Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

Australian parents who are struggling to find child care, and struggling to afford it when they do find it, were hanging out for relief in Tuesday night’s budget. They had been listening to the Treasurer for weeks saying, ‘Watch this space.’ They have seen the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs on TV saying, ‘Watch this space, we are going to do a whole heap for parents in this year’s budget.’ They were holding their breath hoping that the problems they have had in finding places and, when they do find places, affording those places would be solved in this year’s budget. In fact, you cannot blame them for having those hopes. The Treasurer said in March this year at the Press Club:

We ought to be looking at making this the most female friendly place on earth ... But, if there are areas where we can improve these things I would want to see that and that is going to involve work family balance.

The most important thing this government can do to help families balance their work and caring responsibilities is to offer affordable, quality child care in places where parents need it. This is the test that this budget has failed. It has been a sad disappointment for parents. It has been a con.

I have seen some pretty terrible advertising over the years. I have seen some pretty dodgy things advertised. I remember the slimming tea that model Sam Fox used to advertise in the papers. I remember the Fat Blaster ads that said weight would drop off the minute people started taking Fat Blaster. The best one that I remember, though, from when I was a kid is the sea monkeys. Do people remember the sea monkeys? They used to be advertised on the back page of Mad magazine. There was a picture of little merpeople—mermen and merwomen—in little castles and they were swimming around having a great time. So many kids sent their money in for those sea monkeys and, I will tell you, when they got them they were terribly disappointed.

This is the sea monkey budget when it comes to child care. Parents had been promised 25,000 extra places. What are they going to see? They will see not a single extra place and not a single dollar off the cost of child care. Do you know why? The reason is that the Treasurer does not understand child-care shortages and the minister in charge of child care cannot be bothered explaining it. I hope the minister actually understands what the problem is. I hope the problem is that he cannot convince the Treasurer. We see a Treasurer who just does not get it and a minister who cannot deliver to the people he should be fighting for.

The government were looking for a headline such as: ‘A big number of places, 25,000 extra places.’ Wouldn’t that be good? We’ve shortages. What did they do to get that headline? They announced a dodgy policy of uncapping family day care places and out of school hours care places. The problem has never been capping in these areas. There is not, and has not been, a cap in long day care and yet there are shortages all around the country. Why would you take the system that has delivered shortages all around the country in long day care and apply that to all of child care and somehow think that that is going to solve the problem? The government said, ‘Oh, I know, we will take the system that does not work in one area and apply it to all of child care and that is going to solve the problem.’ What kind of madness is it to take the system that already does not work and extend it to solve shortages?

I think that a lot of people find the different types of child care a little bit confusing, especially if they have not had kids in child care for a long time or do not have children at all. The charitable view, of course, is that the Treasurer is one of these people, but I will explain it to him. Family day care is when a carer takes children into their own home. Often four, five or sometimes more children are looked after in the carer’s own home. They get about $4 an hour for each child. Someone who is providing family day care in their own home would earn about $480 a week gross for looking after, say, five children under the age of five for five days a week. Is it any wonder that people are not queueing out the door to be family day carers when this is the value that we place on their hard work? That is family day care.

What is long day care and how is it different? Long day care is care in child-care centres—the sort of centre you see down the street. The smaller ones might have 30 kids. The big ones might have 90; some might have 100. That is centre based long day care. That applies to babies of usually six weeks up to children of school age. That is a different thing. The Treasurer needs to understand that there is family day care and long day care—and then there is out of school hours care. That is for school age children.

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