Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the member for Higgins says the government is protecting child care, I have to ask, 'Who are they protecting child care from?' Let's look at the record of this government when it comes to child care. Since the coalition was elected, in 2013, childcare fees have skyrocketed by 35.9 per cent—close to 40 per cent. And what have they done about it? They've done some smoke-and-mirrors stuff along the way but nothing that has changed things for women seeking to return to work and maintain and develop their place in the workforce in the long-term—nothing. Nor does the budget announcement last night do anything in the long term.

Let's look at the history a little bit. We heard from the Prime Minister about the once-in-a-generation reform of child care in the lead-up to the 2016 election. This government has a pattern of cutting in the first two years of a term and then spending big in the last year of a term—spending big in the year before an election but cutting in the first two years of a term. In the year before the 2016 election, they announced a major childcare reform. Prime Minister Morrison was the minister then. They didn't actually do it in 2016. They talked about it a bit more and made a few iterations. They introduced the legislation in 2017, two years later, and in 2018, in the year before an election, they introduced a once-in-a-generation reform of child care for the women of Australia—and men, by the way, because both parents have to wear the responsibility of looking after children.

It took the government three years to deliver it. They announced it just before an election and delivered it before the next election—and, 2½ years after they delivered it, this once-in-a-generation reform has made no difference to ongoing childcare costs. In fact, women are worse off now than they were then because childcare fees are rising much, much higher than CPI or wages. And the government's own predictions for the years following this budget say exactly that. Documents from the Department of Education predict that childcare fees will increase by an average of 4.1 per cent every year for the next four years but they are only indexed to CPI.

So there we go, the promises that the government are promising now are still temporary—and they're very, very, very narrow. You have to have more than one child in child care, and you get the increase for your second child—your second child, not the first one—and you lose the increase for your second child when your first child goes to school. The day they go to school, you lose it completely. And it doesn't come into effect for another year anyway. It doesn't come into effect for another year. So, if you have a five-year-old and a three-year-old now, forget it. By the time it comes in—zip, zero. If you have a three-year-old and a two-year-old, you'll get it maybe for a year and a half or two, if you're lucky. That's it. Then it's gone. Again, because it's indexed at CPI and fees are going up, it's a bit like bracket creep; it's going to wipe out the benefit for every parent in just a few years, just like the government's last childcare announcement did.

There is nothing long term about this government. It also does absolutely nothing—nothing—for workplace participation. I have a person in my electorate who told me that they pay more on childcare fees than they do on their mortgage. It does nothing for parents once the child goes to school. Yet any of us that know people who have children of school age know how difficult after-school-hour and vacation care is and how expensive it is, and how complex the lives of working parents are if their children are in the childcare system. as the vast majority are.

We also know, because woman after woman after woman is telling us, that they lose money if they go to work on their fourth day. We the taxpayers contribute to their education, we help them go to university, we invest all that money in their training, and then they have children and suddenly it costs them money to go to work. So their work is maybe three days but not four or five. It halts their career, it's a waste of their investment and ours. It doesn't allow them to flourish.

This announcement by this government is a sham. Protecting child care? They should protect it from themselves, quite frankly.

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