Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to, in principle, support the recommendations. I have made a clarifying statement in the report, and I will talk about that in a few minutes. First of all, I would like to comment about the Australian government’s commitment—which has already been demonstrated—to improve workforce participation and employment prospects for all Australians over their lifetimes. Workplace relations, social security and taxation policies have worked to complement a way to support Australian families. Many initiatives support Australian families over their life cycle, including those who care for others, by facilitating choice for families in their work and care arrangements. These initiatives include the maternity payment, the family tax benefit, the childcare benefit, the childcare tax rebate and funding for a range of childcare initiatives, as well as the carers allowance and payment. The maternity payment, for example, is where mothers of newborns are entitled to a non-means-tested maternity payment currently worth $4,000 to assist them meet their parenting needs. This will increase to $5,000 in July 2008.

In the 2006-07 budget, a number of assistance measures for families were delivered. They include $993.3 million over four years to raise the amount that families can earn to $40,000 before their family tax benefit part A payments begin to be affected; extension of the large family supplement to families with three or more children—previously four or more children—at a cost of $496.7 million; $60.2 million over four years to remove the cap on outside school hours care places and family day care places, and this was particularly significant for suburbs in outer Western Sydney; and an extra $9.4 million in 2006-07 for jobs, education and training—JET—childcare plus continued top-up funding of $3.7 million per year in 2009-10. This is a great initiative which assists parents on income support with childcare costs while they develop skills needed in the workforce.

I will talk in a few minutes about a number of the recommendations that I think the government should look at but, referring to my clarifying statement, I particularly want to say that recommendations 16 and 17, while they in part may be of benefit, may allow higher income earners or the wealthy who have the capacity to pay higher childcare costs and pay for more expensive options to get a greater tax benefit than those on lower incomes with a lesser capacity to pay for those more expensive options in child care. In principle, if this was to be looked at, I would like there to be some cap in place and some additional assistance given to people on lower incomes and those on middle incomes whose budgets may be more stretched and who will have less choice.

Looking at the recommendations, I would particularly like to highlight the second recommendation. That is significant in that it will encourage the Department of Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs to fund a public information campaign aimed at both men and women on the effects of age and late partnering and fertility. It became apparent from a number of submissions that this would be of great benefit. I also strongly support recommendation 3.

I want to move to recommendation 10, which says: ‘As a priority, the Australian government target adults in jobless households with a goal of helping them obtain paid employment to break the cycle of disadvantage in Australia.’ This government has spent more than any other government in creating innovative and supportive structures that tackle this issue with Welfare to Work and programs such as the personal support program, but this is something that we need to continually look at to see how we can creatively invest, particularly for people who have been caught in generational cycles of unemployment.

Recommendation 11 refers to in-home care. I would particularly like to focus on this because I think it is important that the in-home care program, which is already an initiative of this government, is expanded further. There has been a review of in-home care carried out by government. I think it is critical that this kind of care is more flexible and expanded in a way to meet the needs, particularly of two-income families and where there are shiftworkers—in many cases in Western Sydney, both parents are engaged in shiftwork. My husband, for example, is a shiftworker and my travel here I think could be called shiftwork. I think where two parents are trying to juggle family and shiftwork for an organisation, it is critical that we expand this kind of service and look at expanding how rebates and CCB are made available to these families.

I also think it is important to note that one of the challenges for people accessing child care, particularly where there is a second income and a part-time or casual employee being the second income earner, in the structured environment of a childcare centre is that they often have to pay for days when they may not be working. So they have to pay and register a child for Wednesday even though they may be working only some Wednesdays. So I think in-home care, for example, may be a way in which the government could expand accessibility and flexibility for these kinds of workers where they could access child care on a more casual basis. This would create further flexibility for families, particularly where the second income earner is working on a casual or even a part-time basis—a permanent part-time job—that requires them to work varying hours week to week. This increasing flexibility is called for as families and the workplace make changes and adapt to one another.

I will look briefly at recommendation 15 where it talks about fringe benefits tax being removed from all child care so that all or any childcare provision made by employers to assist employees is exempt inclusive of salary sacrificing arrangements for child care. I particularly support this recommendation. Again, I would like to reiterate that many income earners and families could benefit from a tax rebate. How this is administered with improved accessibility and flexibility for middle- and low-income earners and benefiting all families I think is critical.

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