Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a question on Senator Hanson-Young's amendment. Labor will be supporting this amendment. Just going to some of the contributions earlier, I agree with Senator Hanson-Young that the lack of support to move from 12 to 15 hours per week is devastating for a particular group of children. I heard from Senator Xenophon about the BBF services, and I have already made a comment on that.

The point around what we have just seen happen is that 100,000 kids—Goodstart say 100,000 kids—are going to have their access to child care halved with the changes that have just been agreed, or the lack of support for the amendment. Our position would be that the government had to deal with the issue of Indigenous children in mobile services. That is not a win. It is expected that they would have to deal with that. Can you image cutting that? The government had to deal with that. They knew it was an issue, and they would have dealt with it—or I would be very surprised if they did not. In order to secure something that I think the government would have had to do, we can trade off the rights of 71,000 kids and halve their access to child care!

The point is not that your life deteriorates to the point that you get special access to additional hours. The whole point of child care and ensuring that kids get the best start to life is that there is universal access for a set period of time that allows kids to get the benefit of access to child care over two days—and the compromise position put was 15 hours. It is not that there is an inadequate amount of hours, and then there has to be a mental illness or some other catastrophe that hits the family for you to be allowed to get further access to subsidised care. That is not the point of a quality early childhood education system. What we want is for every child, regardless of their circumstances, to be able to access at least two days of full-time child care. That is what all the evidence shows makes a difference. But what the Senate has agreed to do tonight is take that away from thousands of kids and their families and then try to dress it up as though it were actually a win and that something was achieved tonight because the government has done the right thing—a must-do thing—to address a problem it had in a particular type of child care that was provided.

Labor will be supporting this amended. We are deeply disappointed with the Nick Xenophon Team, particularly, because of the position it has taken on this and for the families and the sector, who have been pleading with the Senate to reject this legislation tonight if we were unable to secure 15 hours. Each one of them explained why it will not work and how they will not be able to meet the needs of these groups of kids any longer, should these changes go through. This amendment will provide extra support to these families to some degree. It is not perfect—but then this reform package is not perfect—but it is an improvement. It is certainly not how we would design a childcare system, but it would be an improvement on what the government has currently proposed.

I would say to those who did not support the previous amendment, and this flows on from that, that I look forward to hearing your explanation to the sector and to their families who are going to be affected when they come and say to you how this will impact on them. We are strongly of the view that, yes, there should be support provided to families in crisis and children who touch on the care and protection system, but there should be reasonable and adequate safety net that meets the needs of all children, particularly those from low-income families, who are going to have their access to child care halved thanks to this Senate.