Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

On 20 April this year I received an email from Andrew, a local from my electorate, expressing his concern about the government's new childcare policy. It reads: 'I thought I'd let you know there is an annoying flaw in the Child Care Subsidy plan which has created a system where I cannot get any child care for my child and will probably have to quit my job to look after him. The system has been set up so no childcare centre can take new enrolments, as they cannot be sure they will be paid for that child.'

Unfortunately, Andrew's situation is not unique. Many Australian workers and their families are being locked out of our childcare system at the moment because of this government's ill-conceived COVID-19 response to childcare and the fact that they haven't properly planned for this pandemic. 'Free child care for everybody' was a great headline, but the reality in the suburbs, in the childcare centres, is very far from that headline. It was a bold initiative for the government to proclaim that there would be free child care for everyone. The problem is that the government didn't fund that promise and that commitment. Most childcare providers and family day care providers are struggling to keep staff on. They're struggling to keep children in their care and keep their centres open.

The problem is becoming more and more acute as many of the states begin to lift some of the restrictions that we've all been living under for the past few weeks and to encourage workers to return to work. I ask the government: how can someone return to work, return to their job, if they can't get their children into child care at this point in time because of the policy that you've put in place?

Many childcare providers are cutting back hours for children and not taking any new enrolments because they simply cannot afford to under this scheme that's been set up by this government. That's because the government's childcare response is based on the premise that providers will be able to access the JobKeeper program for all of their staff. The reality is that that is not the case in the suburbs and in centres throughout the country. The reality is that many workers are not able to access JobKeeper for a range of reasons, so they're forced to keep these staff on, potentially at a loss, to care for children. Is it any wonder that they're turning away new entrants and children from their childcare centres throughout the country?

Natalie, who runs the First Class Early Learning Centre in my electorate, runs two centres. She's got a total of 16 early childhood educators. Only 10 of them are eligible for the JobKeeper wage subsidy. With families returning to work and children returning to care, Natalie needs all of her staff on the job to care for and educate the children in care. How is she supposed to do that when only 10 of them are receiving the subsidy and when they can't charge fees during this period? This is placing enormous stress on those centres and is affecting the hours of care that they can provide for children. And, of course, it's prohibiting them from taking on new cases in their centres. It's not just childcare centres that are affected; it's family day care centres as well. On 6 April, I received an email from Jasmine Harrington. Jasmine operates a centre in Botany in my electorate. She wrote, 'The recent announcement of free childcare is not only misleading, it is having a significant impact on my business, my family and my wellbeing.'

The government declared early in this pandemic that child care was an essential service and that it wanted centres to remain open to ensure that healthcare workers, particularly, could continue to go to work and their children could get the care that they deserved. The trouble is that the government didn't properly fund it. As the shadow minister said, they've underfunded the program by close to half a billion dollars. and that's the reason children are being locked out of child care in this country at the moment. That's the reason centres aren't able to provide the necessary care for some of these essential workers and other workers that are returning to work during this difficult period. The government has a responsibility to fix this problem and fix it as soon as it can.

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