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

The government does not support this amendment. I will touch on a few of the broader comments made by Senator Gallagher and Senator Hanson-Young in their contributions on this before I respond specifically to Senator Xenophon's questions.

Firstly, Senator Gallagher indicates that there should be universality of access to early education. The government agrees. That is why we support universal access to preschool that guarantees every Australian child has access to early education opportunities. The childcare system also provides important early education opportunities, but let us not confuse the two, because the childcare system also provides important care and services that enable Australian families to juggle their work and family responsibilities. Preschool is targeted, of course, at preschool age children. The childcare system applies from birth, and all the amendments we are discussing here about whether we have 12 hours or 15 hours—the safety net for the very small margin of families who cannot or do not meet the activity test—or whether you apply it from $65,000 to $100,000 are not targeted specifically at preschool age children. They are at all children from birth till they start school. In fact, they also apply equally to children in outside-school-hours-care circumstances or even of school-age arrangements. So we have universal access. The government is committed to supporting universal access. We have extended universal access agreements to the states and we are working through processes to ensure universal access continues at a preschool level into the future.

We heard Senator Hanson-Young talking about stories of unemployed people. As I indicated to Senator Xenophon before, it is completely misleading to suggest that Australians who are in receipt of unemployment benefits and Newstart payments, if they are meeting their obligations under those payments, would in any way see themselves fall onto the safety net. If they are meeting their obligations to look for work then they are meeting the requirements of the activity test under these reforms.

Senator Hanson-Young went on quite a little rant in saying that this was a kick in the guts to Australian families. Actually, hardworking Australian families should be swinging from the rafters tonight when these measures pass the parliament, because hardworking Australian families will be substantially better off as a result of these reforms. Let me give you some examples. Let us take a family earning $50,000 with two children in long day care for two days a week at $100 a day. That family will be $2,197 better off as a result of these changes. Another family on $50,000, who might have their children in care for three days a week, will be $3,295 a year better off under the Turnbull government's changes. The same family with school-age children in after school care for two days a week will be $426 a year better off. Or take a slightly higher income family earning $80,000 a year: with two children in long day care, again at $100 a week, they will be $3,424 a year better off. The same $80,000 family will be even better off if their children are in care for more than three days a week, getting into many thousands of dollars. Whilst the subsidy rate tapers off from the 85 per cent high that it is for families earning less than $65,000, which means that some of the benefits diminish, you still see significant benefits for families earning around $94,000. With two children under six at long day care those families will be around $1,771 a year better off as a result of these reforms, or if their children are in long day care for three days a week they will be $2,657 a year better off. These are significant benefits that are helping families who are working, who are studying, who are volunteering in their community. They are helping the lowest income families the most and they will help the hardest working families the most.

The Turnbull government does not shy away from the fact that we want to give the greatest support we possibly can to the lowest income, hardest working Australian families to enable them to work more if they choose to; to enable them to participate in the workforce, where they choose to; to enable them to volunteer in their community, where they choose to; to enable them to up skill through education or training, where they choose to. These are the types of reforms that can help people to participate, to better their lives, to meet their demands. That is exactly what we are backing them to do.

We are backing hardworking Australian families.

I have expressed and detailed tonight all of the different safety net aspects of this to provide important early education opportunities to families. But I will not accept this idea that somehow this package is anything but a net good for the Australian population. Australian families overwhelmingly will be better off—one million Australian families will find themselves benefiting as a result of our reforms that we are voting on tonight.

I cannot believe the idea that somehow the Labor Party and the Australian Greens are going to sit here tonight and vote against providing greater childcare support to the lowest-income hardest-working Australian families. This should have been core territory for the Labor Party. This is the type of reform the Labor Party should have been champing at the bit to support, and yet here we are tonight with them desperately trying to pick holes in it and to create political problems rather than recognising that this is fundamental reform of a broken childcare system that needs to be delivered, and that we trust will be delivered, tonight. We thank those crossbenchers who have worked constructively with us, because clearly they are putting the best interests of the hardest-working Australian families first. They are demonstrating their commitment to help those families juggle their childcare costs and to support us in implementing a system that can keep costs down, and future cost rises down, but which also of course delivers important assistance to those families who need it most.

Senator Hanson-Young spoke about unemployment. Of course, under our government around 534,000 jobs have been created, and we will keep pursuing policies that do that. And these reforms, again, will help. They will help workforce participation. An estimated 230,000 Australian families will choose to work or to engage more in the labour force or, indeed, to re-enter the labour force as a result of the extra support we are providing. Why will they do that? They will do that because they know that they will not get to February, March or April during the course of a year and find that their $7½ thousand cap has been hit, that they no longer get any support and that they end up working for the last two, three or four months of the financial year for no financial reward because of their childcare fees. That problem will no longer exist for those families.

Why will they increase their workforce participation? They might be entering the workforce in a lower-paid job, but rather than facing higher childcare fees they will do so now knowing that 85 per cent of those fees will be paid for.

We have gone through every single element of that the rewards that will flow to the people who deserve them most. We are proud of this package. We believe these reforms will help Australian families who need them most. They deliver the greatest help to the hardest-working Australian families, and that is not something that we will shy away from celebrating at all.