Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question and for her ongoing and relentless advocacy for families and children in Boothby. Even before we took office in 2022, we knew that the cost of early childhood education and care was placing pressure on families and that it was often cited as the reason that women and primary caregivers delayed returning to work, weren't able to take on extra hours of work or weren't able to go back to study, if they so wished. And that's why this Prime Minister went to the election with a policy to lower the cost of early childhood education and care for over one million Australian families.

Today marks one year since our cheaper childcare legislation came into effect—the legislation that we enacted within our first six months in office. The ACCC has found that, due to Labor's reforms in decreasing the cost of early childhood education and care, out-of-pocket expenses for centre-based day care are down by 11 per cent. What does that mean in real terms? The Minister for Education gave a great example of that, one that is worth repeating in this place. For a family with an income of $120,000 and one child in care for three days a week, these reforms mean that they have paid $2,140 less in early learning fees. In addition to that, from today that family will also get a tax cut of around $2,679, and there's a raft of other measures to assist with the cost of living that this government has enacted as of today—energy bill relief, cheaper medicines and more paid parental leave.

If you want to look at how you deliver real cost-of-living relief, look at this side of the House. Look at the things that we're doing: putting downward pressure on the cost of living whilst not putting pressure to increase inflation. That's what we've been doing here, because that's how you deliver real cost-of-living relief. You don't deliver real cost-of-living relief by jacking up power prices with some fantasy of nuclear energy in the never-never.

The reforms that I've spoken about here today on early childhood education and care are a critical first step in achieving our vision of a universal early childhood education and care system—one that's affordable, accessible and inclusive. (Time expired)

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