Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is important to correct that slight misperception of Senator Jacinta Collins when talking about the economy doing well in Australia. Any independent commentator or independent observer knows that the strength of the economy lies in the foundation that was laid down by the previous Treasurer, Peter Costello, and Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, over in excess of a decade of strong, effective, capable, competent political and economic management and experience, which is sadly lacking in this nation currently. I am also slightly struck by the irony of Senator Collins utilising the term ‘crass political overlay’, but let me not go there.

This afternoon I asked Senator Arbib a question in relation to the potential for increases in childcare costs as a result of the government’s so-called reform program in childcare. The basis of the question, a perfectly reasonable one, stems from the fact that the much vaunted childcare policy of those opposite that was forced down the throats of Australian parents for months and months in advance of the 2007 federal election—discussions I had the opportunity to enjoy on Friday afternoons with Senator Wong during the campaign on ABC radio about the radical plan to slash childcare costs—is proving to be, unsurprisingly, entirely unfounded. Not surprisingly, we look like we are about to have another broken promise from this government, this time in relation to child care. This time there will be more costs on Australian families, more impost on their already struggling family budgets in the current economic environment.

We have been asking for some time now—I have had the opportunity to pursue it myself with officers in estimates in this portfolio area—how the government was actually planning to achieve its reform plans without increasing costs. When you institute a series of reviews and a series of proposals to reform a sector, those participants in the sector—parents in particular, who have to bear the costs—are entitled to ask how those reforms are intended to be implemented without increasing costs. In relation to the minister’s response to me and interjections from those opposite at the time, it is no answer to say, ‘We have made a promise in relation to the childcare tax rebate.’ That is not an answer to the question, because, no matter what you do in relation to the childcare tax rebate, parents will still have to pay increases if fees go up. The commitment was to slash parents’ childcare costs. We were told it was very simple and that it was very plain. That was the commitment: to slash childcare costs.

How can that be the case if parents are going to expected to pay for just some of the reform program? Let me cite a number of those examples: the potential for increasing staff ratios in childcare centres, the proposal to ensure higher staff qualifications and the proposal to insist on higher standards in centres. How is it possible to pursue that reform program without increasing the costs that parents will face? I think Australian parents, those with children in childcare centres, are entitled to ask that question. In this place, it is on their behalf that members of the opposition put that question, quite reasonably, to the Minister representing the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth here this afternoon.

We also have, as I cited in my question to the minister, an independent economic analysis prepared on behalf of Childcare Queensland, which indicates in the independent modelling that the potential annual increase for a parent who has just one child in care could exceed $3,000 a year. That is not an insignificant amount. Any parent facing that sort of cost, that sort of challenge, would be asking themselves how they are going to pay for that. What we are asking—reasonably, I think, and fairly simply—is how the government expects families struggling in the current environment to meet a price increase like that and how the government expects childcare centres, in the face of some pretty indicting material in this piece of research, to deal with these challenges as well. There is a startling lack of information available to the opposition and most importantly available to parents, who have every right to ask how they are meant to respond to these propositions. They should have been more adequately consulted.

Question agreed to.