Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for his question and for the opportunity to highlight that our government, our side of politics, has taken childcare reform very seriously over recent years. Our reforms to the application of the new childcare subsidy provided billions of dollars in additional support that was targeted to ensure that the more hours somebody works, the greater the number of hours of subsidised child care they and their family are entitled to and that the less that they earn, the greater the rate of subsidy that they get. It seems quite remarkable that the Labor Party seem now to be adopting a policy position that is all about providing higher rates of support in terms of the childcare subsidy to those earning higher levels of income.

We absolutely want to make sure that the childcare system works to support Australian families. Under our reforms, over 70 per cent of families have out-of-pocket costs of less than $5 an hour and nearly a quarter are paying less than $2 an hour. Those families would be the lowest-income Australian families. We have targeted childcare subsidy support to give the greatest level of assistance to Australian families working the longest hours but earning the lowest amount of income.

When the Labor Party comes along and says, 'We're going to beg in the budget for a whole lot of extra structural spending,' the question always is: guess how they'll end up paying for it? Higher taxes, no doubt. This will just be some little Labor trick where they pretend to give with one hand but take with the other.