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

The biggest beneficiaries of our childcare reforms are the lowest income families. The biggest beneficiaries are the hardest working families because what we are doing is increasing the level of childcare subsidy to the lowest income Australian families. We're better targeting support—in terms of the hours of child care that are available—to the hardest working Australian families. We've put in place a mechanism to keep a lid on fee increases in the future. We are investing significantly more in child care. It will be around $37 billion of support—an increase as a result of our reforms of around $2.5 billion targeted at those low- and middle-income families—because we want to empower people to be able to make a decision, a choice, about when to work and how much to work without childcare costs being an impediment on the decisions for their family to guarantee that they are confident they can access high quality early education and to make sure that we give that access to those who need it most. (Time expired)