Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Before I go into what I was originally going to speak about, I might point out to Senator Smith that this budget is going to spend $4.5 billion in child care to not create one new spot. That's one new spot of child care not being created under $4.5 billion of spending. I understand Senator Smith's children are very young, so she may not have gone through this process; mine are a bit older. There's nothing for me in the budget, for older children, by the way. It's only good if your kids are really little and you want to send them to child care.

What's going to happen—and I think we're going to see this next year—is that families currently in child care will probably go from three days to four, because most childcare centres have their books closed. So there are no new spots being created, no new centres—nothing. There's $4.5 billion to allow families to go, maybe, from two days to four or three days to four. It'll be really interesting when we have a look at this in the next 12 or so months and see how many new childcare spots are created, because it will be a big, fat zero. There's $4.5 billion for the families already in child care. It's not creating one new spot. There's nothing for the parents and families that want to stay at home with their children. They've added six extra weeks to a Paid Parental Leave scheme—six weeks—but nothing for those parents who want to stay at home with their children for those five years when their brains are so busy developing, as Senator Smith points out. It's only to go into those childcare centres. Perhaps that's where they think the indoctrination can start.

What we saw last night was a budget that offers nothing for families. It offers nothing towards the pressures of living. In fact, it gives each and every family a bill of $2,000 for Christmas. We warned you it wasn't going to be easy under Albanese! We're seeing that every day. Inflation's up at 7.1 per cent now. There's not a lot of wriggle room.