Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let me assert on behalf of my constituents and my fellow colleagues on this side of the House who represent people in Western Sydney: it is not acceptable to us that people in Western Sydney enrol in universities at just over half the rate of the rest of Sydney nor is it acceptable to us that our major university in Western Sydney has been ignored for so long by the Howard government. Let me put it on the record and let me state it very strongly that the people of Western Sydney and I will not be satisfied with the performance of the government until they take concerted long-term action to do something about it, something that they have neglected to do for at least 11 years of government.

Let us talk about child care. There is a one-off 10 per cent increase in the childcare benefit in addition to the regular three per cent increase. Again, that is to be welcomed. There are people out there struggling with child care at the moment. Childcare fees for some of my constituents are more than their rent. But, again, let us put it in perspective. How bad did it have to get before the government finally listened and did something? How bad did they let it get? How long did they stand aside and let it happen before they finally did something about it? Surprisingly, they have done something about it just before a federal election.

The annual increase in childcare costs has been more than 12 per cent per year over the last four years. That is the annual increase. Childcare costs are rising five times faster than the average cost of all other goods and services. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over the last four years out-of-pocket childcare costs for families have increased dramatically by 12.7 per cent, then 12 per cent, then 12 per cent and almost 13 per cent last year. What do we have now? An election. So the government does the bare minimum to take this issue off the rapid boil, a 10 per cent increase in childcare benefit. It is welcome, of course, but it does not even compensate for the 13 per cent increase last year or the 12 before that, or the 12 before that or the 12.7 before that. This year, with an election just around the corner, the government finally gives families the one-off bonus increase. This is after four years of cost increases and four years of bearing the costs—more than what some families pay in rent. Of course it is welcome; of course it is taking place just before an election. Let us wait and see whether what happened four years ago, when fees rose to absorb the bonus, happens again this time.

The budget also brought forward the childcare tax rebate. This is not a case of creating a problem and then asking for applause for fixing it; this is a case of deliberate government policy. The government made a promise at the last election and then they did not deliver it; now they are making it again. This childcare rebate promise—and given the track record of the government on this specific item, we might all be well advised to view it as the promise of a desperate, tired government until we see the cheque, not the advertising, in our own, hot little hands—is the same one that was made before the last election and not delivered. It simply promises to finally deliver on the Treasurer’s original promise, which he made back in 2004. There is a song called Fool me once, with the words: ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’. This is groundhog day. Before the last election, the Treasurer promised to pay the childcare tax rebate immediately after the financial year in which the childcare expenses were incurred. That was flawed policy, anyway, because it only helped those who could at least afford to pay it as they went and provided no assistance for those who could not afford it in the first place. Nevertheless, before the 2004 election, the Treasurer promised that families would receive payment of the 30 per cent childcare rebate from 1 July 2005. Then they won the election, and he immediately broke his promise and declared that families had to wait until 1 July 2006 to receive their rebate on childcare costs that were incurred in 2004. All this new budget measure does is finally deliver—it promises to deliver—on a commitment that the government promised once before, immediately before the 2004 election.

The promise of $8,000 per child sounds like a big promise. But wait—there is less. The average rebate, according to the government’s own figures, is only $813, not $8,000. Very few families are likely to receive payments of that order. Still, families are under such pressure that even a few hundred dollars will help with costs. But the government has done nothing to address other concerns of families, such as availability and quality of child care.

Why don’t the government take this issue seriously? I say, and enter into evidence, that they only do something about this in an election year when their own work and family balance is at stake, rather than that of the Australian electorate. Yet this is a critical issue, not just for families but for the economy. We hear about it from the government—the ageing of the population, the need to increase workforce participation—yet the only solution they put forward to that is Work Choices, a solution that is supposed to increase workforce participation by driving down wages and conditions. They say that will encourage people into work. Just imagine families sitting at home and deciding whether the stay-at home-parent, for example, should go back to work. They would consider the economic value for the family and the loss of family time. They would weigh up the options and say: ‘Oh, Work Choices—wages and conditions are lower. I’ll certainly go back to work!’ All the government put forward to bring people back into the workforce is lower wages and conditions.

Jokes aside, lifting workplace participation is a critical issue. We all know on this side of the parliament that meeting the participation challenge will be a key ingredient in maintaining our economic prosperity. How are we going on this? Not good. We do not have anything like the participation rates for women that many of our competitor countries do, and the experts say this quite clearly. The Productivity Commission recently reported that the cost and quality of child care were barriers to workforce participation for about 30 per cent of women aged 25 to 44, while a further 10 per cent could not access child care at all. The Bureau of Statistics said that 100,000 women are not in the workforce because child care is too expensive, not available or of low quality. We need our government to take this issue seriously. There is much work to be done, and we have never been in a better position to do something substantial about it. We have not been in a better position for the last 11 years. We have had 15 years of uninterrupted economic growth. We have never been in a better position to change the lives of people for the better.

One of the most powerful moves we can make is to invest in the early development and learning of our children, but there is nothing in the budget for this except a $1.4 million fund to establish a committee to look at intergovernment agreement on quality assurance and regulation. As important as that is, after 11 years of government we would hope for some action. On this side we have put forward a comprehensive and significant commitment, especially for our four-year-olds—not a one-off election bribe but a long-term commitment to providing access for every child to 15 hours per week of quality play based learning for 40 weeks of every year. That is a policy that builds for our future.

I would like to talk briefly about tax reform—or the recent tax cuts more than tax reform. When the Labor Party put the same policy forward two budgets ago, we were soundly condemned by the government. As recently as yesterday in question time, even after they had finally gotten around to doing it themselves, they were still playing that political game. The government have finally gotten around to providing tax justice for working families. Again, it is an election year, so they will do that. Between elections, they did not. Nevertheless, it is welcome because it is overdue and, with rising costs of child care, medicines, petrol and interest rates, families in my electorate really need it.

The skills crisis is another issue that we were all expecting would be well and truly covered in this budget—a skills crisis caused by 11 years of neglect—and once again we were hopeful that this time the government would do something substantial about it. Once again they have thrown some window-dressing on it; look out for an advertising campaign. On the whole we welcome new assistance for apprentices in the budget. After 11 years of the Howard government’s neglect of this most critical issue, of course we welcome that. But the government’s commitment to three more Australian technical colleges will not address our skills crisis in any real way.

On the government’s own figures, Australia will face a shortage of 240,000 skilled workers by 2016. The Howard government’s response is its Australian technical colleges, which will produce their first qualified tradesperson in three years time and by 2010 will have produced fewer than 10,000 students. That is assuming that the problems that have bedevilled the technical colleges so far—the late openings, the cancellations et cetera—do not continue. If they travel as they are supposed to travel, by 2010 they will have produced fewer than 10,000 students with a looming skills shortage of 240,000 skilled workers just six years later than that. Meanwhile our TAFE system, of which my community is rightly proud, which was capable of responding immediately and which has been starved over the last 11 years, is gradually being weakened by this government’s neglect. In contrast to the government, Labor’s plan is for the next decade and beyond, not just the election. It is led by our most recent policy to invest $2.5 billion to help build or upgrade trade facilities in our schools over a 10-year period, to lift school retention rates and to help provide real career paths to trades and apprenticeships.

I will dwell on retention rates for a moment because education is something that I care about deeply. When I look at school retention rates and school completion rates for the electorate that I represent, I am deeply saddened. When Labor returned to power in the early eighties, the percentage of kids staying at school to year 12 was way down in the 30s. When we lost office in 1996 it was in the 70s; we had achieved a doubling of school retention rates, and that is something that I am immensely proud of. But it has stagnated under 11 years of the Howard government, and that is just not good enough for our kids. Ask any parent who is struggling to keep their child in school or who watches, without being able to do anything, their child drop out—talk to any of those parents—and you will see that Labor’s plan will provide options for those kids who are inclined towards the practical skills. It will lift high school retention rates, which is good for the economy, but it will also provide additional options for families with teenagers to build the best lives they can for their children. It is a must for families and for the future prosperity of this nation.

We were expecting that the budget would be an environment budget. Even though the Treasurer has never used the words ‘climate change’ in any of his preceding budgets, even though the central piece of environment legislation that the government passed last year did not mention those words and even though we have a Prime Minister who does not believe in it and a whole front bench of climate change sceptics, we nevertheless expected, as did the media—given that it is an election year and the polls are saying it is a big issue—that finally there would be something significant on climate change.

But unfortunately, and unfortunately for us all, we were wrong. After 11 years of the most appalling neglect a very modest amount of $30 million per year has been allocated for the solar panel rebates program. We have argued for this before and we welcome it, modest as it is. But let’s face it, it is a policy for an election, not for the planet. The calculation is that after five years the reduction in emissions from this program will amount to only 0.01 per cent of our emissions. Before the budget, there were indications from the government that they would bring down an environment budget. So where are the plans to rein in our rapidly growing greenhouse pollution? Not in this budget, I am afraid. We in this country are connected to the land in ways that white Australia perhaps does not understand and it is time this government acted.

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