Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Productivity Commission has confirmed that, since this conservative government came to office, families are paying over $2,000 more a year for child care. Now this Prime Minister is introducing childcare changes which will leave 279,000 families worse off. Just how much more will these 279,000 families have to pay because the Prime Minister doesn't understand the cost-of-living pressures facing families?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The honourable member overlooks the fact that the government's childcare reforms have created additional opportunities for Australian families on low and middle incomes to access child care. The simple fact of the matter is that over a million families are benefiting from our childcare reforms. The Labor Party opposed them. They are means tested. There are families on high incomes that are no longer getting a benefit. We have done that to ensure that the help is where it is most needed, and it is ensuring that more Australian families can stay connected to the workforce when their children are small.

You can see that this is all part of our consistent policy to create more jobs and more opportunities: 403,000 jobs in the last year, 75 per cent of them full-time, with the highest female participation rate in our history. What we are determined to do is ensure that more families are better able to manage that work-life balance, to be with their children—especially when they're small—to stay connected to the workforce and to not suffer the consequences of a long absence from the workforce that, as we all know, is tough on both fathers and mothers, but is especially tough on mothers. Our childcare reforms are historic, equitable and generous, and the honourable member should be backing them instead of trying to find fault where none exists.