Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

It was not a fine government when you start talking about the sorts of things they did to working families. Can I just bring you back to Work Choices, what you voted for and did in that government and the damage that you did to working families in this country.

Senator Nash interjecting—

Senator Nash, I know you do not like the truth about what you did to working families through Work Choices, but that is the reality.

Senator Bernardi interjecting—

Even your mentor, Senator Minchin, has now accepted that you made a blunder with that particular policy. I would have thought you would have come round to that same conclusion yourself, Senator Bernardi. I thought you religiously followed everything your mentor—or should I say tormentor to some—does.

Over the next four years we intend to invest $20 billion in this area, $13 billion more than the last four years of the Howard government. We are providing record levels of assistance directly to families through the childcare benefit and childcare rebate. Over the next four years we are going to provide $16.4 billion in direct fee assistance for Australian families through the childcare benefit and childcare rebate. This is more than double the funding that was provided by the former coalition government. While the coalition government was perfectly happy to leave the childcare rebate capped at 30 per cent with an annual cap of just $4,354 per year, we increased the rebate to 50 per cent of the parents' out-of-pocket expenses and increased the maximum for each child in care to $7,500 a year. This represents a 72 per cent increase that has assisted more than 735,000 Australian families to pay for child care since July 2008.