Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

That is a very good question. As I mentioned earlier, these sharp practices by a small group of family day-care services and a small group of parents have been occurring for some time now. As I said, the blow-out in 2012-13 was $28 million on this program—that is not an insignificant amount of money in a program of this nature.

The former government were well aware of this issue and they did nothing about it. But that is not surprising: that sort of complete disregard for the appropriate use of taxpayer dollars is typical. As I was saying earlier, this is a program that cannot afford to be abused by dodgy services who want to make an easy buck. It cannot afford to be abused by parents who use more care than they need to to complete their study requirements just because the taxpayers are paying. That is not on. It is for people who, as I described, are on income support looking for a job and for genuine people— (Time expired)