Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to incorporate the remainder of my comments.

Leave granted.

The remainder of the speech read as follows—

These programs will be delivered by a university qualified teacher, for 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year in the year before formal schooling.

This will be delivered in a range of settings, including long day care, to ensure it meets the needs of working families.

They also sit within Labor’s $55b Working Families Support Package, incorporating: much needed tax relief aimed at working families; the education tax refund; measures aimed at the housing affordability crisis; a fairer Medicare levy surcharge; and the Teen dental plan.

Today’s bill is an important step in making child care in Australia both accessible and affordable.

This is an important area of policy that represents an intersection of the government’s social and economic policy agendas.

Finally I want to make some comments acknowledging those who have enabled me to continue promoting my passion for social justice in this place.

Without the support of my family, extended family and broader family in the labour movement this would not be possible.

The labour movement remains another passion and I thank many, including state and federal colleagues, retired Senator Robert Ray, John Lenders, Jenny Lindell, Fiona Richardson but, also, in particular, Michael Donovan and Joe de Bruyn for their ongoing support and encouragement.

My family has grown in my absence but their support, willingly provided to me, can not be underestimated nor left unacknowledged.

My doctor suggested, half seriously, that I use my sabbatical to have another child but instead I became a grand-mother.

I very much value the life experience and balance provided by a full and active family life. (A detailed knowledge, from experience, of many areas of public policy has not hurt either.)

To my parents, Gavin and Shirley; Daryl, James and Madison; Ben, Leeamber and now Charlotte, thankyou for your ongoing faith and support as I re-enter public life once more.