Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Childcare centre after childcare centre told me their concerns about the halving of their income. They didn't know whether centres would be eligible for the JobKeeper payment because of how they are set up, or need to be set up, to provide services and survive. They were worried about not being able to access the traineeship subsidy. As Darlene, an early educator, said: 'I feel the early childhood education care relief package is nothing more than a marketing ploy by the government to gain some extra votes and appear to be doing the right thing by Aussie families; however, what is hidden behind this blanket 'free child care for everyone' banner is the disconcerting truth that early childhood educators, without consultation, have been told to continue working, despite isolation and social-distancing rules that apply for everyone else, and in addition services will be financially worse off, forcing many services to reduce educator hours, many of whom are not entitled to the JobKeeper package.'

I have raised concerns about this package with the government and, while I was pleased when they finally announced a supplementary relief package to assist, it did not solve all the problems. Then the government decided they would just snap back to the old system on 13 July. This was not a plan and it was not a solution to the problems the government has created.

I just want to tell you about one preschool in my electorate which I think is a great example of the government's failings to fully consider this policy. Andrew runs the Culburra Beach Preschool. Along with preschools across Australia in April, Andrew was receiving 50 per cent of what the fees were at the end of February before being told he now had to give free child care. When numbers of children dropped, they rejigged staff rosters to adjust to lower numbers. They put in place social distancing to help protect staff and children. They also lost their director and, because of the government's JobKeeper rules, a newly employed director was not eligible. While Andrew's centre did receive JobKeeper, while they still could at least, he said that many centres didn't and it would be hard to survive.

These centres provide care for vulnerable children and children of essential workers. When school went back this also sent a message for parents to send children back to child care or preschool, where social distancing is even more difficult. At school, kids either get dropped at the gate or travel by bus, but at child care families come in and want to stay with children for a while.

Then the government's department sent an email to providers which said: 'We will look carefully at the government help you are receiving both through the relief package and the JobKeeper payment to consider if the care you are providing is reasonable. Providers found not to be following the requirements of the family assistance law, including the relief package, may have their payments cancelled. Services experiencing a significantly higher demand should apply for an exceptional circumstance supplementary payment.' To clarify, that's a payment that centres had applied for and that, when they received the email, they had still not received—just gobsmacking.

Then, after all the difficulties they have already been put through, the government decided to rip away the one lifeline that many of these workers had: JobKeeper. They decided that early educators didn't deserve that help; they can make it on their own. You know what that meant, Deputy Speaker? More hardship for early educators, more parents without support and even more people who can't pay their bills.

The government try and try again to make changes to the childcare system, but the problem, as so often with those opposite, is that they are not listening. The truth about free child care is simply that the government were spending less money than they had budgeted for the childcare subsidy—almost half a billion dollars less—so they ripped half a billion dollars from the sector on top of the revenue losses from not being able to charge fees. Then they just wanted to go back to things as they were, switching from one flawed system to another and leaving parents, children and early educators to suffer the consequences.

It is absolutely vital that we have a properly funded childcare system that does not overburden our hardworking educators. It must adequately support parents to keep their employment during this unprecedented crisis. The consequences of not doing so are dire for parents, for children, for early educators and for our economy. I welcome the changes the government is making today through this bill, but again I find myself asking: what took so long? So, as I always do in this place, I will keep sharing the stories from my community until those opposite stand up and listen.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Young families have been hit exceptionally hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in a double-fisted blow. First, young people—specifically women—were the first to lose their jobs en masse in the pandemic. Second, childcare fees were reintroduced and JobKeeper payments for childcare staff slashed well before this pandemic has come anywhere near an end.

But I am very happy to stand here today to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020, which seeks to support our most vulnerable children and their families and provide some stability in their lives. It wasn't long ago that we were here in this place debating the first round of touch-ups that the government needed to make to their new childcare subsidy system. We in Labor were pleased to support those changes late last year. They were sensible and overdue fixes to some of the most obvious flaws in the government's childcare subsidy system. They were changes which Labor, families and the early learning sector had been calling for for more than a year. I'm pleased to be back here again to help the government to fix some more flaws in their system, and I'm pleased that we are able to be here in this place to debate this bill.

The additional childcare subsidy for child wellbeing is a vital program that seeks to provide a safe and nurturing learning environment for children in extremely vulnerable situations at home. For most of these children, it can be the difference between being able to stay at home and having to go into the child protection system.

In Perth's south-eastern suburbs, which I represent, there are around 570 kids in care, and the WA Department of Communities' Child Protection and Family Support service engage up with 50 new families a month. Further to this, about one in seven families with children up to the age of five are in the lowest income bracket. If we do nothing, 55 per cent of these children won't be given assistance to move out of poverty as they come into adulthood. It is vital that legislation like that which is before us today be enacted and that the children in my community get the support that they need to rely on.

It's critical that the government treat this program with sensitivity and ensure families and providers are not overly burdened with red tape. When this government introduced a number of new requirements and rules that restricted access to the additional childcare subsidy in July 2019, as a father of a two-year-old at the time I had to deal with mountains of online paperwork in applying for the subsidy scheme, which I had to work through, of course, with my wife. Now, between my wife and me, we hold five degrees, including two law degrees, and we experienced great confusion and difficulty working our way through a mind-boggling rigmarole of calculations, data input and information that had to be provided to access this system. The system is clearly broken. If we had trouble with it, how on earth are the majority of Australians going to be able to grapple with this system that the government has created, especially those families and others who are trying to support children most in need in our communities? So I have a great deal of sympathy for the difficulties that all Australians have had in engaging with this system.

This third-term government likes to bang the drum about cutting red tape, but we know that in fact it's more interested in getting a headline than in helping people. They go out of their way to increase red tape for vulnerable families and the childcare providers that are trying to help them. In the first six months of the new system, the number of children receiving the child wellbeing subsidy collapsed by 21 per cent. These numbers have since recovered to pre-July-2018 levels, but only after significant effort and resources from the providers. To help vulnerable children get the support that they need, it is vital that we fix some of these design flaws in this system that was created by this government. Doing so has been a far, far too long time coming.

But the Liberal childcare system still has many other serious flaws. This is a system that leaves one in four families worse off. It's apparently a design feature that access to early education and child care is reduced for some 279,000 Australian families. It is a system about which only 40 per cent of the providers and only 41 per cent of the families using it told the independent evaluation reviewers that it had resulted in positive change. Eighty-three per cent of parents told the evaluation that the new system had had no impact on their work or study. It's a system that has been forcing childcare providers to act as unpaid debt collectors for the government, because families are struggling to stay on top of complicated activity and means tests.

Childcare fees are already out of control under this new system. The latest data shows that fees in Perth's south-eastern suburbs, including the areas that I represent, have increased by almost six per cent over the 12 months to December 2019, which is well above the 4.6 per cent that we saw nationally, let alone the rate of CPI increase in Western Australia, which was only 1.8 per cent for the same period. More tellingly, to pay for this six per cent increase in fees, wages to December 2019 in Western Australia only increased by 2.2 per cent. These are the high fees that the Morrison government have chosen to lump onto local families—and, again, by snapping back their old childcare system with no extra support to bring down these out-of-pocket costs.

The data shows that, before the pandemic, out-of-pocket childcare costs were taking a huge chunk out of household budgets. Now, in the middle of a recession, when families are struggling to get by, these fees mean access to these services continues to be out of reach for many who need them. Families who have taken a pay cut over the last few months can be forced to give up child care and early childhood education altogether. Childcare centres are forced to turn parents away. If families are forced to withdraw their children from early learning, it is the worst-case scenario for everyone. Parents then have to turn down work, children miss out on early education opportunities, and providers suffer from a drop in demand, which of course changes their viability as a business as well. Families are now paying, on average, $3,800 a year more for early education and child care under this government.

The government were very confident that their new system would 'put downward pressure' on fees and that they were driving down the cost of child care, but any evidence of this remains to be seen. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The government's bungling of childcare subsidies has meant that centres that were going to close due to the COVID pandemic have now had to increase their fees. This isn't the fault of the early learning and childcare centres; it is due to the unwillingness of the government to help struggling families and the centres that are trying to support them. Early learning providers and childcare centres have been done over by this government. The hoops that they had to jump through to gain government support through this COVID pandemic have been extreme, and they were the first to have the rug pulled out from under them by having JobKeeper for them completely cut, early, before anybody else.

I was inundated with cries for help from childcare providers during the height of the pandemic in Western Australia, with many centres telling me of a decline in attendance, the insufficiency of the government subsidies and their apprehension about what the end of those supports would mean for the centres and their families. This government has absolutely no idea. It has no plan for how to bring these fees under control. The Morrison government must ensure that early education is affordable, that it's accessible, that it remains high quality and that it supports our families in our communities, especially our most vulnerable families, who are relying on this care and assistance.

Can you imagine being the operator of a childcare service, an early education service, in our country this year? You're already under the pressure of having to increase fees, which is putting the pressure onto families. We then encounter a pandemic, which sees children withdrawn from child care as their parents become unemployed, as they suffer the health problems and lockdowns. Then the government turns around and says, 'We'll provide you support,' and designs that support in such a way that, for many childcare centres, they face even greater pressure and difficulty. And then, just when you think there is a glimmer of hope, it puts further pressure on families by putting those fees back onto families and removing JobKeeper from childcare support services at the very same time. This government can't have it both ways. It needs to actually support our childcare services, it needs to support early education, it needs to support families that need to rely on it and, critically, it needs to support the most at-risk children in our society by making sure that this system works properly.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. This bill makes important amendments to the legislation governing childcare assistance, with a focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged families or those who might be in less conventional family situations. The bill makes amendments to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 by extending the backdating of additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) certificates and determinations from 28 days to up to 13 weeks in defined exceptional circumstances. The bill also extends the period from 13 weeks to up to 12 months in which additional childcare subsidy determinations can be made for certain defined classes of children, such as children on a long-term protection orders, including those in foster care. A further amendment will clarify that a provider is eligible for additional childcare subsidy for certain children, such as foster children. I support this bill and the measures to make it easier for families in difficult circumstances to access child care.

I'd like to acknowledge and thank the childcare workers across Australia, in particular in Warringah, who have been on the front line of the response to COVID-19. They have endured numerous changes in their conditions throughout the pandemic response and are now precluded from access to JobKeeper payments. The legislation is important in making it easier for families in unconventional situations to access the additional childcare subsidy. However, given this legislation was introduced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not go far enough and, I suggest, is an opportunity missed. There are wideranging issues within the childcare sector that need to be addressed. The affordability of services for families has become an increasingly important concern. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the impacts of interruptions to services on the children in care as well as on their families and their ability to re-engage with work.

In Australia we have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world. The pandemic has shown that there are serious issues with the sustainability of the current model. We must take this opportunity to look at it and look for a new way to deal with child care. This particular bill is important to address inequalities that existed in the availability of the additional childcare subsidy scheme between those with traditional families and those with foster children. In speaking with interest groups, such as The Parenthood group, they recognise that this legislation is important to fix gaps in the current system. They argue, and I join my voice to theirs, that more needs to be done to address the broader issues in Australia.

Whilst this legislation is necessary and it is an ethical thing to do to improve access for disadvantaged and vulnerable families in our community, as I've said, more needs to be done. I've received a significant amount of correspondence from families, childcare centres, family day care providers and other interest groups in my electorate in recent months on the issue of child care. Since the start of this pandemic, there has been no solution implemented that satisfies parents, childcare centres and professionals. While childcare centres were struggling with falling attendance at the outset of the pandemic, parents too were finding it difficult to work from home with young children around. When the government announced free child care for all, parents were overwhelmingly pleased with the outcome. However, in many places—and in Warringah, perhaps more so than other electorates—childcare centres suffered greatly as the level of funding did not match the operational costs of centres. Many childcare centres saw their revenue cut by up to two-thirds. This was an unsustainable situation for childcare centres. We received numerous representations from childcare centres and parents alike, fearing the closure of centres due to the unsustainable operating model forced upon them.

Then we have the return to the childcare subsidy scheme, which has been welcomed by providers due to the compatibility with their existing business models, but that change has now impacted families. The Parenthood group conducted a survey of 2,200 households in June, which found more than half—some 60 per cent of Australian households using child care—would have a parent forced to reduce work when full childcare fees returned and in 68 per cent of those households the parent who would stop or reduce work would be a woman. Affordability of child care for families was already an issue prior to COVID-19. Now, with an increased number of people out of work, particularly women, access to affordable child care is a key factor in decision-making about how and when to return to work. On average, Australian families sending their children to child care pay between 30 and 40 per cent of their household income, when—and it's important to appreciate the difference—the OECD average is just 11 per cent.

The bulk of the caring responsibility in Australia still falls to Australian women. The Grattan Institute recently pointed out that, even before COVID-19, Australian women were doing 2.2 fewer hours of paid work on average but 2.3 more hours of unpaid work than men every day. A decade after the birth of the first child, the average mother does more caring and twice as much household work as the average father. The value of early childhood education to the wellbeing and development of our future leaders is well documented. Conversely, the impact on children of the interruption to childcare services can drive learning difficulties and mental health challenges for young Australians. These are not the outcomes we want. The need for consistency at a young age is paramount to our young people's success.

There is a solid business case for greater investment in childcare affordability. The Grattan Institute calculated that the return is more than two to one. Should the federal government spend an extra $5 billion a year on childcare subsidies, the pay-off would be an $11 billion a year increase in GDP from the boost to workforce participation, and $150,000 in higher lifetime earnings for the typical Australian mother. I would urge the coalition government, as a government focused on economic policy, to look at this sector and make the necessary changes. This would be a great step towards improving gender parity in earnings for Australian men and women. Similarly, reforms to the parental leave scheme could also contribute to enhancing male participation in caring and unpaid work responsibilities.

Given the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 recession on women and female dominated industries, solutions for how to get women back into the workforce should be front of mind for the government in planning stimulus and recovery packages. Sadly, there has not been any such focus. At the recent Women's Job Creation Forum led by Minister Payne, child care was not on the agenda.

In conclusion, while I support this legislation, I urge the government to look further at the childcare system in place in Australia and develop a new legislation to make it affordable to all Australians. I urge the Minister for Women, the Minister for Education and the minister for social services to work closely together on these issues, because an integrated solution is required to make sure we can recover and come out stronger on the other side of this recession. We know that child care is good at getting women into the paid workforce and we know that it is important for the development of our children. Both of these elements contribute to a solid return on investment—let alone the ethical question. Our childcare sector needs work, and it is in the best interests of all of Australia to invest in it. I urge the government to do so.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to everyone who has enabled me to be present through this technology and allowed our parliament to catch up with workplaces across Australia so that we can all be representing our constituents this week. In fact, being able to use this technology today means that I started my day by dropping my daughter off at her early education centre. And so I feel very passionate in speaking about this Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 because I see firsthand the hard work of our early educators at this time. I know how important the work they do is for our children and for Australian families and I know that they are feeling unsupported by this government at this difficult, difficult time.

This bill is important for children from vulnerable and disadvantaged families, but the most critical action the government could make for vulnerable children and the early education sector right now is to reverse their snapback policy which removed the JobKeeper payment from early education workers. It is critical to our country's future that we have an early education system that's equally accessible to everyone. That's not what we have in Australia at the moment. Instead, we have a system where vulnerable children are at risk of being shut out and missing out on the vital preparation they need to start school. We have a system where, even before this pandemic and recession, Australian families were paying some of the highest fees in the developed world for child care, and current economic circumstances make those fees even more of a burden for Australian families. We have a system where this government has abandoned our early childhood educators, targeting them as the one sector to have JobKeeper removed and leaving many workers without pay at this time.

Australian families and Australian workers deserve better. I've spoken before in the chamber about how vital early education is to giving our children the best start in life, and I don't think I need to run through all that evidence again. But I do need to highlight that early childhood education is particularly important for vulnerable children and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Early evidence from this pandemic tells us that, as a result of COVID disruptions, too many of these children have now lost contact with their early education centres, which puts them at increased risk of starting school at a disadvantage. While this amendment will provide some continuity of care for children at risk of abuse or neglect, it doesn't go nearly far enough, given current circumstances. Without additional support, these children are now at increased risk of starting school even further behind or in fact not engaging with our education system again.

Of course, the very people who are in a leading position to reach out and help these vulnerable children are the people who've been thrown under a bus by this government. Early childhood educators and providers have been treated disgracefully. They are the one sector in this country to have had JobKeeper ripped away. I—like most of my colleagues in Melbourne, I'm sure—have spent a good part of the last three weeks talking with early childhood educators in my community. I can tell you they are angry, they are upset, and they feel as though they've been actively discriminated against by this government at a time when they are putting themselves at risk and being asked to do frontline work.

I'll list some of the people I've heard from in these three weeks. There was a 59-year-old early childhood educator who was stood down without pay for six weeks. Her husband is retired, and this has a significant impact on their family income. There is a provider in Macleod who is trying to do the right thing by her employees. In fact, she doesn't want to stand any of them down. She's been trying to keep everyone employed and trying to provide places to children of frontline workers, and yet she's not getting enough financial support from this government to be able to do that.

I spoke with early childhood educators from Eltham North, who are feeling unseen and unheard and are worried about their future. I will quote from what they sent to me, because it reflects how our early childhood educators feel so badly let down by this government at this time. They said: 'The loss of JobKeeper has really upset a number of educators in early childhood education, and it's heartbreaking not being able to provide certainty to the educators who are so passionate about the job they do every day. They've been left feeling extremely undervalued, especially since they've showed up to work every single day since the COVID-19 pandemic began. They've constantly been made to adapt to a variety of changes, sometimes with little to no warning at all. Still, they come to work and provide high quality education to the children and provide continuous support to families each and every day with a smile on their faces even when they're going through their own personal challenges.' What an indictment on this government that these are the people that they have cut off from JobKeeper and that these are the people they're not giving support to. I wrote to Minister Tehan to highlight this problem over a week ago. I haven't had a response yet. In fact, I note, looking at this debate today, that there are no members from Victoria on the other side speaking on this legislation, either remotely or in the chamber. I refuse to believe that their constituents haven't been coming to them and talking to them about this problem as well. Do they just not care? Do they not want to stand up for early education workers? It really is a disgrace that, at a time when we're asking these people to be on the frontline, we are not giving them the support they so desperately need.

More broadly, Australian women must be getting used to this government failing to acknowledge them, even as they are the hardest hit by the effects of this recession. More women than men have lost their jobs or had their income reduced. More women than men have had to scale back their hours at work or take on the responsibility for home schooling, caring or cleaning. We know the data tells us that in Australia women spend 64 per cent of their average working hours each week on unpaid work compared to 46 per cent for men. During the pandemic, we've seen mothers spending an extra hour each day on unpaid house work and four extra hours on child care. If we look at all the things that this bill fails to do, we'll see that it fails to make Australian child care more affordable, and we know that is going to hit women hard.

This pandemic highlighted what we knew to be a huge problem in this space—that is, the cost. Before the pandemic started, we saw the cost of child care continue to go up and up under this government. The cost of living was continuing to increase, wages stagnated and families were feeling the strain of ever increasing fees, and yet, again, the government has failed to address this. At a time when people are losing their jobs and losing income, this government is doing nothing to make child care more affordable for these families.

The cost of child care had already increased by 7.2 per cent in one year alone before the pandemic hit. We've had recent analysis from the Grattan Institute highlighting how the cost of child care is a disincentive, keeping Australian women out of the workforce or from working beyond part-time hours. The Grattan Institute suggested that, for an extra investment of $5 billion a year on childcare subsidies, we could create an $11 billion increase in the GDP from increased workforce participation. At the same time, we could boost the earnings of the typical Australian mother by $150,000. How important could that be at this time? There would be more women able to work and more jobs for women in a female-dominated industry, like early childhood education. But are we getting any of this from this government? Not at all. In fact, we've got a government targeting stimulus in male dominated industries such as construction while cutting off areas where women are working, like early education, and making it too expensive for Australian women to afford child care so that they can work where needed.

This is an important bill, but it doesn't address the important issues at this time. It doesn't support our early-childhood education workers on the front line. It doesn't make child care more affordable for Australian women and Australian families who are struggling through this pandemic. I urge the government to think carefully about what more it needs to do. It's leaving too many people behind. It's left too many workers without the support they need at this time. It's urgent that it acts now.

Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment moved by the member for Kingston. Labor will support this bill, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020, which makes several changes to improve assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged families. But let's be clear: this legislation is yet another in a long list of 'told you so' moments. It's another example of a government that repeatedly gets it half right and half wrong, and ultimately it's working people and families who suffer. I will return to this later.

The additional childcare subsidy for child wellbeing, or ACCS, is a vital program which ensures children in extremely vulnerable situations at home are provided with a safe and nurturing learning environment. For many of these children it can make the difference between staying at home and entering the child protection system. In July 2018 this coalition government introduced a range of requirements, resulting in restricted access to an additional childcare subsidy. These changes included: reducing the initial approval period from 13 weeks to six weeks; approving eligibility certificates for only 13-week periods; only allowing 28 days of backdating of ACCS payments; and refusing applications that aren't approved by Centrelink in 28 days, regardless of merit. The government ignored warnings from both Labor and the sector that these changes would have a detrimental impact on vulnerable families—and we were right. In the six months following the July 2018 changes, the number of children receiving the child wellbeing subsidy collapsed by 21 per cent. These numbers returned to pre-July-2018 levels, but only after significant effort and an injection of resources from providers themselves. Shockingly, in Senate estimates the department said that it wasn't concerned about the drop. They also confessed they weren't even tracking if families had dropped out of the system.

Despite this disappointing performance, the bill is a step towards reducing the administrative burden on early-learning providers and at-risk families. It provides greater financial security to these families with four key improvements: firstly, by amending provider eligible enrolment, providers will now be able to enrol children in child protection rather than via a parent or foster carer for up to 13 weeks while the parent or foster carer is applying for a CRN and CCS through Centrelink; secondly, providers may apply to ACCS to be back-paid up to 13 weeks instead of the current 28 days; thirdly, providers will be able to access ACCS determinations for up to 12 months for children on long-term child protection orders or in foster care, rather than the current 13 weeks; and, lastly, the calculation of annual income for couples who haven't been a couple for a full year will change to ensure that childcare support eligibility more accurately reflects the proportion of time they've been together.

The sector worked with the department on this bill, and they are supportive of it. Labor will support these changes because they will fix some of the design flaws in the government's system and will help get vulnerable children the support they need. But, having said this, the Liberals are just tinkering at the edges of a seriously flawed system and are not invested in supporting service providers, educators, families or even employers by providing a world-class, accessible early-childhood education system.

Early evaluations of the supposedly overhauled package this government introduced in 2018 indicate that one in four families is worse off. A full evaluation report is due in 2021, but initial evidence demonstrates that the government has let down this sector and, importantly, the families that rely on these services. Many providers say the 2018 package was onerous and placed a heavy burden upon them. Providers expressed concerns about the IT system. Issues with the operation of the additional childcare subsidy were also reported, which, hopefully, today's bill addresses; and to date, whilst some providers have introduced shorter sessions, the charges for these services are often prohibitively high. Notably, only 41 per cent of families reported to the independent reviewers that the system has resulted in positive change for them. What we have seen is an IT system that has sent out blunt letters telling around 91,000 families to date that they owe the government money—without any explanation. This is just more evidence that the system is too complex and is not working for families.

In 2018 the government boasted that their new system would put downward pressure on fees and that they were driving down the cost of child care. But the reality is that CPI figures show that childcare costs increased 1.9 per cent in the December quarter of 2019 and had increased by 7.2 per cent in that 12-month period. Disgracefully, fees have risen by 34 per cent in seven years under this Liberal-National government. This is bad enough—in particular, punishing women who need to return to work. And now this pandemic is exposing the deep flaws not only in early childhood education but also in aged care. And who is suffering? Our youngest, our most vulnerable and our frontline workers.

The Minister for Education last year claimed that Labor plans for taxpayer funding of early education and care were 'communism'—and then COVID-19 hit and, suddenly, free child care sounded like a good idea. 'Centres would be opened and kept open, enrolments would be maintained, and staff would not be worse off.' But we know this is not the case. In today's Age we hear from several early years educators that their hours and pay have been significantly reduced or they have been stood down. It does not help that, on 20 June, the Minister for Education announced that JobKeeper was being ripped away from this sector. The Prime Minister's rescue package for Victoria's early years sector has also failed to protect the jobs of many early years educators. The Prime Minister boasted at the announcement on 5 August that the package would secure childcare spots while ensuring no centre closed or no jobs were lost. It would be a triple guarantee with no job losses and no fees for parents. But what we are finding is that this triple guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on.

These rushed measures are complex and confusing, leaving many service providers wondering how the package will ensure their ongoing viability. We know that attendance numbers are significantly reduced. Staff are being sent home. Some of our most underpaid workers are now experiencing financial hardship from significantly reduced hours and no JobKeeper assistance. And many casual workers from the sector have joined the unemployment queue.

Importantly, the transition payment introduced as part of the Victorian package was meant to be a replacement for JobKeeper and directly protect the wages of early years educators—or so we thought. Nothing in the transition program ensures that any of the money is used by service providers to protect educators take-home pay. The transition payments included a so-called employment guarantee stating that service providers must maintain existing employment levels and may not terminate an employee other than for misconduct.

This guarantee is just not working. One local educator who wanted to remain anonymous because she was afraid of losing her job said: 'I was stood down with no pay on Tuesday. I was waiting for government support but received none. It has been an extremely stressful time for myself and my colleagues, some of whom are single mums. We've been caring for the community's precious children while feeling that weight of uncertainty, stress and doubt about our own financial future. How are we going to pay the bills? Most of us used annual leave in the first lockdown. I will have to apply for Centrelink to survive. The government has let us down.'

The government are not protecting workers, services or families with their flawed system and their flawed transition programs for Victorians who are doing it hard during this pandemic. We know that with a stroke of the pen the Treasurer can extend JobKeeper to all early-years educators and give these frontline workers some certainty. We ask the Treasurer to act now, because two-thirds of the sector have no protection and are not covered by the Prime Minister's so-called guarantee.

The plight of the sector in Victoria aside, the broader picture is that free child care ended on 12 July and JobKeeper assistance for the sector ended on 20 July, despite the fact that it was supposed to remain until September. Early-years education services providers are receiving only 80 per cent of their usual fee revenue as the system transitions back to the so-called normal system, but our economy isn't anywhere near normal, with double-digit unemployment and nearly 20 per cent underemployment. It is scandalous that this government thinks it can snap the early childcare system back to normal when many families cannot afford the gap fees and are losing jobs. It means parents rebuilding their small businesses or women who wanted to return to work will instead have their little ones around their ankles rather than in care, like Dee Behan, who was quoted in an ABC story on 9 June. Dee had a six-month plan to rebuild her graphic design business, but now a return to the co-payment means withdrawing her son, Max, from care again. Parents like Dee needed the free child care. The problem was that it excluded many parents returning to work and many providers were left with less revenue than they previously had or were shut out of the system altogether. Now we're returning to the system built for five per cent unemployment, not the 12 per cent we're currently experiencing along with massive underemployment.

This bill we are debating is just another example of legislation that can only visit the edges. It does little to fix the mess of the government's own making—in this case, the additional childcare subsidy for child wellbeing. Labor supports fixing this mess, but there is so much more to do. I call on the Morrison government to do its job and fix the system, because it's not working.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope you can all hear me from one of Melbourne's finest suburbs, St Kilda. I'm very pleased to be representing this local area, and I thank all of the staff and all of the people in the parliament who have helped make this virtual contribution possible. These really are historic times that we're all living in right now, and I know that the efforts of many to make our democracy tick over are very much appreciated. So I start my contributions by saying thank you. I also would like briefly to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land I'm calling from, the Boonwurrung people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

This pandemic really has tested many of us. It has brought out the best in many Australians, and we've seen our frontline workers really do more than their fair share in this pandemic. But, unfortunately, it hasn't brought out the best in some members of our government. Unfortunately, I would say that the minister responsible for this area has had some really disappointing decisions that have been made. I'm very pleased to see the shadow minister in the chamber with us this afternoon, because she has been a consistent voice of reason throughout this entire pandemic and someone who has stood up for educators, for parents and for people in my electorate, who are some of the hardest hit in the entire country. So I want to thank her for all of her efforts.

This bill, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020, is one that the Labor Party does support. But, just as the second reading amendment put forward by the member for Kingston, the shadow minister, says, this issue is far bigger than just this bill, and there are serious issues in our early childhood education and childcare sector that we need to be addressing right now. Despite the government opposing the wage subsidy from the very beginning of this pandemic, despite the government pushing back against the suggestion of the Labor Party and the broader labour movement that we needed a wage subsidy, I think all Australians were relieved when the Prime Minister and the Treasurer announced there was going to be a wage subsidy during this pandemic. At the time Australians were relieved that that wage subsidy was going to last until at least September. But, unfortunately, despite the government committing to the wage subsidy, JobKeeper, being around until at least September, only four days after making that promise, the first group the Prime Minister decided to take the JobKeeper subsidy away from was our early educators and childcare workers.

There are many people around the country who are really struggling because they're being left off receiving the JobKeeper subsidy. In my electorate we've had job losses in the university sector and in local government, and arts and entertainment is one of the hardest hit industries. But there is a certain sense of cruelty to pick on this industry and to pick on the workers who, throughout this pandemic, have put themselves on the frontline to look after our children, to make sure they are having the experiences that they should be having at this time, only to be told that their job security and their JobKeeper subsidy was going to be taken away. Unfortunately, it's a reflection of the government's attitude to this sector and to the workers in this sector, who really deserve a whole lot more. We didn't get everything right at the last election, but I would say that our policy to support the workforce, to support our early education and childcare workers with a much-needed pay rise and with the respect that they deserve in their industry, is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer breaking their promise to support the workforce all the way up to September. It couldn't be more stark, and it couldn't be a more important time for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to be supporting this female dominated workforce.

The other point I wanted to make was to show how important our early education sector has been in this pandemic. In the great electorate of Macnamara, the biggest local council authority is the City of Port Phillip. Last year they decided they were going to look at potentially taking council out of the council-run childcare services in the City of Port Phillip. It was a really frustrating time and it was a really disappointing move by the council, because the council-run services are really good, and the council supported services, the community-run services, are also of an extremely high quality, with two services in my local electorate having an 'excellent' rating—and it is quite rare to have that in services so close to each other. These are extremely high quality services that are relatively affordable compared to some of the local for-profit providers. The City of Port Phillip decided to look at potentially privatising of some of their services. This was a move that divided the council. After this move was announced, a group of local parents and educators, along with union representatives and the state member for Albert Park, my good friend Martin Foley, and I got together and decided to push back against the City of Port Phillip taking themselves out of the council-run services.

I am so pleased that, in the last couple of weeks, the City of Port Phillip announced that they will not be proceeding with this plan. The Save Childcare in Port Phillip group had a decisive victory in standing up for their local community and reversing the council's decision to take themselves out of the council-run childcare services. The council reversed their decision because they recognised the importance of our early education sector in these times. At the moment child care is not just about giving parents a chop-out during the day; child care is a pathway back to work in these extraordinary times. Child care and early education are crucial to our essential workers being able to make sure supply lines and healthcare services are available to the broader community. Our childcare and early education services are the linchpin that keeps society together. I think that was reflected in the City of Port Phillip's decision to maintain their commitment to early education and child care. But, unfortunately, it hasn't been reflected in the federal government's decision to rip JobKeeper away and provide uncertainty to our workforce and to our staff, who are doing a herculean job over this period.

I want to acknowledge the member for Kingston, who joined me at a roundtable in my electorate where we met with a combination of council-run and community-run services, family daycare providers, union representatives and a really impressive and committed bunch of early educators, who all shared the shadow minister's commitment to the sector. They were speaking not about their own welfare but about the welfare of their industry and the welfare of their colleagues.

I just want to reiterate a point that's been made to the government a number of times. The Labor Party hasn't been seeking to undermine the government's effort; we've been seeking to stand up for the interests of those in the industry. Throughout this pandemic the government seems to be consistently forgetting that we need certainty for our workforce, and we need certainty for our providers and parents. In the last month or so Victoria has experienced probably the darkest and hardest days in our state in a very, very long time. I can see that a lot of my colleagues are joining in virtually today. As MPs and representatives in this place, we are deeply concerned about our communities, we're deeply concerned about our elders and we are concerned that this pandemic has stretched people's patience and has taken so much away from so many.

The least we can do is provide the certainty that the government showed at the start of this pandemic to not only make sure that young families have the support they need to get their kids into early education services but also to make sure that staff and the workforce receive JobKeeper. Instead, despite all of the turmoil and struggle that we've seen in Victoria, the government has disappointingly decided to snap back to the Liberal Party's politics of old and to take certainty away from our workforce and our providers. It's been really difficult to watch and really frustrating, at times, for families. The Labor Party supports this bill, but, to be fair, we believe that the government needs to do much better in this sector.

The government fought against the JobKeeper subsidy from the very beginning, reluctantly introducing it after much pushing by the broader labour movement. JobKeeper has made a deep and profound difference to the lives of Australians. It was extremely disappointing to have JobKeeper removed from early education services, especially for Victorians. Members of the Victorian community can't even have friends and family over for dinner, yet the government wants to reduce the only thing that's keeping them above ground—their JobKeeper support payments. I think the Leader of the Opposition is a hundred per cent right in saying that the circumstances of this pandemic need to be taken into consideration when the government decide on the sort of support they are giving to the Victorian community and the Australian community. Now is not the time to be taking away. Now is the time to be supporting Victorians and now is the time to be supporting people in our workforces right across the country, and it is absolutely the time to be supporting our early educators, because for too long they have worked too hard for too little and have been underpaid and undervalued in our society. I think that we, as a parliament, need to not just take steps to support families but take more profound steps to support our early educators.

As a political tragic sometimes, I was watching the Democratic convention, in the background, over the last week, and one piece of policy that stuck with me was from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, when she spoke about child care. We often talk about infrastructure and how crucial it is. The more roads we build, the more train lines we build, the better it can help support businesses and the better it can help support companies to move freight, to trade, to move products. Well, child care is the infrastructure for families. It is the infrastructure for our families to be able to get back to work. It is the basic foundation that we need to be setting up in our society to make sure that parents, and especially women, can return to the workforce.

We are the poorer for putting up barriers to women returning to the workforce. Throughout this pandemic, there have been too many Australians out of work. We need to be doing everything we can as a society to make sure that there are pathways back to work for Australian workers. While it has been wonderful, personally, to be able to stay home and spend more time with my family, it is a cold hard fact that women do more than men at home in our country and they do it without pay. As men, we can absolutely do better at this and it's something that we need to do better at. But as a society, we need to make sure that the pathways back to work for Australian women are not blocked by unaffordable childcare and by the sorts of barriers that we're talking about today.

We need to be supporting our early educators, we need to be supporting families and we need to be supporting people throughout these extraordinary times. What that looks like is certainty. What that looks like is making sure that we do not snap back—that we are assessing the pandemic on the times that are before us. In Victoria, now is not the time to be making families who are doing it tough try and stretch themselves to get back into unaffordable child care. Now is the time to be pushing for reform in the sector. Now is absolutely the time to be supporting our childcare workers and early educators. Now is the time to give them the respect and admiration that they have been due for, for a very long time.

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

I thank the member for Macnamara for his contribution. The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I call the member for Lalor.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's an absolute privilege to speak today on this piece of legislation because it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the constructive way that Labor, as an opposition, has worked with various ministers in the early education and childcare sector over seven long years. I see in the chamber the member for Kingston, the shadow minister in this space, and I want to call out the amazing way she works with government and the way she constructively goes through the detail, line by line, on every amendment they've brought into this chamber that reflects in the portfolio that is early education and childcare.

I'm really pleased to follow the member for Jagajaga and the member for Macnamara this afternoon—of course, all of us in the virtual parliament, at home in Melbourne, because of the position our state finds itself in. We're hopeful, at the moment, that we have turned a corner, but obviously we've still got a lot of work to do to ensure that our great state can get back to where it needs to be in terms of COVID-19. But it is that that drives me every day and has done since this pandemic began, because of course this piece of legislation has been talked about for some time. It's an amendment that was called for by Labor because this government failed to see that its standard legislation had left out some of the most vulnerable children. So I'm pleased to join my colleagues today to support this and say, 'Good; you're going to put back the things that needed to be put back to look after our most vulnerable children, to look after families who have interactions with DHHS and who have very difficult lives, and to ensure that those children, those very young children, have access to early learning and to a system and environment that gives them stability in their lives.'

I don't have to remind the chamber that, having been an educator for decades, I absolutely understand how important that stability is in young children's lives. We know what the research says. We know how important early learning is. We know that it sets children up for life. We also know that early education and child care is sometimes where the troubling things in a child's life are identified. It's incredibly important that these vulnerable children have access to that and that their families have access to the support that they need, which often comes from an observation in an early learning childcare setting. It often comes from the people working with those children. Alarm bells might ring, perhaps about a progression in terms of a milestone in speech, movement or health. So this is incredibly important.

I'd like to stress again the constructive way in which we've gone about pointing out the errors when the government changes legislation in this space, pointing out to the various ministers, across the seven years that I've been in the parliament, when they really don't understand the finer detail, particularly in this policy space. Of course we're going to support this amendment. We want to see those young children accessing early learning. I want to see them in the childcare centres in my community. In the community that I represent, we have high numbers of children who would be accessing early learning through this process. These are families where income is sporadic and where moving from place to place because of high eviction rates is common. Those sorts of things can cause enormous chaos in family lives, and this sort of capacity to have their very young children in early learning is absolutely critical.

The notion of us being a constructive opposition is incredibly important and pertinent at this time. It has been particularly critical since February, when the pandemic began and decisions were being taken. It has been our role to be that constructive opposition, to look at what the government is putting forward, to try and assist the government by pointing out what may not be painfully obvious to them but is painfully obvious to us. The first of those things, in the early education space, has been around the provisions that were made. The member for Kingston has been calling out where those omissions were, foreseeing the problems that were going to arise under the different models of funding and support for this sector throughout the pandemic. We know that early childhood is a critical federal responsibility and we know that, in that first wave of the pandemic, there was a litany of woes. In an electorate like mine, with over 60,000 families and the highest number of childcare educators in the state of Victoria living in just one of the suburbs that I represent, it is absolutely critical that the government get the support from us to get this right. And it has been a struggle. No matter which program was put in place to support this sector through the pandemic, there have been holes.

I'd like to think that the work of the member for Kingston and all on our side of the parliament, reaching out, has been critical in this. I know that in my electorate I reached out to my childcare providers, be they family day care or more traditional long-day-care centres, so that we knew what was going on and so that we understood the impacts of each piece of legislation being felt across the sector in various areas. Of course the demographics in each area are very different, from community to community, and therefore the funding models need to be very different. That has been really important work, but what we haven't been able to convince the government on, and what saddens me today, is that the premature withdrawal of JobKeeper from this sector has left communities like mine grappling with incredible issues. This government has pitted families, educators and providers against one another in these last few weeks here in Victoria. We've got educators losing hours, being stood down. JobKeeper is supposed to be about a connection to the employer. It's supposed to be a wage subsidy so that, across the other side of the pandemic, the business will survive and their relationship with their employees will survive. That's what it's supposed to be about. So withdrawing JobKeeper earlier than in any other sector was an error on this government's part, and it's an incredible error that it hasn't been fixed in Victoria with the rise of the pandemic here.

At the moment, across this space we've had different providers trying to explain to us, as local members, what it means for their particular centre. In an area like mine, without getting above 80 per cent attendance, 80 per cent capacity, in their centres, all centres could very well become unviable, so they are really stressed at the moment. The worst of this is that it isn't just the families and the educators; it's also the centres. In my area, I need those centres to survive. We all do. We need those centres to be open. We need those family day care providers to be working on the other side of this, when parents get back to work outside of their homes, for those who are working at home, and for when parents get back to work full stop, because they've been on JobKeeper or they've been on JobSeeker without having those hours.

When we went through the first wave, obviously JobKeeper was there for the childcare sector, but there were still issues. There were issues around parent contribution. Then we had the minister come out and announce free child care, because he took away the need for parents to pay the contribution. It was a great sugar headline, absolutely great—'Waive the fees for all parents'—but this did not work for every centre. In various parts of the community, people were celebrating, and, in others, they were wondering how their business was going to survive, wondering how they were going to pay their employees. So it's been in the implementation of these ideas around the sugar headline of free child care where the issues have really come, and there's been massive confusion, where the changes made by Minister Tehan have worked for some but not for others. Then we get newspaper articles, with one centre saying, 'This is terrific,' while, in another geographic space, it's a bad news story.

Then we had JobKeeper withdrawn prematurely, and in Victoria we are acutely aware of this failure. During the second lockdown in Victoria, I have, ringing my office every day, educators who've lost hours now. I have educators who have been stood down. I have centres concerned that they will not make it across the bridge to a post-pandemic world. And I have families—I'll give you one example. I was contacted last week by a couple. One parent works at our local hospital. The other parent works in the public sector somewhere else. They both work shift work. Under this new system, they feel deeply affronted because no-one understands their situation. They work shift work. They've got a child in child care, and they're only needing at the moment to access child care probably two days a week, because they've got their shifts so that one of them is home more often. They're being asked to pay for the full week. Their question is: why, as essential workers, are they being asked to pay the full-week parent contribution, while other people they know, who are not working, are having their fees waived, and people who are working from home but choosing not to send their children to child care, or are not able to send their children to child care because they're not essential workers, are having their fees waived and their spaces held?

These are the fine details that the member for Kingston gets herself across so quickly. These are the important things that this government needs to understand.

The Prime Minister said that he would give a triple guarantee. He said no-one would lose their job. He said it won't cost parents more. He said centres can decide whether they ask for the gap or not. He actually set up a system where he put the educators, the providers and the parents at odds with one another. Of course we can tell both sides of this story. When I'm talking to my local providers, they're saying to me: 'I don't have an option but to stand my staff down. That is the only way this business, this centre and this educational facility will survive and be there on the other side.' So it isn't just bad for one; it's pitted all three against each another.

This is the reality that we are living and it is a disaster in this sector. It will vary. It will be patchy from geographical place to geographical place, but for my community this is a terrible story. We have educators across my community who don't have a job. How do they stay connected to employers? They're now applying for JobSeeker where they can and where they meet the criteria. None of them feel comfortable and none of them feel that their job has been guaranteed by this Prime Minister. They feel incredibly let down.

Some families have their contributions waived; other families do not. The sector is beset with issues that are hurting families. They're putting educators onto JobSeeker, if they're eligible, disconnected from employers. The centres are facing choices between their employees and their viability, between charging gap fees and pressuring families, all while we are battling a global pandemic.

We are all being flexible, and this minister needs to advocate to the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to put JobKeeper back. This Victorian minister needs to understand the impact in his home state for the people I represent and the people he represents. And I'll leave you with this one thought: I am tired—and I know many of my colleagues are—of the good-news Prime Minister, smirking when it's good news. But when it's bad news he's shirking because that's what we're seeing on the ground: a sugar headline but no detail; not there to do to implementation and the hard work of going through it line by line, line by line. When it's good news, this PM smirks. When it's bad news, this Prime Minister shirks.

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge that I am standing on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations, and I pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging. I would like to thank especially the Speaker, all the technicians and everybody who has worked hard to make it possible for me and others to have a video presence in this 46th Parliament at this time.

I'd also like to acknowledge the shadow minister, the member for Kingston, who I would like to thank for her amazing passion and the hard work she puts into everybody in the sector—the providers, the families, the workers. It's untiring. It's infectious and it's really worthwhile, so thank you. I'd also say that it's very pleasing to follow the member for Lalor, herself an educator who understands only too well how important education is for our kids and for the future of this country.

Today I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. Labor is pleased to support this bill. It seeks to make a number of changes to the administration of the additional childcare subsidy or the child wellbeing payment. The additional childcare subsidy payment is a vital program that provides a safe and nurturing learning environment for children in extremely vulnerable situations at home. For most of these children it can be the difference between being able to stay at home or having to go into the child protection system. It is critical that the government treat this program with sensitivity and ensures families and providers are not overly burdened with unnecessary paperwork or administrative processes.

This Liberal-National government introduced a number of new requirements and rules that restricted access to the additional childcare subsidy in July 2018. As a third-term government, they like to bang the drum about cutting red tape. They do this constantly for their mates in big business, or for those wanting to get around environment laws or for bosses, but they go out of their way to increase red tape for vulnerable families and the childcare providers trying to help them. For that matter, they do it for workers, for anyone needing to rely on a social safety net. In the first six months of the new system, the number of children receiving the child wellbeing subsidy collapsed by 21 per cent. These numbers have since recovered to pre-July 2018 levels but only after significant efforts and resources from providers. When asked in Senate estimates if the department was concerned about the drop, they admitted they weren't and also confessed that they weren't even tracking if families had actually dropped out of the system.

During the Senate inquiry into the government's first round of changes to the childcare legislation last September, the stakeholders all expressed strong views that the additional childcare subsidy was not working in the best interests of vulnerable children. The Early Learning and Care Council of Australia, Early Childhood Australia and Goodstart all called on the government to fix the restrictions on the additional childcare subsidy. Labor will support these changes, because they do fix some of the design flaws in their new system and they will help to get vulnerable children the support they need.

It's clear to me that early childhood education, including child care, is the kind of sector that simply does not get enough attention in this place. It directly affects the lives of families every day. Educators are entrusted with our youngest and most precious kids and become part of the family. The cost of early education is a battle for nearly everyone I know. They sit at the kitchen table, deliberating over the bills, working out whether it's worth it. For so many families the cost of child care is the same amount that one of the working parents is earning. Often, it's the mum who decides that it will be cheaper to keep the kids at home and not return to work. My own daughter has two children and she and her husband work full time. We and the family and a lot of her friends all juggle one day of care a week for her, just so it's worth her time to go to work.

These things were true before the pandemic. But over the past few months the early education sector has been through absolute hell in my seat of Cooper. Right at the start of the pandemic, the childcare sector was one of the last things on the Morrison government's list of things to sort. It resulted in mass confusion, centres not knowing whether to open or close, parents not knowing whether to send their kids or not. It was utter chaos. I spent hours speaking to centres and to families trying to get them answers. Then we had, as usual, from the Prime Minister, a big announcement: free child care—no worries, everything will be fine. The free childcare policy did help families through a tough time but, crucially, the main feature of the Prime Minister's free childcare system was that providers weren't adequately paid for the cost of caring for children in their centres. This meant that a number of children and families were locked out of free child care and many services were driven to the brink of collapse. My office was flooded with calls and emails from early education centres that were struggling to keep their doors open after their funding was slashed. Centres were relying on JobKeeper payments to keep them afloat. I spoke to many family day care educators who didn't suffer a drop in enrolments but, under the Prime Minister's plan, were now expected to work for half their pay because they couldn't access JobKeeper, because the payment went to their service and had to be distributed to so many.

I also heard from many families who were being denied places, including healthcare workers who were asked to come back from maternity leave early to help with the crisis and who simply missed out. They couldn't come back because they didn't have child care. What a debacle. So much for us all being in it together. And then—bam!—we snapped back to the old system. Just as Victoria went back into our second lockdown and the country officially went into recession, the Prime Minister used the childcare sector as the test case for removing JobKeeper and returning families to high out-of-pocket costs for child care.

My community is doing it tough. Many have lost their jobs or had their hours cut as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. Mortgages and rent payments have been deferred, and families are barely scraping by. Nobody can pretend that things are back to normal. So now we have the worst possible outcomes for early childhood education: no JobKeeper to pay staff wages, fees too high for struggling parents to afford, falling enrolments and centres closing.

My inbox has been flooded with emails from workers—mainly women, I might add, because most early educators are women—who have lost hours, been stood down or know that pretty soon they won't have a job. They want to know: why them? Why can't they access JobKeeper? Why are they the only sector having their access to JobKeeper stripped from them early? Why isn't the work they do valued by Scott Morrison and his government? They are workers who have continued to work, to look after children, so that our health workers, our emergency service workers and our essential workers can also continue to go to work. They've been on the front line. They've been looking after our children when many of them have been quite frightened about the spread of COVID. I don't have answers for them. I tell them that they are heroes, some of the hardest workers I know and some of the cleverest, and that they deserve JobKeeper and they deserve job certainty. But that's not good enough. So I ask those who sit opposite: why are you preventing workers in a female dominated sector from accessing JobKeeper; and, crucially, why do you deny their ongoing requests for policies which would fix the early education sector?

We need to make sure that our early educators and childcare workers are paid in a way that reflects the value that they provide to the community. We know that those early years of learning are fundamentally important for all children for their chance of success and further education levels later in life, and we know that those early years are even more important for children who are vulnerable or who are enduring disadvantage. And yet the sector receives pretty much peanuts from this government. The rates of pay for early childhood workers are amongst the lowest in our economy.

This is a gendered issue. Ninety-six per cent of early educators are women, and, historically, their work has been undervalued and underpaid. As my good friend Emma Dawson from Per Capita points out:

Care is women's work, and women's work for millennia was done at home, unpaid and uncomplainingly.

…   …   …

The market that relies on the unpaid labour of women at home is completely unwilling to recognise the value of women's work, and so care work by women in the paid labour force is massively underpaid.

Coronavirus has absolutely rammed this point home. We've heard so much about shovel-ready projects to get the economy going and nothing about the benefits of early education. It is infuriating. Investing in education and child care is in fact one of the most important economic strategies for ensuring prosperity in future years. It ticks the boxes. It's an investment which is an economic stimulus because it increases jobs, and it increases jobs predominantly for women; it increases productivity; it helps women stay in the workforce; it's good for their families; and it's good for the economy.

Along with the requests for help from early educators, I've had so many emails from families, mainly from mothers, who can no longer afford the high cost of child care and, subsequently, are removing their kids from it. It's not surprising that many mothers conclude that working an extra day for no or virtually no take-home pay makes no sense. And, for families that have lost jobs or hours because of the pandemic, Australia's high out-of-pocket childcare costs are even harder to pay now.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a woman in my electorate. She's a single mother of a four-year-old son, who lives with a disability. This mum scrapes by with freelance work, but it's precarious and it's difficult. In those few months when child care was freely accessible, it suddenly all felt manageable. She developed her business to a level that meant she could actually get a decent income. Free child care to her was a lifeline. It allowed her some respite that she desperately needed and gave her son the opportunity to socialise and get the education that child care offers. My request to this government is: fix early education, give the Victorian workers access to JobKeeper now and do something about the exorbitant cost that is preventing women going back to work.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that I'm coming to you from Wurundjeri country in my electorate of Melbourne. I want to thank everyone who's taken steps to make remote attendance possible as we in Victoria deal with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis.

I want to say thank you to all of the childcare workers and educators in this country and especially those in Victoria. They are on the front line of dealing with this pandemic. They are taking steps that are akin to what many of our healthcare workers, educators, emergency services workers and others are taking, where they are putting themselves in situations where they are in close quarters with people who aren't part of their family and aren't part of their immediate circle, and they're required to do that as part of their job. Anyone who's spent any time in a childcare centre will know that being a childcare educator is a hands-on job—it comes with the territory. You have people traipsing in and out through the centre every day. Those workers have not only been dealing with the stress that all of us are dealing with as we tackle this coronavirus crisis but they have also had to put themselves in situations where they have wondered: 'Are we safe? Are we going to have a job? Are we going to be paid?'

From what came as a promising start from the government, where they came out in a big blaze of glory and announced a package of free child care, we've actually seen that, for many centres and for many workers, the last few weeks and months have been a time of additional stress. They've been dealing not just with the stress that we are all feeling as we deal with the coronavirus crisis but also with the economic pressures of wondering whether they're going to have a job and what kind of support they're going to be given. So I want to say to all of those educators and all of the staff in all of the childcare centres around the country, and especially in Victoria, who've continued to front up day after day: thank you. Thank you for everything that you've done and that you continue to do. I say that not only as a representative of an area that's got some magnificent childcare centres in it but also as a parent with two children. We've all been living through this, and, knowing what toll the stage 4 lockdowns in particular are taking on small children right across Victoria and Melbourne, I say thank you to all of those people who work in child care who've been helping us deal with all of that.

As I said, the situation facing childcare centres and childcare workers was initially helped by the government—at least, in announcement form—but, when looking at how the details of the support packages actually flowed through, for many it caused an additional amount of stress and put childcare centres under some extraordinary pressure. It's helpful that in this Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 the government is at least purporting to address some of those issues. But there are many things that the government could have done and could still do in Victoria that would make a huge difference to this very important sector.

When the government first announced its initial package, there were plaudits for the government finally stepping up to acknowledge free child care. On my first day of becoming Leader of the Greens, I called for free child care in this country and committed the Greens to working towards it. I didn't imagine it would come quite so quickly. I'm happy that it did, at least in rhetorical form. But, as we start to delve into the detail, we understand that this massive switch from the government to supposedly supporting free child care didn't necessarily do what it said on the tin. JobKeeper was not extended to many workers on temporary visas, and we saw that have an enormous impact at many childcare centres, because many childcare educators and workers had in fact been on temporary visas. The government's support package for child care was premised on centres being able to use JobKeeper for those workers.

When some of those workers were ineligible for JobKeeper, either because they were temporary visa holders or because they had been employed on a casual basis, that posed an immediate hit to many centres. I was talking to one centre in my electorate who said they were having to cut back on some basic essentials within their centre and were considering their viability for the future, basically because the government refused to extend the JobKeeper payment to all of the workers in the centre. Had the government done that, it would have made life a lot easier for centres. There is still time for the government to do it. But instead the government's gone in the other direction. It speaks volumes that the first area in which the government breaks its promise and starts withdrawing payments to workers is child care. For a Prime Minister who perhaps thinks that a woman's place is back in the 1950s and that women should not be in the workforce in the way they are now, I can understand, perhaps—

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

Order, Member for Melbourne! The minister, on a point of order?

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Reflecting on a member—the comments on the Prime Minister.

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

Member for Melbourne, it would assist the House if you would withdraw.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Given the circumstances, given that I am attending remotely, if it assists, I withdraw.

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

I thank the member for Melbourne.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I make the point that what we are seeing here is a political attack from the government, where the burden of the coronavirus crisis has fallen on women and young people. They have been the two groups that have been most significantly impacted by coronavirus. We know that women are losing work more. We know that young people are losing jobs more. We know the pathway back for recovery is going to be hard for them.

But, also, the government have deliberately chosen in their response package, their supposed industry support package, to hit hard the sectors where women work. They have pulled JobKeeper for the childcare sector—an area where women predominantly work. They have also chosen not to extend JobKeeper to areas like education in universities, where we know women work in large numbers. We also know that the government—with Labor's support, it might be said—is looking at cutting JobKeeper for people who were previously working low hours by working less than 20 hours a week—many of whom are underemployed and in insecure work. Women are twice as likely as men to be impacted by that cut that's looming and that may well sail through with the opposition's support. So the government has deliberately chosen to disadvantage women in the support packages and in the recovery packages. It stands to reason. I understand the government might object to that, because they find it uncomfortable for it to be pointed out to them in parliament that they are deliberately attacking women in their support and recovery packages, but that is what they are doing.

What is the answer? The answer, in this sector, in supporting women to not only make some real choices about whether they want to go to work, and how they want to incorporate work and care and family responsibilities, but also assist us to recover from the massive recession induced by coronavirus, is free child care. We need free child care in this country, and the government needs to start thinking about child care the way we think about primary schools. I acknowledge the significant work that was done by the previous Labor government to lift the educational standards and requirements on workers in child care; that was terrific work to start getting that to more closely align with what we might expect of educators in primary schools. But what we've now got to start doing is making the funding match that. We've got to have a bit of a mind shift. Not only will that help get women back into work, if they want to, and, most importantly, give women some real power to start making decisions about how they incorporate family, work and other responsibilities, but it will start providing employment that is COVID compliant, hopefully, as we come out of this recession. In other words, it is a great stimulus package and a great economic recovery package. We shouldn't just be focusing on granite benchtop grants, which no-one takes up, with this industry response that discriminates against those industries in which women work; we should be looking at expanding the education sector, the care sector and the health sector as ways of recovering from the coronavirus crisis. An investment in free child care is not only good for women and families; it will be good for our recovery and jobs as well. So I would urge the government, while it is thinking about these issues, to ensure that its recovery package does not discriminate against those industries where women work. We need to see the government step out of the 1950s and instead acknowledge that we have to support women's rights and give women power to make real decisions about returning to work and about how they incorporate family responsibilities as well.

I come back to where I started and say thank you to all the childcare workers and educators, who work under such difficult circumstances. I give a small hat-tip to the government for being dragged into giving some form of JobKeeper, but a huge recognition that the government has cut an industry that needs it. The fact that childcare workers were the first to be cut speaks volumes about this government's approach to gender and how it sees women. But we've got the opportunity to fix it and not only assist with the inequality crisis we have in this country but fix the economic crisis as well. The best way to do that is to invest to ensure that we have free child care.

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

It's a pleasure to stand in this House and speak about the Morrison government's commitment to looking after and supporting Australian families. During our time in office we've invested significantly to make child care more accessible and affordable. In the last financial year we invested over $8.6 billion and we'll be increasing this investment to more than $10 billion in the coming years. This has meant more families can access child care due to a reduction in out-of-pocket expenses. Typically, a family is better off to the tune of $1,300 per child per annum. In difficult times, this is a tangible and welcome benefit to families. But more can always be done. The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 makes a number of improvements in the operation of the additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) and the childcare subsidy and some other technical drafting improvements.

As I go around speaking to the childcare centres in my electorate of Forde, it's always a pleasure to see happy kids running around playing and learning. It's also a pleasure to talk to the owners and the managers of those businesses and see the delight and joy they get from looking after and teaching our younger citizens. I was recently at Good Life Kindergarten and Child Care at Park Ridge. One of the interesting things about their model is that, rather than have additional support in the learning space—they've got that well covered—they have a nurse on site. The nurse has identified, for a number of children, health issues that hadn't been picked up. Subsequently, they were able to refer those children to their GP and have some major health issues dealt with very quickly. It just shows that our childcare centres are at the leading edge of trying to do things differently, even during a difficult time for the Australian community and certainly for my community of Forde.

That centre only opened in February this year. They have continued to grow. They have been successful and they are talking about opening another centre not far down the road, at Chambers Flat or Logan Reserve, so there is a confidence that the model and the funding and the decisions that this government has made are supporting the sector. Not only is that confidence there with the owners and managers of our childcare centres, but, equally importantly, the confidence is there with the families in my community of Forde that they're prepared and have the financial resources to send their kids to child care. If those financial resources weren't there, these centres wouldn't be able to open and wouldn't run profitably. So the decisions that this government is making and the supports that we have put in place are supporting our childcare sector and, importantly, the families that need to have their kids in child care so that they can go to work to earn a living.

In just over 18 months of implementation of the childcare package, it's clear, as I've just outlined practically, that the government is delivering on its goal to create a more affordable, accessible and flexible childcare system. We've done this by listening to the stakeholders regarding areas of improvement, and the key measures contained in this bill are a direct response to that feedback received from the childcare sector on the operation of the additional childcare subsidy payment. This bill makes amendments to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 by extending the backdating of the additional childcare subsidy certificates and determinations from 28 days to up to 13 weeks in defined exceptional circumstances. It will also mean gaps in subsidy entitlement will be avoided where a child has been identified as at risk and it takes longer than 28 days to be able to provide a certificate or apply for a determination due to circumstances outside the provider's control.

Sadly, in my community and, I'm sure, in the communities of many colleagues here in the House, this issue of children being identified as at risk and ensuring they are properly looked after, cared for, put in the right place and taken out of harm's way is a sad reality of life. I've seen that firsthand with a number of close friends and what they have gone through with family members that have been in that situation, and they've had to bring those children into their care. I've seen the devastating impact that that can have on those families. But, equally, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank those families for their willingness to step in and help a child in need, difficult as it may have been. Equally, for these children being placed in child care early on, so we can get them back into their routine, which is important for these children, these sorts of measures, whilst they might seem small for many people, are very, very important.

This bill also extends the period from 13 weeks to up to 12 months in which additional childcare subsidy determinations can be made for certain defined classes of children, such as children on a long-term child protection order and those in foster care. I know also, from speaking to many families with children in this situation, that that's greatly appreciated.

The importance of these changes is that they seek to reduce unnecessary red tape for providers, families and state and territory governments, by no longer requiring them to reapply for subsequent determinations with supporting evidence every 13 weeks for such children whose circumstances mean that they would be at risk for longer periods of time. These changes, along with a number of other changes in this bill, go significantly towards improving transparency and efficiency and, importantly, the ability of our childcare service providers to provide the service that they need for our youngest citizens. They allow those children to get the maximum benefit available to them through the provision of high-quality childcare. Having their kids in child care allows families to continue to go out to work or do the other things that they might need to do.

In closing, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the childcare workers, both the owners of the childcare centres and their teams—their teachers; as I said in the case of Good Life, their nurse; and their administration staff—for the outstanding work that they do each and every day in our communities. I know from speaking to them that sometimes they are looking after kids that, sadly, come from very difficult circumstances. For many of those kids, it's their few hours in the day when they have a bit of normality and a bit of time when they can actually be children and not deal with the issues they face on a daily basis when they're at home.

I want to thank each and every one of the educators in the 80-plus childcare centres across the electorate of Forde and, equally, all of those in the childcare space across our country for the tremendous work they do every day. I commend this bill, in its original form, to the House.

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

I'm very pleased to rise this afternoon in the House to make a contribution to this debate on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 and to lend my support to the amendment moved by the shadow minister for early childhood education, Amanda Rishworth, the member for Kingston.

Early childhood education has been one of the worst-managed portfolios under this government. Even before the pandemic, it was a disaster area. It was complex. It was slow. It was smashing families' budgets. Indeed, out-of-pocket costs soared by 7.2 per cent in one year alone before the pandemic hit. So I certainly knew—and I'm sure my electorate is not unique in this respect—that families were already struggling with childcare expenses prior to COVID-19. In the face of the pandemic, enrolments plummeted in all of our early childhood learning centres, and the government announced its so-called free childcare plan. It may have removed the gap payment for parents, but let's be very clear here: 'free' it most certainly was not. Indeed, early childhood centres paid a very heavy price for the government's cynical marketing exercise, as they saw their income capped at 50 per cent of the usual fee. So childcare centres were actually being forced to cover the cost of the Prime Minister's promise. It was pushing many of those centres to the brink. This is the secret the government doesn't want you to know.

In my electorate of Newcastle I was contacted by a number of centres that were on the edge of closure as a result of the government's disingenuous policy. I cannot convey to the House the level of distress that both parents and childcare centre operators conveyed to me during those very, very anxious months and days. They told me that staffing each of the centres was also something of a nightmare because, as children returned to care, centres needed to employ more staff to be able to comply with ratios. But, of course, they couldn't do this, because of their newly reduced income and the fact that many of their staff were simply not eligible for JobKeeper. Many early childhood educators lost hours or were stood down at centres they worked for, and they struggled enormously during that time to keep their heads above water—both the providers and the staff who either were losing hours or, indeed, were stood down. Let's not forget that many of them were not eligible for JobKeeper at that time.

At the same time, I had families contacting me, and families also contacted many of my colleagues—certainly on this side of the House. Families were telling us that, because childcare centres had had their income capped, they weren't able to take children for any extra days. Parents who wanted to take up additional child care when their children weren't already enrolled found it virtually impossible to find a place. I know that the calls I was taking were replicated across the nation. I had calls from young mothers who'd had their names down at childcare centres since before the birth of their children. They were working in essential services.

Among the many examples were frontline health workers who got calls from their respective hospitals saying: 'We are desperate at this hospital. We need to get as many of our staff as possible back onto the floor for work. Can you possibly cut your parental leave short and come back to work early?' These are women who are extraordinarily professional in their approach to providing healthcare services in Australia, and of course they wanted to meet that call. They wanted to be able to return to work to do their bit to help prepare and ensure our health services were ready for whatever might be coming. Nobody quite knew at that stage what the demand was going to be, of course. So they did exactly what their employers had asked and tried to return to work early. The only trouble was that they simply couldn't go back to work unless they had some child care put in place, and that's when these women would make call after call to centres trying to get a placement, only to be told, 'Sorry.' Despite the fact that those early learning centres had very few children, they weren't taking new kids, because they had had their income capped and it was economically unviable to take on additional children at the time. I think that example is a very good illustration of just how dependent the productivity of this nation is on the participation of women in the workforce. Not only are we at least 50 per cent of the population but we're important contributors to the economic productivity of this nation, and, if you cannot access quality, affordable child care, it is very difficult for you to make that contribution to the economic productivity of Australia.

So parents, as I said, were telling me that they wanted to take up child care but they simply couldn't. Their children had not already been enrolled. They were trying to get them enrolled but found it virtually impossible to find a place, and this left many of my constituents stuck, unable to take on extra work when their workplaces desperately needed them to do so. So childcare centres were pushed to the edge and parents couldn't get the care they needed. That was the situation. Then, with the pandemic nowhere near over and without warning, the government declared that everything was fixed and fees would just snap back to what they were before, and suddenly Australian families again had to try to find the extra money in severely cash-strapped budgets. You can imagine the distress that caused Australian families.

The Parenthood campaign director Georgie Dent summed it perfectly when she said:

The idea that in four weeks time all of the households that are dealing with job and income losses will be in a position to 'return to normal' is fantasy.

Well, well said, Ms Dent. But, of course, it gets worse because in its wisdom the Morrison government also announced that early childhood educators would no longer be receiving JobKeeper payments. In the middle of what was an understood agreement, they'd been told—and indeed there'd been an earlier promise—that JobKeeper would stay in place until the end of September. But here we are ripping the rug from underneath early education and early educators in Australia, telling them: 'No, from now on JobKeeper payments are stopping. We're going to be pulling them up early.' And every thinking person in Australia at the time asked: how utterly senseless is this policy move from the government—cutting off the wages of the very people we rely on to look after our children in the middle of a pandemic?

I mean, seriously? Did the government take no advice? Did the government not listen to Australian women as to what was happening in their everyday lives at that time? Truly, this was reckless, indeed, bordering on insanity when we heard that policy announcement, that flip-flop change in policy, for early childhood educators. If there is any service that should be declared essential and protected at this time, it is child care.

Now, let's be clear: no other sector has had JobKeeper ripped away early. It strikes me as worth noting in this House that this is a sector that has an overwhelming number of women in its workforce. It is remarkable that this government has been so deaf to the concerns of Australian women and their families throughout this pandemic. It is remarkable that the government seems oblivious to the pink recession that is underway in this nation. It is remarkable that this government thinks that the very first cohort of workers that you should pull the wage subsidy from in the height of the pandemic would be the women, and they are predominantly women, who are educating the zero to five-year-olds, our children, in this nation. They're the people you think it is okay to chop off at the knees in the height of a pandemic when they had no idea as to how they were going to actually keep going either in the workplace with reduced hours or indeed having lost their jobs altogether.

So, despite the government saying how important child care is during these terrible times, it was the childcare workers who were the first, and indeed only, group to have been cut off from this important wage subsidy. Little wonder that Australian women were sitting up and taking note at that point, trying to figure out how this government could be so profoundly deaf and oblivious to the lived experiences and realities for them at home. It is not surprising that the educators and the centres they worked for felt utterly betrayed and abandoned by this government. In making these choices the government has displayed wanton disregard for the critical importance of early childhood education and the key role it has played in laying the foundations for our children to lead happy and successful lives. Of course, things were nowhere near fixed, which anyone from even the most casual of observations could see.

The future for the sector is still enormously uncertain. In Victoria, the situation is particularly bad. With average centre attendance levels of between 25 and 30 per cent, many educators are having their hours reduced or cut entirely, and, because the majority of educators are casual or part-time workers, they have no protections against being stood down. Many of these workers are now wondering how they will continue to pay the mortgage or the rent and keep their bills up to date. What a shoddy way to treat your so-called essential workers, Mr Morrison. At this point, it is also important to note that, as with so many things during this pandemic, this pain is disproportionately felt by women. As I mentioned earlier, 95 per cent of the early childhood education workforce is women. Throughout this crisis, Australia has relied on women to care for us and protect us from COVID-19, but now women are bearing the brunt of government decisions that have left them out in the cold again and again and again.

In summary, this government continues to make a mess of early childhood education. Australian families need quality, affordable care, and Australian early childhood education centres and their staff need certainty that they will be viable into the future. It's well past time for the Morrison government to deliver.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up, I thank those members who have spoken on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 for their contributions to this debate. The Australian government's primary aim has been and continues to be to support families and the childcare sector during the COVID-19 crisis and to ensure that quality early childhood education and care is available to vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families. Through the ECEC Relief Package, over 98 per cent of childcare providers kept their doors open and provided free child care to the children of essential workers, vulnerable children and children whose families have an existing relationship with the service. The bill clearly shows that, with the return to the demand driven childcare subsidy on 13 July, this government is committed to improving access to child care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families and to cutting red tape for families and childcare providers.

Since the implementation of the childcare package, it has been clear that the government is delivering on its goal to create a more affordable, accessible and flexible childcare subsidy system. We have been listening to stakeholders regarding areas of improvement, and the key measures contained in this bill are in direct response to feedback from the childcare sector. The key measures contained in the bill will benefit families and childcare providers by extending the backdating of additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) certificates and determinations from 28 days to up to 13 weeks in exceptional circumstances and by extending the period, from 13 weeks to up to 12 months, that additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) determinations can be given for children on a long-term child protection order, clarifying that a provider may be eligible for additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) in respect of certain defined classes of children, such as foster children. Notably, the amendments also continue to maintain appropriate safeguards to support the integrity of the additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) payment.

Schedule 2 to the bill seeks to modify the calculation used for childcare subsidy balancing, for individuals that change their relationship status through partnering, separation or bereavement, to bring the calculation into line with other government payments. These amendments have already been progressed as part of the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus (Measures No. 2) Act 2020, which received royal assent on 9 April 2020. I will therefore be moving government amendments in the committee stage to remove schedule 2.

In conclusion, this bill demonstrates the fact that the government remains committed to making life easier for providers and vulnerable and disadvantaged families and continues to make improvements based on feedback on the childcare package. The changes in this bill will reduce regulatory and administrative burdens on families and childcare providers, support vulnerable and disadvantaged families to access quality early learning and child care and help parents to access financial assistance. I commend the bill to the House.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Kingston has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.