Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity, Mr Deputy Speaker Cheeseman, to congratulate you on your elevation to the Speaker's panel. I believe this is the first time that I have spoken while you are in the chair, but I have been watching your contribution and have seen what a fine job you are doing as a deputy speaker, so congratulations. I know that you will bring great dignity to the role and that you will perform the task extremely well.

While listening to the last contribution to this debate on the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, that by the member for Menzies, I became quite puzzled. Here was a member from the other side talking about the government ripping money away from families. But, as I found myself thinking, it is the opposition that are the side of this parliament that is about ripping money away from families. They have a plan—they definitely have a plan—for Australian families. They have a plan to penalise Australian families. They have a plan to make it harder for Australian families. They have a plan to take away the schoolkids bonus.

I would like to share with the House this fact: there is no initiative that the government has introduced that has been more widely embraced by families than the schoolkids bonus. Parent after parent has contacted my office saying how helpful it has been to them. Actually, my grandchildren are attending school, and my children have told me how they have been able to use that money to purchase school shoes and other things to help prepare their children for school. I would caution those on the other side of the House: if they are really about supporting and helping families, then they should be ensuring that the schoolkids bonus stays in place.

On the baby bonus, I fully believe that the level of the baby bonus when you have your first child should be $5,000. A moment ago, I referred to my children; they all have more than one child. They had to purchase the cot, bassinette, baby bouncer and all those other things you need for that first child. It is an enormous expense. Then, when they had their second child, they still had the cot, bassinette and baby bouncer—which were also shared among their nieces and nephews—and all those things they purchased the first time. They already had that nursery furniture, so, the second time, the expenditure was not as great. The outlays they had to make were not as great.

If we really want to support families, do we give them a one-off payment or do we provide them with ongoing support through a schoolkids bonus? Now, I know, because families in the Shortland electorate are telling me, that the schoolkids bonus is what they need. They need it for all their children and they need it to assist them at school. They also tell me that the changes to dental care for kids are something that will help them no end because, instead of families having to scrimp and save to maybe be able to afford dental treatment for their child, from July 2014 all children will be eligible for the kids dental care program.

These are among the things that we have delivered since we have been in government that I am not convinced the opposition would keep in place, such as the increase in the childcare rebate, the Paid Parental Leave scheme, the dads and partners leave—all things that are helping families on low and middle incomes and should not be taken away. They are things that are given to families to make their lives a lot easier and to provide them with support—and not just when the baby is born, because the expenditure gets greater as that child grows.

On this side of the House, we recognise that support for families and children is whole-of-life support. It is about ensuring that they have educational opportunities and making sure that as a government we fully fund every child's education. There is quite a strong contrast between what the New South Wales Liberal government is doing—that is, pulling $1.7 billion out of education—and what the federal Labor government are planning to do, which is to invest more in education. It is about whole-of-life support, not a one-off payment at the time a child is born.

The previous speaker spent a lot of time talking about declining fertility. He believes that the way to increase fertility is a one-off baby bonus payment set at the same amount for every child people have. I have news for that member. There are many things that determine whether a woman and her partner decide to have children. They do not look just at a one-off incentive payment to have a child; they look at things such as whether they will have ongoing support once the child is born and whether they will have access to child care, which is a very important consideration when making decisions about whether or not to have a child. You need to be sure that you will have good child care.

On this side of the parliament we are not opposed to women choosing to be stay-at-home mums. We believe in choice. Real choice is not only about providing a baby bonus; it is also about putting in place the support structures that will enable a woman to stay at home and so allow her to choose whether to return to work. The choice is determined by child care, by paid parental leave and—to a large extent—by the availability of flexible working hours. The workplace needs to be tailored to be family friendly so that a woman or a man—whichever person chooses to be the primary carer—can adapt their work hours to fit in with their family responsibilities. It is a very complex situation. Is it a question of just throwing money at families every time they have a baby? Or is it a question of providing support for the family once a child has been born, not in a one-off payment but through access to child care, paid parental leave and proper family leave so that if a child is sick the family has options as to how the child will be looked after? It is also important to make sure that health care is in place so that families are supported in their dental and immunisation costs and in all the other costs of bringing up a child. Also important is affordable education. We on this side of the parliament have contributed significantly to providing affordable education with the introduction of the schoolkids bonus and other initiatives that increase support for families when their children are attending school.

In the Shortland electorate there is a really good program. It is called the Better Futures program, and it has been a great success. Rather than encouraging women to have more children, the program is providing support to young women who have children before they finish their education. These young women need extra support and need to be given options in their lives. The Better Futures, Local Solutions program is operating in 10 regions throughout Australia, and the part of the Shortland electorate where it is operating is an area of acute disadvantage where one in four families is jobless and youth unemployment is very high. There are a large number of young women there who have had babies at a very young age. The Better Futures program provides hope for the future and gives young people the opportunity to succeed. It has been an outstanding success and provided a range of opportunities for young parents and their children.

The program has been delivered through a number of flexible options. There is the DALE program, which is operated through St Philips Christian College—where Kevin Berger has done an enormous amount of work—and the Local Employment Access Program, which is being operated through the San Remo Neighbourhood Centre. These programs provide support for the young women when they have children. They also help them plan the whole of their life during the years that they go from being young women—some are as young as 14—who have babies to completing their education. The program puts in place support for the women for the whole of their children's lives. These programs are more than just a one-off payment; they provide whole-of-life support for the women and their children.

As a government and as a society we have to look at providing more to families than a baby bonus of $5,000 every time they have a child. I fully support the need to pay a $5,000 baby bonus to a family when they have their first child or for multiple births, regardless of birth order. If you have twins on the second time then it should be $5,000 because the outgoings, the expenses, at that time are greater.

But I think the real way that we can help families is by providing them with support, not only at the time of the birth. At the time of birth, the other type of support that new parents need is hands-on support such as visiting health workers to help them to come to terms with the enormous change that has taken place in their life. A lot of information is put out there about what is going to happen when you have the baby, but there is very little information put out there about afterwards. So to look at the decisions around children—having babies and fertility rates—and link that solely to the baby bonus is, I think, very, very narrow. It is an approach that I do not think will work for the betterment of our society. I believe that when parents have a second child or a third child $3,000 helps them with those initial costs, but we also need to look at this as a whole, as a big picture, in terms of what we can do to support families throughout the life of their child.

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