Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

RTH () (): The Labor Party has been banging on about fee-free TAFE places for the best part of two decades. The reality is that every state Labor government—and at the federal level—come in and say, 'We're going to save TAFE,' and, four years on or eight years on, they're still trying to save TAFE, with no extra results. In my state of Queensland, I went out to the TAFE in Redcliffe the other day, and they're not even offering diploma-level courses at the moment. It's all certificate levels. I thank the member for Moncrieff, the shadow minister, for putting forward this motion today. One of the best things that we can do when, hopefully, one day the member for Moncrieff is the minister will be to cut red tape, because red tape kills small business and it makes it very difficult for providers. Red tape costs a lot of money, and that pushes up the cost of child care. I was talking to a provider in my electorate today about this, and they were telling me how much red tape was involved and what has to be sent off to the Department of Education in Queensland each week. I imagine it would be the same around the country.

Child care is important. As a father of three sons, all now in their teenage years, I remember how important child care was when my wife was working even part time. We needed that child care when she was at work. It plays an important role in helping young kids develop the social skills to mix with other children.

The coalition have a strong record in child care. Why? Because we doubled the amount of childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23. From March 2022 we provided a higher subsidy, of up to 95 per cent, for families with multiple children in early childhood care and education at once, which has helped with workforce participation and allowed cheaper access. The coalition also helped a lot of Australian families access more affordable child care by removing the annual cap on childcare subsidy. We saw women's workforce participation reach record highs of 62.3 per cent in May of this year, which was good news. Under the previous Labor government it was down in the high 50s. Under the coalition, 280,000 more children were in early childhood education.

Recently I hosted the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in my electorate. We had a roundtable for women. Invited guests were women leaders in my electorate, including people from business, including one from child care, education, faith communities, medicine—I had a couple of doctors there—digital marketing and fitness. They were women of different ages, different life experiences and different education levels. Everyone in the room was remarkable in their own right. And they didn't all vote a certain way. They were just people that I've met as the federal member for Petrie in my time in the job. For any federal member—as you'd know, Deputy Speaker—their job is to listen to what local people in their electorate are saying. The topic of child care was relatable for all the women in that room. There were women with young families, grandmothers, mothers with adult children but also women who were married without kids, and they could all understand what each of them were saying.

I've spoken to childcare centres in my electorate, and they are struggling with regulations, as I explained before—red tape that is forcing up the cost of child care. So I'd say to the current government, but also the opposition, that that's something that does need to be improved. Many educators have raised low wages, mental health issues, no appreciation and the increase in red tape as their top concerns. I want to use this opportunity to thank every childcare provider in the electorate of Petrie and every childcare worker in the electorate of Petrie for what they do.

In relation to the cost of living, we know that cost-of-living relief was needed, and it was a missed opportunity by the Albanese Labor government in their budget—a completely missed opportunity. They did nothing to help reduce the costs of living for people in my electorate each day, particularly since these changes don't even kick in until July next year. They expect people just to wait around another eight months. So I would say that the current government needs to do better. Six months into the job, time's up. It's no good blaming former governments or anything like that, like we see the current Prime Minister doing daily. It's time to step up and lead. Thank you.

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