Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is very important that we discuss all the full implications of this bill, which someone described as the child of Frankenstein of the 2014 budget in many ways. We have heard reference of course to the energy rebate; well, we have heard a lot from the government about soaring cost of energy—which has happened under their watch. So there has been no time when there has been a greater need for support for people dealing with those costs, which we know will come down with the greater application of renewable energy. All we need now is someone to step up and actually manage that transition and manage the grid, which is the real story.

But I particularly want to focus on one specific issue that emerges from this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. Last year, on 26 November, I travelled to Tumut as I was deeply concerned about the impact that the changes to child-care funding would have on vital services in our region in that area—the Snowy Valleys south-west slopes area. The Snowy Valleys Council had written to me stating that their mobile child-care service, Puggles, would have its funding cut, and rural and remote families in the region would not have access to quality child-care services.

I met with parents from all over that south-west slopes region who were deeply worried that the award-winning mobile child-care service that they relied on, Puggles, would no longer be available for their children. The Puggles mobile children's services van, run by the Snowy Valleys Council, has provided services to rural and remote venues across southern New South Wales for the past 16 years. The federal government was seeking to introduce the family assistance legislation amendment bill 2016; at that stage, the criteria for funding were unclear and there was no guarantee that services like Puggles would have continued to receive funding.

This year I am even more disappointed, as the government is seeking to introduce the social security omnibus bill that provides even less certainty for Puggles children's services and to the people who utilise that service. The social security omnibus bill is designed to streamline child-care arrangements as a budget savings measure, but it fails to take into account the differing circumstances of delivering services to rural and remote communities.

The Snowy Valleys Council have had modelling done on the impact that the streamlining will have on their mobile child-care services. This indicates that, if a new funding package is introduced, Puggles will have to cease servicing two of the six venues it currently services. And it is likely that increased costs will reduce enrolments at other centres owned by the council. This threatens the overall viability of that service. These changes also stand to impact the 85 children and 70 families that use the Puggles service in the region, as they will have reduced access and ultimately no access at all to this service. We know that quality child care plays such an important part in the development of young people, and for these children to have their service reduced or cut is just not good enough.

The Puggles mobile children's service ensures that our remote children are receiving six hours of early education a week. It is a recommendation that children receive 15 hours of early education a week and, as a result of the government's proposed changes, parents are seeing that their children will receive no early education—so not just not meeting the recommended levels but nothing at all.

Sheridan IngoId, a local parent speaking at the meeting that I mentioned in Tumut said, 'Puggles provides a service for our children to thrive and get early intervention and education care where otherwise they would miss out. It also serves as a hub for families to meet and socialise in our small village.' Award-winning childcare teacher, Kylie Wilesmith, who manages the Puggles children's service, stated that there was much to be lost in our area if these reforms go ahead. If passed in its current form, this policy will render many budget-based funded mobile children's services unviable, with the likely result that the early education and care of isolated children will suffer. It is deeply concerning that the mainly Aboriginal community of Brungle is set to be impacted by these changes.

The early years are the best opportunity to lay a solid foundation for a child's future. Time and money spent in the years before school have been shown to be a much more cost-effective investment than investments made at any other time. The skills that children gain as pre-schoolers form the basis for later skill development. As a result of a quality education before school, children enter school with marked differences in the cognitive, emotional, attention-related, self-regulatory, learning and social skills needed for success in the school environment, and these differences influence later academic success. Mobile children's services provide flexible, responsive, innovative services to children and families experiencing social, geographical cultural or economic isolation. The children that access services through Puggles stand to lose much more than a service; they stand to have their future negatively impacted.

It is clear from my regular community meetings in Eden-Monaro that both the New South Wales and federal coalition governments are simply out of touch on this issue. They refuse to explain their policy decisions to the community, they are too lazy to run proper community consultation processes and they are hypersensitive to criticism. While all governments should constantly monitor how efficiently funding arrangements are being delivered—and I am certainly happy to concede that—if they want to make changes, the important thing is to bring everyone along. Our mobile childcare services and parents are being left completely in the dark on this matter.

I have mentioned in the past that this is compounding the very serious body of issues that particularly the people I see in country New South Wales are really rising up to exhibit and voice their concerns over. It is building on all of the grievances that they have that have been developing over a period of time now at both the state and federal levels. We have seen what happened with the backpackers tax; the Gonski changes, meaning that the loading for regional schools and Indigenous kids is not being applied; the NBN stuff-ups that we are having in rural and regional areas; the forced mergers of our councils; the greyhounds issue; the privatisation of hospitals being mooted and the loss of funding for those regional hospitals; and electricity privatisation and all the things that we flagged that would happen with that—for example, the security issues that fell out of the Ausgrid sale and the gaming of the system now by a lot of private companies that have taken over the delivery of electricity services, which has caused a lot of the problems that we have been seeing.

We have seen the attacks on our TAFEs all around the country. In New South Wales country areas that is having a serious effect. We have seen the draconian fracking protest laws on our farmers who are worried about the impacts of GSG. And there has, of course, been the failure to come to grips with the impacts of climate change on our farmers. I was pleased to meet with our Farmers For Climate Action, who really understand both the challenges and opportunities that we have here if we get our policy settings right. There has also been the Centrelink debacle, which is playing out very badly in rural areas, where people who really depend on that personal and face-to-face support are now being targeted and persecuted by this mail-out program which has driven many of them to contemplate suicide. I am pleased that the wonderful people in my electorate offices have been effectively acting as adjuncts of Centrelink to deal with that issue. We have also seen veterans forced into the situation where they do not have the opportunity to have a face-to-face with support—forcing everyone to try to do all of these services online. We are also seeing a loss of services in banks and railway stations and the like.

But the latest blow that our country areas are facing relates to this penalty rates issues. In general terms, the impact on rural communities was spelled out in a McKell Institute study, which said that the retail and hospitality sectors account for some 18 per cent of all rural workers. The partial adjustment to these penalty rates was also looked at in that study. The average income earned by workers in retail and hospitality was evidenced to be the lowest of any industry. If you are talking about multipliers like double time et cetera, it is like the old saying 'two-fifths of bugger all'. These are very low wages that we are talking about. That multiplier effect was what enabled these people to put food on the table. In my region, a lot of people only get to work two to three days a week with these jobs. So it is absolutely critical that they have that penalty rate mechanism.

The McKell study highlighted that the income of these groups of workers, who are already the lowest income recipients in the country and in rural Australia, would be playing out dramatically through the reduction in the disposable income of those workers, because there would be less money going into the local economy. The very businesses where these workers work depend on people being able to afford to come into them to buy their coffee or to buy their food in that discretionary opportunity. That is going to really suffer a huge dent with the lack of that money flowing through the economy.

The McKell study said that a partial abolition of penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors would result in workers in rural Australia losing between $370 million to $691 million per annum and in a loss in disposable income of between $174 million to $343 million per annum to local economies in rural Australia. We can imagine what the impact of that will be. Specifically in New South Wales, we are looking at the loss of between $118 million and $220 million per annum, and the impact on the local rural economies' disposable income would be in the order of up to $106 million. So we can see generally what the impact is going to be, but in relation to Eden-Monaro, one of the most vulnerable electorates in the entire nation, we know what the community feels about this because we have been extensively surveyed. In particular, only a few months ago a survey conducted by ReachTEL found that nearly 60 per cent of my community is opposed to plans to cut penalty rates, with 17 per cent undecided. It remains a very hot issue for us. The opposition to the cut was strongest amongst women, who will be deeply affected by this, and those aged between 18 and 34—as we have heard, young people will also suffer greatly. A poll also conducted by ReachTEL, of people in Queanbeyan and Canberra, found that 79 per cent supported penalty rates, with only 12 per cent opposed. So we know that in my region not only is it something that will have a massive impact but it is something that the community does not want.

If we are talking about tribunals, the ultimate tribunal for all of us in this place is the tribunal of the people—and the people have spoken loud and clear across this nation on this issue. We can talk about the acceptance of decisions, but decisions are made by tribunals all the time. It is like decisions that are made by the High Court. Decisions made by tribunals pose policy issues for this parliament and for governments. It is up to us then to deal with the challenges that decisions of tribunals might present. In this case, this is a very clear situation where a policy response is called for. What we need is a floor that preserves the ability for enterprise agreements to also adjust these matters in exchange for benefits, and that was the piece missing from the arguments put forward by the Prime Minister today. Absolutely, we accept the protection and the strength of unions to achieve agreements that deliver better outcomes for people in exchange for productivity or other trade-offs. Of course no-one is objecting to that, but what we are seeing here is the potential for a very important floor to be pulled out from under workers, which will influence the way future enterprise agreements are negotiated. So we need this situation addressed.

In the time left to me, I will also point out the local impact of the proposed move of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority from Canberra to Armidale. This is having a severe effect on my own electorate. Employees across the board are being cut from the Public Service and agricultural agencies, but we are really suffering from the impact that this will have on the capacity that the APVMA used to have, in the face of a cost-benefit analysis that showed that there was absolutely very limited benefit but plenty of cost associated with this move. We are talking about $26 million in moving costs, $157 million pulled from the local economy and a staff of 200, more than half of whom will not move. An internal strategy reveals that the government will struggle to move even 10 of the authority's 103 regulatory scientists. The specialised nature of that work means legal compliance and licensing divisions are also unlikely to move. This is having an impact on the capacity of our government to effectively service our rural industries.

One other issue that is having a big effect on rural Australia is the failure of the Black Spot Program, which the Australian National Audit Office highlighted was skewed politically. The criteria being used to determine the location of blackspots infrastructure were deeply flawed. The money is largely being spent in areas that already had some coverage and not in the areas that really need it. This is a damning record and I hope that the government starts listening to fine rural members like you, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, and addresses these issues. (Time expired)

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