David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was talking about child care, and those families that can't get their children into child care because of the lockdown and the impacts it's having on Victorian businesses. Labor say lockdown works. We've been in stage 4 for three weeks already, we've been in stage 3 for over six weeks, and there are the hotspot suburbs that have been in lockdown for over 10 weeks. So, if this was going to work, it would be working better. Perhaps we should be concentrating on better testing and better contact tracing, because that's where the Labor premier, Dan Andrews, is failing Victorians.

I now am very pleased to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. Like all my colleagues on this side of the chamber, I recognise that good early child care provides the foundation for young Australians to grow and to learn and to form the confidence that they need for the future. During this government's time in office, we've invested heavily in making child care more affordable and more accessible for all Australian families. Just in the last financial year alone, we've invested over $8.6 billion into the sector, and you'll be pleased to hear, Madam Acting Deputy President Bilyk, that this will continue to rise. Over the coming years we will see this investment climb to more than $10 billion per year. But this is not just a large investment; this is a large investment that has ensured families right across the country are better off. This investment from the Morrison government has meant more families can now access child care, due to significant reductions in out-of-pocket expenses. A typical family is now better off to the tune of $1,300 per annum per child. In difficult times this is a tangible and welcome benefit to families. But more can always be done.

As I spoke about last night, my home state of Victoria is dealing with a state of disaster. Every day I get calls from distraught business owners, who are mothers and fathers, who are suffering because of lockdowns that have been brought about in Victoria due to the state of disaster because of the disastrous handling of the coronavirus by the Andrews government. With lockdowns, we've seen, comes business shutdown, and with that comes rising unemployment. It is, therefore, vital that we get the policy settings right to assist those who are struggling to keep their businesses afloat and those families who are struggling to make ends meet. The Morrison government's primary aim at the moment is to support families through the COVID-19 crisis. As part of that, we are supporting the childcare sector, ensuring that quality early childcare education and care is available to vulnerable and disadvantaged children and their families.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Morrison government initiated the childcare relief package, which has seen around 99 per cent of childcare providers keep their doors open. I'm sure all in here will agree this is a huge achievement and something this government should be proud of. This relief package not only supported families during the early stages of the pandemic but also supported the work of childcare centre staff, ensuring that they stayed in work. Since 13 July, the childcare transition package has included a payment of 25 per cent of a provider's pre-COVID revenue. This transition package has continued to support childcare centres right across the country. In particular, centres in my home state of Victoria have benefited from additional support to the tune of an extra five per cent, in response to the situation that we are facing. I thank Minister Tehan, Treasurer Frydenberg and Prime Minister Morrison for making these additional supports available. As you can see, Madam Deputy President, the introduction of this bill clearly demonstrates that, with the return of the demand-driven childcare subsidy system in July, the Morrison government is committed to improving access to child care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and their families.

The Morrison government pride ourselves on our pragmatism. We listen to the experts, and we are willing to address matters following feedback, because that is what good governments do. This bill is no different in that regard. This bill has been drafted specifically to address feedback from the childcare sector. Following the new childcare package implementation that occurred on 2 July 2018, and, more recently, in submissions to the Senate inquiry into the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Building on the Child Care Package) Bill, stakeholders raised areas where improvements could be made to streamline access to additional childcare subsidies. This bill does just that.

The additional childcare subsidy is part of the childcare safety net. It is designed to give the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in Australia a strong start through access to quality early childcare education and care. The additional childcare subsidy provides additional fee assistance to an individual or, in limited circumstances, to a provider for children at risk of serious abuse or neglect. This subsidy will ensure these children will continue to have access to child care, something that I am sure all senators will agree is a good thing.

This bill also seeks to reduce unnecessary red tape for providers, families and state and territory governments by extending the backdating of additional childcare subsidy certificates and determinations from 28 days to 13 weeks in exceptional circumstances; by extending from 13 weeks to 12 months the period for which additional childcare subsidy determinations can be given for children on a long-term child protection order, including those in foster care; and by clarifying that a provider is eligible for additional childcare subsidy in respect of certain defined classes of children, such as foster children. The additional childcare subsidy is a top-up payment in addition to the usual childcare subsidy. In 2018-19, the Morrison government paid almost $50 million in additional childcare subsidy, which supported 21,500 vulnerable and disadvantaged children and their families to cover childcare costs. All senators, and all Australians, should be proud of the contribution that we are making to the next generation of Australians.

In closing, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank childcare educators, both the owners of childcare centres and their teams—their teachers, nurses, cleaners and admin staff—for the outstanding work they do each and every day. Specifically, I would like to acknowledge the educators in Victoria, who have continued to provide high-quality support to children and families through the COVID-19 crisis. Our communities across the country are stronger for the work that childcare educators do. I know that sometimes they are looking after kids who, sadly, come from very difficult circumstances. Childcare educators are, for many of those kids, the ones they are closest to, the ones who provide the care they need and the ones who provide the few hours a day of normal life that children need to thrive. They are the ones who provide the time when children can really be children and not deal with the issues they face at home on a daily basis.

We've all heard of the 'blind pandemic' that's going on. This blind pandemic is not just family violence; it's suicide and it's depression. These are things people are struggling with every day across Australia but particularly, right now, in my home state of Victoria. We need to lift the lockdowns and get on top of health care in Victoria. Victoria needs to do better when it comes to contact tracing and better when it comes to testing. It needs to do more so that people's lives are returned to them—so that businesses can return to normal, so that employees can go back to work and earn money, so that children can go to school and child care and live normal lives. I call on the Andrews government to do more, to do better. Children in Victoria, the people of Victoria, deserve it. They really deserve it and they deserve it now. We're not seeing numbers come down fast enough. With less than another three weeks to go, it's hard to see how the Andrews government, because of their failures, will have any other choice but to use the one tool that they find available to them: all they have to resort to is locking down Victorians.

So it's time, if we care for our children, to get their lives back to normal, and we can only do this through better processes in contact tracing, in testing and, of course, let's not forget looking after people in hotel quarantine. The failures there are why we're in this position now, make no mistake about that; the failure in contact tracing is the added part to that. We've seen outbreaks in other states but they've managed to contain them. New South Wales provides the gold standard as to how to do contact tracing in a coronavirus pandemic—