Federation Chamber
Monday 7 December 2020
I rise to enter the debate today to talk about an important issue that not only affects families and cost of living issues in my electorate, but I believe in every electorate in Australia. Today's motion enables us to have a conversation in the parliament, to have a debate—if the government decided to defend their positions instead of giving up in this debate today—to talk about the No. 1 issue that is raised with me by families, which is the spiralling cost of child care in this country. Child care is not affordable in this country. This is the feedback that every Labor member of parliament has heard from the night of the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply, where he put the cost of child care firmly and squarely on the government's agenda. We've heard nothing from the Morrison government. Just last week the first visit that the Leader of the Opposition did was to fly to the electorate of Blair, my neighbour—I note that the member for Blair is here in the chamber—to hear firsthand from parents and early educators about the costs of child care in Ipswich. Ipswich is made up of many thousands of families that are groaning under the child care costs of this government.
The department of education estimates that fees in this country will increase by 5.3 per cent in 2021. But fees have already increased by 35 per cent since the election of the Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott governments back in 2013. Thirty-seven per cent of early education and childcare costs are average around Australia, which is compared to the OECD average of 18 per cent.
We know there is an annual subsidy cap, which is a barrier to many parents. We've all sat at kitchen tables or visited parents who all say the same thing: 'I'm working just to pay childcare costs'. We see that time and time again. That's why I'm so pleased that federal Labor is tackling this issue, is laying out a comprehensive plan to deal with the costs of child care in this country. Today the Leader of the Opposition, alongside our hardworking shadow minister and local member, Alicia Payne, launched the childcare calculator. Australian families can find out how much cheaper child care will be under an Albanese Labor government. This new website is a useful tool for the over one million families that will be better off under Labor's cheaper child care for working families plan.
There are a couple of key tenets that I want to bring to the attention of the House today. Under our plan, Labor will scrap the $10,560 childcare subsidy cap, which often sees women losing money from a day's work. It's the same old conversation: 'I'm only working to pay for the child care'. We want that to be an economic driver and an economic benefit to this country; to lift the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent and increase childcare subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000.
What that means is that child care under a future Labor government will be more affordable for 97 per cent of families in the system. It will remove the financial barriers that disincentivise second income earners, predominantly women, to work full time. Our plan is to fix Australia's broken childcare system, which currently locks out 100,000 families because they can't afford it. I know, in the growth corridor that I represent and share with the member for Blair, we hear this time and again when we visit with mums and bubs groups, when we sit down at the Springfield Lakes YMCA, when I visit childcare centres, when I talk to advocates, they all say the same thing: it's time the broken system was fixed.
That's exactly what Labor will do. This is an economic issue; it's a productivity issue; but it's also a life-family balance issue. We want to see more people participating in the economy. Heaven knows, after the year we've had, that we owe it to families to help them get back on their feet.
In my remaining remarks I want to acknowledge the incredible effort that early educators provided in this country during the pandemic. Thrown on the scrap heap by this government, the first to be cut from JobKeeper, but valued, supported and recognised every step of the way by this side of the chamber for the outstanding work that they do contributing to our economy.
