Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad that the opposition spokesman just got put out of her misery, because clearly, first of all, she knows nothing about child care. Her facts are incorrect and her arguments are incoherent—in fact, her arguments are contradictory. We will point out all of those things and explain to her, because the public actually knows that what the Howard government delivered yesterday is on the back of a record of doubling the actual number of child-care places in Australia since 1996.

There is no disputing that today there is in excess of 600,000 child-care places operating in Australia—real places, real children being looked after in the child-care sector, allowing mums to go back to work and allowing people to have fulfilling lives. Those parents, by and large, are receiving child-care benefit paid for by the Howard government and they will receive the child-care tax rebate. That is because the system is working.

Back in Labor’s day, 1995 and before, there were 300,000 places. Believe it or not, we all know that things go up through inflation as the years go on, but today Australian families are using less of their after-tax income on child care than they were 10 years ago. It is actually cheaper today, as a percentage of your net income, to have your child in child care than it was under a Labor government 10 years ago.

Let us deal with some of the comments from the member for Sydney, the shadow minister. Today she has said that uncapping places for family day care was a hollow promise—that it was a shonk by the coalition on the public. Why was it that on budget day—not budget night—she said that she believed the government should ‘lift the cap on outside school hours care places’? So here we have, two or three days ago, the shadow minister saying—

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