Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Williams for his question and his interest in ensuring that every dollar of Australian taxpayers' money is respected and directed towards the cause that it is intended for. That is why, in relation to the record levels of expenditure in child care and early education, the Turnbull government is making sure that we are applying scrutiny to every possible area of compliance to ensure spending is directed to support early education and childcare services that are genuine—because over the next four years we will be supporting around $40 billion worth of investment to help Australian families and to provide the best possible start for young Australian children.

One of the major changes we made, in terms of compliance measures, over the last year was to stop the practice of child swapping that was rife within certain family day care services—a practice that resulted in some family day care services claiming benefits for caring for children of another family day care service in operation at the same time. This measure is estimated to be saving around $421 million from going to people who were otherwise rorting childcare services.

But, importantly, our government has also stepped up compliance from around 500 compliance checks that were undertaken in 2012-13 to more than 3,100 compliance checks undertaken in 2015-16. This has resulted in the arrest of 16 people, the suspension or cancellation of over 30 services, the seizure of over $8 million, enforcement action taken against 109 services—all of this driven by a 500 per cent increase in compliance activities under our government. We are serious about making sure that finite taxpayer dollars that are determined to be used for early education or childcare services are used for genuine purposes, not by those who seek to rort the taxpayer.