Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the government's plan for cheaper child care benefit Australian families and the economy?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Tangney for his question and for his passionate advocacy of cheaper child care to benefit his electorate. What we know is that cheaper child care will be good for productivity. It'll be good for workforce participation and good for population growth. It's good for families. It takes pressure off family budgets. It is also, of course, good for children, given that 90 per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years.

Last week, I had the opportunity, with the member for Macnamara, of visiting the Avenue Children's Centre & Kindergarten. There I met Louise Hird with her son Jack and Laura Hill with her son Levi. It was Halloween. The kids were dressed up as superheroes. They were all very keen. What the parents there were keen on was the fact that they now have a government that recognises the importance of early learning. The workers—the educators—were keen as well, about the fact that they now have a government that respects the work that they do.

The member for Boothby and I then went on to Goodstart Early Learning in Somerton Park. The kids there were growing their very own vegetable garden, learning about food nutrition.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Nationals!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were also learning about cooperation and the skills that you learn at an early learning centre. This is something that parents value and, certainly, this government values. I also met Honey and Chilli, the centre's little guinea pigs. Kids get to take turns taking them home, because many of the kids at the childcare centre don't live in houses where they are allowed to have a permanent pet. It makes a big difference to them.

I even went to Baringa in the member for Fisher's electorate last week as well. There, at the Sunshine Coast, we have a growing community full of families, who said to me, very clearly, 'Thank you for the government's action which will make child care cheaper, which will be able to help—

Baringa's on the Sunshine Coast in a region, in Queensland.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Nationals will cease interjecting. The Leader of the Nationals is warned.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do have to educate those Queenslanders opposite about where places are. This is a brand-new centre in what is a growing new suburb of Baringa. I thank the children there for giving me a book called If I was Prime Minister. They wrote and illustrated it themselves. We won't be giving free ice cream or bringing back dinosaurs, but we can make child care cheaper.