Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister inform the House how Western Australian families will benefit from the government's increased investment in child care? How will this assistance also help Western Australian families better afford their own homes?

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

I thank the member for Tangney for his question. He, like all of those on this side of the House, and I would hope on the other side of the House, will be pleased about the fact that there are more jobs, that there are 20,000 extra jobs a month this year compared to 2000 in the last year of the former Labor government. These jobs are important for families because the coalition's Jobs for Families package, which provides more affordable access to quality child care in this country will support 1.2 million families, including 90,000 families in Western Australia. That also includes some 2,262 children in Western Australia, of which 1,319 are Indigenous children, who will be supported by the budget-based funding to some 25 centres in disadvantaged areas.

The Jobs for Families package is about giving families more choice, particularly the choice to be able to work, and work more. It is important for families today with the cost-of-living pressures that are on them and the challenges in terms of housing affordability for both parents to be in work. Over the last generation, from 1981 to 2011, the average median mortgage as a percentage of household incomes for families under the age of 45 has doubled over the last 30 years, and of single income, two-parent families the percentage 30 years ago was one in two for those under 45 or looking to buy a house. That has fallen to less than one in five. What that says to us is this. It is making work easier to get into, creating jobs and, importantly, ensuring that where both parents in families need to work and can be in work, they can access that work by having more affordable child care. It is not just that. In 2012 when those opposite were in office, we had some 19 per cent of families where there was no-one in a job at all. There was 530,000-odd children under the age of 15 growing up in a family that does not have a job. We are trying to ensure that the cost of child care can be more affordable and we are doing that by making it more affordable for government as well.

We are looking at making changes to the family tax benefit payments to ensure that we can pay for our $3½ billion worth of increased investment in child care. Those opposite opposed those changes. They would rather keep rolling out the cheques than ensure that we make better use of taxpayers' money to give families greater choice over being able to work more. That is why we responsibly budget and plan for these increases in investment to make child care more affordable. The only ones standing in the way of that are those who sit opposite, those who want to run up the debt and run up the deficit rather than ensuring there are savings in place to invest in important, affordable child-care reforms.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about families' debt?

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Jagajaga is preventing the member for Gorton getting the call.