Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

You would have every right to question the government’s commitment to working families after looking at the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Budget Measures) Bill 2010. The government is trying to slash the childcare rebate by $278 per child per year. This is a blatant attack on working families by the government and it represents a real kick in the guts to Australian working families. It is a heartless decision that strikes at the heart of the family budget and puts even further pressure on families who are already struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet.

The government has ripped into one of the most important items for ordinary hardworking Australians and pretends it is nothing. The government has abandoned its pledge to help working families when it comes to accessible and affordable child care and has put mums and dads out of pocket by an extra $278 per child per year. But we should not be surprised, because this broken promise only adds to other broken promises by the government.

For a family with two children, this budget cut will cost more than $500—that is, a family budget will be hit with $500 extra in childcare expenses. Any family that pays more than $57.70 per day in childcare fees for five days a week will be worse off under this change. On top of this, the childcare rebate will no longer be indexed to the CPI, like it has been in the past. What this means is that, as childcare expenses go up and up each year, Australian families will be left more and more out of pocket. Even the Henry tax review was urging for greater support. It suggested giving low-income families a 90 per cent subsidy for child care. But the government has done the very opposite and hiked up the effective cost of child care for those that depend on it most.

This latest attack on working families comes only a few weeks after the government broke another election promise by scrapping its plan to build 260 childcare centres. These 260 new centres were needed because there are already many families who have trouble finding an affordable spot in child care for their kids. Clearly the government does not really care about the extra costs and looking after working families in the area of child care when it goes back on promises like this.

The government has said it is committed to helping working families, but how are families supposed to go to work if there are not enough affordable childcare centres to look after their kids and it is too expensive for them? We know where this promise went: it went to the Labor election promise graveyard. Before Mr Rudd was elected in 2007, he said in a campaign ad:

… I believe you make your own luck.

He wasn’t wrong there! You have no choice but to make your own luck under the Labor government, because it has broken its promises in regard to child care and has slapped working families in the face with higher costs.

On budget night, when these stingy cuts to the childcare rebate were announced, Family First was the only party to speak up. There was little or no objection from any other party about the cut to the childcare rebate. It was Family First that first raised the issue. There was such an overwhelming public outcry against the government’s cuts to the rebate that the coalition finally took notice and pretended to care. I use the word ‘pretended’ because the pretenders, the alternative government, said they would also oppose the cut to the childcare rebate. That promise had a shorter life than any promise by the Rudd government. That is what you get when you are dealing with the hollow words of the two major parties.

Family First is the only party that is genuine about helping families. Family First will not be voting for this bill because it is a cruel bill that punishes families who need to put their kids in child care and hits them hard in the hip pocket. If the government wants to cry poor about needing the extra savings in the budget, perhaps it could stop feathering its own nest. It just stinks to think that this is the second year in a row that former Prime Minister Rudd—and Prime Minister Gillard, I am sure, is probably not going to go back on it—has increased staffing levels by more than 60 in the Prime Minister’s own department. It is a real smack in the face for all Australian mums and dads who will now be faced with higher out-of-pocket childcare fees when they see Prime Ministers feathering their own nest. At a time when Australians are told to cut back and make do, the excesses of a Prime Minister increasing their own staff is obscene. We raised this after the previous budget and we have raised it after this budget. It is incredible to think that, in the last two budgets, the Prime Minister’s own staff has increased by nearly 60 each time. That is excessive. The government cries poor and says that it just does not have the money to maintain the childcare rebate at the same rate but has no problem splashing out $18 million of taxpayers’ money to boost the Prime Minister’s office budget. I find the government’s priorities warped. This is a government that has clearly lost sight of helping its working families. Family First will not be voting for the stingy cut to the rebate, and I am surprised the opposition has gone for it.