax benefit reform package will not only deliver record levels of childcare support to families who need it most, but it will also deliver sustainability to the family payment system. And that is important, because we want a family payment system that not only supports and is sustainable for current families but also provides support and sustainability for families of the future. It will mean almost 100,000 low-income families will get up to an extra two weeks paid parental leave by increasing paid parental leave to 20 weeks. And around 1.2 million families will get up to $20 per fortnight more in family tax benefit payments to help them with day-to-day expenses, including more than 15,000 families in my electorate of Forde. These changes are on top of the benefits working families will receive through removing the cap on the childcare rebate and increasing the subsidy rate to 85 per cent.

When it comes to reforming the broken childcare system, it is this side of the House that is providing solutions for our families—not those opposite. Unlike those opposite, who went to the election promising to continue the current system only to undermine their stance more recently, it is this government that has put the time and effort in to consult with parents, families and childcare providers. We have listened to input from the Productivity Commission and two Senate inquiries to present a package that we know will make child care more affordable and accessible for those who need it most. The coalition government's childcare reform will help so many hard working families right around the country. It will provide more opportunities for parents thinking of going back to work or working more hours as the opportunities arise. It will provide parents working part time with the affordable and flexible child care they need to increase their hours—and make working more worthwhile. I believe this legislation will make a tremendous difference to the hardworking families in my electorate of Forde, and I commend this bill in its original form to the House.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I may be new here but much of the content of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 is not; it well predates me. Fundamentally, it recycles the same old tired cuts that the previous parliament rejected. And for those who were here in the previous parliament, you would feel like the proverbial goldfish going around in the bowl—'We've been here before, we've been here before, we've been here before; we say no, we say no'—but still they come back. So here we go again, debating the same old cuts that hit the poor.

These zombie budget measures—as they are called—these fantasy cuts that just will not die—actually, to keep calm in question time during one of the more ridiculous moments with the Deputy Prime Minister, I googled 'zombies'. In my view, these zombie budget measures are worse than zombies, because in fact there are ways to kill zombies. You have to lop off the cranium, destroy their brains. Google does warn you not to underestimate how difficult that is to do, to kill a zombie, but I have to say I think it is easier to do that than making these cruel, unfair cuts go away. Indeed, I am at a loss to understand where the government's brain would be to kill them, given how brain dead their actual policy agenda seems to be.

We have a few additional cuts to families, to pensioners, to young people looking for work, and of course the old paid parental leave 'double dipping' chestnut set up against child care. It is truly heartwarming stuff. So it should be no surprise that Labor does not and will not support this bill. It is further evidence of the government's complete inability to govern, which means presenting ideas in a coherent way, having a conversation and listening to criticism. We heard the member for Indi make reasonable points. You would think that those in government who claim to represent rural and regional Australia may even listen to them and do something about them, but no. The government could have put forward a childcare package that encourages workforce participation, maximises human capital through early childhood development—given the evidence is clear—and provides parents with the support and certainty they need. But they chose not to.

I will say at the outset that some parts of this package are worthy of support; they are not all bad. Things like combining the two parenting payments into one—that is good stuff. But the government just cannot help themselves, and there are two fundamental problems. Firstly, the current package spends $1.6 billion on changes that will leave one-in-three families worse off—and that is an independent analysis by the ANU—and it especially hurts some of the most disadvantaged children. It halves access to early education for many children in low-income families and it fails to guarantee the direct subsidies to services accessed by thousands of children in mostly rural and regional communities—for the most part, Indigenous children. I was moved by the description by the member for Indi of the impact on her electorate, a part of the state that I know well. Her point that farmers and rural communities are not some kind of add-on extra to Australian society is well made. It should not have to be made, but it was well made. And this model does not work for small centres outside towns. If these services cannot continue without ongoing support, and we know that, you would think the government might provide some support. No, but just last sitting week this place was filled with talk of closing the gap on development outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, yet the original target on access to early childhood education for Indigenous children, for four year olds, expired unmet years ago and this legislation will further hurt access for Aboriginal children. It is rank hypocrisy.

The second problem of course is playing parliamentary games by holding investment in child care to ransom by bundling it together in one big bill with other cuts. It is a tactic and it is a scam. We are being asked to pit family against family. When you do the math on this bill, in total the government wants to take $3.30 off pensioners, new mums, families, young Australians, for every dollar they then put back into child care. And among the many cuts we are being asked to okay today are: reducing the pension after six weeks overseas if you are a migrant who has only contributed to the Australian economy for, say, 34 years rather than 35; abolishing the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment; abolishing the energy supplement for new welfare recipients; and increasing the age of eligibility for Newstart from 22 to 25 years, further demeaning young people trying to find work. You can vote in three federal elections but apparently the government still considers you some kind of weird 'youth' unworthy of support that is barely adequate to sustain independent life. These measures have appeared again and again in different bits of legislation. They are still in other bills on the Notice Paper resurrected again and again, but you cannot polish a turd and the government continues to try—it is a bit like the Prime Minister's leadership. There is no shame in the government's efforts to hit pensioners, families and young people where it hurts.

I will point out a couple of things about budget repair and the economic impact. In the scheme of the stuff-up that the government is making and how badly they are stuffing the deficit, these are relatively modest contributions to fiscal and budget repair. But in terms of economic impact, these areas have to be the worst places you would look for cuts. Because if you are taking money from those at the very bottom, who spend every dollar that you give them as the evidence shows, you are going to have most impact on the real economy. These are the people who have least to begin with so, once again, this proposal will target the poor, the vulnerable and the striving to make inroads to budget repair.

Labor continues to fight measures that shield the wealthy from the burden of budget reform, fuel inequality and further wealth disparity in this country. We showed the ability in my first week or two in this chamber last year to compromise and to push through a lot of savings in the omnibus savings bill. There was difficult compromise, and we need to do more of it—there is no shame in it—but not here. There are lines that should not be crossed. Time and time again though, the government keeps trying to pick on the poor and the vulnerable, and we will have no part of it. We did of course at the election outline a range of other budget measures to deal with the fiscal situation, many for which we were clobbered on the head relentlessly about—superannuation, VET funding rorts—and then the government kind of snuck up to the line and put them through, albeit in some kind of bastardised fashion.

We also proposed revenue measures. That is right, the 'r' word—revenue. The member for Forde and I have got a bit of a buzzword bingo game going—having a little giggle—over keyword phrases. 'Jobs and growth' has not had much of an outing this year. We all hear 'CFMEU' and 'stop the boats'. But another one that is really doing the rounds at the moment is 'live within our means'—we have to 'live within our means'. The member for Forde told us about 'living within our means'. It is a cute phrase and it is hard to argue with. But for those opposite, it is actually just code for cuts that hurt everyday Australians. How is it going? Net debt is $100 billion up; the deficit has tripled. They never seem, when they say it, to mean making sure that we have the means to live.

Ordinary people pay tax, and the Liberals seem to think that is okay. But, somehow, when we talk about tax avoidance for the very wealthy or multinationals who pay nothing or large companies, who find paying tax in this country optional, somehow that is class war. 'Living within our means', for me, means behaving like a grown up and putting the budget onto a sustainable path. It means as a community we need to and have the right to decide what kind of society we want to live in. We have to look at spending and we have to look at revenue. You can imagine a world where society decided what was important, what was needed, what kind of community we wanted to be and then constructed a budget around that—just imagine. But that kind of imagination is sadly lacking by the small minded bean counters opposite.

It is not just me who says this though. The Salvation Army, in its submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into one of the previous guises of this bill—the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2016—which still hangs around as one of those zombies on the NoticePaper with some of the same garbage in it, said:

The Salvation Army strongly recommends the government ensures any reforms to balance the budget focus on both revenue and expenditure and not unfairly focus funding cuts on vulnerable groups who can least afford to be further marginalised.

It is not rocket surgery—one of my favourite Warwick Capper quotes; although apparently the original has to be attributed to Chris Rock in a comedy show. So for both core reasons—the impact of the childcare package on vulnerable and disadvantaged children, and the tactic of bundling massive cuts in the same bill—Labor must oppose this legislation. I do wish the government would stop playing parliamentary games, decouple these harsh cuts, and sit down and discuss the package to improve it. I urge people in the Senate when they look at this to consider the member for Indi's very reasoned comments around the impact on rural and regional Australia.

In the time remaining, it is impossible to deal with all of the cuts. The bill itself is 387 pages long, the explanatory memorandum 271 pages. But I do want to turn my attention to two particular measures that the government has been trying on for years now. The changes to proportional payment to pensions outside Australia is a blatantly discriminatory measure. It unfairly targets a growing number of overseas born pensioners. My electorate in this place is one of only two in the parliament where a majority of people were born in another country. After six weeks outside the country, this bill would see the rate reduced, if you have lived here for less than 35 years, proportional to your Australian working-life residence.

About 190,000 pensioners are born overseas, and the government has to understand that ties to family and country of birth are not severed through grant of Australian citizenship. Those ties can strengthen us; they are not a fiscal burden to be punished. In terms of holidays, the habit of many pensioners is they save up for a big trip rather than taking lots of shorter ones, for reasons of family and care. And it makes sense, if you are counting your pennies, to use the flight and maximise your time away—you do not have to get back for work. Caring for family members overseas is also an important part of life. Funnily enough, people are often sick for longer than six weeks. It puts pensioners in a diabolical position when they have to make a choice between staying with a sick and dying relative and rushing back to Australia just so Centrelink will not cut off their pension when they may have worked here and paid tax for 32 years. COTA Australia, in their submission to the Senate inquiry into the 2015 version of the budget repair bill, said:

… this measure is excessively punitive and inequitable in its impact on Australians not born in this country and who maintain cultural and familial ties to their place of birth. As around 40 per cent of Age Pensioners were not born in Australia the impact of the measure is likely to be significant and unfairly borne by one segment of our community.

The other measure I want to draw attention to is the pensioner education supplement—or the removal thereof. Is it fourth or fifth time lucky for this one? The government has failed to listen so many times before. In the Minister for Social Services' second reading speech on last year's crack at this, he stated, of the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment:

… they were … introduced to assist long-term income support recipients who had been out of the workforce for a long period of time by helping them improve or rebuild skills to be more competitive in the labour market.

That is a clear opportunity for cuts, isn't it! The minister went on to justify their abolition, in part, by reference to the targeted support and assistance now available to these people—things like HECS loans, VET FEE-HELP and so on, which cover tuition, not additional expenses as you study, which means so much to low-income earners.

The Poverty in Australia 2016 report by ACOSS said that, for the 13.3 per cent of Australians who are living in poverty:

Being unemployed is the strongest overall predictor of poverty …

Indeed, more than 63 per cent of unemployed households were experiencing poverty. The second most vulnerable group after Newstart recipients are those in receipt of the parenting payment, over 50 per cent of whom exist below the poverty line. Again in the minister's second reading speech on the 2016 bill, he noted:

The most common recipient of the pensioner education supplement is likely to be on a parenting payment (single) …

And the people who receive the parenting payment single—let us call them, I don't know, women; 95 per cent of people who receive that payment are women—have the audacity to seek assistance to undertake study as a pathway to re-entering the workforce!

I was raised by a single mother. I have seen this up close. My mum was forced to leave school at year 11 because her family could not afford the uniform to go to a school where she could finish year 12. Then she was out of the workforce for many years, raising us. A few years after my dad died, she decided she had to fight her way back into the workforce. She thought, 'I know; I'll go and do a year 12 subject.' She actually topped the state adult VCE in psychology, and that gave her the encouragement to then go and do a nursing refresher course and eke out work. It is not easy. In effect, removing this payment means that single mums who go back to education will be forced to find those extra few dollars by taking things from their kids.

The Welfare Rights Centre, in its submission to the Senate inquiry into the budget repair bill 2015, stated:

The removal of this payment is both counter-productive and short-sighted, and calls into question the sincerity of the Government's stated aims of encouraging job seekers of working age to be 'job ready'.

It also said:

… even the ideologically-driven, fiscally hard-headed National Commission of Audit did not go as far as recommending that the PES be removed, proposing instead that the Supplement only be provided to recipients during study terms or semesters.

Those are just two of the cuts. I could go on, if time permitted—and I am sure my colleagues will. I urge the government to reconsider these cruel cuts, which are not necessary, in this legislation. (Time expired)

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the member for Bruce's speech and I understand, as he said in his speech, that he is a new member of this place. He spoke about choices as well, and he might want to make choices in regards to some of the terms he inserts into his speeches which not only reflect on the parliament but reflect on him.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 and the statements of members on this side of the House, who have been clear on how this government is backing families who need it most. This bill includes a number of items which are new as well as previously introduced social services measures which will improve the fairness and sustainability of government payments. But, above all, this legislation reconfirms how we are determined to make life easier for our hardworking families.

As the Minister for Social Services outlined in his second reading speech on this legislation, this bill reintroduces the Jobs for Families Child Care Package, from the Education and Training portfolio, and a range of other measures. Together, the measures in this bill will help us provide a fair and reasonable safety net for those who need it, encourage participation in work and study, and contribute to bringing the budget back to balance.

This government wants a welfare system that supports the most vulnerable in our community, encourages those capable of work or study to do so, reduces intergenerational welfare dependency and is sustainable for the future. But today I want to focus on our government's commitment, and continuing commitment, to investing in child care.

We will, with this bill, provide parents with more choice and opportunity to work, and provide children with high-quality early education. This is absolutely vital in my electorate on the Central Coast, where around one in four, or 30,000 people, leave home early in the morning and return home late at night to their families because the only jobs that are available for them are in Sydney or Newcastle. This is an everyday reality. My husband does it. As I said, around 30,000 hardworking people on the Central Coast do it.

It is certainly something that hits home whenever I meet with the young students who visit Parliament House in school groups, like I did during the last sitting wee. We were visited by some wonderful students from my old school, St Philip's Christian College at Gosford. The Prime Minister took the time to meet all the stage 3 students, who asked some fantastic questions, in his courtyard, and of course they took plenty of photos. As I do with every other school group, I asked every student present to raise their hand if their parents had to leave home early in the morning and return home late at night because their jobs are in Sydney or Newcastle. Around two-thirds of the students usually raise their hands, and it was certainly the case on this occasion as well. It really does demonstrate how widespread the need to support working families is. With this everyday requirement for parents to access child care so they can work, flexibility is crucial. Put simply, access to child care can mean the difference between working and not working, especially when your job is a four-hour round trip commute every day.

Of course, we have so many outstanding child care centres on the Central Coast in suburbs like Point Clare, Erina, Kariong and even just near my electorate office in West Gosford, with many hard-working, dedicated, caring and wonderful staff members. I do want to pay tribute to every single one of them and the childcare centres on the Central Coast. I have been the beneficiary as a mum with two kids and I know what an extraordinary job they do for the future generations.

I commend the Jobs for Families Child Care package because it delivers genuine, much-needed reform for a simpler, more affordable, more accessible and more flexible early education and childcare system. In supporting almost one million Australian families to balance work and parenting responsibilities, this package of measures is fair. It will provide the greatest number of hours of support in child care to the families who work the longest hours and the greatest financial support to the families who earn the least. In my electorate of Robertson, I am advised the latest figures reveal that almost 9,000 will receive an extra $20 in family tax benefits per child per fortnight to help with their day-to-day costs of living.

But the significant investment in child care must be fiscally sustainable. Combining fair and reasonable changes to the family tax benefit system and childcare reforms into a single bill enables the government to reduce spending and increase workforce participation through an affordable childcare system. As part of this bill, the Child Care Subsidy will replace the current Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate with a single, means-tested subsidy from 2 July 2018. The package before the House will also provide targeted additional fee assistance through a new Child Care Safety Net for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and provide consequential and transitional arrangements.

We are also introducing an activity test to ensure that the greatest number of subsidised hours is provided to those who work the most. The legislation also includes the introduction of an hourly fee subsidy cap to put downward pressure on fees charged by childcare providers; it strengthens approved childcare service eligibility requirements; and it enhances the childcare payments system compliance framework. Of course, it is right to ask the question: why is it tied to savings to pay for it? That is simply because we have a responsibility—not just for ourselves, but for future generations, for our children and our children's children—to ensure we do not see the nation's debt go up any further. As the Member for Fairfax said in this debate earlier today, it is in many ways squarely about budget repair.

This bill reinforces that this government is the party of lower taxes. It is a clear reminder that Labor is the party of higher taxes, bigger deficits and more debt. It is the same Labor Party that wants a new carbon tax, but cannot tell people how much it will be; the same Labor Party that wants to make the budget worse off by $16.5 billion; and the same Labor Party, represented on the Central Coast by Senator Deborah O'Neill and others, that wants higher spending, higher taxes and fewer local jobs.

So in contrast to this reckless approach from Labor, this government is supporting families through measures such as those outlined in this bill. As the Minister for Education said, we do not want to see the very children who are in child care today lumbered with higher levels of government debt in the future than is already the case. We do not want to see higher levels of tax that will hurt job opportunities for those children coming through our educational system today. Sadly, far too many families are falling off the financial cliff mid-financial year when it comes to their child care support. Too many Central Coast families have run out of support for their childcare bills. This is a tragedy. We need to be giving children the best start in life. As a mother of two, I know this to be the case.

There are many other elements of this bill, but I rise today to again place on the record my determination to ensure this government delivers a core commitment—simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible childcare system and something that will benefit the families of Robertson. I commend this bill to the House.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot support this omnibus bill. It is very bad policy and it lumps in bad policy with good policy. The government has negotiated with us, the Nick Xenophon Team in good faith on individual pieces of legislation, but this bill does not reflect that good faith. I and the Nick Xenophon Team will always support sensible welfare reform and will continue to negotiate with the government from this position. However, we definitively reject many of the cuts contained within this bill. That is because they are too deep, too harsh and, most critically, they target the same vulnerable group of people again and again.

Most importantly, there is no evidence that the measures in this legislation will assist young people to find employment or assist single parents of older children to find employment or earn more money. They will do nothing to assist pensioners to keep lights on in the home, and it will do nothing but cut financial assistance from some of the most vulnerable citizens.

The Nick Xenophon Team takes budget repair seriously. We know it is a necessary foundation for the future prosperity of our nation, but if heavy-lifting on budget repair is going to be successful, then all segments of Australian society need to tighten their belts, not just the poorest third.

I would like to talk about family tax benefits. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the government is determined to abandon Howard's battlers for whom family tax benefits were created. In the national broadsheet The Australian on 1 December 2015, former Prime Minister John Howard was quoted by Judith Sloane as saying that he did not 'regard family tax benefits as a form of welfare'. It is true that the original scope of the Family Tax Benefit scheme was relatively generous, and it is for this reason, perhaps not unreasonably, that some have labelled it as 'middle-class welfare'. However, the halcyon days of generous payments for middle-class families are well and truly over. Family tax benefits have been cut again and again, and what little remains now provides critical support for struggling families. Some people argue that governments do not have a role in subsidising families and that it should be completely up to families to bear the costs of any children they choose to have. However, you cannot ignore that, statistically, impoverished and disadvantaged children often beget more disadvantage. This is a cycle we cannot and should not actively choose to reinforce.

More importantly, times are changing. Families are more vulnerable than ever in this country. In ACOSS's 2016 report, Poverty in Australia, it is estimated that 730,000 Australian children are living in poverty. Everyone who looks at real estate pages sees how many more zeros there are in home prices—prices which more and more Australian families simply cannot afford. Even rental markets are increasingly tight, with more and more families in insecure housing and impermanent month-to-month leases. In light of this, the government's proposed cuts to family tax benefits are just too harsh. Of the 1.1 million families who will lose FTB A and FTB B supplements, over half are sole parents. A two-parent family with two children under 15 and a dual combined income of $60,000 a year stands to lose just over $400 a year in family tax benefits. A two-parent family with a single income of $60,000 a year and two children under 15 will lose even more. They will lose $756 a year. A single parent with an income of $40,000 and a 17-year-old child in high school will a year lose a whopping $3,387 a year. That is nearly 10 per cent of that family's income.

We as a party are willing to discuss with government the streamlining of supplements into fortnightly payments so that families are able to budget more effectively. However, we do not believe that families who are in the lowest incomes—those who are receiving the maximum amount of family tax benefit—should be worse off, and they most certainly would be. What do we want for that single-parent family on $40,000 a year with a 17-year-old? We want that child to finish school, undertake further education and to give them the best chance possible of escaping the poverty trap. Why would we want to reduce that likelihood? A wise woman once said to me, and that woman is my mother: when money troubles come in the door, love goes out the window. I believe that the cuts in family tax benefits would increase rates of separation. Why would we want to do that? Why would we want to put more families in crisis?

I would like to move on to talk about childcare reform. The Nick Xenophon Team considers that the childcare reform measures within the bill to be important for families and for the childcare sector. They will see hundreds of thousands of Australian families better off and should see increased workforce participation as a result. The childcare sector is united in support of many of the measures contained within the bill and they have conveyed to me how important those reforms will be. However, the reforms are not perfect and I have some issues with how they will impact on low-income families.

I also have concerns about the Budget Based Funded services that are not mentioned in the new package. These include Indigenous services and remote services which differ in practice from a traditional childcare model, as well as mobile childcare services, which are particularly valuable and well regarded in regional areas. For many remote Indigenous communities, budget based childcare services operate in a different manner to other childcare services due to the fact that they cater directly to the community's needs. Many of these centres run youth programs for children, and, while they do not fit perfectly into the childcare funding model, the positive impact on their community is incredibly significant. Similarly, the mobile childcare services ensure that children and families in disadvantaged regional communities have access to high-quality children's services. These services are invaluable for those living outside of the cities for whom the closest permanent childcare centre may be hours away. I will be seeking assurances from the government that these services will continue to be funded under any new scheme. If the government is serious about childcare reform, it should bring it to the House as standalone legislation. These measures were introduced in the 2014 budget and three years later there has been no reform. The children who were born on budget day in 2014 are now unlikely to see the benefits of the long-promised new package. Let's remember that the government already has—and we, of course, support this measure—$950 million in savings that it has already managed with reform to child-swapping arrangements and ensuring that it is cutting rorting out of childcare systems in family day care. A further $250 million was announced by Minister Birmingham today in expected savings. That alone would pay for this childcare reform.

The government has had three years to bring in this measure and, year after year, at this time of the year, working families reaching their $7,500 threshold are wondering how they will afford child care. The most recent MYEFO shows a reduction in the projected cost of the childcare package of almost $1.29 billion, and yet the government is still insisting on a further $4 billion worth of savings above and beyond the cost of childcare reform. A package such as this is an investment in the future of Australia. If the government's prediction of 240,000 more people entering the workforce as a result of this childcare package is true, then the benefit it brings far outweighs the cost of it, so we say, 'Bring it on and bring it on in a standalone way.' This reform should not be used as a bargaining chip with which to strip vital support away for the lowest income Australian households.

In relation to the energy supplements, the instability and high cost of power in South Australia is devastating households, business and employment in my state. Both state and federal governments are playing the blame game and we are yet to see workable solutions actually implemented. State and federal governments share responsibility for the problem and both state and national regulators have made major mistakes in recent months. It is becoming increasingly apparent that it is not only South Australia that is vulnerable to instability in our energy grids. According to the Tariff-Tracking Project, average electricity prices have increased by more than 80 per cent across Australia since 2009. In South Australia, they have increased by more than 125 per cent over that period. Until the federal government makes some serious efforts to address Australia's energy prices and energy security, until they reform the national electricity market—and that does not mean swapping a piece of coal on the front bench; it means true reform—and until they increase competition and put downward pressure on electricity prices, the Nick Xenophon Team simply cannot support closing the energy supplement to new welfare recipients. Let's remember that by doing this we would also be creating a two-tier welfare system and discouraging people from taking on short-term work, because we know that if they manage to get a three- or four-month contract and were back on Newstart they would be living on less money than they originally had under the Newstart program.

I would like to touch on the four-week waiting period for young Australians. Many in this House would know that I have been particularly vocal about that issue over the several months that it has been in the parliament and certainly in the media. The Nick Xenophon Team cannot and will not support discriminatory waiting periods for income support based on the age of a recipient. Young Australians who are in need of real support from the government should not be treated any differently from older Australians who also need support. We are all in favour of young people being activated and getting into the workforce. However, if you are being starved out of a foxhole, how do you do this? You have no capacity to find a job. It costs money to look for work. We all know this.

And we know that youth homelessness is on the increase. According to Homelessness Australia, under-24-year-olds already account for a whopping 42 per cent of homeless people. That is 26,000 young people aged 12 to 25 who are homeless. And 70 per cent of those young people left home to escape family violence and child abuse. It is just a ridiculous policy measure to think that, by starving a young person for four weeks, we would somehow magically assist them in finding a job. There is just no evidence that the long waiting periods will create any new jobs, or that they are going to get young people into work. So, just as we would not support discriminatory waiting periods for older Australians to receive the aged pension, we do not support the four-week waiting period for Australians under 25 to receive income support payments.

Similarly, we cannot support discrimination against young people by preventing them from accessing Newstart until they are 25. Many of them are already parents of five-, six- and seven-year-olds by this stage. Young independent jobseekers deserve the same level of financial support afforded to older jobseekers. The cost of looking for a job—and of public transport, phone calls, internet, work clothes, printing and job training—is not magically cheaper just because you are under the age of 25. Water, rent, electricity—they are no cheaper for independent Australians who are 25, 35 or 50.

The Nick Xenophon Team deliberated long and hard on the issue of paid parental leave. We had hoped to navigate a course that would extend the number of weeks available to lower income primary caregivers, but without deeply cutting those who fought hard for the benefits afforded to them by their employer-funded paid parental leave schemes. We just could not make it through with the government, despite many, many hours—many days—of negotiation.

Besides the United States, Australia has the least generous government-supported paid parental leave system in the OECD. Paid parental leave is not just another welfare payment; it is an employment benefit, and the investment in it is an investment in Australia's children.

There is a deep concern that the government's paid parental leave scheme will ultimately shift the full responsibility for paid parental leave in Australia onto the government. The government's proposal of 'topping up' paid parental leave provided by employers only serves to destroy the incentive for employers to provide parental leave in the first place. We were told this by employers firsthand. They have said to us: why would they bother providing their employees with any weeks of paid leave if the government is just going to top it up to 18 weeks or 20 weeks anyway? Better to compensate their employees in other ways, such as return-to-work bonuses.

The government's proposal will inevitably shift the responsibility and cost for paid parental leave from a shared public-private concern to a wholly-funded government concern. And, although the government will save money in the short run, we are deeply concerned that the government is actually creating a future unfunded liability as employers respond to the new incentives and just stop paying parental leave as a workplace prerogative altogether. This policy position is in complete contrast to the government's position of small government.

In conclusion, I and the Nick Xenophon Team will continue to deliberate carefully on all proposals the government puts forward on the measures contained within this bill. But, as it stands, we cannot support the omnibus bill, and we most certainly cannot support cuts to our most vulnerable Australians.

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

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment that has been proposed, because it highlights the true nature of this government. On a day when the government and the Prime Minister refused to support a suspension of standing orders so we could debate legislation which would protect the income of hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, we are now debating a bill which sees this government also cut many of the support payments for those same workers. And that is the thing about this government: they are very quick to put forward tax cuts for themselves and tax cuts for the top end of town, and very quick to, with a lot of fanfare, talk about the $50 billion tax cut to big business, in particular—money that will go overseas to multinationals and money that will go back to the big banks. At the same time, they are also very quick to continue to attack some of our lowest-paid workers and families trying to survive on the smallest of incomes.

So, when I rise to give this speech on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, it is not just about the fact that these workers—particularly in retail, pharmacy and hospitality—will have their penalty rates on Sundays cut, which will cost some of these workers $2,000 a year, though for some could be even more. These are the same workers who, if they have children, will get hit by this government if this bill gets passed with cuts to their family tax benefit.

And, just in case the government thinks I am making this up, I will just share the story of a local woman in my electorate, a single mum. She will be hit if this bill is passed because her youngest is now 18. She still runs her daughter around to school. Her daughter does not yet have her licence. Her daughter is involved in a NETschool program and has re-engaged in education, so this is a family that has had its challenges. Mum tries to work two casual part-time jobs, and then has some support from Centrelink in terms of family tax benefits, as well as some Centrelink payments, just to try and scrape by. She is dependent upon how busy the store is and whether people are sick, so she might get 30 hours one week and then 10 hours the next week, so her income does fluctuate. She is trying to do everything she can. She is a single mum trying to work two jobs, hoping that they would make a full-time job, and then, with family tax benefit, is just scraping by. Christmas is hard. Returning to school is hard. Helping her daughter with driving lessons is hard and expensive. Yet everything that this government has done today is to not help this single mum and her children survive. Everything that this government has done today is to attack her, on the small income that she has.

So let us just remind ourselves of that. These are people who are earning less than, in some cases, $30,000 a year. They did not benefit from the government's tax cuts to high-income earners; those, in parts of my electorate, went to a very small proportion of people. Instead, the government choose to attack people like this family.

And it is not just this family that I choose to highlight; it is families like Beck Kelly's. Beck Kelly is an advocate in our community who, day in, day out, supports families of children with autism. She volunteers a lot of her own time. She is studying and she is working part-time. Her husband is also working part-time and taking care of their two young children who have autism. The cuts to family tax benefit means that Beck might have to give up study to work full-time or they will have to try to find someone to care for the children so that her husband could return to work full-time. They are the kinds of pressures that this government is putting on families—families who are trying to survive on the smallest of incomes.

I also think of the Martins in speaking to this bill. The Martins are on what is the average income in the Bendigo electorate—just under $50,000. They have three children. One of them is in high school and two of them are in primary school. They are surviving. They are what the government would term 'a hardworking family'. Yet this government wants to change the family tax benefit for this kind of family, which would see them worse off.

In rising to speak about this bill, I also think of little Paige, who I first met when she was in year 1 and homeless. She was at the Saltworks dinner with her mum. Her mum was pregnant and they were desperate to try to find accommodation. Mum was looking for work. At the age that she was, she was struggling to find work—pregnant, homeless and looking for support. She is what you might coin 'vulnerable', but she would not coin herself as 'vulnerable'; she would say that she is just trying to get by. Yet she is a mum that this government would seek to target. This government clearly have a problem with working families. They clearly have a problem with families, whether they be low- or middle-income families. You can see that by the cuts that they have proposed in this package—for example, the cuts to paid parental leave, denying new mums time with their families.

Perhaps the government need a bit of a lesson on how collective bargaining works, because they seem to really struggle to understand collective bargaining. We have a minimum award. It is an absolute minimum, which is why people get so upset when there is a random cut to the minimum, as we have seen with penalty rates. Employees, most of the time with their elected union representatives, will bargain for above the award rate and will secure a change in conditions and an improvement in conditions above the award minimum. A number of the industries that we have focused on today—like pharmacy and retail—have been able to secure, through collective bargaining, top-ups in paid maternity leave. It is similar in our Public Service. Through years of enterprise bargaining they have been able to secure extra paid parental leave. But now the government seek to punish those workers and those employers who did the right thing about prioritising conditions for new mums and new families in terms of paid maternity and paternity leave.

In this bill they are also targeting young jobseekers, people who may have finished their university degree and are starting to look for work. They want to make them starve, essentially, for five weeks until they are able to claim Newstart. It is just ridiculous to say to university students, who may have finished their degree, who still have to pay their rent—who may have had to leave home and are living in an electorate like Bendigo, where we have a university—and who no longer qualify for the university study allowance, because they are no longer studying, 'Because you are on Newstart, you have to wait five weeks.' It is just forcing people into dire poverty. It is okay if you have rich parents to fall back on. But the vast majority of young people in Australia do not have rich parents to fall back on. The government's answer for young people seems to be, 'If you want a home, have rich parents,' or 'If you finish university, move back home and live off your parents before you start your job.' That is not how the majority of young Australians live. It is also completely disempowering to force young people back home so that family members can support them for five weeks until they qualify. This government has the most negative and cynical approach to this.

And all of these cuts are savings. Previous speakers from my side of the House have highlighted that these changes that are before us are actually a $2.7 billion saving. The government are cutting $2.7 billion out of the pockets of low- to middle-income Australian families, single parents, young people and pensioners. They are cutting money out of their pockets. This is a savings bill—and, in a cynical way, they have tried to link it to changes to child care.

Labor has, for a long time, supported greater investment in early childhood education. It was Labor that introduced the national quality framework to ensure that we had a framework for education and care for our youngest Australians. It was Labor that introduced and ensured that there were ratios—so you had the right number of educators to young children from babies through to five. It was Labor that first acknowledged that we have gone from child care and a workforce participation sector to early childhood education. I am really concerned at the government's changes to the activity test. I am concerned that some of the most vulnerable children in parts of my electorate will miss out on hours of early childhood education. They need every single hour they can get.

I think of a young man named Lestat whom I met at Golden Square Goodstart. He is there five days a week. Goodstart are very good in that they do not chase the fees. His family are in tens of thousands of dollars in debt for fees they have not paid. The educators know how critical it is for Lestat to come to their education facility every single day. This childcare facility taught Lestat and his brothers everything from toilet training in their early years to their letters and their colours—because they simply do not come from a stable home with parents capable of doing that. The activity test will exclude vulnerable children—the children who most need to be engaged in early childhood education.

I also have a fear—and the government has not addressed this in any way—that, if vulnerable children whose parents may not be fully engaged in work or study are excluded from child care because they have had their hours cut, that will put pressure on centres to close rooms for certain days. I fear that, in areas of low income and high unemployment, where we are desperately trying to break the cycle of poverty through the next generation, numbers will drop because families get fewer hours allocated to them. That will mean fewer children going to child care and early childhood education each and every day, which could place pressure on some childcare centres to close rooms on certain days. That would then put pressure on families who want their children in care because of work to turn around and say to their employers, 'I can't come to work on Mondays because the centre doesn't open on Mondays.' A childcare model that is designed for the inner cities does not work in regional areas. The government has not put enough focus in its childcare package on regional cities and electorates and areas where the most vulnerable are accessing early childhood education. It has not put enough focus on mobile childcare and education facilities, which are most in need in the bush.

To outline a few of the other cuts contained in the bill to demonstrate how much the government are seeking to save, they are stopping the payment of the pension support supplement after six weeks when our pensioners are overseas. Do they know how this washes with people in their electorates? Perhaps they are just not listening to pensioners in there electorates. We live in a multicultural society and a multicultural world today. Even in my electorate, which has one of the smallest proportions of people born overseas living in it, there are still lots of grandmas who travel overseas to spend three months of the year with their grandchildren and then come home—because guess what? They cannot afford to fly back and forth every five weeks. This measure targets a lot of pensioners living all over Australia, including those in regional areas. This is another budget savings measure. The pensioner education supplement is being abolished—because why would pensioners want to keep studying? This is another cruel measure, excluding pensioners from education by taking this money out of their pockets.

The government are also seeking to close the energy supplement for new welfare recipients. They are trying to suggest that energy has all of a sudden got cheaper, when all of their rhetoric says otherwise. The energy market at a national level is failing. It has emerged that, during the really hot few weeks that we had in February, the national Energy Regulator was going to shut off electricity to my home town of Bendigo so that coal focused New South Wales could keep their lights on. There is a problem with the energy market and there is a problem with the Australian Energy Regulator, but the government blame renewables. Worse still, they are cutting the supplements that help people pay those bills.

This is a cruel bill; it is a cynical bill; it is a savings bill. It is linked to changes to child care and early childhood education, but those changes demonstrate how the government have not moved with the times. They do not acknowledge the importance of early childhood education for every child, regardless of their parents' income. I urge the government to drop this bill or to support Labor's amendment.

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

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. We have heard from many speakers on this side of the zombie measures that are contained in this bill—measures from that dreadful budget back in 2014 that are now, seemingly, linked to whether or not this government will support increases in funding to child care. I actually do not want to talk about the zombie measures today. In fact, I think it is quite sad, really, that we are not having a discussion today specifically about child care. The fact that the government has linked these measures means that we have so much to say and so many people in our communities to defend that we are, quite rightly, concentrating on those areas. Many people on this side have already done so, but today I want to have the conversation that we should be having, which is specifically about child care.

I have often quite openly said to people in my community that, if as a government you had to pick one thing to make a difference in 2050, it would be educating zero-to-five-year-olds. Children who are born today will be in their mid-30s in 2050, and whether or not they are able to manage a world that is growing now will depend entirely on whether or not they are given every possible advantage in their first five years of life. Ninety per cent of the development of a child's brain occurs in the first five years of life, and, if you get that wrong, 12 years of schooling does not make up for it. It is incredibly important. On this side of the House, we see child care being not just about workforce participation but about what benefits the child. I believe in this childcare package this government has got the balance wrong. I would like to be in here having a debate about that and having community consultation about it so that we can adjust the balance between what a working family needs now and what the community will need in the mid- to long term. They are the two aspects of child care: whether we are providing it so that more women can join the workforce, which is incredibly important, and families can manage their work and family life balance better now, which is also incredibly important; or providing it to ensure that our children have the best possible opportunity to grow up and flourish.

All of the research shows that, if you are going to invest in the zero-to-fives in any section of the community, the investment has the biggest return for the community as a whole and for the person when it is directed towards those children who are most vulnerable—children whose parents do not have the skills or may have intellectual disabilities, drug and alcohol problems or other issues that prevent them from being the best parents they can be. We know that, if you put the effort into those children, the impact on them is phenomenal and the return to the taxpayer in the long term is also incredible. In fact, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report in 2014 found that the long-term gains in productivity from children who participate in quality child care are even greater than the gains from increased workforce participation by their parents. When looking at children in disadvantaged families who were receiving no formal early childhood education, it was shown that engaging them in early childhood education and care would boost Australia's GDP by a further $13.3 billion by 2050.

So there are very good economic reasons to invest in the early education of the most vulnerable children in our community, and there are also, of course, reasons to do that for the benefit of the children themselves. Yet this childcare package actually takes support from the most vulnerable in our community. It lessens the assistance for families that are really struggling with raising their children and earning a living, with the lack of flexibility that families quite often have. This package actually takes from them.

I want to walk through how it does that, because this is an extraordinarily complex piece of work. The government claims that this simplifies child care. It actually does not. It is incredibly complex, and nearly every stakeholder that is worth listening to when it comes to early childhood education says exactly that.

Currently, the childcare-benefit activity test gives families 48 hours, or four days, of subsidised care per fortnight without undertaking any activity. That means that any child, whether the parents work or not, can have two days per week, because that is considered to be the amount that you need for a child to bond with the other children and the early childhood educators and to feel stable. That is what a child needs: two days per week. And that is what the current activity test gives. It gives 100 hours of subsidised care per fortnight if both parents undertake activity of more than 30 hours per fortnight. It is a bit complex, but essentially it guarantees two days to every child.

Under the new activity test, families will receive 36 hours per fortnight when both parents undertake activities for eight to 16 hours per fortnight. That is the first tier. In the second tier, it provides double that if parents work from 16 to 48 hours per fortnight, and it provides 100 hours if parents work 48 hours plus per fortnight. There are three separate tiers.

A person, for example, who has casual work—and I will just stop for a minute there when I mention casual work and say that this activity test is really quite good if you are in permanent work and you sit a few thousand dollars on one side or the other of the tier so that you know you are going to be in that tier for the full year. If your work is stable and nothing happens in the year, this could be quite good for you. But an increasing number of people in our communities, not just in regional areas but in city areas as well, do not have the luxury of permanent full-time work or even permanent part-time work. Their work is quite sporadic. It is quite casual.

I have doorknocked areas of my electorate where I have found children who were eight or nine years of age at home on their own. They came to the door and unlocked the door in some cases, which worried me greatly, even more than seeing them home alone. When I phoned their parents later, I found parents who were finding out at eight in the morning whether they were working that day. These were not parents who had the ability to say no because they could not get child care for their children.

We have people in our communities who live very sporadic lives. They do not know when they are going to work. They take the work when they can. They do not have the flexibility of going in and out of child care. In order to be able to take the work, they have to take the days of child care because, if they give those days up, they cannot get their children back in. Those two days of child care that were available under the old system allowed parents to say to an employer: 'I can work Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Thursday and Friday I can put my children into child care, and on Saturday and Sunday my partner can look after the kids while I go to work.' They were able to organise their days because of that.

Now, that certainty of those two days is gone. The fallback position for parents who do not meet the activity test is 12 hours. Now, 12 hours is not two days; it is one, because long-day centres are open for 10 hours. That is it. They are open for 10 hours, and, if you do not take them for 10 hours, another parent will. So that is one day. That is not sufficient for parents who work those unstable kinds of work patterns to organise their lives, and it is not enough for a child to bond and feel secure and develop a pattern with the carers and the other children, so it is actually not good for anybody, but that is what we have got at the moment.

I want you to consider too what it means for a parent who sits somewhere in the middle, someone who works 16 hours a fortnight, so they are entitled to 36 hours per fortnight, or, even better, they work 18 hours per fortnight, and it has been fairly stable, so they are entitled to 72 hours per fortnight, and then something happens. Their partner gets sick, or their child gets sick; they have to take a few weeks off, and suddenly they fall into the lower tier. What if that happens towards the end of the year? What kind of debt do you have if you have been claiming 72 hours per fortnight quite legitimately and then something happens in your life that changes, and suddenly you are only entitled to 36 hours per fortnight? You get one of those robo-debts and it is real, not because of any fault of your own but because your working life was not stable enough to work within these artificial tiers that this government has created for parents to work in.

It is 36 hours of child care for eight to 16 hours per fortnight; 72 hours for 16 to 48 hours; and 100 hours per fortnight when both parents undertake activities for 48 hours per fortnight or more. That is quite confusing, but then you add the extra layer of how much you earn in those hours. If you earn up to $65,710 per family, you get a subsidy rate of 85 per cent. If you earn from $65,000 to about $170,000, it tapers down. Over $170,000 and up to $250,000, it is a 50 per cent subsidy rate. Again, it is good to taper, and the government here, you can see, is trying to reduce the subsidy to those who earn more. It has moved the subsidy into those with stable employment in the middle range, and that is not a bad thing.

But just consider if you are a parent trying to return to work. You are not working at the moment, but you are seeking work. Someone offers you two days work this week on short notice, and you cannot get child care. Of course you cannot get child care. Parents who are trying to return to work hit their head up against this barrier that they actually have to be working in order to get the childcare subsidy, and they cannot work unless they have the child care. If a parent is in that sort of situation for two weeks, they might manage to find a way around it if they are suddenly offered permanent part-time work. But, if they are in and out through casual work for several months while they try to work their way back into the workforce, how does this help them do that at all?

This system is actually a barrier for them, not an aid. That is the discussion we should be having here. If this is actually about workforce participation, it is only actually helping those who already have secure, permanent patterns of work. It is a barrier to anybody trying to move into the workforce and it is a barrier for those many people who work in the casual world, where the work comes and goes around work patterns that they do not have control over.

You can imagine what happens if you are claiming the 85 per cent subsidy, so as a family you are getting $63,000 or whatever a year, and then something happens that pushes you into another taper rate. Your partner gets extra work and earns an extra $20,000 a year, then suddenly you are not entitled to the 85 per cent and you are only entitled to 65 per cent. You have got a debt because you did the right thing. This is a ridiculous system. This does not recognise in any way the world we live in today. It does not recognise at all the world we live in today.

Every stakeholder who is worth talking to has said exactly that. This is the Social Policy Research Centre from the University of New South Wales:

There are no measures in the package that will make LDC (long day care) more flexible – indeed, many of the new rules … will make it more rigid.

  …   …   …

… the new, three-tiered activity test introduces a level of complexity never seen before in the Australian childcare system.

  …   …   …

… the Bill introduces provisions that will increase the complexity and reduce accessibility and affordability for some of the most vulnerable children and families.

This is where I go back to my first point: parents who are in this precarious situation are already incredibly stressed as families. They already are the parents who have got so much else on their minds that it becomes difficult to pay attention to their children in the way that you need to if you want your child to reach the age of two with all of their needs met, which is incidentally what you need to do if you want your child to be highly creative. They need to reach that level of two assuming that whatever they need is just going to be there so that they can explore and be creative as adults. It is done by the time they are two. It is all over.

Parents who are in this kind of precarious situation, where they do not know where their next hours of work are coming from, have trouble finding time for the family to be together because their work lives are moving around. Even deciding to have breakfast together on Wednesday becomes difficult. Those parents need to have the support that stable, good quality early education gives them and their children. This bill takes it from them. They have it now; if this bill passes, it will be not just the zombie measures but also the childcare package that actually hit the most vulnerable in our community.

I believe the hearts of those on the other side are in the right place; I really do believe that they are trying to improve the childcare system, but they just have not. Please, separate it out: take the zombie measures out and let us have a real debate about what is best for children and what is best for our community in terms of the capacity of our children to grow up and be productive, creative and well-balanced adults. That is our job in this place: to consider both sides of the coin and get it right so that when these children turned out to be adults, they can build a better society for themselves.

Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Parramatta for giving a very detailed account of these changes that will have an impact on the childcare system of this country. As a parent who has used child care continuously over the last 10 years, I know some of the issues that the member for Parramatta raised would be of significant concern for families if this bill is to be passed. I also agree with the member for Parramatta in her contribution that, particularly around child care, we need to see more debate, more investigation and more attention just on this one part of this omnibus bill.

When I first read this bill, I said to myself, 'Wow, I know it is an omnibus bill, but goodness me there are so many measures in here that will have such a detrimental impact on so many Australians.' It is a real shame that we have a government that only talks about those who will benefit from this bill. Let us talk about those who will not benefit from this bill. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our community. I know that this legislation will have a devastating impact on the people in my community—the people of Braddon—in an electorate where we have poor health outcomes; we have relatively high unemployment, particularly in youth unemployment; and we also have very low educational attainment rates. This bill will hit those people the hardest. It makes me very sad to stand here in this place today and talk about what this bill will do for them. It will be devastating.

When you are talking about regional communities, they generally are older, they generally earn less and they generally do have a greater reliance on government support. All I have seen since being elected to this place, in a relatively short amount of time, is this constant attack from this government on those people. What I really struggle to understand is those sitting on the opposite side, those members of the National Party: when they can go back to their electorates, can they go back and look those families, those young people and those pensioners in the eye and say that this bill is good for them? The National Party are heroes at home but are cowards when it comes to being in Canberra.

Last week, I spoke about how regional inequality is becoming more entrenched in Australia. The gap of inequality between those in urban areas and those in regional areas, like in my electorate, has never been this big in the last 75 years. That gap is widening every day. This legislation will further entrench that inequality. It will affect families, working mums, pensioners and young people. It contains a deterrent for young people to find work. In some sort of sick game, the previously bipartisan approach to the NDIS has now been abandoned. Again, that is a terrible, terrible shame. This is so that the government can fund a $50 billion tax cut to big business. It makes me question the government's priorities. When I come into this place, I look at my community and see what priorities they need: access to good health, access to good education, jobs, fair wage for the work that they do and support from a government that cares. I really do not think that this government is living up to any of that.

The Murdoch press and those opposite say that this side is engaging in the politics of envy, but this is the politics of reality. The reality is that we live in regional areas. The reality is that every dollar we have we have to spend on something that enables us to live day in, day out. It is the reality of what it means simply to get by. This is what I am faced with every day in my electorate when I go out knocking on the doors. I hear stories of people struggling to make ends meet every single day.

But I am particularly really disappointed that those opposite and especially those members from regional electorates, by supporting this bill, are not standing up for the people that they represent. They sit mutely and are prepared to green flag these cruel, heartless, out-of-touch cuts. Even more bizarrely, they are being stitched up by their own coalition colleagues on One Nation preferences, and still they do nothing. So tell the Prime Minister that you have had enough, that you are sick and tired of being taken for granted, and join this side of the House when it comes to the inevitable decision on this legislation. Just for once, those in the National Party, be a hero at home and a hero in Canberra.

I do not begrudge those families from Eastern Sydney, Toorak or the North Shore. I do not doubt many have worked hard to enjoy the quality of life that they do, but I do begrudge it when the local members seek to punish families in electorates like mine that are not so fortunate. The government admits that their family payment cuts will leave 1.5 million Australian families worse off, but what do these cuts to family tax benefits mean to the people of my electorate of Braddon on the north-west and west coasts of Tasmania? Around 8,000 families in Braddon who receive the family tax benefit part A will be affected by these cuts. As a result of the abolition of the family tax benefit part B end-of-year supplement, 6,335 families will lose $354.

It is one of those things where families who receive this supplement plan their budget accordingly. It may be to buy their kids school uniforms. It may be to help pay some of the bills. On the day that this omnibus bill came out into the media—on that very morning—I received an email, a real dose of reality that I would like to read into Hansard. This is from Melinda in my electorate:

Dear Justine

In regards to the LNP government proposal to remove family tax benefit B to single parents once youngest turned 13 and cuts to the reconciliation payments for Family Tax Benefit A & B ( these historically were never bonuses ).

This topic hits close to home!!

I am a single mum with 100% care of my son who has just turned 12.

I returned to part time work when—

he—

was 6 months old and I am still working!

I don't rent my home, I have a mortgage!

Here is someone that actually has a mortgage and is going to be so hard hit by these cuts. It makes me wonder if they are ever going to be able to service that mortgage. It continues:

I struggle everyday with making ends meet.

I don't drink or smoke or really have a social life - my money goes on the mortgage, power/phone/water and food.

Going back to school this year has been extremely hard financially without the back to school bonus.

Please don't let them take the FTB away from us too, I rely on that money to pay my rego and assist with rates.

Please Justine - please stick up for those of us doing our best for our kids!

That is such a heartfelt letter from someone who just that morning heard the news that these changes were going to happen and are going to hit her in that way. These are the real-life examples that I think every single one of us in this place need to listen to, need to respond to, need to react to and not pass this bill.

Labor will stand up for Melinda and so many other families. I challenge the Prime Minister or a Tasmanian Liberal senator to go visit Melinda, to knock on her door and explain why she should take this cut to fund a corporate tax handout. I think they would be lucky to get past the front gate.

The Prime Minister's plan to punish low-income working families does not just stop with them. Pensioners, people with disabilities, carers and Newstart recipients will be hit with the abolition of the energy supplement. I have heard some members on the other side say, 'Oh, with the carbon tax gone, the energy supplement should go.' When you come from a state that has the highest electricity bill in the country, that extra payment helps pay for a bill like that. It helps pay for the rates. It helps pay for the water and sewerage. And yet we are going to see pensioners and people on these payments worse off because they will not have that money. Some people might think, 'Oh, that's not a lot of money,' but it makes a hell of a difference to these people.

My electorate has one of the oldest populations in Australia. They have already expressed their disgust at the Prime Minister's plan to have them work until they drop at 70. Instead of supporting them in their retirement, this Prime Minister wants to punish them. This government wants to create a two-tier system of pensioners.

Like a bad dream, there are more of those struggling in the community. This government wants young jobseekers to live on nothing for five weeks. Youth unemployment is also disproportionately high in regions, so once again it will be people living outside of the cities who suffer. Once again the National Party and regional Liberal Party members are happy to let down young people in their communities. Labor has opposed this overly harsh measure before and we will again.

The government always talks about young people and those on benefits needing to study or work, but the Prime Minister, aided and abetted by the National Party, wants to remove the pensioner education supplement and education entry payment, a small payment that goes some way to supporting people on income support who are trying to get ahead. It just goes to show how out of touch and mean-spirited these people are. But the most extraordinary, callous, cruel thing this government is doing is tying the funding of the NDIS to these cuts, playing off one vulnerable group of Australians against another.

I would just like to read a small snippet that was in The Examiner newspaper. TasCOSS chief executive, Kim Goodes, said:

“We’re seeing … a federal government that appears to want to attack people who are on welfare,” Ms Goodes said.

She said TasCOSS was “appalled” that the Coalition was allegedly implying the NDIS would experience a funding shortfall if the omnibus bill was not passed.

TasCOSS is an organisation that is there to advocate on behalf of those who are vulnerable in our community, the less fortunate, and they were absolutely disgusted with what this government is attempting to achieve.

Rather than me talking further on this, I would like a mum from my electorate, Lyn, to talk about what the NDIS means to her family and her son, Mitchell. In her own words, Lyn has summed up why tying this bill to the NDIS is so wrong:

From the moment they placed Mitchell on my stomach I had this gut feeling that something was so wrong, I just didn't know what or how, but I just knew.

After 3 and half years Mitchell was referred to a Paediatrician and then to a geneticist, and on the 17th November 1998 he was diagnosed with a rare syndrome, Called Floating Harbor Syndrome.

Our Paediatrician told us that Mitchell was the 12th in the world to be diagnosed.

Because to get help it was like we weren't entitled to any, being told 'we don't have the funds' to 'he isn't that bad'.

I just kept my ear to the ground and was hopeful that another piece of legislation like Medicare was coming to help people.

Well Mitchell got a letter saying we had an appointment with a NDIS Coordinator, we could not wipe the smile off our face we were so excited.

What is that when you have a child with a disability?

We never had a life; we never had support apart from my Mum who died 17 years ago.

You so called politicians who make up the so called government who I didn't vote for because you treat us people like we as dirt and wouldn't give us the time of day and who guaranteed that Medicare and the NDIS won't be touched.

You tell us to live within our means, well how do I tell our sons and daughters who have a disability to do that, you can't can you?

Let me help you Prime Minister - don't give the multi millionaire's a tax cut of 50 billion dollars, tell them to live within their means.

I can't afford a trip to Canberra but I would love to have my say to you and the government.

How cruel you lot are to begrudge the most vulnerable some tax payer dollars to make a little bit happier for them.

Think with your heart.

It won't kill you.

Mr Speaker, need I say any more.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak emphatically against this bill, just as the member for Braddon did and just as other members on this side do. I do so because this bill will hurt families, mums and dads, pensioners and young people across Australia, and especially in my electorate of Hindmarsh. I say that, because the electorate of Hindmarsh has one of the oldest demographics in the nation, with one of the largest numbers of age pensioners in the nation. All these people are in the firing line as a result of this federal coalition government's latest proposed round of cuts.

This will entrench inequality in Australia. This particular bill will make the gap that exists between the haves and the have-nots even greater. Instead of giving people a leg up to assist them, to ensure that they keep up with the pace of increasing bills—getting a little bit ahead, paying their bills—this bill will ensure that that gap becomes greater and they fall further behind.

Inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high. It has not been higher than this for 75 years. In other words, we are back where we were 75 years ago when it comes to people that have and people that have not, and that is very sad. At this particular point in time, with a 75-year high of inequality in Australia, at a time like this, we should be addressing inequality; we should be looking, as I said, to give people a leg up, to assist them to keep up with the pace of increased costs, to keep them in line with CPI. We should be ensuring that the little bit of subsidies that we do give to the most vulnerable people—we are not talking about people who are millionaires or people who are doing quite well; we are talking about some of the most vulnerable people in our electorates and in this nation. We should be doing all we can to address that inequality and to assist them at this particular time.

The coalition government seems intent on increasing the gulf, bit by bit, by dismantling the safety nets that we have in place and the social security net, and this is what this bill does. For that, I think the government is extremely out of touch. You cannot get more out of touch than taking away from our poorest people, people who depend on the very small subsidies that they receive.

This omnibus bill will do nothing other than grow the gulf between rich and poor in this nation. Since the omnibus bill was first announced, in 2015, the government has said that they would not pass their child-care package unless cuts to family payments were first passed by the parliament. That is playing one particular group off against another, and it is extremely cruel. Essentially, they are holding families with young children to ransom. This is a government that just will not listen.

The majority of savings measures in the bill have been previously introduced, but have not passed the parliament, most dating back to the 2014 budget, and we have all heard about the zombie measures. This government keeps resurrecting these cuts in different ways, threatening in different ways. And every time that they are resurrected, they are threatening again the most vulnerable people in our society. They just do not get it. Back in 2016 the government lost so many seats—they nearly lost the election—and they still have not got the measure that people see these cuts as very unfair. Australians do not want these unfair cuts, neither do I and neither do those on this side of the House. I am proud that Labor will continue to oppose them.

For years now this government has failed to deliver any childcare relief, because they insist on linking the changes to the cruel cuts to family budgets. With the introduction of this bill, the government is not just holding families to ransom to pay for child care, but now they are also adding pensioners, young Australians and new mums and dads. This bill introduces $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments alone. They say they need to do this in order to pay for the $1.6 billion childcare package. It does not make sense; they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is what this is. In total, it rips $5.6 billion from the household budgets of low-income Australians who desperately need that money to pay their bills, buy clothes for their kids, put food on the table and send their kids to school. We will not support this bill.

Let's take a closer look at how this bill will hurt hardworking Australians—for example, pensioners who receive the energy supplement. The government wants to remove that energy supplement from the most vulnerable Australians: our pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. These are not people who are wealthy. These are not people who are doing it easy. These are people who are doing it quite tough. This cut will rip approximately $550 from the pockets of pensioner couples, and $229 from a single Newstart recipient already struggling on a very inadequate payment. What happens when you rip $229 from someone who is just making ends meet and, in some cases, not making ends meet but being basically dependent on different welfare agencies, on top of all this?

The reality is that this government has been in since 2013 and there has been no job growth. I could understand that, if there were plenty of jobs and they were creating wonderful opportunities for young people, then, yes, you would certainly look at these things. But the economy is not doing well, and we have seen a decline in job growth, so it is the worst time to put these cuts in.

The other cuts are to migrant pensioners. Pensioners are being targeted in other ways apart from the cuts. If this government gets its way, after six weeks overseas, pensioners born overseas will have the rate of their pension reduced. This will unfairly punish people who choose to spend a period of time overseas visiting family. I know that in my electorate many aged pensioners of migrant background decide to visit their country of birth to see relatives for a few weeks or maybe a month or two or just to spend the warmer season during our winter over there—just as many people move to Queensland in winter; it is no different. Yet they will be punished for wanting to go overseas to visit family.

These are people who maybe have saved their whole lives just to visit their homeland. They will be punished and only allowed to be there for six weeks. Currently, pensioners can stay overseas for 26 weeks and receive their full pension. Following that time, the pension is reduced to a rate that depends on the number of years they have resided in Australia. It could be someone who has been saving their entire life to go for a holiday to the homeland where they were born to see relatives for the very last time and spend maybe two or three months overseas. But these cuts mean that after just six weeks these people will be affected and they will only be allowed to stay for six week.

These people who will have the rate of their pension cut have lived in Australia for less than 35 years. It is estimated that this particular measure will affect around 190,000 pensioners who came here as migrants many years ago. This will affect many pensioners in my electorate, and many have raised it already with me and are concerned about this particular measure They are good people—people who worked, people who paid their taxes—who now, in their twilight years, wish to go and spend perhaps a few weeks in winter over in sunny Europe in the Mediterranean, perhaps, given the Deputy Speaker's background, in Italy or Greece or many other countries, and rightly so. It is their right to be able to do that, just like it is the right of any other retiree who wishes to go to the northern part of Australia for winter.

We are discriminating in a big way here, and I find this very wrong. Certainly I am hearing the message loud and clear in my electorate from the 190,000 people affected by this, and many other electorates around the country would be hearing the same things that I am hearing. Coupled with the changes to the asset test, this could result in many pensioners really struggling to make ends meet. People who have worked hard all their lives deserve dignity in their retirement. The last thing they need is to be treated like a burden on society by this particular government, the coalition government, and by the Treasurer. This is terrible. These people need to be treated with dignity.

The other area of concern is family payments. We have heard a lot about family payments from the speakers before me and from others on this side of the House. This coalition government admits that these cuts to family payments will leave 1.5 million Australian families worse off. These cuts add up for families who are struggling to make ends meet. For example, a typical family with two children and a single income of $60,000 will lose around $750 per year. A couple with one child on $75,000 will lose over $1,000 per year. That could be the school books or school uniforms. It is a big hole in someone's budget.

Those worst hit will be single parents whose youngest child is 17 or over and finishing school. These particular families will lose over $3,000 a year in FTB alone. This period when a child is 17 is a time when children cost more. As a father who has two adult boys, I remember the period when they were 17 and finishing high school. That is when the real expenses come in. This is wrong. The costs increase as they get older; we know this. This is a time when it is vital for parents and carers to be able to support their children to stay in school, and these cuts will hurt families in a very real way. On this side of the House, we will stand up for low- and middle-income Australians and families, as we have done since this government began its attack on them in its cruel 2014 budget.

Another area which is being hit hard is paid parental leave. The coalition government's cuts also target new mums and dads. Around 70,000 new mums with a median income of $62,000 would be $5,600 worse off on average. That is a big, big cut—$5,600 worse off. But what can we expect from a government that calls new mums, as we heard earlier, accessing their entitled paid parental leave as 'double dippers' and 'fraudsters'? These are working women who have bargained for paid parental leave, often at the sacrifice of wage increases. This government is destroying the incentive for employers to provide leave to their employees and making mums choose between returning to work early and cutting their living standards. This is not on. We do not agree with it. We will stand up for their employers, who have done the right thing by providing them with paid parental leave.

We need to protect this scheme, which we introduced, which deliberately allows new mothers to combine leave from their employer with the government scheme. This was done to ensure that as many mothers as possible can get to the 26 weeks of leave recommended by the World Health Organization to spend that early time with their babies—the most crucial time for children. The coalition government wants new mothers to have less time with their babies, capping the scheme at 20 weeks. For instance, a retail worker who gets eight weeks paid parental leave from her employer will have access to only 12 weeks from the government instead of 18 weeks. This means that this new mum will have 20 weeks of paid leave at home instead of 26 weeks. She loses around $4,030 in support. How can that be right when we are reducing the time and taking approximately $4,000 off that person? It cannot be right. It is wrong.

Another group of Australians who will really bit hard by this bill is young Australians and income support recipients. Young Australians are very much in the firing line of these cuts. What we have seen is a government that wants young job seekers to live on nothing for five weeks—absolutely nothing. So how can we, in all seriousness, expect young people who fall on hard times to live on absolutely nothing for five weeks? You have lost your job. You cannot get a job. You have fallen on hard times. On top of that, we say, 'Not a single cent for five weeks,' just to make it tougher for them and to make sure that they really hurt. That is what this government is doing, and it is wrong. How are they going to pay their rent? What about bills, such as electricity? What are they going to eat? In addition, the government wants to rip $48 a week out of the budgets of young Australians by shifting 22- to 24 year-old job seekers from Newstart onto the lower Youth Allowance. That is almost $2,500 a year!

Labor will always stand up for Australian families by protecting them from these harsh Liberal cuts. We must stand up and protect the rights of our most vulnerable people. I am proud that we will be voting against these measures.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with my Labor colleagues in venting our outrage at the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. We are outraged because of the fact that it is so unfair. We are outraged because of the fact that it is holding vulnerable groups to ransom. How is it holding vulnerable groups to ransom? What has been put forward by this government is that, if you do not pass this omnibus savings bill, we will not be able to fund the NDIS. That is an unacceptable proposition, and Labor will not be countenancing any of that. This morning, Jenny Macklin, the shadow minister, moved amendments to this bill, and those amendments are calling on the government to drop its unfair cuts and holding childcare assistance to ransom.

Doesn't it just say it all that there is no-one on the other side who is prepared to continue this debate and argue the so-called merits of this piece of legislation? The fact that the government cannot be bothered to put up any speakers while this debate is going on says it all. It says it all in many ways. It says to me that the people who are watching this debate and people who are following this debate will see it as bad politics. It is bad politics for the government to not even come forward and provide the arguments for this omnibus bill. It is difficult to understand why the government would take that position. Perhaps the answer is that what is really absorbing this government is internal machinations, internal arguments, and the very bad governance of government in this country.

We have watched in amazement from this side of the House the way in which this government is beginning to unravel. Not only is it beginning to unravel; but it is unravelling at a great pace. It is unravelling to the point where there are backbenchers who are making very public statements and directly challenging the authority of the Prime Minister. With all of that going on, is it any wonder that there will be the moral ineptitude of putting forward this omnibus so-called savings bill, with the threat that unless you pass it then you will not get the full funding of the NDIS. I think it is reprehensible.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's deplorable.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member said, it is deplorable. It is really the narrative that I want to focus on today that is beginning to emerge from this government. Many other speakers, including the shadow minister this morning, outlined very clearly what the effects of this bill will be on the many individual groups that are being targeted. But it is the actual narrative that I want to focus on. It is the narrative that is very much emerging as this government's story—the narrative that you can kick and disadvantage vulnerable people, the narrative that you can attack people who are on Centrelink payments, the narrative that it is okay to have a go at the poorest and the most vulnerable, because people won't care. Hasn't the government got it wrong? You only have to see the response to the cynical political judgement that the government made with the Centrelink robo-debt debacle to see that people do actually care. People do actually care when the vulnerable are being attacked unfairly. You only have to go through every aspect of this omnibus bill to understand the unfairness and the unacceptability of this proposed legislation. It is understood not just by the Labor Party but by the broader Australian community. It was well said on Radio National this morning, in the discussion on the fortunes of the Turnbull government. They made the point that what we are seeing now is not an aberration; it is actually a pattern. I could not agree more.

Labor will oppose this bill holus-bolus, and we will pursue the amendments we have put forward not just in this House but in the other place as well. If the government does not drop its unfair cuts and continues to hold childcare assistance to ransom, Labor know that this bill has been referred to a Senate inquiry. A Senate inquiry is what is absolutely needed for this bill because of the unfairness of it and because of the distasteful way in which it has been put forward as a bribe: either pass this or you do not get disability funding in Australia. We will oppose this bill because we will not hold childcare assistance hostage to cuts to family tax benefits and pension supplements, and to a range of other savings measures. Again we see the Turnbull government attempting to play politics with the most vulnerable members of the community and to pit those vulnerable members of the community against each other. This bill, as the previous speaker just said, is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it is despicable. But the government continues to try to mask its agenda in this way. The House should make no mistake that this is part of the government's view of those in our community who receive assistance.

We remember, writ large, the cigar-smoking Mathias Cormann and Joe Hockey after the 2014 budget. These are the very measures in the 2014 budget that were clearly rejected not just by the parliament but also by the Australian community. The world is not made up of lifters and leaners. People who receive family tax benefits and people who receive Centrelink payments do not do it because they are leaners; they do it because they have a right. As I have said on many occasions, we as a country should be proud of the welfare system that is in place. We as a country should do everything to build that welfare system. Reform is fine—there is no problem with that—but do not rip the system down and destroy people's lives as you do it.

In this particular bill, look at the way in which, for example, cuts to family payments are going to affect families. Families losing their family tax benefit A will be $200 worse off per child. Families losing their family tax benefit B will lose $350 a year. Those cuts add up for families who are struggling to make ends meet. For example, a typical family with two children and a single income of $60,000 will lose $750 a year. A couple on $75,000 with one child will lose over $1,000 a year. People on the other side of the House may think that that is not very much money, but let me assure you that—and you only have to talk to your constituents in the electorates that you represent to understand this—they are very large amounts of money for people. It can mean the difference between registering your car and not doing so. It can mean the difference between making sure your kids are well outfitted to go to school and not. It can mean the difference between going to the doctor and not. It has massive ramifications.

The issues around young Australians and income support recipients are an outrage—an absolute outrage. Put yourself in the shoes of a 20-year-old who is desperately trying to find work, who finds themselves having to apply for a Centrelink youth allowance and is told, 'Sorry—you can't get anything for five weeks.' How do you pay rent? How do you go to the doctor? How do you buy food? How do you survive? The answer is that you do not, and therefore you have to rely on others.

The issues around pensioners have been well canvassed, and the issues around child care have been well canvassed. But I will say this: there is a very long list of representative organisations and providers of child care that have added their voices to what Labor is saying. They include the Australian Childcare Alliance, Family Day Care Australia, Gowrie Australia, The Benevolent Society, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, United Voice, the Affinity Education Group, Goodstart Early Learning and Early Childhood Management Services. The list goes on. They are not small outfits. They are either providers or people who understand this system extremely well. If people and groups such as the ones I have just read out into Hansard are saying this is wrong then what on earth is the government doing in terms of not listening?

I will finish my contribution by focusing on what this is going to mean for Indigenous children, remembering that we talked about the Closing the gap report the last time that the House sat. How on earth the government thinks that the measures in this package as they relate to Indigenous children are going to close the gap just astounds me. They are going to widen the gap. We already know from that report that the measures around early childhood education are not being met. The childcare package will end the current Budget Based Funded Program that provides direct subsidies to 300 mostly Indigenous services. These services reach 20,000 children. They are often small, and they are often in remote communities. The government saying that there will be no direct Budget Based Funded Program is going to have a terrible effect on these services.

The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care say:

These changes will diminish our kids’ potential to make a smooth transition to school, compounding the likelihood of intergenerational disempowerment and unemployment.

Alarmingly, that will make Aboriginal children more at risk of removal into out-of-home care. We know exactly what the out-of-home care situation is for the First Nations children. It is just an absolute scandal that the government would even consider these reforms in the context of out-of-home care and Aboriginal children.

I will finish up by saying that, before the 2013 election, the Liberals promised more affordable and accessible child care. Instead they went the whole last term of parliament without doing anything at all about childcare costs for ordinary Australian families. A child born when the Liberals promised their affordable child care will be in school by the time this government deliver anything—if they ever do. Early education and care is an investment in the future. It is the best early intervention that you can possibly provide. The government need to listen to the experts, fix their package and stop playing silly political games by holding the sector ransom to these nasty cuts. It is cynical, it is misguided and it underestimates the sense of fairness that the Australian community has. Jenny Macklin said it today: it underestimates the fairness that is very much a part of who we are as Australians.

Judgement day will come. That judgement will come because of these sorts of pieces of legislation. That judgement will come because this government is very rapidly developing a narrative of not caring, that you can kick the poor and that you can put the disadvantaged and vulnerable up against each other and let them fight it out. This side of the House, the Labor opposition, will never tolerate that approach. It is wrong, it is cynical and, as I said, it underestimates the basic fairness of the Australian community.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, otherwise known as the omnibus bill. For more than three years, the only childcare program that this government put in place was the nanny pilot program, which in itself was ill conceived and poorly executed. But this is a vital area. We are not just talking about babysitting that allows mums or dads to go back to work. This is about how we educate young minds so that they are ready to thrive by the time they get into the school system.

This education needs to happen in a number of ways. It is not easy. It is not surprising that the other side have found it a really challenging policy area. But there are few things that need to be taken into account. It needs to recognise the value and importance of the educators who are caring for our children. It needs to be done in an affordable way so mums and dads have the ability to be in the workforce. We agree that it is not easy to get it right, but this government have chosen to come up with a package that will leave one in three families worse off. They have taken all this time and the best they could do was a package that leaves one in three families worse off. You need to be pretty clever to get it that wrong!

What is really awful about the way this government are pushing through this change is that they are tying it to a swathe of cuts to family and pensioner benefits. I will talk about those in more detail later. Let's first talk about some of the flaws of the childcare package. The member for Barton has so eloquently spoken of the hypocrisy of what we heard in the closing-the-gap speeches only a week or so ago and what we see here, because the changes in this childcare reform threaten to close Indigenous and remote childcare services. We are worried about the impact on mobile services in rural and remote areas. The subsidies for these programs have effectively been scrapped, and there has been no guarantee given that services will not be forced to close. Nobody wins when some children are disproportionately disadvantaged. If we fail to invest the funds at the early childhood level, we will pay a much bigger price further down the track. This is a poor element in the childcare reform package.

One of the other key problems in this proposed legislation lies with the new activity test for subsidised care. It is a complicated test that has been brought in. It removes the current entitlement that all children get two days of early education. Remember that this is not child care on its own; it is education. This is not just paying someone a pittance to babysit. We know the developmental stuff that happens in this phase can change a child's educational future. I wish we knew that when my children were that age. We know that 150,000 families are going to be worse off. The new test halves the subsidy that many families can access and removes eligibility completely for some children with non-working parents. If the parents work casually or part time, their children's chances of accessing stable, subsidised early education will be seriously under threat with these changes. This is exactly the section of the community where we can break intergenerational cycles through early education that then gets followed throughout school. That is the reason we need the Gonski reforms to be continued. It is because we can build on this and change a child's future.

The Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales summed it up really well. They said:

… the new, three-tiered activity test introduces a level of complexity never seen before in the Australian childcare system.

No-one said the system was too simple. That is not what these reforms are about. The system was always complex. But here we are: we have legislation that introduces a level of complexity never seen before. The Social Policy Research Centre at the university notes:

… the Bill introduces provisions that will increase the complexity and reduce accessibility and affordability for some of the most vulnerable children and families.

What kind of reform is that? It is the opposite to the sort of reform that we need.

We know that 90 per cent of a child's brain development occurs in the first five years of life. Children who attend quality education do go on to do better in school. They do better in employment and they do better in life. Certainly, if I had young children, I would prefer them to be starting school with the cohort of children who had been in good quality early education. That takes some of the differences out that you see in a kindergarten class once they hit school. That is going to make teaching easier for teachers. It is going to mean the kids all have a better chance of success.

Early education should be recognised for its ability to help in solving social problems. I think that is what the other side failing to understand. They are actually creating problems further down the track with this legislation. There is clear and long-standing research to show that vulnerable and disadvantaged children have the most to gain from early education. We do not want to see those children worse off.

Let's talk about the implications of how this new activity test plays out. Does it make it easier for parents to work? That is, supposedly, one of the objectives of this package. Well, in fact, the new activity test will make it harder for many parents, particularly those who, as I mentioned, are in part-time or casual jobs, and especially for those who are trying to get back into the workforce. It puts parents in, as the shadow minister described, an unfair catch 22. They are not going to be able to get work because they cannot get child care, but they are not able to get child care because, guess what, they do not have work. It hardly sounds like a solution to any problem. Parents getting back in the workforce actually need to be able to say to their employer when they can work. They need to know with certainty what access they will have. This activity test means that parents will actually have to be worried about whether they meet the work requirements. So if you are casual and you do not get as many shifts, will you suddenly lose eligibility for child care? These are criticisms not just from Labor. This new activity test has been criticised by just about every reputable organisation that works in this field—everyone from UnitingCare, Mission Australia, Anglicare, United Voice, The Benevolent Society, the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia, the Australian Childcare Alliance and Early Childhood Australia. So you do not actually have to take my word. These are the experts, and that is what they are telling us.

So those are some of the flaws with the actual childcare reform. But I want to spend the next few minutes thinking about what price is being paid by the rest of society for this childcare package and, for the same people who may get some benefits from it, what price they are paying at a different part or a different phase of their life. For a start: the loss of paid parental leave when you have a baby. It stands to reason that before you have a child going to child care you actually have to have the baby. I spoke to one mum out at my mobile office in Glossodia this weekend in the Hawkesbury in my seat of Macquarie. Having looked at these changes, she is thinking of trying to bring forward a pregnancy to a time before she is really ready to have a second time. She has a beautiful baby. He is not even one yet. She is about to go back to work and she is worried about the timing of the second baby. She wants me to keep her posted on the passage, or not, of this omnibus bill. That is the sort of impact you have on women when you say, 'We are going to take way your paid parental leave.' She works for an employer where it has been negotiated that the employees get paid parental leave. That is not an entitlement that they were just given; that is one that they negotiated and bargained for. Now, the threat is that that will be taken away, so she will miss out on the full entitlement that she has had with her first child. We are talking about something that will leave her potentially $5,600 worse off. And, more to the point, it will mean she is not at home as long to do that really crucial first few months—ideally, 26 weeks, and even better if it is longer. I think the government probably does not realise the sort of impact it is having on women by attaching this paid parental leave exclusion to this bill.

The paid parental leave should not be traded away. It not only benefits the mother and the child, and the rest of the family, but actually benefits us all. You have 70,000 new mums who are thinking, 'I'm not really keen on what is being proposed here.' The other things that are being taken away, of course, are family tax benefits. In my electorate of Macquarie, around 8,500 families receive family tax benefit part A, many of whom will be worse off by $200 per child. Around 6,500 Macquarie families will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of the family tax benefit part B end-of-year supplement. They might not be big amounts for the people opposite, but that is the sort of stuff that allows you to send your child to a music lesson or do those swimming lessons that are so vital. It is that little bit that just gives you a difference between bare necessities and something that really enriches your life. I think it is quite cruel to tie this childcare reform to those sorts of savings. We are talking about a family with two children and a single income of $60,000 being $750 worse off a year. You tell me where those families are going to get that money from. They are certainly not going to get them by working an extra shift on a Sunday, thanks to the cuts to penalty rates. So you are making it harder at every turn for these families.

The other cut that we are seeing in this bill is the cut to the energy supplement for pensioners, people with a disability, carers and Newstart recipients. Scrapping the energy supplement to new pensioners is going to be a cut of about $14 a fortnight for single pensioners. That is $365 a year. For couples, we are talking $550 a year worse off. Again, these may not be big amounts to those opposite, but they are significant to people on lower incomes.

One of the moves that horrifies me is the forcing of young jobseekers to wait five weeks. Like other speakers, I think that by the time a young jobseeker goes onto Newstart they have probably run through all their savings. They are holding out and looking for work for as long as they can before they need to go and seek government support. I really fear for those young people. I have children in their twenties. I look at some of their friends. They do it tough. They do not have savings. This is going to make their lives even harder, as will the cuts to support for young people, where the 22- and 24-year-olds will be pushed from Newstart onto youth allowance, thereby losing around $48 a week. I have to tell you that I have a 25-year-old and a 22-year-old, and their landlords do not make an adjustment to their rent on the basis of their age. Funnily enough, their food does not cost less either, nor do their clothes. Their phone bills are not reduced because of their age. This sort of cut is very arbitrary and likely to cause real pain.

The other thing that will affect people in my electorate is the cut to migrants' pensions for migrants who spend more than six weeks overseas after working a lifetime here and then taking a well-earned rest in their mother country. In my community there is a Maltese community, and they have raised with me that it is not unusual for people to spend an extended time with family in Malta having spent decades in Australia and, finally, when they retire and go onto a pension they might just have the time away from work to be able to do it. They do not necessarily have a lot of money, but they can stay with family. These cuts means that after just six weeks overseas pensioners who have lived in Australia for less than 35 years are going to have that rate of the pension cut. That is hurting migrant families and migrant communities. All of these things might not sound like they are a lot to those opposite, but to my community they are painful cuts.

We are really happy to work with the government on child care reform. That is what this bill was meant to be. It is vital that we get it right. To say that we can afford to give multinationals $50 billion tax breaks, but the only way we can pay for child care increases is by making lower- and middle-income Australians pay for it in some other way, just does not cut it. These are choices that this government is making, just like they are making the choice not to protect penalty rates. This is an entirely a choice, and it will hit women particularly hard. When the government re-introduced the child care changes they claimed it would cost $3 billion. Now it is actually only costing $1.6 billion, yet they are keeping their unfair cuts and tying it to the NDIS. They do not need to. There is an opportunity to get reform right here, and we would be happy to help.

Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Childcare Reform) Bill 2017. This bill is effectively the reintroduction of the remainder of the government's 2014 zombie cuts. Families, new mums, pensioners and young people are all in the firing line as a result of the Turnbull government's latest round of harsh cuts. For many Australians already struggling to make ends meet these proposed cuts are deeply concerning. Indeed, there are few who will not be impacted one way or another by these unfair changes proposed by the Turnbull government. And that is even before the government's failure to act to protect the incomes of low-paid workers.

Before I go into detail, let me point out some of what I might call the low lights that are found in this legislation. Firstly, there are cuts to family benefits that will leave a typical family on $60,000 around $750 a year worse off. There are cuts to paid parental leave—70,000 new mums will be worse off. Scrapping the energy supplement is a $1 billion cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. A five-week wait for Newstart will force young people to live off nothing for five weeks before they can access income support. There are cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower youth allowance—that is a cut of around $48 a week or almost $2,500 a year. The bill scraps the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment, and cutting the pension to migrant pensioners who spend more than six weeks overseas.

These changes are just the latest move in the Turnbull government's sustained attack on the living standards of everyday Australians. This is an attack which has new targets, given the loss of penalty rates just last week and the Prime Minister's refusal to stand up for the rights of low-paid workers.

Labor's position with respect to this legislation has been consistently put since it opposed the unfair cuts first mooted in the 2014 Federal Budget. The government of the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott was roundly criticised for being out of touch and failing to recognise the widespread community disillusionment in not addressing the issue of fairness in the 2014 federal budget. Who can forget that iconic photograph of the then Federal Treasurer, the former member for North Sydney, Mr Hockey, and Senator Cormann smoking cigars in a haze of self-congratulation and hubris? There was sustained public criticism regarding the unfair 2014 budget, and ultimately even this government, a government with a tin ear for public opinion, was able to concede that errors had been made and that some changes needed to be made.

However, this government's deception has constantly been laid bare in that these so-called zombie measures have been included in subsequent financial reporting and are now exhumed in all their rotting glory. We therefore had a government that promised it was listening to the concerns of the community in respect of a program that was fundamentally unfair, but nevertheless was unprepared to abandon these measures in a quest for budget repair. Its duplicity is laid bare in this package of legislation. This bully government is unable to articulate the need to disadvantage families, mothers returning to work, pensioners and young people—those who are often already disadvantage. It just prefers the interests of the big end of town. Why does this out of touch government wish to attack the most disadvantaged in our communities? What they are seeking to do is to hurt some of the most disadvantaged in our community, including regional and remote communities doing it tough, so that they can gift big business—who, I might add, are reporting record profits as of today—a further $10 billion of tax cuts.

Labor's message has not been against repair of the budget, but has been consistently in favour of budget repair that is fair. I say it again, because those opposite choose to ignore our message around fairness: we propose budget repair that is fair, budget repair that does not rely upon flawed trickle-down economics that prefers the interests of those who are better off at the expense of those who are not. We speak about investment in nation building, in education, in the social safety net. They cut; we build the nation and we protect our communities. Labor has consistently argued for the retention of Medicare, fully funding Gonski and the protection of the disadvantaged in our communities. Instead, with respect to the most recent budget, the government has chosen to spend in excess of $50 billion on tax cuts to large corporations on the basis of the failed mantra of trickle-down economics when their own Treasury figures rely upon economic growth being delivered as a consequence of changes to taxation in 10 years. This government continues to pursue the lines of a confidence trickster using distraction, hyperbole and, if all else fails, a message which boils down to: trust us as the better economic managers. The government admit that their family payment cuts will leave 1.5 million Australian families worse off.

Nothing this government says or does should be taken on trust. There is no residue of trust in this government, for good reason. The Prime Minister has taken positions with regard to a range of issues that demonstrate that he is a hostage to the conservative right of the Liberal-National Party. Now we see that this Prime Minister and this Liberal government are prepared to formally preference the One Nation party, rather than pursue a course that John Howard ultimately imposed upon the state divisions of the coalition—that One Nation should not receive Liberal or National preferences. Now we have the Prime Minister talking up the positive aspects of this childcare package and linking cuts to social services to supposedly pay for the childcare package. Again, this is deception and distraction from a failing government.

This government is not only holding families to ransom to pay for child care, but it also continues to have in its sights those who are pensioners, young Australians and also new mothers. The numbers involved are significant. There is $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments, which are supposed to pay for $1.6 billion in a package of child care. The minister some weeks ago went dangerously close to misleading the House as to the fact that the cuts to family payments were being applied towards the cost of the childcare package and, when pressed, had to concede that families were losing more than the cost of the childcare package. In other words, the cuts were being concealed by the extra expenditure in the childcare package. The extent to which this confidence trick is sought to be foisted on Australian families is illustrated by the fact that for every $1 spent on child care in the proposed childcare assistant package, $3.30 will be ripped off pensioners, families, new mums and young Australians—that is, for every $1, $3.30 goes to fund tax cuts for handouts to big business and this government's administrative incompetence.

The numbers involved in this heist are amazing, if not terrifying. In total, these measures rip $5.6 billion from the household budgets of low-income Australians. These cuts add up for families who are struggling to make ends meet. Some of these families will have additional burdens come 1 July or whenever the unfair cuts to penalty rates take effect. For example, a single income family with two children on an income of $60,000 will lose around $750 per year, while a couple with one child on $75,000 will lose over $1,000 a year. Around 8,120 families in my electorate of Bass receive family tax benefit part A. Many of them will lose over $200 per child. Around 6,335 Bass families will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of the family tax benefit part B end-of-year supplement. Labor opposes these unfair cuts to family tax benefits.

After years of sustained attack since the horror 2014 budget, Australian families know they cannot trust the Liberals to help them get ahead or to protect Medicare and fully fund Gonski. This government is so dastardly that the worst hit by their mean-spirited policies are single parents, who will lose $3,000 a year in family tax benefit when they need it most. And when might that be? For their teenager's 17th birthday, just as they are entering one of the most stressful times in their life—the HSC. We want our young people to be focused on finishing their high school studies, not worrying about the already difficult financial pressures of their single parent. My son has relatively recently gone through this very period, and those in this House who have had the pleasure of a teenager know the growing costs involved as they get older. How does this government assist these growing costs for single parents? That is right, a $3,000 a year cut to the family budget.

Labor has consistently stood up for low- and middle-income Australians. We know what is fair. We know that a strong social safety net is important. We cannot allow this place to become like the USA. I know in my electorate of Bass that there is sound economic argument that small business is sustained by the fact that those on low and middle incomes typically expend most of their income on nondiscretionary spending. In other words, most of the income of low- or middle-income families goes directly into the local community buying goods and services. It is for this reason, for example, that cuts to penalty rates adversely affect small business in small communities and regional Australia, due to the fact that all reduced wages of the workers are unable to support the goods and services in those workers' communities. This is why I am concerned not just for those facing cuts in their take-home pay, I am deeply concerned for the effect of the cuts to income and these cuts to benefits and allowances will have on my part of regional Australia.

Community is what Labor stands for. Families, workers, children, pensioners, mothers, fathers: Labor wants our families to grow and prosper in a vital and flexible economy. But we want them to participate in economic growth that is fair. We know that Australian women traditionally taking on the burden of workforce participation and the majority of unpaid domestic and caring work is a large contributing factor to Australia's 16.2 per cent gender pay gap. That is why Labor has had the sense to refer to an inquiry the means of parental assistance to the Productivity Commission. It was clear from the commission that this was a financially beneficial change for the community and businesses. Labor's original scheme was designed to complement payments available under existing employment arrangements so as to generate the greatest impact for the least amount of financial assistance whilst also ensuring that businesses could continue to use these schemes as a recruitment incentive for talented women. This government should stop focusing on gifting $50 billion dollars to big business and focus on the real issue at play here; ensuring children get the best start in life. That is a prescription for long-term sustainable growth.

The government also wants new mothers to have less time with their babies, capping the parental leave scheme at 20 weeks. This means that new mothers will have 20 weeks of paid leave at home instead of 26 weeks, although experts recommend mums need six months at home caring for their newborn; not to mention that the same new mother will also lose around $4,030 in support. Labor does not believe that new mums should be forced to choose between returning to work early and missing out on time with their newborn or staying at home and having their living standards cut. This legislation is emblematic of the difference between those opposite and Labor. Labor will stand up for families. Labor will stand up for disadvantaged in our communities.

This government has stopped listening. It is led by an out-of-touch Prime Minister who is determined to pursue an unfair agenda.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to oppose the Turnbull government's Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 in the strongest possible terms. This is a bill which shows just how cruel, how vindictive and how manipulative the Turnbull government really is. This is a government that is soft on multinational tax avoidance but hard on families. It is a government that is ruthlessly determined to take from those who cannot afford it in order to prop up those who do not need it. And it is a government that has shown there are no levels it will not stoop to in order to maintain privileges for the top end of town.

In the past month, we have seen some of the most deplorable divide and conquer tactics from the Turnbull government in its desperation to get this bill through the parliament. Because, of course, the government desperately needs the cuts levied in this legislation as a down-payment for its corporate cash splash. That is what this bill is really about—slashing brutally from families and low-income Australians so Mr Turnbull can give big business and the banks a windfall. The Prime Minister has promised $50 billion of tax cuts to big business and now he is trying make families, jobseekers, young people, income support recipients, new parents and pensioners pay the price.

If those opposite were honest about their intentions, they would link welfare cuts to corporate tax cuts. They would make these wasteful and reckless cuts contingent on the passing of the savage cuts to ordinary Australians in this bill. But of course, they are not honest. No. Instead, they have cynically and arbitrarily tied these cuts to greater investment in child care. Now, let's be clear. There is nothing inherent or natural about the link between childcare and welfare cuts. They did not need to be in the same bill. Linking them was nothing but a crude political strategy to blackmail the parliament into passing this regressive legislation. Holding child care hostage is spiteful, sneaky and completely unnecessary. And, as we have seen, it has not worked, with reports that the Senate still will not pass the legislation in its current form. Of course, what the government would do if it was honourable would be to split out all the measures so the parliament is able to consider each measure on its own merits. This is exactly what literally tens of early education providers and representative organisations have called for. But, as we see far too often, this government is far from honourable. In fact, rather than splitting the bills to ensure that the things the parliament does agree on do not get held up, the government has upped up the ante in the most deplorable way.

When pitting parents of young children against pensioners, jobseekers and families did not work, they did not back down. No. They doubled down and held a gun to the NDIS, suggesting that if the parliament refused to pass the cruel cuts before us today then the NDIS would lose billions of dollars. Four years ago, those opposite said they were at one with Labor on the NDIS. But this month they trashed this vital bipartisanship, put a question mark over future funding for this landmark social reform and plunged thousands of Australians into uncertainty.

It is appalling that this government has no problems with using the NDIS and childcare funding as pawns in their cruel political games. And it just goes to show that the Prime Minister's promise to place fairness at the centre of all government decisions was as hollow as his belief in marriage equality or his commitment to real action on climate change. It also demonstrates that Mr Turnbull has completely failed to learn the lessons of his predecessor and the thoroughly toxic 2014 budget. In fact, the majority of the items in the legislation before us today are recycled zombie measures that were fundamentally rejected by the parliament and by the Australian people three years ago. These are the very same measures from the budget that led to Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey losing their jobs. But the Prime Minister has again showed just how beholden he is to his right wing masters by putting up this bill before us today. He has chosen to try to save his own job rather than saving millions of Australians from further hardship.

I would like to spend some time now looking at the specifics of the bill, starting with the childcare measures. Those opposite went to the 2013 election promising more affordable and accessible child care. For three years, they did nothing. Then they went to the 2016 election promising to spend $3 billion on reducing the childcare cost burden on Australian families. Now, we find that the actual investment is little more than half that at $1.6 billion. And a recent ANU analysis found that one in three families will actually be worse off under the government's childcare plan. In fact, more than 71,000 families earning less than $65,000 a year will go backwards. Many children in low-income families will have their access to early education slashed from 24 weeks to just 12. It will also make it harder for parents who work part-time or casually to get stable access to early childhood education and care.

Rural and remote childcare services, particularly those for Indigenous communities, are also at risk, as the government has refused to commit to guarantee ongoing financial support for 300 Indigenous and mobile services. The government's plan to transition them to the mainstream model is completely unrealistic. These services perform a key role by providing childcare services in areas where the market would otherwise have failed to deliver. Indeed, most of these services are the only childcare providers in their respective regions. If they are lost, the impact on these communities will be significant.

In fact, Deloitte Access Economics has found that the impacts will be severe. Fifty-four per cent of families will face an average fee increase of $4.40 an hour, 40 per cent of families will have their access to early education reduced, and over two-thirds of Indigenous early childhood education services will have their funding cut. But, despite the clear failings of the childcare package and despite the massive drop in the government's investment, Mr Turnbull still sees fit to hold support for families, pensioners, young people and the NDIS to ransom.

Labor support increased investment in child care, but we will not support it at the expense of vulnerable people and Australian families—and that is exactly what this government is asking us to do today. Even the government itself has admitted that 1.5 million Australian families will be worse off as a result of its cuts to family tax benefits.

The first thing the government wants to do is abolish the family tax benefit A end-of-year supplement. This will cost families $200 per child. Those families that receive family tax benefit B will take a $350 hit each year. These cuts would see a typical family on a single income of $60,000, with two kids, lose around $750 a year; a couple on $75,000, with one child, lose over $1,000 per year; and single parents whose youngest child is over 17 and still in high school, lose their FTB B payments entirely, a loss of $3,186 a year including the supplement. It is ridiculous that the government should be trying to sell this legislation as a boon for families when it clearly gives a little with one hand and rips away a whole lot more with the other.

Labor is also deeply concerned about the impacts of this legislation for new parents. This government wants new mothers to have less time to recover and bond with their babies, and will cap the current scheme at 20 weeks. The government's suggestion that women who use the current paid parental leave system are double dipping is totally unfair and utterly wrong. Let us not forget that the government scheme was deliberately designed to encourage employer contributions to help as many new parents as possible get the World Health Organization's recommended 26 weeks off work to recover, bond and breastfeed. The government's proposal in this bill will leave around 70,000 new mothers worse off each year, and undermine the very purpose and design of the existing scheme. This removes the incentive for employers to offer paid parental leave to their staff, and forces new mothers to choose between returning to work early and cutting their living standards.

But it is not just families and parents-to-be who are targeted by this legislation; anyone who receives government income support will also be hit. The government plans to freeze income-free areas and means-test thresholds for three years for working-age allowances, except student payments. Students will be forced to endure a three-year freeze to income-free areas and other means-test thresholds, including the student income bank limits. This will mean that income-free areas will fail to keep pace with the cost of living. Labor is particularly concerned about the impacts on jobseekers, who rely on an already low payment rate. It is good to see the minister, the Minister for Social Services, in the chamber for this debate.

But the cuts do not end there. The government also plans to close the energy supplement to new pension and allowance recipients. This means that single pensioners will be $365 a year worse off, and pensioners in a couple will be $550 worse off a year. Newstart recipients will lose $229 a year. Again, Labor is aware that there are significant concerns about the adequacy of Newstart as it is, and these cuts will just serve to drive jobseekers further into poverty. When the Business Council says that Newstart is so low that it is actually a disincentive to finding work, you know there is a problem! Even KPMG has called for the Newstart rate to be increased.

It is an appalling indictment of this Turnbull government that it is driving jobseekers further into poverty so it can prop up its tax cuts for big business. This is especially galling when the government is refusing to lift a finger while hundreds of thousands of the lowest paid Australians are having their penalty rates cut. Let us not forget Mr Turnbull gave himself a $6,500 tax cut this year. But now he wants to force all income recipients to live on nothing for a week.

Not only will young jobseekers have to wait a week, with no income at all; the government also plans to make 22- to 24-year-olds ineligible for Newstart, instead forcing them onto the much lower youth allowance. This will be devastating for the 240,000 young jobseekers who will lose $48 a week. This might be loose change for Mr Turnbull, but for young jobseekers it could mean that basic expenses like rent and power bills do not get paid. But it gets worse. Shamefully, jobseekers under 25 will also have their waiting periods extended by four weeks, on top of the one-week waiting period for all other payments. This is a horrendous measure that will see around 75,000 young jobseekers trying to survive with absolutely no income for five weeks. Despite what those opposite seem to think, unemployment is not a lifestyle choice for the vast majority of jobseekers; and starving young Australians will do anything to improve their chances of finding work. The Turnbull government should focus less on punishing jobseekers and a lot more on creating the jobs.

It is clear that the legislation before us today is a recipe for increasing poverty and entrenching inequality. The bill demonstrates the depths those opposite are willing to plumb to attack the most vulnerable Australians so they can continue to prop up big business and high-income earners. It is an appalling indictment on this government that, when wages growth is at its lowest on record and when inequality sits at a 75-year high, those opposite continue to hit the poor so they can reward the wealthy. This bill is a direct attack on the social contract that sits at the core of our national identity and it is a shocking affront to our sense of a fair go.

Labor will continue to defend families and the lowest-paid people in the country and we will continue to oppose the Turnbull government's vicious agenda of tax cuts for the big end of town and income cuts for low-income Australians.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spoke with reference to this bill only a week or so ago and at that time I observed that this legislation was put forward by the government on, of all days, Valentine's Day—a day that is usually referred to as a day of love. What this legislation really highlights is how this government is a love-hate government. Whilst this government does love big business and wants to give big business a $50 billion tax cut, it seems to hate ordinary Australians. This legislation is a bill that takes much more than it gives.

It is laudable that the government has recognised that we do need to make some changes to our childcare system in this country so that more people can access affordable child care. That is a laudable ambition. However, the way in which the government has gone about trying to do that with this legislation and the way it has married up a laudable objective—not really with great detail, I have to say, there are definitely problems with what it is trying to achieve—with massive cuts to family payments for ordinary Australians really demonstrate where this government's priorities lie.

The thing that really highlights it is that we have a situation right now in Australia of what is euphemistically referred to as 'an economy in recovery' or 'a transitional economy'. I can tell you right now that in Western Australian we have had two consecutive quarters of net state demand being negative—I think that is what is technically called a recession—and people are hurting. Ordinary Australians are hurting all around the country; in Western Australia they are particularly hurting; and of course the people who hurt most are those who earn the least. And those are the people who benefit from family tax benefits and people who have come onto Newstart payments because they have found themselves out of work through no fault of their own. This is what happens when we get to what was referred to by the Reserve Bank governor as 'the other end of the cycle', followed by the decline in mining construction in my home state.

At a time when people are hurting more, this government's response is: 'We're going to take more money off you.' I do not think that is the right approach for any government, and we should not be letting this government get away with that. We have these cuts—$2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments and a total of $5.6 billion being ripped out of family budgets. Many of those household budgets were hitherto supported by Sunday penalty rates. So we have the double whammy. At the same time we hear, and it has been put to me, 'Oh, well, it's okay if people have a reduction in their penalty rate income because they will pay less tax.' When you are already not paying tax and when you are trying to benefit from receiving these welfare payments—whether they are FBT benefits or other sorts of supplements, which will no longer be indexed but capped or frozen for three years—that really makes life even harder.

This legislation in particular demonstrates almost the cruelty of this government—linking a supposed benefit in changes to be childcare benefit with cuts to other benefits. The government will say and has said, 'Well, sometimes you have to make hard decisions. You've got to make cuts to pay for these benefits. We have a budget emergency'—as they have been telling us for years, not that they have done anything about that, I might add; they have just let the debt and deficit blow out. To tackle their budget emergency or to pay for some extra benefits for people who need child care, what do they do? They think: 'How can we pay for that? What should we cut?' They look through the budget. They went through all of the lines of the budget and wondered what they should cut. This government had a great idea. This government thought, 'Do you know who we should cut back on? Do you know who we should take that money off? We should take that money off people who get family tax benefit. We should take that money off people who get the pension'—people who have paid taxes their entire lives—'We should take that money off people who are on Newstart allowance. We should take that money off young mums and off Australians trying to go to university. We should freeze the indexation of their payments.'

This is a very odd set of priorities by a government, Mr Deputy Speaker To look through an entire Commonwealth budget and ask, 'Where can I save a few billion dollars? I will save it from Australia's poorest people.' The thing that really jars for me about that, and I think it jars for all Australians, is that in the whole context of the Commonwealth budget when looking at what could be saved the thing that did not occur to them was $50 billion worth of tax cuts for large businesses. It did not occur to them—I am going to make a suggestion here to the government—to reduce the tax cut so that it is only, say, $48 billion worth of tax cuts so that it did not have to do take that money off the poorest Australians, those who are struggling the most and those who are finding it the hardest to get by and those who need the most support. If we take this back out to the macro level—

Debate interrupted.