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

I thank Senator McKenzie for her question and her continued, passionate advocacy and representation in relation to more effective and affordable child care. I am very pleased that earlier today the House of Representatives passed the Turnbull government's legislation to bring in place more affordable, more accessible and fairer child-care support for Australian families. These are reforms that I am pleased will come to the Senate once the Senate has concluded debating the savings measures required to fund our $1.6 billion increased investment into support for Australian child-care services.

Our reforms will benefit around one million Australian families. They will deliver assistance that will ensure that low-income families are able to access higher levels of child-care subsidy to help them to work, study and volunteer. They will ensure that the lowest income families are able to access child-care services at around $15 a day. Families currently face the $7,500 cliff in child-care rebate support. Our reforms will abolish it for all low- and middle-income families. These are tangible, practical reforms that will help them to choose to work more hours. Evidence demonstrates that more than 200,000 families may well choose to work more hours or work more days, to participate more in the Australian workforce, because they will no longer have child-care fees as an impediment or barrier to their participation.

These are critical reforms. They also contain an hourly rate cap. We will put in place a mechanism to keep a lid on fee growth in the child-care sector. This is an important mechanism that ensures that neither families nor taxpayers continue to bear the brunt of excessive fee increases but instead enjoy a more affordable, more available, more productive child-care regime in the future.