Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some remarks on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Payments Structural Reform and Participation Measures) Bill 2015. I just want to take the opportunity, with this piece of legislation before the chamber this afternoon, to indicate that Australians generally understand and appreciate the contribution of those who raise a family. Certainly it does cost. It is a very important contribution to raise a healthy family that is able to participate fully in the community, and it does take money to make that happen.

One of the things that I am very concerned about with this particular government is its entire attitude to the need for families to have some security about the funding that they are going to receive and also the outrageous way in which it has attacked the family tax benefit A and B schemes since it has come to power. We cannot forget that in its first budget, that horror budget of Mr Abbott in 2014, this government, which now claims to articulate a point of fairness as part of its policymaking, started out by wanting to take $8.5 billion from family tax benefits. The reason I really want to participate in this debate is that people might be listening and might pick up different parts of the debate along its journey, and the reality is that that $8.5 billion worth of cuts would already be a reality if it were not for the passion and energy of people on this side of the chamber, with support from the crossbenches, who prevented the worst excesses of what this government wanted to do. So, when government members stand up and start to act like they want to be the friends of families, I think it is important to record in the Hansard, in this speech, that this is a government that cannot be trusted with family benefits A and B, nor can it be trusted when it starts to use the language of fairness, because fairness is simply not a part of its DNA.

Indeed, in her remarks in the other place, Shadow Minister Macklin indicated the only reason that the government were pulling back from cuts of $4.8 billion as recently as just last week. This is how she expressed it:

Today the government are admitting they cannot get these cuts through the parliament. Australian families now want to know what this Liberal government are going to do next. Are they still committed to these cuts or will they be abandoning them forever? It is time … for this Turnbull government to come clean with Australian families. Next week—

she was referring to this week—

is the last week of the parliament before Christmas. It is time for this Prime Minister to give families the certainty that they will not be faced with another round of cuts in 2016.

It is a fact that it is only continued resistance and opposition from the Labor Party that have prevented the whole of the community being incredibly negatively impacted by the values choices of who the government want to support and who they are ready to hurt.

On the other side, in the government, people are more than willing to impact negatively on families. There are large businesses, multinationals, which we know from much evidence before the Senate are avoiding any taxation at all in this country. This government chooses for big businesses to keep their taxation dollars in their corporations and was ready to slug every Australian family across the country and claw back $8.5 billion from families.

Let us talk about the new changes to child care. First of all, child care was taken away from education, its natural place, and put with social security. I can put on the record that I spoke with people in the great state of New South Wales who were subjected to a diatribe from Minister Morrison about his view of child care and the shameful way in which he completely ignored the responsibilities of childcare workers to support families and to engage in education rather than childminding, slowly driven at pushing people to jobs. Can I say that, if you live in regional or rural Australia, finding those jobs that we keep hearing about that people are being pushed towards is a pretty hard thing to do. In addition to that, where those jobs do exist in regional and rural Australia, particularly in the retail and hospitality sector, this government is going after those workers and trying to take money away from them as well, getting rid of penalty rates and imposing terrible restrictions on people in the workplace.

Can I make a couple of remarks also around the argument that is being put by this government in its various iterations, with regard to this particular policy area, that it can only deliver childcare changes if it makes these sorts of cuts. That is a modesty skirt, really, for a shameful attack on families. Labor rejects this entirely. Senator Sinodinos actually said in budget estimates that there is only one reason that this government has decided to link child care with cuts to family tax benefits, and that is for political purposes. Those are his words: 'They're linked for political purposes.' This is what we see from this government all the time: an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian people and to damage families, to hurt families, as much as it possibly can while propping up the other end of town.

In terms of child care, let us just get on the record a couple of points that the shadow minister for education, Kate Ellis MP, made today. One is that one in four families stands to be worse off under the government's childcare changes. So here they are saying, 'We're making these changes because we're going to really improve child care,' and the reality is that the impact is that one in four is going to be worse off under the government's childcare changes. I think the shadow minister was right in indicating that a methodology of the government is that they choose sound bites over substance every single day, and they are simply not putting the facts on the table. I was listening to the contribution of Senator Moore, who pointed to some very significant evidence that the committee had acquired and also the importance of the information that was in the Bills Digest about the way in which the piece of legislation that is before us needs to be given very close scrutiny moving forward.

I want to close my remarks by indicating that, if the beneficiaries of these cuts are to be childcare providers and the families who need to seek child care, we have many, many more questions that need answering before we can trust this government. After 21 months of waiting, three different ministers and the rising out-of-pocket fees that have happened on this government's watch, parents still have no idea about how that change is going to impact them. The modelling on that, which the government is not releasing, is akin to the kind of deceptive behaviour, the hiding of information, that so characterises this government at every turn.

In closing, I would like to just indicate that Labor will support this particular piece of legislation. But we will continue to fight for fairness for families and to prevent the worst excesses of a government that pretended to be the best friend of families but continues through its legislation at every turn to demonise families and to make it harder for families to raise children healthily and well. In doing that, it is wasteful in the way that it is distributing the money across the economy and across our community needs.