Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation and Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting these amendments. I take this opportunity to outline the reasons and also to correct some of the ridiculous misinformation that has been thrown about this chamber. First of all, the opposition have just committed some pretty basic errors, indicating that they have a very poor understanding of what these measures are actually meant to do. The first mistake was when the member for Farrer repeatedly said that these measures would affect the 25 largest childcare providers in Australia. That is not what these measures do. In fact, the bill says very specifically and particularly that these measures will be aimed at large long day care providers who have more than 25 services. At the moment, that is six providers across the nation. So let us just make sure we have our facts right when debating this important legislation.

The other thing we have heard is a scare campaign that it would be so easy for us to just extend this to every childcare centre across Australia. That is absolute rubbish. It would not be so easy because the legislation actually lists who would be impacted by this and to change that we would have to come before this parliament and have another debate and another vote. So let us not run scare campaigns on everything, even though it does seem to be the flavour of the month for the opposition.

This bill is an absolute priority for the government because the government are proud that we are investing some $20 billion of taxpayer funds over the next four years into the Australian childcare system. This is a massive increase on the investments we have seen previously, and it is because we recognise just how important accessible, affordable and quality child care is for Australian families. We want to make sure that it is safe and stable. Obviously there was a huge impact on families, on workers and on the sector when ABC Learning collapsed. We are committed to making sure that does not happen again.

The secretary is already constrained by this bill to requesting information only regarding financial viability. This is already in the legislation. It is not true that the secretary can go on broad fishing expeditions—they are already constrained by the bill before the House. I also note that the financial information listed in this amendment includes the type of financial information that maybe required. We listed those types of information in the explanatory memorandum because this is not an exclusive or exhaustive list and we will not be supporting the amendments to list them in the legislation.

This measure is consistent with similar measures which already exist and operate to assess the financial viability of providers in the vocational education and training area. This is not something new. Instead, this is another example of the opposition saying no—that is all they like to say, with their negativity and opposition for opposition's sake. I commend the bill as it stands. I oppose these amendments and I urge the House to do likewise.

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