Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Management System and Other Measures) Bill 2007 will help realise several substantial childcare initiatives for Australian families announced by the government. The new Child Care Management System, the CCMS, is the key in this agenda, providing a significant boost to the supply of information and accountability across the childcare sector. The CCMS is a national childcare computer system that will underpin the government’s projected $11 billion investment for the years in child care. Families, childcare services and government will all, under the CCMS, be able to base their operations on the very best information on childcare supply and usage that has ever been available across Australia. This is partly to provide simplified arrangements for childcare services to report to the Child Care Access Hotline so that families can get up-to-date information on childcare vacancies.

However, the CCMS will be just as important in simplifying and standardising the administration of childcare benefit for families. The information on childcare usage and fees will now be reported online by all approved childcare services directly to the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, and Centrelink. This will allow childcare reductions and weekly arrears payments to services to be calculated and paid swiftly. Also, information on families’ childcare usage and childcare benefit payments made on their behalf to the childcare services will now be directly accessible by families through an online statement. While the CCMS will reduce the administrative burden on childcare services and therefore benefit Australian families, the significantly changed arrangements for services’ interactions with government will be recognised by rolling out the new system progressively across childcare services from 1 July 2007 over a period of two years.

The CCMS will support the childcare compliance strategy announced in the 2006 budget to protect the integrity of payments made to families using child care. Those compliance measures are also provided by this bill. The compliance measures are aimed at the childcare benefit program, which is mostly delivered to families through their childcare services. Services must be approved to participate in the childcare benefit program and the approval is based on their compliance with certain conditions. This compliance system is now to be strengthened. As a result of the new compliance measures, combined with the benefits of the new CCMS, the risk of incorrect payments and fraud will be minimised. Improvements will be made to detect problems if they should occur. Childcare services’ awareness of their obligations and the consequences of non-compliance with their obligations will be increased because of the new measures.

A new civil penalties scheme is a major element of the compliance measures in the bill. The new scheme will allow a pecuniary penalty to be imposed on any service that contravenes a civil penalty provision, such as the new provision which puts an obligation on a service to provide information on the Child Care Access Hotline on time. This obligation reflects the importance of getting timely and up-to-date information into the hotline. If this information flow works well, families can readily find out about any vacancies at childcare services in their local area, and childcare place needs in a particular location can be assessed efficiently.

The new civil penalties scheme will operate in conjunction with an infringement notice scheme. If an infringement notice is issued to a childcare service, the service will have the option of either paying the lesser penalty set out in the notice or proceeding to a court to determine liability. The new civil penalty scheme and infringement notice scheme will be developed in future legislation to consolidate the range of penalties that may be applied to childcare services, relevant to the level of non-compliance. The two new notice schemes will not directly impact on families receiving childcare benefit. A family will only be affected where an approved childcare service consistently fails to comply with its obligations under the family assistance law, such as through the application of existing sanction provisions.

A further compliance measure in the bill will allow families to be notified if their childcare service should fail to comply with one of its conditions of approval, or have its approval suspended or cancelled. Families are entitled to know if this occurs because their childcare benefit may stop and they may become liable for the full fees if they stay in the service. As it is only fair, the bill will allow this information to be passed on to families.

Further childcare measures relating to compliance and other matters are included in this bill—for example, amendments to the absence provisions for childcare benefit. These amendments will reduce the administrative burden on both families and services by providing for childcare benefit to be paid for the first 42 days of absence from care for each child, regardless of the reasons for the absence and without the need for documentation. Other similar amendments are made by this bill.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.