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

Affordable quality child care is about supporting families. It's about ensuring that all parents have the right to participate in our society through a job and ensuring that their kids get access to good-quality care and an education in a safe environment. The issue with child care in Australia over recent decades has been the issue of affordability and providing that access to all families. We have a subsidised scheme here in Australia that is means-tested, but it doesn't work to provide full access to all families to child care in this country, and that is a great shame.

In that scheme, we see the nation being held back in terms of productivity—by having more people in the workforce—and also individuals and families being held back by parents in the workforce being unable to afford the care for their children, particularly those who are on lower incomes where the utility that they can get from going to work doesn't outweigh the cost that they're forced to pay for child care. They simply don't earn enough to make sure that there's an advantage to going to work rather than staying at home. Under this government's scheme, that scenario, unfortunately, has become all the more difficult.

This Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 is a bill that Labor will, of course, support. I'm speaking in support of the amendment that has been moved by the shadow minister. This bill does make changes to the government's new childcare system, to remove some design flaws that have placed significant administrative burdens on at-risk families and early learning providers. The Additional Child Care Subsidy (child wellbeing) is a payment for at-risk and vulnerable families who need support with the cost of child care to support the child's participation in early learning. The ACCS is a vital program that provides a safe and nurturing learning environment for children in extremely vulnerable situations at home. These children are typically at risk of child protection or child safety issues. Families receiving the ACCS (child wellbeing) payment are exempt from the activity test. For most of these children, it can be the difference between being able to stay at home in a safe environment or having to go into the child protection system.

It's critical that the government treat this program with sensitivity and ensure that families and providers are not overly burdened with red tape. The Liberal-National government introduced a number of new requirements and rules in July 2018 that have restricted access to the additional childcare subsidy. Labor and other stakeholders in the sector warned the government that the changes would have a detrimental impact on vulnerable families—a warning which, unfortunately, the government ignored. In the first six months of the new system the number of children receiving the child wellbeing subsidy collapsed by 21 per cent. Remember, we're talking about some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Those numbers have since recovered to pre-July 2018 levels, but only after significant efforts and resources from providers.

When asked in Senate estimates if they were concerned about the drop, the department admitted they weren't and confessed that they weren't even tracking whether families had dropped out of the system. During the Senate inquiry into the government's first round of changes to the childcare legislation, last September, the stakeholders all expressed strong views that the additional childcare subsidy was not working in the best interests of vulnerable children. The Early Learning and Care Council of Australia, Early Childhood Australia and Goodstart all call on the government to fix the red tape and restrictions to the ACCS, and Labor will support these changes because they fix some of the design flaws in the system and will help get vulnerable children the support they need.

The government's childcare system is failing families in so many other ways. It's a system that leaves one in four families worse off. It's a design feature that's had access to early education and care reduced for 279,000 families. It's a system that only 40 per cent of providers and only 41 per cent of families told the independent evaluation reviewers had resulted in positive change. Eighty-three per cent of parents told the evaluation that the new system had made no impact on their work and study. It's a system that's been forcing childcare providers to act as unpaid debt collectors for government, because families are struggling to stay on top of the complicated activity and means tests. It's a system that's been ridiculed, with software glitches that have left providers and families in the dark and staff without pay. It sends out blunt letters telling families that they owe the government money without any explanation. So far 91,000 families, or 16 per cent of families, that have been audited have been hit with a childcare subsidy debt notice, which is more evidence that the new system is too complex and not working for families.

Childcare fees are already out of control under the new system. The latest CPI figures show that childcare costs increased by 1.9 per cent in the December quarter—the fourth successive increase—and have now gone up by 7.2 per cent in that 12-month period. Fees are now up 34 per cent under this Liberal-National government, with families now paying, on average, $3,800 more per year for early education and child care. That results in families dropping out of the system. That means parents don't get the opportunity to work and have their children educated and looked after. That means our nation is not as productive as it could be, because the people who want to work aren't getting access to that work because they're left with the dilemma of having to care for their children or affording to get them into quality care.

The government was very confident that its new system would put downward pressure on fees and that it was 'driving down the costs of child care', to quote the minister. The minister was keen to spruik, on the new website, this new system as 'a game changer for families'—they were his words. He told families to shop around. But less than half of the providers were providing accurate information on the website, particularly about their fee structures. As a result, you don't hear the minister making those claims anymore about the system being a game changer and driving down the cost of child care, because it's simply not. The system is simply not providing that support for families that the minister claimed it would. That's the great shame. That's holding back families. That's holding back our nation.

As with every other portfolio in this government's realm, there is absolutely no plan to fix the issue and bring some of those fee increases under control. That's going to mean that more families are going to be worse off and unable to get their kids into good early education and care. It's going to hold back those families. It's going to hold back those individuals, particularly single parents, who struggle to make ends meet and have the awful dilemma of whether they can earn enough to afford child care and get their kids into child care rather than stay at home and look after them. They're particularly vulnerable because of this government's changes. It's up to this government to come up with a plan to fix some of these problems and make sure that all families and all parents have access to a good-quality childcare system that is affordable and provides good care for all children throughout the country.

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