Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Labor does not support the Education and Employment Legislation Committee's report tabled today on the provisions of the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2014. We do not support this majority report which focused on childcare benefit, and I will present my reasons as to why we do not support it. I commend the Labor senators' dissenting report which gives an accurate report about the impact of freezing the income eligibility thresholds for childcare benefits.

Labor believes that Australian children have a right to good quality, accessible and affordable early childhood education and care, and we further believe that children and families have a right to a quality educator. After all, many children spend longer in childcare services than their brothers and sisters do in school. In order to retain quality educators Labor believes in paying educators a decent, professional wage.

In government, Labor undertook major reforms in the early childhood education and care sector and part of those reforms are still underway. Our reforms focused on improving educational outcomes for Australian families. The early childhood education and care sector has overwhelmingly endorsed Labor's reforms. Labor improved staff qualifications, improved staff-to-child ratios, introduced a national Early Years Learning Framework and a new outcomes based accreditation system. Through the COAG process states and territories introduced national early childhood and education laws. Labor, through its Early Years Quality Fund, took a first step in addressing the poverty wages in early childhood education and care which left many workers well under the poverty line.

The Abbott government has already abolished the Early Years Quality Fund and seems set to roll back Labor's improvements against the wishes of the sector. Despite promises before the election, all the Abbott government has done is cut $1 billion out of childcare assistance for Australian families.

We have seen cuts to family day care and we have seen cuts to outside school hours care. And then we have the accessibility fund, which was actually designed to increase childcare places. When the government was in opposition the now minister criticised the fund and in fact sat on that report from September of last year; yet earlier this week—Tuesday, I think—praised the report, which looked at how you might reduce some of the barriers that local government have in fast-tracking applications and making sure that there are enough early childhood places for Australian working and studying families. Minister Ley first criticised Labor's initiatives and then praised them. And the cuts go on. We have seen the Indigenous Child and Family Centres in Western Australia and across the nation severely cut, and we heard Senator Sterle speak about those earlier in the week.

Of course, the most recent one—and the one we had the inquiry into—was the childcare rebate. Minister Ley is still singing from the Abbott government's old broken promises and litany of lies song sheet with this lie on Tuesday, where she said in her media release:

The Abbott Government is committed to making child care more affordable.

When? Not in this budget and not with $1 billion worth of cuts. The Prime Minister's latest cut to child care currently before the parliament is a cut to the means-tested childcare benefit. It is an attack aimed directly at low- and middle-income Australians—the same people who are already doing it tough and feeling the pain of the Prime Minister's harsh budget. This is another attack on families. There was no warning before the election. No government has ever before either moved to cut or freeze the childcare benefit. Families should not have to pay the price for the Abbott government's inability to get their budget through the parliament. Prime Minister Abbott should keep his pre-election promise and reverse the $1 million cuts to early childhood education and care—something which families rely on.

When we did the inquiry earlier this week, the department appeared as witnesses and gave us evidence. You would think that, if the government were going to make it much more difficult for families to find their out-of-pocket expenses by freezing the wage eligibility of the childcare benefit, they would have some very solid research that they could present to the committee. But, no, despite questions during Senate estimates, despite questions since and despite questions earlier this week at the hearing, the department—and therefore the government—have no modelling at all other than a bit of a guess to let the committee and the public know what the cuts will mean for families. They were able to say that about half a million families would be affected. That is a staggering number of families who are already reeling under other cuts in the harsh, cruel Abbott budget that are hitting low- and middle-income families.

The department were not able to demonstrate to the committee the justification or to present modelling to tell us exactly which families, when and how—which you would expect when you are taking a million dollars out of a program. The government should be able to demonstrate very clearly how they arrived at that figure and what the damage will in fact be. But the department have not done any modelling. They have no intention of doing any modelling and they certainly did not have any modelling to share with us earlier this week at our committee hearing. This is despite overwhelming evidence in other childcare inquiries and overwhelming evidence presented through submissions that the cuts to the childcare benefit, which is aimed at low-income families, is really going to hurt families using child care.

I thought that maybe the government had some other targeted program that they wanted to put this money into—maybe the family and children services that Senator Sterle spoke about—and that maybe they were going to find the million dollars needed in Western Australia to continue to support those childcare centres. But when we asked where the savings from the cuts to the childcare benefit were going to go, they did not know. The freezing of the eligibility to the childcare benefit has been around since the budget—more than 100 days—and still the department were not able to tell us where that money would go, other than to other government priorities.

What could be more important than supporting young children into quality early childhood education and care in this country? Indeed, before being elected as Prime Minister of this country, that is what Tony Abbott, as the opposition leader at that time, committed to do. What he has done ever since then is the complete opposite. Taking money from the early childhood sector is a bad move. It will impact families. We will potentially see women who work part-time having to cut their hours and therefore reduce the family's income or we may see families being pushed into backyard unregulated care—and that would not be in anyone's best interests.

The evidence on the positive impact that early childhood education and care has on children's brain development is absolutely clear. Children benefit from quality care. Yet our Prime Minister is making that much, much tougher for Australian families, particularly those on low income. There is also plenty of evidence to say that kids from low-income families also benefit from this additional support. But, no, like many other budget measures, this is being ripped away from low-income families. They will suffer at the hands of the Abbott government. They will be the ones who have to pay more out-of-pocket expenses for child care—child care which is already way to expensive. And this is from a government that committed to do better. Well, when? That is the question that we ask. I commend the Labor senators' dissenting report, and I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.