Karen McNamara (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister update the House on how the government's Jobs for Families package will provide families with greater choices?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dobell for her question, and for the consultation and engagement she had with service providers and families in her electorate, as so many members on this side of the House have done, to contribute to the formation of the Jobs for Families package that was announced on the weekend.

Fifty-seven per cent of families go back to work to pay the bills and to maintain their standard of living. Fifty-seven per cent are saying that is why they are going back. Forty-seven per cent of those who do not go back to work say they do not go back because of the cost of child care. The Jobs for Families package is going to change that for those families because this package will give greater choice to 1.2 million families. We are going to make child care simpler, more affordable, more flexible and more accessible.

This support for child care is not a welfare payment; it is a support that helps families be in work, stay in work and work more. That is what families are increasingly needing to do, and we want to make sure they have those choices. We are investing $3½ billion in lower income and middle income families to ensure that they get better childcare support, to keep them in work and to put them in work.

Also, that funding is going to vulnerable and disadvantaged families through our childcare safety net. There will be greater subsidies for those on those lower to middle incomes. As the Prime Minister has said, those who are using those services in child care will be $30 a week better off. The safety net, particularly for those families with children with disabilities or for those in remote and rural areas, means that there is support to ensure that they get the same choices that other families can access through the childcare system.

There will be greater flexibility with our in-home care nanny pilot program which allows access for those who cannot access mainstream care—nurses, police families, firies, ambulance officers and shift workers. All of those who cannot get access to the program now deserve the same choices that other families get. It has been well received. Early Childhood Australia said of this package that:

These historic reforms … will make access to early learning services more affordable for the majority of working families.

The Early Learning and Care Council of Australia said that this is:

… a big step forward for affordable child care and early learning.

Chief Executive Women said:

The shift in thinking about childcare as a facilitator of workforce participation rather than welfare is essential for the sustainability of Australia's economic future.

Goodstart Early Learning, the biggest provider of childcare services around the country, said: 'These reforms will improve child care affordability for most low- and middle-income working families and get more mothers to work.' This package gives families choice.