Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Minister for Education and Youth. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is supporting the childcare sector by keeping services open for essential care, keeping staff employed and easing financial pressure on families?

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wentworth for his question. He's a former diplomat, and now the member for Wentworth is an incredible advocate for the childcare centres in his electorate. As the member knows and as everybody in this House knows, child care is a critical part of our economy and our society. There are almost a million families who rely on the childcare system, and it's particularly important at the moment for those essential workers. There are 200,000 people that work in the childcare system, and many centres are owned by small family businesses. I want to say at the outset: thank you to all of those providers for continuing the work that you are doing. It's essential work that you are doing, providing valuable services for all of us.

During the pandemic, we've been constantly monitoring the financial situation with childcare providers to ensure that they can remain strong, viable and open. Up until just yesterday, we'd already provided $3 billion of additional support since the beginning of this pandemic. But, even over the last few weeks, we've been noticing attendance levels, particularly in greater Sydney, continuing to fall as the lockdown has gone on. And then, over the weekend, both New South Wales and Victoria gave additional health directives that children should not be attending childcare centres unless they were children of essential workers, which of course has a further impact on those childcare centres. Consequently, we stepped up yesterday and announced new additional support for those childcare services. That's an additional 25 per cent of revenue going to the childcare centres, and it's an additional 40 per cent of revenue which goes to the out-of-school-hours care providers as well. Of course, this is on top of the childcare subsidy, which will continue to flow even if the children aren't attending. That keeps those childcare centres open, that keeps them viable and that means that they can continue to be open for those essential workers who need those services in order to go to the hospitals to do their work—in order to be out in the community, serving us and keeping us safe.

I finally want to come back to my thanks to the childcare workers. They are very important workers. We've made this funding conditional upon headcounts being maintained. And we've also made the funding conditional upon gap fee waivers being put into place—that is, you only access the funding if parents aren't charged. Parents won't be charged, but we'll continue the flow of funding. This is a good package. It's good for the childcare operators, it's good for the families and it's good for the workers. (Time expired)