Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As someone who has seen phenomenal residential growth in the electorate I represent, and the influx of new families, particularly around Colebee and Marsden Park, families who often think about child care and early childhood development—the type of people I thought about when we announced some of our historic, as a Labor Party I would say, policies designed to help families with child care.

I thought about how much our policies would be of enormous benefit to them, especially things like the preschool and kindy program, the biggest ever investment in childhood education in Australia, which will commit permanent funding to the national preschool and kindy program for all four-year-olds. We'll extend the program to cover all three-year-olds from 2021. This is huge. We'll also invest over $6 million in our youngest citizens, providing greater support for community based playgroups and toy libraries.

Again, a lot of families in our area who often wonder about the quality of childcare will see this as a massive benefit. In Chifley alone, over 5,000 three- and four-year-olds will benefit from our plans. While families are always left second guessing about what the coalition budgets will do to childcare—in fact, the changes will affect 26 per cent of families in the electorate—they know that Labor is serious about this issue and is serious about investing in early childhood education.