Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Rebate) Bill 2011. For the benefit of the member for Ryan, I will give a bit of a history lesson when it comes to the Howard government. The first thing the Howard government did was rip $1 billion out of the childcare sector, because in their fantasy land of ‘leave it to Beaver’ they thought it was the case that women did not need child care and families did not need child care, because that did not fit in with their social mores and their perspective of what family life is like in this country. They thought that the reality was that every family was a nuclear family with 2.5 children and a mum and a dad. We know that families come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. We know that families are what people make of them, with love, affection and affirmation. That is what family life is like. I live in a nuclear family, with a wife and two daughters, but many families are not like that. We need to provide financial and household support for those families so that those children can complete school. We want to raise the rate of children completing school in this country from 75 per cent to 90 per cent. We want to make sure that women have the opportunity to go back to work and have choice. We want to make sure that they have a choice, not just over their financial circumstances but their vocational opportunities. We want to make sure that is the case, but clearly those opposite, when they were in government, did not believe that.

You really need to look at what those opposite did, not what they say today. We have seen crocodile tears from those opposite, saying, ‘This Labor government is not looking after working families.’ But let’s have a look at the history of it. Let’s look at what we did. Let’s look at their record. Their record was abysmal in the area of child care and education. They know it. In their heart of hearts, they know they failed. We were the ones in 2008 who raised the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. Did I ever see a private member’s motion from those opposite at any stage during the whole period of the Howard government in relation to raising the rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent? Did we ever see that? Did they go into the 2007 election campaign arguing that? No. They did not argue that it all. It took a Labor government to raise it from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. We effectively saw a maximum rate of $4,354 per year per child under the Howard government raised to $7,500. That is a massive increase for families. Under the coalition it was $4,354 per child per year; Labor got into government and increased it to $7,500 per child per year. That is real money. This is the reality—not the fiction perpetrated and perpetuated by those opposite. The real situation is that, when Labor got in, they increased the assistance to families in that regard. Those opposite forget the fact that we have cut taxes for the last three years. That is three years of tax cuts for those opposite to enjoy, for us on this side to enjoy and for the Australian community to enjoy. Those tax cuts put more money in people’s pockets so that they can spend money.

If those opposite want to talk about assistance to household budgets, let’s have a bit of a look at their record. That is the party of Work Choices, which drove down wages. That is the party that made child care more difficult by inflicting Work Choices into the workplaces of this country. That is the party that went to the last election proposing a Woolworths and Coles tax, effectively, which meant that $6 billion of tax would be foisted onto the retail sector. That would have put more cost-of-living pressures on working Australian families. So they should not come into this place and give us lectures about how their so-called affection has always been there for working Australian families, because they did not have it when they were in power.

What did they do with respect to education? There were cuts to education. What happened to health care? There were cuts to health care. They even fessed up, just before the 2007 election, with respect to health care. That is so important in the area of child care as well. They fessed up that it went backwards under them. The now Leader of the Opposition fessed that up when he was health minister in 2007, just before the election. They ripped $1 billion out of the health system. So it was not just health and education, and it was not just Work Choices; it was child care as well. Those opposite failed miserably. They come in here and give their sanctimonious and self-righteous nonsense on child care. The truth is that under our policies we have massively increased childcare assistance—$14.9 billion to help 800,000 Australian families annually with the cost of child care through the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate. That includes $8.7 billion over four years to 2013-14.

We are effectively reducing childcare fees and reducing the household burden with $6.2 billion to assist working families with out-of-pocket childcare expenses under the childcare rebate. That is the reality; I am not making it up. It is in the budget papers—it is on record. Those opposite can perpetuate their fiction. We will talk about the facts over here with respect to child care. We have a good record on child care. Those opposite have a 1950s perspective on families.

In this legislation we are giving people options. We are enabling families to access the childcare rebate at least on a fortnightly basis. That means about 700,000 Australian families across the length and breadth of this country, from the Torres Strait to Tasmania and from Perth on one side to Palm Beach on the other, are getting access to the kind of crucial help that they need to meet their childcare fees each day.

I have some fantastic childcare facilities in my electorate. The member for Ryan talked about our record with respect to childcare fees. She can come to the Yamanto Early Learning and Care Centre, which ends a double drop-off situation by being located at the new Amberley District State School. It was a $1.6 million election commitment which we made. It means that about 75 local kids can get the benefit of attending the learning centre and going on to the Amberley District State School next door. Minister Ellis opened it with me on 22 April 2010. That is the fulfilment of our election commitment with respect to child care in my electorate of Blair.

We have eased the burden of taxation on families. Those opposite are the ones who, in the Senate, have stalled the kinds of savings that we need to ease the burden on working families. They keep attacking our budget commitments and measures and knocking them off in the other place. They say we are not spending enough money on child care and certain things, but then, inconsistently, they lop off the very measures we are trying to implement to get the budget back into surplus. They always criticise us by saying we are creating a burden with respect to child care and tax. In the mid-2000s, when in government those opposite had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 24.1 per cent under their beloved leader, the Hon. John Howard. This year ours is 20.9 per cent, easing the burden on the Australian community and on working Australian families with respect to taxation. We are cutting tax, increasing childcare rebates, making sure that people have more money in their pockets and getting rid of Work Choices. That is our record. They are the facts over here, not the fiction over there.

This is good legislation because it enables families to have a better and more flexible arrangement with respect to child care. They can elect to have their CCR paid via their childcare services by way of fee reduction; 98 per cent of childcare benefit customers elect to have their payments made this way so as to receive fee reductions.

I want to diverge for a minute and pay tribute to a number of the childcare facilities in my electorate, which played a great role in the flood crisis in South-East Queensland, particularly in places which were affected. I mean places like Bush Kidz in Brassall. Brassall, in Ipswich, is the suburb in my electorate with the highest population. My electorate office is actually in the Brassall Shopping Centre. Bush Kidz and a number of the other childcare facilities in that area looked after kids at this time while their mums and dads were out there volunteering and cleaning up after the floods in the dozens and dozens of homes which are affected in Brassall. Community childcare facilities around Riverview did the same thing for those people around Duncan Street in Riverview who were also inundated by water. I pay tribute to the Riverview Neighbourhood House for the great work they did during this period.

In fact, I was at Riverlink Shopping Centre on Saturday and had someone praise the childcare centre and the Riverview Neighbourhood House for the work they did during the flood. A guy came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder while I was at Mister Minit getting a watch fixed and told me that. Childcare facilities did a great job during the flood time. We saw that at places like One Mile, Leichhardt, Churchill, Yamanto and other places. Childcare facilities enabled mums and dads to go out there and work in the flood relief, mitigation, recovery and reconstruction. Whether it is Cribb Street Child Care Centre, the one at the great One Mile and Leichhardt Community Centre, Bush Kidz at Brassall or any one of the many, many childcare facilities in my electorate, I want to thank them very much for the work that they did during the flood crisis. They played their role and I know that the mums and dads in my electorate were very appreciative of what they did.

As I said before, this legislation introduces more frequent childcare rebate payments for families from the first Monday in July 2011, either through the childcare services on behalf of the parents or carers as an immediate fee reduction directly or by way of a payment to a nominated bank account. That is a good, flexible way. They are still able to receive the CCR quarterly or on an annual basis, should they so wish. This is important legislation.

I also want to mention the number of options that they have, because I think it is worthwhile for those who may be listening to know that there are a number of options people can claim. I want the people of my electorate of Blair to understand that. From July this year you can have a choice with respect to receiving the childcare rebate. You can have the childcare rebate payment made to your childcare service—for example, the Yamanto Early Learning and Care Centre—weekly or fortnightly as a fee reduction, subject to the provision by your service of a childcare usage report on your behalf. As I said before, nearly 100 per cent of people choose to do that. Or, if they want, they can receive their childcare rebate payment directly to the bank account weekly or fortnightly, subject to the provision by their service of childcare usage reports. Or, as some people have in the past, they can have their childcare rebate paid to their bank account quarterly. They can do it annually if they wish to, but I do not think it is likely too many people would do it annually.

The annual payment is another point which brings me to those opposite. Under the Howard coalition government, families had to wait until the end of the year to receive this important assistance. That was their policy—that is what they did when they were in power, not what they said in this chamber or to various childcare centres, groups and communities across the country. Look at what they did. You had to wait and claim it on an annual basis. It took us being elected in November 2007 for important reforms to take place in this area. When it comes to improving affordability of child care across the country, for those opposite it is fiction; for us it is fact.

Overall, we have committed, as I have said, over $18 billion over four years to make early childhood education more affordable to mums and dads and carers across the country. The thing that those opposite never say is: that is twice the amount they ever put in in the last four years in their forward estimates and their budget measures under the John Howard coalition government. We have put twice as much in as they did with respect to early childhood education. Those opposite in 1996 ripped a billion dollars out, paid it annually, only $4,300-odd; we increase it to $7,500, pay it weekly or fortnightly, make it more flexible and make sure that we put in more resources—twice as much as those opposite across the four-year cycle. Fiction from them; fact from us.

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