Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Rebate) Bill 2011. The coalition went to the last election committing to pay the childcare rebate weekly in order to ease the upfront cost of child care for families and to ensure that child care remained affordable. We listened to and heeded the pleas of Australian families struggling with mortgages, the rising cost of groceries and their battle to find affordable, accessible child care. Fortunately the Labor Party has now listened to families and to our arguments and has put forward this bill.

The bill seeks to pay the childcare rebate either weekly or fortnightly depending on the frequency at which the childcare centre reports their childcare occupancies. Information provided by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations indicates that, as the majority of childcare centres report weekly, there will be provision to pay the rebate on a weekly cycle. Where the providers report their attendance data on a fortnightly basis, parents or the centre will be paid every two weeks.

In addition to increasing the frequency of payment, the bill enables the rebate to be paid directly to the childcare provider. Given that a number of providers have raised concerns with me about parents defaulting on childcare payments this will certainly assist providers. Parents may still elect to receive the rebates directly and this will be the default mechanism if they do not advise otherwise. The coalition certainly welcome the decision by the Gillard government to copy our lead and offer weekly or fortnightly payments of the rebate. However, this leads me to address the real reason why this legislation is so necessary.

The Gillard government has sought to decrease the childcare rebate from $7,778 to $7,500 a year while ceasing indexation. Whilst this bill is yet to be passed, Centrelink has already enacted the reduced rebates slashing the amount paid to thousands of parents. This is a clear sign of the sheer arrogance of this government. Despite evidence suggesting the legislation will not pass, they are intent on pushing forward with it, like a bull at a gate, to push through these changes—all this from a government that went to the 2007 election promising Australian families that it would make child care more affordable. Remember, the government committed to an additional 260 childcare centres, but alas child care has increased in cost and the promise to end the double drop-off with the building of those 260 childcare centres has been whittled down to 38.

Now the government claim they need this $86.3 million in savings from cutting the childcare rebate to help fund their national quality framework. Considering the wasteful spending of this government to date I am amazed they are not asking the nation’s children for interest-free loans from their piggybanks. Yet the real issue here is that once again this is poorly designed, haphazard policy much like the pink batts debacle, the Building the Education Revolution fiasco and the hideously wasteful National Broadband Network.

The government want every childcare worker to be qualified. They want to increase the staff-to-child ratio. These sound positive measures. However, if you want to enact policy measures such as these, they need to be realistic. Given the current critical shortage of qualified workers, exemptions will need to be offered left, right and centre to ensure that childcare centres can even keep their doors open. This is an industry which has a very high staff turnover and many qualified staff opt instead to use their qualifications in early-school-years teaching where the pay rates are higher and the holidays are longer.

In today’s Age, the critical shortfall of childcare workers is made very clear. Hundreds of centres are desperately searching for qualified staff. However, there is a chronic shortage. Three out of every 10 childcare workers in Victoria have no qualifications, according to the workplace survey undertaken by the government in 2010. I question the intent in forcing through these changes that, quite frankly, cannot be met and will lead to further shortages in the number of childcare places available as providers decide to reduce vacancies if they cannot find or afford additional staff. Particularly in rural and regional areas the shortages of skilled staff will see a real two-tiered system develop, and country areas will be made to feel like the poorer cousins compared with the cities.

The problems will not be confined just to rural areas. There will need to be a substantial increase in infrastructure nationwide. More childcare workers will need to be trained and providers will need to negotiate issues, such as additional car parking, with local councils. I come back to the article in today’s Age mentioning that there are some 29,000 childcare workers in Australia who are unqualified. The Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth insults those unqualified childcare workers by suggesting that our children in the nation’s childcare centres are somehow at risk from unqualified staff. I take great exception to that.

As we in the coalition know and understand, you can have workers in childcare centres supported by adequate qualified staff and high-quality systems that are in place that can balance the needs of every child in that centre. To suggest to those 29,000 workers that they should be made redundant, that they should get qualifications quick smart and that they have to meet a new framework says that something about the skills and the passion that they bring to their job every day are not worthwhile. We strongly resist that suggestion. Whilst I strongly support improving quality in the childcare sector, we do need practical, realistic goals. We need to re-examine the current auditing process to weed out the few providers who are not making the grade We need to recognise that, whilst many childcare workers may not have formal qualifications, their years of experience on the job give them an understanding that no classroom can teach.

Instead, with the release of some quality statistics last week from the national childcare association which indicated that only 87 per cent of childcare centres were meeting all of the high-quality ticks in the boxes and the measures that are used when those auditing visits are done, the minister reacted, assuming that parents across Australia would be horrified at the lack of hygiene and the lack of quality in the centres that were highlighted by this report. The point is that if, as a school child, you brought home a report that said you were 87 per cent across the line, your family would be happy with that. I think, likewise, that the nation’s parents should be very happy with the quality of child care that we receive in our centres, and the minister needs to remember that she is the minister for child care, not the minister whose job it is to offend, insult and denigrate Australia’s hardworking, viable and, in a world measure, very high-quality childcare centres.

The report that was released last week—and there were some headlines as a result of that report, and the minister insisted that the nation’s parents would be horrified—does not give parents the assurance that they should be getting from the minister for child care that our Australian child care is very good and parents should have confidence in it. The last thing we want is for parents not to have confidence in their childcare centres and in childcare generally. Certainly, where there are issues, as the accreditation process indicated, then the accreditors, the state agencies and the numerous people who are constantly sticking their nose into every childcare centre—and we accept that that is necessary—need to work with those who run the centre, with the parents and with stakeholders and make sure that the standards are met. Instead, the minister’s response has been that they should be named and shamed, that they will be appearing on the My School website in a few months time and that parents can go on there and perhaps see their local childcare centre named and shamed.

It is very important that we make a distinction between indicators that demonstrate genuine shortfalls and genuine failings in how a childcare centre is operating and indicators that perhaps do not demonstrate those. I notice that one of the accreditation criteria was that children should have a positive experience while toilet training. Maybe there is not a tick in the box every time that that happens. There were some indicators that hands were not washed as frequently as they should have been before eating food and that children did not get as much sleep as they perhaps should have. But I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that if you went into any household there would be days when those things might happen. It is quite difficult for every toileting experience to be positive. It is quite difficult for a harried mother to manage to meet every single tick in the box, so we accept that that happens in households.

Again, I am not suggesting that our childcare centres should suffer any lack of standards. I know that things should be done properly, but we have to be realistic. I come back to that: we have to be realistic. Another of the criteria mentioned was that children should be given an opportunity to appreciate the expressive arts. Finger painting, potato painting, hands in water—they are all expressive arts. But maybe there are some days when the opportunity to appreciate the expressive arts is not as good as it is on other days, and maybe they get fewer ticks in the box as a matter of course because of that. All of these indicators lead to a set of circumstances where, as I said, the accreditors and the agencies need to work with centres that are almost making the grade and make sure that things are fixed up. Instead, we have the minister noting that families must be horrified and centres will be named and shamed. That is an appalling response from a minister who should be supporting the childcare sector in this country. I am very proud of it. The centres that I meet have much to offer and are offering much to the nation’s children.

Australian families are really struggling to meet the cost of childcare as it is. The government has reduced the rebate and is intent on bringing in this national quality framework agenda, which will further exacerbate the pressure on families because they will have to cover the increased overheads of business required by this model. It is estimated that around 20,700 families will be affected by this reduction in the childcare rebate cap and will suffer financially as a result. The government, however, has been quick to dismiss these concerns, playing down the financial impact on families. Yet research undertaken by the Childcare Alliance shows that 74 per cent of parents surveyed would have difficulty meeting additional costs of $13 to $22 a day. For a couple of children over a year of working, that is a significant additional impost on any family. If both parents are working fulltime, with one child in formal care for 40 hours or more a week, it may cost $140 a week after the federal government’s childcare benefit and childcare rebate. This is a huge additional burden to families already struggling to pay mortgages and put food on the table.

Many parents have to question whether it is finally worthwhile for one parent to return to the workforce when they consider the costs of care for their children. In all likelihood, it would be the mother who stays home to care for young children, possibly losing the opportunity to re-enter the workforce for a number of years. We have to remember: it is not just a childcare issue, important though that is; it is a productivity in the workplace issue, and you cannot look at any newspaper or report today in any state or territory jurisdiction across Australia that does not mention the skills shortage and the need for workers. Many skilled workers come from overseas. We cannot possibly meet the shortfall in Australia. But we have here a significant demographic of working women who we need to support and encourage in their family and childcare choices so that when they are ready to go back into the workforce—and many of them are skilled when they step out of the workforce to have children—they have all of the support that they need. But it will come down to budgets; it will come down to payments. Additional costs of childcare could make the difference between them staying at home or going back to work.

Lack of access and increasing costs will undoubtedly force many parents to either withdraw their children from childcare or seek alternative, less attractive care options. If parents have no choice but to work in order to meet their mortgage repayments or pay off their car, they may resort to placing their child in backyard care. That is not scaremongering. The other type of care that I must mention is care with grandparents. Another report in today’s press showed that the proportion of child care being done by grandparents has increased quite dramatically since 2002. Those grandparents do a magnificent job. I salute every one of them. It is not always easy when your own health is not what it was when you were a younger mum and you have very energetic toddlers and babies to look after, but you do it to help your children—to help them pay the bills and, of course, because you love to see your grandchildren. But sometimes it gets just a little bit too much and sometimes it is quite a burden that families are asking their parents to take on in looking after the grandchildren.

We have seen an increase, as I have said, in grandparents assuming those caring responsibilities, and the recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey indicates that approximately 47 per cent of grandmothers look after grandchildren for at least one day a week. Certainly, grandparents are willing to assist but many, due to geographic separation or their own employment, would be unable to care for their grandchildren on a regular basis, meaning that child care is the only viable option for parents. These difficulties bring stress to families. It really is important that with the lifestyles that we are living today we try to remove as many of those sources of stress as we possibly can—all of the balls young parents have to have in the air when there are jobs, mortgages, payments, bills and family issues to deal with and when there are young children in child care. Our job, as policy makers, should be to try to make those choices easier and to try to support the options that parents have.

The rollout of the National Quality Framework will further increase financial pressure on families, with many industry groups predicting increased costs of $12 to $22 a day—costs which, for the most part, will inevitably be borne by families. So, whilst we welcome the government’s decision to introduce weekly or fortnightly payments of the child care rebate, this is just one small positive in a sea of negative decisions. If this government is truly serious about helping Australian families source affordable child care it will reconsider its national framework and reinstate the indexation of the childcare rebate immediately.

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