Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am absolutely astounded that this debate has degenerated into a personal attack on our Prime Minister and former education minister, who has been absolutely resolute in her support of Australian families. Whilst everybody is entitled to their own opinion, I am not sure they are entitled to their own facts, so I would like to put the record a few facts about what we in the Labor government have done in respect of looking after families and in particular I will be referring to child care. Take paid parental leave. We have delivered on Australia's first paid parental leave scheme. Eligible working parents are paid up to 18 weeks of government funded leave, at $606 a week before tax from 1 July 2012, and, very importantly, 160,000 families are benefiting from paid parental leave.

We know that the opposition leader, the Hon. Tony Abbott, has his version of parental leave and we also know that is going to be funded out of a new tax on business—if he ever gets the opportunity to implement anything like that. We know that the new schoolkids bonus provided 1.3 million families with $410 a year for kids in primary school and $820 for kids in secondary school to meet education expenses. We are also paying out the full amount of the education tax refund so that, importantly, families can get extra support right away. We know that there is the teen dental scheme with more than 1.5 million check-ups for eligible teenagers. For health checks we have allocated $25.6 million for Healthy Kids checks, supporting families who want their four-year-old to get a health assessment through their GP. There is $120.5 million in the maternity reform package, a key element of the government's health reforms plan to deliver improved maternity care particularly in regional Australia and to give women more choice. There is $66.6 million to expand support for eligible midwives, $25 million to restore access to additional indemnity insurance for eligible midwives, $9.4 million for improved access to information support, $11.3 million for expanded medical outreach services to rural and remote areas, bringing care closer to home and family, and $8 million for workforce support.

In respect of child care we have, as Minister Carr said, increased the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket expenses. We have raised the annual limit for each child from $4,354 to $7,500. We have increased the childcare benefit giving extra assistance for 650,000 low- and middle-income families each year. A low-income family using full-time child care now has around 80 per cent of its childcare fees covered. There are more places. Let us not forget that we saved the centres at risk from the collapse of ABC Learning in 2008, stepping in with $58 million to ensure continuity of care for around 95,000 families. As a result, 90 per cent of these centres are still operating. The opposition gloss over those sorts of facts very glibly. Probably quite rightly, they give us no credit for that, but I am sure that the families who had their children in ABC Learning centres strongly recognise the fact that we stepped in and made sure that those very good centres, those very well built centres, continued to operate.

We are funding an unlimited number of childcare places. The number of childcare centres has increased from 11,449 in December 2007 to 13,807 in December 2010. With the states and territories we are setting up 38 child and family centres, offering integrated services like child care, playgroups, family support and child and maternal health support. What is very clear, and this always comes up at question time with the opposition, is that if you have a position and you state it vehemently ad nauseam, hopefully, in the opposition's opinion, that will then become a fact. But what is becoming increasingly clear to me is the need for us to continue to restate the facts to the opposition so, hopefully, they may then consider the merits of their argument—so instead of singling out a point they will take the whole picture and look at it properly. (Time expired)