Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to continue my contribution to the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. I mentioned in my earlier contribution that with the childcare relief package around 99 per cent of childcare providers kept their doors open throughout this pandemic. Around one million families received free child care during the coronavirus pandemic under the Australian government's plan to support families and help the early childhood education and care sector.

Like with so many of us here in this place, early in the outbreak of COVID-19, childcare concerns of both parents and providers were one of the most regular concerns raised with my office, and the prompt response by Minister Tehan and our government was warmly welcomed. I would like to place on record my thanks to the Tasmanian childcare providers for sharing their stories and concerns with me during this time and for their dedicated service to our children through those times of uncertainty.

Since 13 July, our transition package, which included a payment of 25 per cent of a provider's pre-COVID revenue, has supported childcare centres around Australia. Centres in Victoria have benefited from additional support in response to the situation there as well. This bill clearly shows that, following the return to the demand-driven childcare subsidy system on 13 July 2020, we are committed to improving access to child care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families and to cutting red tape for families and childcare providers. This red tape impacts providers, families and governments to improve access to services for vulnerable children, so we must improve it.

Once amended, the bill will allow the period of time the provider can apply for an additional childcare subsidy determination to be extended from 13 weeks to up to 12 months for children under a long-term child protection order such as those in foster care. This is a welcome change that recognises the support that vulnerable children need over longer times.

Other amendments will enable providers to apply to backdate a family's additional childcare subsidy beyond the current limit of 28 days. This can be up to 13 weeks in exceptional circumstances. This will mean that providers can receive the additional subsidy for a foster child who is at risk of serious abuse or neglect while the foster family confirms its childcare subsidy eligibility. This will ensure these children have immediate and streamlined access to child care.

Childcare providers will also be able to enrol children who are in foster care under the additional childcare subsidy for an initial period of up to 13 weeks. This gives an individual foster family enough time to lodge their childcare subsidy claim and have it assessed by Services Australia. Existing provisions where providers are required to notify Services Australia when a child is no longer considered to be at risk will continue to apply.

When introducing this bill to the House of Representatives, Minister Tehan reaffirmed the government's commitment to improving access to child care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families. As I outlined earlier, the changes in this bill will streamline access to the additional childcare subsidy by cutting red tape for families and childcare providers. The changes will also further support vulnerable and disadvantaged families to access quality and affordable early learning and child care by enhancing a childcare provider's ability to provide early access to the additional subsidy to vulnerable and disadvantaged families where appropriate. Notably, the amendments continue to maintain appropriate safeguards to support the integrity of the payment.

This government is providing record funding for child care. We invested $8.6 billion in the 2019-20 financial year, with this budgeted to rise to $9.9 billion in 2022-23. We know how important these early years are and we are committed to the provision of quality affordable child care. The once-in-a-generation reforms we have introduced have delivered a 3.2 per cent reduction in out-of-pocket costs to parents. The new childcare package represents the most significant reforms to the early education and care system in 40 years. This package provides more access and more financial support for those who need it most. This is around one million Australian families. We are making it easier for these families to balance work and parental responsibilities.

Drilling down into the figures, and as highlighted by earlier contributions to this debate, this package means around 72 per cent of families pay no more than $5 per hour in day care centres, with 24 per cent paying no more than $2 per hour. The childcare relief package introduced during the coronavirus pandemic kept 99 per cent of childcare centres open. This initial relief package did its job, and now we are operating within the $708 million transition package. This transition package, as I said earlier, was introduced in July to support the sector and families as they move back to the childcare subsidy. This package has several parts to ensure the recovery of the childcare sector, while also ensuring continuity for the families that need this service. The government will pay approximately $2 billion in childcare subsidy this quarter to eligible families. The subsidy is means-tested to ensure that those who earn the least receive the highest level of subsidy.

In addition to the childcare subsidy, the government will pay childcare services a transition payment of 25 per cent of their fee revenue received during the relevant relief package reference fortnight, and the last two payments scheduled for September will be brought forward to help with the transition and cash flow. This additional transition payment of $708 million replaces JobKeeper for employees of a childcare subsidy approved service and for sole traders operating a childcare service, and it applies important conditions on childcare providers. For the period of the transition, childcare fees will be capped at the level of the reference period and services will need to guarantee employment levels to protect staff who have moved off the JobKeeper payment.

The government will also ease the activity tests until 4 October, to support eligible families whose employment has been impacted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. These families will receive up to 100 hours of subsidised care per fortnight during this period. This will assist families to return to the level of work, study or training they were undertaking before COVID-19. In addition, the gap in fees will be waived when childcare services are forced to close on public health advice as a result of COVID-19. This has been extended to 31 December.

The Victorian childcare sector will receive an additional $33 million in support. Melbourne's services will receive a higher transition payment of 30 per cent. They may also be eligible for a top-up where the childcare subsidy received is low and they are experiencing greatly reduced attendance. Victorian families will receive an extra 30 days allowable absences up to a total of 72 days. All services subject to stage 3 or higher restrictions can waive gap fees if children are not attending and absences are claimed, allowing enrolments to be maintained and the childcare subsidy to be paid. Outside hours school care services in Victoria will receive an additional viability support payment of 15 per cent of their revenue if attendances have fallen by 40 per cent. On average, the government expects that services in Melbourne will receive between 80 and 85 per cent of their pre-COVID revenue. The 25 per cent transition package will be applied to all providers to replace JobKeeper, which was not universally supportive across the entire sector. This package is designed to deliver a more equitable outcome across all early learning services providers.

The support I have outlined here for vulnerable and disadvantaged families is just a small part of what this government has done to ensure Australians can receive financial help during this pandemic. This support also includes: the JobKeeper payment to help businesses and their employees; changes to JobSeeker eligibility and payments; the coronavirus supplement; pandemic leave disaster payments; and additional funding for a number of essential services helping vulnerable Australians during this pandemic, such as those experiencing family and domestic violence, those who need extra support for their mental health and those who are living with disability. There is so much this government has done to support Australians during these incredibly difficult times, especially vulnerable Australians.

In conclusion, this bill demonstrates that the government remain committed to making life easier for childcare providers and vulnerable and disadvantaged families and that we are listening to providers so we can continue to make improvements based on that feedback around how the childcare package is operating. The changes proposed in this bill will reduce the regulatory and administrative burden on families and childcare providers. They will support vulnerable and disadvantaged families to access quality early learning and child care and help parents to access financial assistance. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. I'll state from the outset, as my colleagues have done, that Labor is supporting this bill because it makes a number of changes which will improve assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged families. Fundamentally, they need help now more than ever and if this bill goes some way towards providing that help then it's something that we of course would support.

But the conversation can't be left there, because we know this bill doesn't go nearly far enough in supporting the vulnerable families who depend on our early childhood system, the educators within it and the system itself. Even prior to this pandemic, the early childhood sector in Australia was in crisis. Fees were soaring without any real way of getting them under control. There were serious issues with the rollout of the government's response, which we warned them about and which still manifested because, ultimately, the government don't get early childhood. They don't get child care. They don't get the sector. They don't value it in the way that they should. When it comes to early childhood, our expenditure in this area and the things we do are ultimately a choice about what we as a community value. We see time and time again from the government that they see this sector, that they see child care, as babysitting. They don't see it as early learning. Fundamentally, we have to see it as early learning, because that will drive the appropriate policy responses on cost, quality and access, especially for vulnerable families.

We know parents are paying too much for child care at the moment and that is a huge issue. It is an issue which the government needs to get control of. But I know that's difficult because in early childhood you're always balancing this question of cost and this question of quality and this question of access. It's a tricky conundrum. It's an expensive conundrum, but it's a conundrum worth trying to solve. It's a conundrum that we need to put our money and our minds towards if we really want to make a difference not only to the lives of children but to productivity in Australia. Ultimately, investing in early education is one of the best things we can do to grow our economy not just now but well into the future. We know that for every dollar spent on early learning in Australia we could generate $2 worth of benefits to our broader economy. That's a huge return on investment. We also know that child care is critical to women's participation in the workforce. The Grattan Institute has shown us that it's one of the best ways that we can enhance this participation and that could bring us a multibillion dollar impact on gross domestic product.

Of course, these were the issues that surrounded this sector prior to the pandemic. The pandemic has come along and, in so many ways in our community and our country, it has just completely changed the way work operates and the way sectors like early childhood operate. The pandemic has had a devastating impact on our early childhood sector. The government was far too slow in responding to it. Our educators, who I talk to every day, were worried and scared early on that they were on the frontline of this crisis but no-one was really seeing that they were. They didn't have access to PPE. They didn't know where to get it. They didn't know how to run their centres, what to do and how to handle these changes. The package which came in to support them wasn't well thought through. It left some centres much worse off. It left families not able to access the care they needed. It left women who were returning from maternity leave and wanting to go back into jobs such as being ICU nurses unable to access a place in child care and therefore not going to work and fighting the pandemic. And the early-childhood educators who were raising these issues were never given that seat at the table that they needed so that the government could get on top of it.

The package saved a lot of centres, and we're grateful for the ones it helped. But then came the inexplicable decision to throw early-childhood educators—and only early-childhood educators—off JobKeeper. What does that say to these educators, who, through this pandemic, have been doing critical work and, let's face it, often risky work? It's very hard to socially distance from a toddler. I've got one; I know. It's not really possible. When a toddler needs their nose blown you've just got to get in there and do it. These guys were doing risky work, and they were the first ones—the only ones—thrown off JobKeeper.

Their anxiety has been sky high during this pandemic. And I get it. But he government doesn't; they never have. There is so much more we need to do for these early-childhood educators to see them through this pandemic, to give them the confidence they need that they'll have the PPE, that their centres can survive, that they can provide the care that the children need. And for vulnerable kids especially, we need to make sure we get this right. When this pandemic started and we saw parents having their children home from school—either by choice or by necessity, depending on the state they lived in—and we saw parents withdrawing their children from early-childhood education, because they too were worried about the implications for the health of their kids, one of my first fears, my first thought, was: 'What about those most vulnerable kids in early-childhood care?'

We know that for too many children in Australia that interaction with their educators in early childhood, that attendance at child care, can make an enormous difference to their lives. It can be the difference between abuse being reported and not being. It can be the difference between knowing that a child is getting enough meals and enough nourishment or not. These early-childhood educators working with vulnerable children are saving lives and often they provide the only love and support a child gets. Often they're the only ones who do things like sit with a child and count their fingers and toes—critical things that so many of us take for granted. But if you don't count a child's fingers and toes out loud, if you don't have that early counting and language and interaction, then critical brain connections will not form and that child will not develop as a child should.

The work our early educators do is critical. It's critical for individual children and it's critical for our community. What happens to those vulnerable kids who left early-childhood care? What happens if they don't come back? What happens if they miss that critical part of their early learning? It will change their brain development. That is a lifelong implication for these kids, to be locked out of the early-childhood sector, even for weeks—and imagine if it's months, or even years. We can't afford that. Those kids can't afford that. Our country can't afford that. For these vulnerable children who, I acknowledge, this bill tries to help, there are much bigger challenges ahead, too. Until we get a handle on those, until we know we can ensure access, until we know that our early educators have the confidence to do their job, to be there for these kids and all kids, then we're failing.

The government needs to do so much more in this space. I implore them to look at the research, look at the brain maps. You can actually hold up scans of brains and see those critical connections form. It is incredible, some of the most simple acts that we do as parents and that are repeated by early-childhood educators and built on. Their work is incredible, and they've been doing it so incredibly tough during the pandemic.

I want to take this opportunity to thank them, not just the educators but also the administrators who are working in centres and trying desperately to balance the books to keep their centres thriving and continuing, because they know how important it is that children have continuity of care. They know how important the work they're doing is. They also know how important it is to keep their early educators in work, and secure and safe. To our administrators and our directors as well: I thank you, because it has been such an incredibly stressful time for all of you.

During this pandemic our early childhood workers have been on the front line. They are also some of the workers in our community who have been the least valued historically in terms of their pay and conditions. So let this be a wake-up call for us. They are doing essential work and doing it at the toughest of times. Once we get through this pandemic, once we get through the critical questions we have to face to make sure our educators and the children they care for are okay, let's look at the workforce—let's look at wages and at actually valuing these educators for the critical role they play. They are changing lives and, more than that, they are changing our country and our future. Our productivity, our future prosperity in Australia, depends on our education system. And our education system does not start at school; it starts when a child first walks into an early learning centre. We have to make sure during this pandemic that we don't see any child walk out of their early learning centre and not return, because the consequences of that would be absolutely catastrophic. I commend the bill to the Senate.

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

I thank the Senate and, in particular, those senators who have spoken on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. I acknowledge the contributions to the debate and the support for this legislation coming from across the chamber. I add my thanks to Australia's early childhood education and care providers and those who operate centres, the educators and carers across the sector in particular, who have gone above and beyond in providing, not just in this challenging year but every day in every year, valuable care to Australian children and advancing their education prospects.

Our government has focused throughout the COVID-19 crisis on ensuring that amongst the support provided to families we've made sure that the childcare sector has been available to vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families and those who need it most. Through the ECEC Relief Package, over 98 per cent of childcare providers were able to keep their doors open during the period of widespread national shutdown of other economic activities, providing free child care to the children of essential workers, to vulnerable children and to children whose families had an existing relationship with the service. This bill clearly shows that as we see, across most of the nation, the return to the demand-driven childcare subsidy on 13 July our government is committed to continuing to improve access to child care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families and to cutting red tape for both families and childcare providers.

Since the implementation of the government's world-leading childcare reforms that provided for much more affordable and much better targeted childcare access in Australia, it is clear that our government's goal of delivering a more affordable, accessible and flexible childcare subsidy system indeed has been delivered upon. But we've also been listening to stakeholders regarding areas of improvement. They were widespread reforms that we made to the system, and naturally with those widespread reforms there will continue to be small areas of refinement and improvement. The key measures contained in this bill are in direct response to feedback received from the childcare sector. These key measures will benefit families and childcare providers by extending and backdating the additional childcare subsidy child wellbeing certificates and determinations from 28 days to up to 13 weeks in exceptional circumstances; extending the period, from 13 weeks to up to 12 months, that additional determinations can be given for children on a long-term child protection order; and clarifying that a provider may be eligible for additional childcare subsidy in respect of certain defined classes of children, such as foster children.

Notably, the amendments also continue to maintain appropriate safeguards to support the integrity of the additional childcare subsidy payment. Tragically, it's a fact that, historically, the childcare system has been open to activities of rorting and misappropriation of funds that are intended to support the wellbeing of children, the education of those children and access to care for parents and families. That's why we made sure that we had strong safeguards in our reforms, reforms that were intended to ensure that the children and families who needed care most received the greatest access to care and that those who needed financial support to pay for that care most received the greatest degree of financial support for the care that they need.

In conclusion, this bill demonstrates that the government remains committed to making life easier for providers and for vulnerable and disadvantaged families, and that we continue to make improvements based on feedback about the childcare reforms and package that we implemented. The changes in this bill will reduce the regulatory and administrative burden on families and childcare providers, will support vulnerable and disadvantaged families to access quality early learning and child care, and will help families to access the financial assistance that they need. I commend the bill to the Senate and thank the Senate for its support of these reforms.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.