Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It did not exist under you, Senator Lundy. We created the program; we are making it happen. In this year’s budget we have improved access to that program. I do not know what more one could do in these circumstances to deliver higher levels of affordable child care to those parents re-entering the workforce on a parenting payment.

The budget also funds improvements to compliance checking and further supports the quality assurance program. Those changes mean that the full value of the record level of expenditure in child care made by this government goes to support parents who use approved child care. Parents can be assured that there will be more rigorous financial compliance and checking. This will ensure that parents get even more value from the assistance that they receive through the child-care benefit. The government is also committed to a significant investment to introduce a new child-care management system to ensure that up-to-date and accurate information is available on the supply, demand and use of child care.

A few weeks ago I indicated to parents in the ACT how they could use this facility, particularly online, to work out where places are available in their particular community. That is of enormous benefit for those who have children reaching an age where they require child care. There is also a child-care access hotline—1800670305—available from 1 July. I warmly encourage people to use that service to find out where they can get those places and what the circumstances of access and government support programs are. Far from not advertising that fact, I have put out a press release to make it clear that those things are available. Senator Lundy is free to do the same thing and I hope as many members as possible on both sides of the house take the opportunity to tell people about the new accessible services and ways in which parents seeking support for caring for their children can access that support.

I think it is worth listing all of those things because this debate on the government’s provision of child care occurs in the context of a stark lack of alternatives—that is, we know what the government’s plans are and we know about the increase in the number of child-care places. We know that the 30 per cent rebate on the out-of-pocket expenses that parents meet in Australia, irrespective of the age of the child or the number of hours of care they receive, is available to parents. We know that there is now an uncapping of the number of places in Australia for family day care and out of school hours care.

We know about all of those things because they have been very widely broadcast in this budget and in previous budgets, but we do not yet know what the alternative policy is. We have heard a litany of complaints about access to child care in Australia, but we do not know how Senator Lundy’s Labor Party would actually fix those problems. I believe we are entitled to view this criticism with a great deal of cynicism because only a year and a half ago the Australian Labor Party had the opportunity to present an alternative vision for child care in this country and, frankly, failed miserably. I say that based on the very sorry story of the debate on child care that took place in 2004 under then leader Mark Latham. It is interesting that Senator Lundy in the debate today used the phrase: ‘the government’s measures, announced in the budget on Tuesday night, are a drop in the ocean’. It is a very interesting phrase because it was only a year and a half ago that the then-shadow minister responsible for child care, former senator Jacinta Collins, admitted on radio in September 2004 that Labor’s child-care policy ‘certainly is a drop in the ocean’ and has ‘not many places’. Those are the words that the then shadow minister responsible used in respect of the policy that had been announced not long before by leader Mark Latham.

Indeed, there was a very heated community debate about the inadequacy of the proposals that were put forward by the Labor Party to deal with the litany of problems that, before and since, they have been complaining about with respect to child care in Australia. Members of the Senate will recall that Mr Latham announced that a child-care policy under the Labor Party would consist of one free day of care—just one—in any given week. It was only for children aged three or four, and it was the case that that subsidy would be provided up to the amount of only $4.88 per hour. Anything above that it was up to the parents to meet. That policy went nowhere near addressing the issue of the affordability of child care, particularly for parents who seek full-time child care for extended periods of time.

In the debate this afternoon, Senator Lundy said that full-time child care is virtually out of the reach of middle Australia. I pose this question to Senator Lundy and to those who will come into this debate later: how would a policy of providing just one free day of care a week for only three- or four-year-olds up to the amount of only $4.88 an hour—I would like to know where you can find child care for $4.88 an hour in this town, Senator Lundy—help fix the problem of accessibility to full-time child care? Of course it would not. It would not have gone anywhere near fixing the problem, yet here we are being lectured to by the Australian Labor Party about how we are not doing enough to fix the affordability of child care. If you cost an alternative and put it on the table then we will have a real debate about where child care should be going in Australia, Senator Lundy. Then we will talk about what we should be doing to further broaden the accessibility of child care.