Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate that I do not support the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Budget Measures) Bill 2010 in that it will reduce the annual childcare rebate limit from $7,778 to $7,500 for four income years starting from 1 July 2010 and it also crucially caps indexation. The government says it is doing this to save $86.3 million over four years, but who actually pays for this? It is the mums and dads of Australia.

Under these changes the cost of care could increase by as much as $22 a day, and I oppose this additional impost on Australian families. It makes no sense at all to be adding to the burden on families and it is extraordinarily difficult for many parents to access affordable child care. It is even harder to access affordable quality child care and it is even harder again to access affordable quality council-run or not-for-profit child care. I think the point needs to be made: what was the point of passing the Paid Parental Leave scheme last week, which I strongly supported, and then ramping up the costs of child care this week?

I note that Senator Hanson-Young shares similar views to mine in relation to this and in fact has been championing the cause of affordable child care in this country. She is on Q&A at the ABC, and I have not had a chance to see her this evening. It is unfortunate that she is not here for this debate because I know she has some very strong and passionately held views in relation to this.

I think it is also important to reflect on what the Childcare Alliance is saying. The case for opposing the cuts to the childcare rebate cap has been put very well by the Australian Childcare Alliance and Childcare Associations Australia. It gives a reminder of what quality long day child care means for families in the economy. The alliance makes the point that women’s participation rates in this country are extremely low by OECD standards and are at their lowest among women aged between 25 and 44, the prime child-bearing years.

Secondly, the Henry tax review was asked by the government to make coherent recommendations to ensure appropriate incentives for, among other things, increased workforce participation. The key finding of an April 2010 Treasury department working paper was that ‘in contrast with previous Australian estimates, the cost of child care does have a statistically significant and negative effect on the labour supply of married mothers. This finding supports policy that reduces the costs of child care to encourage maternal labour supply.’

The alliance makes the point that on average a gross price increase of one per cent would be expected to decrease the hours worked by married mothers with young children by 0.7 per cent. This is entirely contradictory of the government’s policy intent in the Paid Parental Leave scheme—something that I think was welcomed overwhelmingly in this nation. The government is pulling the policy levers in the opposite direction to discourage working families, to discourage families from having kids and making it more difficult for them to cope with having kids by increasing the cost of child care.

This is a bad piece of legislation. It is a case of penny-pinching. If the government wants to penny pinch, it should not be pinching the pennies from families who are already struggling to balance their obligations to their jobs and their families. This is a miserly measure on the part of the government. This is something entirely inconsistent with the rhetoric of the government and indeed with the government’s very good actions last week on the Paid Parental Leave scheme. When you consider it in the context of the budget, $86.3 million, it is something that will be disproportionately felt by working families and mums and dads across the country. It will unfairly increase the costs of child care and therefore it ought to be opposed.

I would like to hear from the opposition in relation to this. Initially they were going to oppose this, and I would like to hear from the coalition why they have had a change of heart in relation to this. They had an opportunity to stand up for the whole issue of affordable child care, affordable community-run child care, yet they squibbed on that opportunity. I think it is incumbent on the coalition, when they had an opportunity to block it, to give an explanation to all those parents who will be paying more for child care. I think the coalition had an opportunity which they have squibbed because they know that, given the position of the Greens and my position, this is something that could easily have been defeated. I think it would have been a defeat that would have been welcomed by families across the country and by the childcare sector, particularly those not-for-profit childcare operators that provide such a valuable service in this country. With those words, the government stands condemned for this penny-pinching measure.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Budget Measures) Bill 2010 and the government’s decision on budget night to freeze the indexation of the childcare rebate for four years at the 2008-09 level of $7,500, affecting tens of thousands of Australian families. Following the collapse of the corporate giant ABC learning, we were faced with the opportunity to dramatically reform the way in which child care is delivered in Australia to ensure that no profit-driven company will ever have the opportunity again to control 25 per cent of the market share in Australia.

Early childhood education and care must be seen as part of the lifelong learning that starts at birth. As parents, we want to give our kids the best quality of care so that we can go out to work and pay our mortgages. It should not be viewed or treated as a profit-driven industry open to manipulation by corporations and the stock market. Rather, it should be seen and supported as the essential service it is.

The three core principles of quality, affordability and accessibility must underpin the basis of early childhood education and care in this country, where the education of Australia’s youngest children is at the forefront of any reform. So when the government committed to the implementation of the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care, which the Greens support, we needed to see a dramatic increase in the funding injected into what is an essential service. We know that increasing the standard of care and reducing the child-to-staff ratio is going to cost money. Of course we want fully qualified childcare workers looking after our children and we want this to occur in an environment that promotes and encourages the development of our youngest Australians. At the moment, we, both parents and the government, spend a considerable amount on child care around the country, yet there is no link to the quality of care. You may pay $100 for long day care for your child, you may pay $80 or you may pay $50—that is before the childcare tax rebate—but there is no link between the money that is going to the carer and the quality of the care that you are getting, because the quality standards and the benchmarking are different across different states. There is no real link between the money that goes in and the type of service you get. I think it is something the government seriously needs to consider. The Greens want to see nationally consistent early childhood education and care standards that are actually linked to the quality care cost drivers of highly qualified staff, low carer-to-child ratios of at least one to three for children up to two years old and one to four for children older than two years and smaller groups. The current funding mechanisms do not facilitate a link between quality standards and the funding received.

While the government has outlined some positive steps in achieving a nationally consistent quality framework, we know that this is going to cost money and we do not want to see parents around the country footing the bill for the government’s reform agenda. Of course we want to see greater investment in early childhood education in this country; it is an area of government policy that has been undervalued for far too long. My son is about to turn 21 and I remember saying the same things when he was in child care all those years ago. Things do not seem to have changed very much. We do not believe that the best way to achieve this outcome is through rolling back the support that is provided and by requiring parents who are already struggling to pay more. While the government supports parents through the childcare rebate and benefit, it has little to do with the planning and oversight of responsibilities for child care.

The current funding mechanisms do not facilitate a link between quality standards and the funding received. The government should be taking charge and delivering the necessary policy outcomes for good quality, accessible and affordable child care that puts the care of children and the needs of parents and workers above lining the pockets of shareholders. Evidence suggests that the daily fees of long day care have increased with the introduction and expansion of the rebate. This has not proved to be a cost-effective model for parents, nor has it improved the quality of care. A change from the current funding mechanism to one that could fund the service directly would give the federal government more bang for its buck. As we commit funding to schools and universities in this way, child care deserves the same level of attention and commitment, given the role it plays in the education of our youngest children.

Following the collapse of the corporate giant ABC Learning at the end of 2008, the Greens successfully established a Senate committee inquiry into the provision of child care in Australia. This inquiry presented us with an opportunity to have a good look at how child care is delivered in this country, particularly as we have seen it transformed from a service that some people use to a service that almost all working parents use in some form these days. In the course of the inquiry, the committee heard evidence from various organisations calling for the matter of childcare funding to be referred to the Productivity Commission to determine the most effective way of funding the essential service of early childhood education and care. The National Foundation of Australian Women reinforced this view. It argued:

... there is a paucity of information around to really calculate what some of the other alternatives should be, and this is one of the reasons why we are very strongly supporting the proposition that a reference to the Productivity Commission to do a great deal of the economic number crunching could be a very useful input to the debate about what future policy should be.

It is clear that referring the matter of early childhood education funding to the Productivity Commission would help us determine the most effective way of funding this essential service. Quality benchmarks and affordability for parents must be linked to the government funding received. In order to implement these quality benchmarks and affordability, there needs to be a significant increase in and long-term investment of funding into early childhood education and care. So when the government announced on budget night their intention to freeze indexation of the childcare rebate for four years at the 2008-09 level of $75,500 you can imagine our concern of the undeniable effect this would have on tens of thousands of Australian families.

Debate interrupted.