Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will come back to the bill. It is this mismanagement of the BER and the pink batts fiasco which has led to this bill. What this bill basically is is a cash grab from the government, with 21,000 families losing up to $9 a week, and as the years progress and the consumer price index increases, taking the cost of child care with it, the burden on families will grow even further. And that is the point I was trying to make, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the money had not been wasted, there would be no need to cut family assistance to child care.

Rest assured, sadly, that the government’s mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars will continue unabated as well. Let us call this bill for what it is—a cash grab. Nowhere is this reflected more than in the growth that is estimated in the savings, rising from $5.7 million in 2010-11 to $42 million in 2013-14. This will come from those parents trying to access child care. Some industry groups predict associated cost increases of $12 minimum to $22 maximum a day as a result of the national quality framework, so add those costs on to it as well. If the worst-case fee increases projected by industry representatives come to pass, it would substantially increase the impact of this change. It is obvious that as the indexation freeze progresses, the financial burden on families will only grow.

How can the Gillard government argue that something that increases its coffers by cutting funding to families will not be to the detriment of those it is taking the funding away from? This is Labor’s spin at its best. This government knows no shame. How it could argue that cutting funding from families struggling with increased childcare costs is fair is beyond belief. The government is squeezing the life out of Australian families already. In my electorate, small rural and regional communities are already being forced to fundraise for kindergartens, for community centres, for improved health services and for aged-care facilities. They are being forced to fundraise within an inch of their existence. These communities will not be helped by this bill. These communities are often under some of the greatest strain in the nation, as local government rates are forced upwards because state Labor governments continually cost-shift services onto rural councils. That the government still wishes to make it more difficult for these families is beyond belief.

Let us look at their record. Child care: in my electorate of Wannon, if you want a childcare facility, you now cannot get one. And if you are lucky enough to have access your costs will go up. Kindergarten: under the Gillard government’s so-called universal access to early childhood education reforms, it is looking more and more likely that kindergartens across rural Victoria will be forced to close. So, rather than providing universal access, this policy will be actually taking it away. Tertiary education: there is a well-recognised growing divide between country students accessing tertiary education and their city cousins. What is the Gillard government’s solution? To make it harder, not easier, for country students to access tertiary education by cutting the independent youth allowance. How anyone can think that making tertiary education more expensive for country students will address this divide is well and truly beyond me.

So with this bill we will have the learning trifecta. The Gillard government are making it harder for families to access child care, they are making it harder for their children to go to kindergarten and they are making it harder for students to access tertiary education—and all this coming from a Prime Minister who brags that her biggest claim to fame is her education credentials. This bill is shameful in its cynicism. It is nothing but a cash grab and that is why I oppose it. I go back to where I started. It should be retitled the ‘reduce family assistance legislation amendment (childcare) (try and fix the budget) measure’.

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