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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Dominique from Port Melbourne works in the higher education sector. She says that half of her pay after tax goes straight to child care for her two children, which is almost the same as the family's weekly mortgage payment. Why did the Prime Minister design a childcare scheme in which fees are so expensive that they cost almost as much as a family's mortgage?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Macnamara for his question and remind him and the families that he represents of the $900 million that we have particularly dedicated to communities in Victoria when it comes to accessing child care. It's very important that those high-quality early learning and care centres are open at the other side of this pandemic. It's vitally important that the educators are supported, as they are, by JobKeeper, and it's vitally important for the constituents and the families that rely on child care that we as a government care about tax cuts, that we care about giving them back more of their money, that we care about affordability. That's why, when we designed the childcare system over two years ago, we had that very much in mind. We recognised that workforce participation was vital, and, as I said, that was part of the reforms that we had in mind.

Our tax cuts reinforce these benefits for families because they recognise that there are women who don't have children, that there are women who choose childcare outside the system, and that there are mums and dads who stay at home, and that's why our tax cuts are supporting those families. The advantage is that they don't impose choices on families. I just want to mention that, side by side with the early education and care system that we introduced following the reforms in 2018, and make the point, as I have done previously—but Labor doesn't seem to be listening to it—that what we have done is deliver a 3.2 per cent reduction in out-of-pocket costs. What we have done is introduce a means tested model, because we recognise that these are difficult decisions for families and we should support them in the best way possible, but we should support families on middle and lower incomes for whom child care can be vital in the development of their children, and that's what we're doing with means testing. And remember that 84 per cent of all families never reach the childcare cap, so the vast majority of families are being extremely well supported by our government.

Going back to female participation—I want to end on this point—in designing the system, of course female participation in the workforce was vital, so we are delighted that the proportion of female parents reporting more than 48 hours of activity a fortnight rose from 56 per cent prior to the introduction of the package to 63 per cent in November last year. We will continue to work with the wonderful people who are part of our early education and care system as we support them, their families and the people that the member represents.