Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the government was asked about its plans for making child care affordable, Senator Birmingham told us, 'The government takes child care seriously.' It's difficult to this take government seriously when it comes to early childhood education, it's difficult to take this government seriously when it comes to anything that affects working women, and it's difficult to take this government seriously when it comes to addressing household budgets and real household struggles. Working families with children in child care today are struggling right now, and this government has delivered them no relief. In fact, under this government, childcare fees have increased by more than 35 per cent. That's happened at exactly the same time as wages have flatlined, with wage growth at record historical low levels under this seven-year Morrison government.

Families can do the maths; they know exactly how expensive and difficult the childcare system is to navigate under this government. They know that many parents actually lose money if they choose to work an extra day or work more than three days a week. That's why Labor will reduce the cost of child care. That's why the Morrison government should commit to our plan, our proposal, to do exactly that. We will scrap the cap, which often sees parents losing money from an extra day's work. We will keep working to fix Australia's broken childcare system. We will take the pressure off family budgets with this reform. We will give families the support that they need to succeed in their lives and in their household budgets—support that this government just refuses to deliver. We know that cheaper child care is not just good for families and household budgets; it's good for the economy as well. It's good for the recovery. Failing to reform child care is just another failure of the Morrison government to get our economy moving. We know that making child care more affordable will lift workforce participation and that that, in turn, will increase growth. We on the Labor side know that cheaper child care is fundamental reform that will absolutely supercharge our recovery.

This government has repeatedly lacked the vision and the heart to power this recovery for all Australians. This government has repeatedly lacked the vision and the heart to power this recovery for Australian women, in particular. First of all, they left too many women out of the JobKeeper program. Women who were, in fact, hardest hit by this COVID crisis got the least support from the Morrison government: casuals, hospitality workers, arts and events sector workers and university workers. Then, after leaving all of those women workers behind, they removed JobKeeper early for early childhood educators. This government chose to target early childhood educators in this pandemic—the very people who were going to work every day to educate our children while everybody else was being asked to stay home to stay safe. This is a sector that is made up of 95 per cent women. Now they're leaving women out of the recovery. Women have lost more jobs than men in this crisis. There are more women unemployed in Australia than ever before. But the government took no steps to get women back to work in its budget.

As we know, the government spent one-third of one per cent on women's economic security in their budget. They delivered nothing for jobs in sectors dominated by women workers, such as aged care, early childhood education, the arts, hospitality and higher education. Those sectors dominated by women got either nothing or next to nothing, or, indeed, got funding cuts, from this government. Women's jobs just do not matter to this government. When the government was called out on this, we got its now famous response: 'What you can find in the budget for women is our package on road infrastructure, because women drive on roads. That's what women get in this budget: roads.' The government just fails to understand that supporting jobs in sectors women work in supports not just 50 per cent of our population; it supports the economy as a whole. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.