Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)

notes:

(a)

the spiralling cost of child care in many parts of Australia;

(b)

that a large number of families cannot either find or afford high quality, local child care;

(c)

the low labour force participation rates of women with dependent children in Australia, relative to many other OECD nations; and

(d)

that families cannot claim the child care tax offset until after the end of the financial year following the year when child care fees had been paid, even though the Government has all the details necessary to process the offset earlier; and

(2)

calls on the Government to:

(a)

develop policies to create more places for children in high quality care in areas where more places are needed;

(b)

recognise that planning is needed in the long day care market to correct market failures, and make it possible for parents with young children to participate in the workforce; and

(c)

implement Labor’s proposals to allow families to benefit from the child care tax offset at least a year earlier than the Government’s scheme allows.

There has been a lot of coverage in recent weeks and months about what is happening in child care in Australia. This motion is designed to give members on both sides, because there has been constructive comment from both sides, an opportunity to speak a little about the dramatic and difficult situation in child care. We have a situation where across most of the country parents have extreme difficulty finding child care for their children and, when they do find it, it is extremely difficult to afford that care. Child care is rising at a rate between four and five times that of all other goods and services. It is rising at over four times the rate of the consumer price index. In cold, hard dollar terms that means that every family with one child in full-time care is spending well over $200 a week on child care for just that child. It is pretty unusual to have just one child in care, so you might be talking of two children in care at $200 a head or you might be talking about one preschool aged child and perhaps another child in out-of-school-hours care that might cost $60 a week or so. It is an enormous slab out of the family budget.

Annual reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that long-day-care fees on average have increased by over 45 per cent in the last 10 years from a weekly average of about $145 in 1996 to $210 in 2004. Of course, that average relies on some parts of the country where fees are still quite low. Conversely, of course, there are many parts of the country where child-care fees are extremely high. We are hearing regularly now of child-care centres charging $110 or $115 per day for child care. You can imagine what $550 per week coming out of an average family budget does to that family’s budget.

Since 2000 the cost of child care as a proportion of disposable income has increased for all family types except for families with very high incomes. The government’s own figures show that child-care centres and family day care are becoming less affordable over time—that is, they are using up a higher proportion of a family’s income than they did 10 years ago. In 2005—just last year—the cost of child care increased by 10.2 per cent on very high figures. Petrol and vegetables were the only two items where the prices increased at a greater rate—and we all know the reasons we have seen extraordinary spikes in the price of petrol and vegetables.

One of the problems in child care is that until very recently we found it very difficult to get the government, first of all, to admit that there is a problem. I was thrilled when some government members admitted that there is a problem in this area. The former minister, Senator Patterson, said at first that there was no unmet demand in long day care. That is plainly not true. It was very obvious when parents started coming out all over the country saying, ‘Wait a second. I have been waiting for three years for child care and I still haven’t got any.’ She was then forced to admit that there were ‘hot spots’ around the country. But when we asked questions on notice about where these hot spots were and what planning measures the government was taking to address these hot spots, the government ran a mile. The then minister was saying that it was everybody’s problem but hers—that local government should be doing this and state government should be doing that.

Just recently we still had bureaucrats on behalf of the government in Senate estimates saying that planning in long day care is just not the responsibility of the federal government—that it was somebody else’s problem. I do not think that is good enough and I do not think Australian parents think that is good enough. We are yet to hear whether the new minister has other views. I look forward to him putting on the record, firstly, whether he admits that there are shortages in long day care and, secondly, what he intends to do about them. I hope we will see a more sensible approach from the new minister. He might admit what parents have been telling him the whole way along and start to work constructively with the child-care industry and with parents to work out what can be done about these shortages.

The main reason for the very high price of child care in city areas in particular is the shortages. You have a situation where the Commonwealth government subsidises child care and there is a very restricted marketplace. It is very difficult to open a new child-care centre in a built-up area, so it is very difficult for new entrants to enter the marketplace. You have subsidies on the one hand and restricted supply on the other. Of course the price is going to go up. You do not need to be a genius economist to work out that, if you put more money into the system but you do not increase supply, the cost will go up.

The number of parents out there who require child care is a contested figure, as the government do not want to keep statistics on it. They are not interested in keeping statistics. However, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed in 2005 that over 61,000 children were turned away from child-care services because there were no vacancies, an additional 30,000 children are not in child care because the fees are too high and 22,000 children could not access child care because no service was available in their area. That is one study which shows that there are at least 110,000 kids who cannot access child care.

Previous figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggested that the figure is much higher—178,000. More recently, close to one-quarter of a million parents were saying that they are not in the workforce because of child care or related issues. That gives you some notion of the magnitude of the problem. At the same time, we know that the magnitude of the problem is not just an idle problem for the parents. It is a drain on the Australian economy, because, for every one of those parents who are not in the workforce, we are missing out on their skills, their commitment to the Australian workforce and the knowledge they have. If they want to be working and we are stopping them, it is a terrible shame.

Today I want to table a suggestion that would make the issue of child care availability much easier. The government has already announced a 30 per cent rebate, which, unfortunately, is not payable for two years after the original costs of the child care are incurred. That is a real problem for Australian parents—to be forking out in 2004 hundreds of dollars a week for child care and not being able to claim any of that money until 2006. You pay the money in 2004 and get it back in 2006. Labor has previously spoken of three ways to make this 30 per cent rebate payable much sooner for Australian parents. I seek leave to table the three proposals for the 30 per cent rebate.

Leave granted.

I hope that we will have some bipartisan support for helping parents now with the very high cost and poor availability of child care in this country.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before calling for a seconder, I remind members that a government minister should be at the table at all times. There have been occasions in the past when the chair has suspended proceedings until one is there. Is the motion seconded?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The shadow minister has by this debate illustrated federal Labor’s unreadiness and inadequacy to govern. This is basically a picking apart of government policies, with no solutions. It is not a debate of the issues at the heart of the matter for mainstream mums and does not acknowledge that long day care is not for every mum. Every mother is different and will make different choices based on her life. Let me point out early that there are not two mothers in this debate—the working mums and the non-working mums—and that the debate is about the best way of raising children, because it is not. It is about every woman who works until she is 30 before having her first child, then returns to her job full time until she has her second child and then returns to work part time until she has her third child and stops work all together. It is about every woman’s life experiences and dealing for every woman in all circumstances in which she may find herself parenting.

A woman’s work and life choices are very different from those of the postwar feminist era the shadow minister is trying to replicate. That type of feminism has no appeal to the vast majority of young women, who are viewed as exceptionally ungrateful by the feminists of that era. Today, they enter the workforce at 20, unaware of chauvinistic limits, and they do not think about children until they have acquired an array of valuable skills that make them highly sought after as employees. When children arrive—and the average age in Australia today for the mother of a firstborn child is 30 and rising—for a multitude of reasons women continue to work. We often regret it later in life and we wish we had spent more time at home, but at the time it seems like forever and we think we have forever—it is for only a year here and a few years there. Time passes.

This issue, contrary to what the shadow minister is saying, is not about the right to work and the state taking care of children in high-quality care a la long day care centres; it is about an inevitable social trend where more and more mothers are working, for whatever reason. Despite the shadow minister’s bleating that we should send in the bureaucrats and spend more dollars finding statistics that we already know, the employment rate of Australian women is higher than in earlier decades.

In 1985, 45 per cent of mothers with dependent children were employed, compared with 60 per cent in 2003. Relative to comparable countries, Australian women currently have a low level of workforce involvement. In 2000, of Australian women with two or more children, 43 per cent were in the workforce, compared with 81 per cent in Sweden, 64 per cent in the United States and 62 per cent in the United Kingdom. Ireland, Italy and Spain have similarly low rates of women’s participation, with two or more children, at 40.8 per cent, 42.4 per cent and 43.3 per cent respectively.

I believe that, with our employment rate for females, Australia is on the way to the US, UK and Swedish levels. This means that we have a job to do in government to make work and mothering easier. For the mums who are not working we provide 24 hours of respite each week, but we need to do better for the mums who are working, especially those on low wages. The medium weekly family income in the electorate of Lindsay is about $58,000 a year. In the shadow minister’s electorate of Sydney it is nearly $80,000 a year. So those from inner city, high-income areas, where Labor councils have consistently failed to provide planning for child-care centres and free up issues and regulations for other types of child care, are now bleating at the federal government to do more.

We have doubled the spending on child care for the next four years. When Labor was in office we saw child-care costs rise by 19 per cent in real terms.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was per year. In real terms over the last five years child-care costs have risen by eight per cent. Let us get a comparison going: eight per cent, from 19 per cent under Labor. Child care is definitely more affordable and more plentiful under this government, but we have more to do.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the members opposite are contributing is exceptionally limited compared with what we could be doing. They come up with negative gearing on child care. Give me a break: at least under the current system Centrelink works out how much CCB has to be paid. Admittedly, it is in November, but if the shadow minister proposes to change it she should let me know. Your centre tells you how much in child-care costs you actually paid—again, it is at the end of the year. If you have a suggestion to change that, let me know. The ATO tells you how much you earned last year. If you are going to change that, let me know. By working all those figures out, you can come to your CCTR. Under the federal opposition’s proposal you risk having a debt, the same way you do with the Centrelink family tax payments.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And this is coming from an opposition who says that our $600 is not real money. On one hand they are saying that $600 is not real money, and on the other hand they are saying: ‘Let’s go negative gearing on child care to fix the problem. If we put in some new bureaucrats to get more statistics, we will fix the problem.’

Since the year 2000, when the ATO started giving private rulings on fringe benefits tax, we have seen an explosion in corporate provided child-care places. We have seen a number of tax rulings coming to a general ruling by the ATO that, where the child-care centre is largely controlled by the employer, as in the Esso case, fringe benefits tax will not be payable on the child care provided to employees. There has been such an explosion of corporate child care that I understand even Woolies and Coles—two of my biggest scratching posts for child care—are looking to take advantage of this state of affairs within the ATO and provide child-care options for their employees, especially now that 24-hour trading is demanded by customers.

Corporate child care is just one potential option. And who introduced FBT? The members opposite. They never put anything forward to say, ‘Let’s remove some of the roadblocks to employers being involved in child-care solutions.’ Of the females that I know, the most successful ones to have managed the balance between work and family life have done so with a cooperative, understanding and fair dinkum employer. Let us remove the roadblocks for employers and lay down some incentives to get employers involved in child-care solutions—not more bureaucrats and not more institutionalised long day care centres—if there is a need. There is a multitude of options that come to bear on this.

Mothers also choose an extraordinary number of options to deal with child care for their children during the years that they need it. One of the most popular these days for the women in my electorate who earn less than $40,000 is the grandparents. They work part time and they use grandparents on a free basis.

We need to look at incentives for employers to get involved in those solutions that are acceptable to parents. We need to look at employers taking advantage of the state regulations so that if the parent is on the premises there are fewer regulations for operating a child-care centre. Those opposite have failed to address that much can be done by the state governments and by the labor councils.

A lot of child-care centres in the inner city area of the electorate of Sydney are going the way of squash courts. Squash is no longer a great sport in Australia, simply because the privately run squash courts got squeezed for space and eventually all of those premises could be used for more profitable means. So, if you are complaining about $100 a place, you have to do something about zoning areas, restricting those zonings and keeping them confined to child-care spaces or putting in a ruling that, when you free up areas for commercial space in the CBD, developers need to provide so many square metres for a child-care centre. That is the only way to make the cost of child care stay within the reach of inner city users. The simple fact is that using premises commercially will far outweigh their use as a child-care centre.

This government is doing an enormous amount in terms of child care and we will continue to do more, despite the fringe picking done by the shadow minister. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion by the member for Sydney and thank her for moving it. I was also going to thank the government for joining in this debate, but I am a bit mortified by what I have just heard from the member for Lindsay, who was previously on the record as saying that the child-care situation was in a state of shambles. Looking around and seeing some beautiful schoolchildren here today whose mums might be at work wondering who is going to be supporting and helping them, I think they would be quite horrified by the member for Lindsay’s rambling statement today, which did nothing to address the issues to help those working mothers. To talk about 30-year-olds et cetera does nothing to recognise the people in her own electorate who are not the ones who had the ability to wait and develop careers. She even mentioned that they earned less money. What is she on about? Where is her solution? Her ginger group was meant to be meeting to do things about it. She has come in here and rambled. Instead of doing something bipartisan and good in this place for once, she has abused a motion we could have all spoken well to. It is quite a tragedy.

All working mums suffer enough. Every week there is a new report saying: ‘Don’t send them to long day care. Don’t leave them with someone else. You’re going to be causing them tragedies. You’re going to be hurting them.’ Then there is another report that says they should be going to child care because it benefits their social skills. We agonise about all this, Jackie, and, if you do not, I do not know how you can stand in this place having previously been on the tellie, holding up your son, saying that child care was in disarray.

A young family in my electorate recently called my office. They were quite distressed because mum had to go back to full-time work to support her family. She needed a place but could not find one. She had rung every centre within my electorate and was desperate. So my staff got on the phone and rang around again to every centre in my electorate and in the electorate of Deakin. We managed to find that woman two places. She now has to send her child to two centres because she could not get full-time care at one centre. She has a half-day at each centre. It is not a great outcome, but she came to the office with a large box of chocolates to say thank you to me and my staff. There is not a way around finding places. They are out there, but it is very difficult to navigate.

Also, as the member for Sydney has said—and as the member for Lindsay has also said—we do not actually know what the shortages are. There is no planning in place. The federal government has a system of planning for aged care but no system of planning for child care. So, if you are going to talk about zoning, maybe you should know what your own legislation does.

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Miss Jackie Kelly interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So how about ringing around your centres and asking what the situation is? A quick survey of 23 centres in my electorate shows that 14 of them have extensive lists. One of them says it has a waiting list for all of its rooms. It has around 50 families waiting for the babies room, 50 families for the toddlers room and 10 to 12 families for the three-year-olds room. Another centre at the other end of the electorate has a waiting list for all ages. It has 66 families waiting for babies, 22 for toddlers and about 50 families for three-year-olds. So go and ask what is going on in your electorate. What is happening out there? It is the federal government that allocate the places. Maybe we should ask about how they do that.

And these are not necessarily all full-time places. What can a woman do when she wants to return to full-time work and can only get a place on a Wednesday or Thursday? What can she do if she is in my electorate and is one of the individuals who does not have a family member available because she is a first-generation migrant and cannot get a visa for her parents to visit? Not everybody has the family networks available. That just does not exist. It is a fantasy to live in that world. Not everybody has, as I do, a husband who can work part time so that my child is not in full-time care. Not everybody has the luxury of being able to afford to pay, as I do, $55 a day for child care.

Not everybody wants to send their children to large centres. This is the other thing that is becoming a problem. Large centres are the only ones that now seem to be profitable. Most of the people in my electorate say: ‘I went in and had a look and just could not leave my child there. I want to go to a smaller, community based centre.’ That is what they are asking for. There is nothing that does anything to assist those smaller, community based centres. And the actions of this government over time have reduced their ability to operate. You only need to look at your friends who are currently on the ABC board to see where the issue of child care is going and where people want it to be.

This is a diabolical situation. The government will not collect stats. The Victorian government has a great pilot program. I really think people should look at what is going on at Darebin and Port Phillip councils. Things can be done and this government is not doing any of them. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chisholm has informed the House that it is the government that allocates the places for child care. I suspect that her adviser may have handed her her aged care speech on her way down here, because nothing could be further from the truth. We make child care affordable for Australians—no matter how much anecdotal evidence is rolled out today from making a phone call here and there. One can close one’s eyes to family day care completely and focus purely on long day care places. One can phone one’s community sector and almost ignore the entire private sector in day care. The member who preceded me is welcome to do that, but that does not do this debate any service whatsoever.

There can be no escape from the simple facts of affordability. While a rise of about nine per cent in the cost of child care for one single year has been quoted, the 30 per cent child care tax rebate has been completely excluded. There has been a child-care benefit that has made Australians $2,000 a year better off in terms of affording child care, particularly those with the lowest incomes. People in my electorate of Bowman hear what is said by the member for Sydney, who obviously exists in a rarefied atmosphere between the Opera House and the mardi gras route, but she cannot put an articulate argument that the situation for child care around Australia is reflected in what we see somewhere down near Chinatown or George Street in Sydney. It is patently different, and it is an incendiary comment to say that those problems exist right across the country.

In reality, child care has become more affordable over time. The places created have far exceeded the number of women who have gone back to the workforce. I do not think anyone in this chamber would apologise for one moment that women are able to return to the workforce. As I remember it, the fundamental right of every woman was to be able to return to the workforce. And never has that goal been more successfully achieved than over the last decade. We have seen the female participation rate go from 59 per cent to 65 per cent. We have seen a 25 per cent increase in the number of women aged between 19 and 64 who are re-entering the workforce. The figures are staggering—to the point where, I am sure, even those on the other side do not believe them. We are talking about 909,000 new jobs being created for women since this government came to power—380,000 full-time jobs and 529,000 part-time jobs. I point out to everyone listening that these figures were completely incomprehensible 10 years ago and could not even have entered the wildest imaginations of the government that preceded ours.

The content of this motion really speaks to just how out of touch are some of the views from within the central couple of kilometres of Sydney with those of the other 19 million Australians, who live in completely different circumstances. I am sure that anecdotally there would be a temptation to ignore the 72,000 family day care places that have been created. There could be no better timing than the press release from Andrea Ferris of my own local council, who congratulates—and this is today, not yesterday; it is not some sort of concocted arrangement whereby this press release was dropped out to suit today’s debate—people like Lone Robson of Birkdale and Kim McIlwain and Cheryl Gould from the Redlands area, who have given family day care services for over a decade. These are services about which we can hold our heads up high and say that these are options for parents the other side simply ignores.

The claim that fees are increasing is a reflection that in certain areas there is a demand for child care. In other areas there are additional places that are unmet. Let us imagine for a moment, as I close, what would happen if we transferred the responsibility for laying out child-care centres around the country to nothing better than the government—or, worse still, to those on the other side of the chamber. Can I for a moment imagine that there has not been at one stage on the other side of the chamber a discussion between the member for Sydney, who has moved this motion, and the member for Lalor? I am talking about pharmacy geographic laws and the policy of government trying to decide where pharmacies go. Or worse still, can we do any better than aged care? Does the policy of having aged care committees determining where aged care places go make aged care any less of a challenge than child care? The simple answer to that question is that it is no better done than by the sectors themselves. The child-care sector know where child-care centres belong, and they do that job far better than one could ever hope to do on the other side.

This motion today—well meaning as I am sure it is—speaks of the lack of a big picture on the other side when it comes to child care. And it speaks of the great disservice to quality debate in this place when those opposite take isolated examples from specific communities, in particular Sydney, without a greater view and an understanding that, for the great majority of Australians, child care is available like never before. (Time expired)

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just heard another mad free marketeer view of another area of social policy—leave it all to the market, nothing else can be done. This government is so hypocritical in the area of child care. The government obviously collects data in aged care; why can it not have some understanding of what the problems are in all parts of Australia? To make the remarks about the member for Sydney, in the divisive kind of way that the two previous speakers on the government side have, is quite unnecessary on what should be a matter of non-partisan concern. The kinds of problems identified by the member for Chisholm and the member for Sydney exist all across Australia. These problems exist because of the non-integration by this government of its policies on child care.

For instance, as the member for Chisholm said, Australia has a very large non-partisan immigration policy. We have thousands of people here who are first generation immigrants—they do not have their grandparents coming in with them. You have this problem all over the country of first generation immigrants, which the government do not seem to know anything about. When grandparents who want to come in to help with their children’s businesses are being kept out under all circumstances, from all kinds of ethnic groups, how can these grandparents possibly assist with child care?

The reason we are having this debate is that the government’s policy in this area is a shambles. We do not have to take my word for it. The member for Lindsay is leaving the chamber, but only last month the member for Lindsay, a former minister and a protege of the Prime Minister, gave an honest assessment of the mess that this government’s policy is in. What did she say? To quote from the Age of 15 January, she said that the Treasurer should spend the government’s surplus by fixing the child-care crisis rather than spending it on tax cuts. She said:

Ministers should also stop doing their own thing and work together to respond to the escalating problem.

It is interesting that, despite her unnecessary and divisive attack on the member for Sydney, the member for Lindsay says we have a child-care crisis and an ‘escalating problem’ with child care. Only last year the former Minister for Human Services told us that we had no problem at all. She told us that in my electorate. The honourable member for Lindsay also said:

We shouldn’t have the Treasurer with a 30 per cent rebate solution, the Employment Minister saying women should negotiate for child care in their workplaces and Senator Patterson saying other things.

She also said it was time that the education minister should start taking an interest in preschools. I think we all agree with that. The honourable member for Lindsay also said that the only way to fix the growing problem of a national child-care waiting list of 175,000 and skyrocketing prices was to dismantle the current system and take a totally fresh look. This is addressed partly by what the honourable member for Sydney has proposed with her three ways of dealing with the rebate for out-of-pocket expenses so that mothers—and fathers, I might point out to the member for Lindsay—would be able to get the rebate back rather than having to wait two years.

I commend the members for Lindsay, Chisholm and Sydney for their honesty in acknowledging that, after 10 years of the Howard government, child-care policy is a disaster. It is a disaster in my electorate. I have said here several times that child-care services in our capital cities are hopelessly inadequate. Inner city areas like my electorate, which runs from Port Melbourne to Caulfield, are now experiencing rapid growth as families with young children are moving back into these areas. These families are servicing mortgages in an area where the cost of land and housing is high. The City of Port Phillip has a waiting list of nearly 2,000 children who cannot find places, and parents are therefore unable to participate in the workforce. What is the economic cost of that, I ask, to all the free marketeers and economic rationalists on the other side?

In child care, as in other areas, this government has a blind faith in market forces and the private sector. That may be because some of the big participants in this sector are big donors to this government. But in my electorate the private sector has not met the demand for child care. I do not think that the people on the other side have ever heard of community child care. This opposition proposed at the last election that there should be some capital subsidies given to community child care all across Australia to subsidise the many honest and honourable people who give their time not-for-profit to work in this area.

I am in favour of the private sector providing services which it is well equipped to provide. I do not argue that the state should do everything. But there is clear evidence of market failure in child-care provision in inner urban areas—not just in Sydney but all over the country. The member for Chisholm’s electorate is not inner city; she is in Box Hill. It appears that it is simply not profitable for private sector providers to offer quality child care to working families at an affordable price in some areas. This is certainly what people in my electorate are telling me. In these circumstances community owned services are the best way to solve the waiting list issue. Increased capital funding for community owned child-care services will increase places in the areas where they are most needed. Of course, all levels of government should fund the establishment of community owned services. In my electorate local government is carrying most of the burden. It is being assisted by the state government, as the member for Chisholm said, with this pilot program for identifying child-care needs. This is the kind of cooperation we need, not just one-sided rhetoric from the government. (Time expired)

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Child care is an issue of great importance to hundreds of thousands of families across the whole nation, and particularly in my electorate of Greenway, a young electorate with the number of families growing significantly every day. I thank the member for Sydney for continuing the dialogue on the issue and thank members who spoke before me, especially the members for Lindsay and Bowman, for their contributions to the discussion of this issue.

For many families, life is a balancing act between work and home commitments. As a member of the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, I have seen first-hand how delicate that balance can be to achieve and maintain. These are sentiments that are echoed in my electorate when I am out and about speaking to Greenway residents. Child care, as we all know, is an integral part of that mix and of critical importance to many parents. As a mother of two, I understand this on a personal level as well.

Part of the reason for the new challenges facing families is the employment opportunities that have opened up to women. Under the Howard government, employment opportunities have increased dramatically. There was a 25 per cent increase in paid employment for women from March 1996 to December 2005. This has been an important achievement for this government. We recognise the talents and contributions of women and believe that women should not be excluded from or limited in their workforce participation.

The discussions relating to child care and family balance are necessarily complex and challenging. It is not easy to synthesise the issues that face families and simply call for additional places. No two families are the same and the challenges facing each family are distinct from those of the family next door in their totality. However, there are common challenges that thread through the families of this nation and, as a parliament, it is important that we note them, listen to them and, where possible, act to ease the burden.

Because families are so vastly different, I want to recognise that there should be a number of options open to parents when choosing their child-care needs. Some have already been mentioned. Some will need long day care places, others will require in-home care, there is family day care, and still others may need a hybrid system that acknowledges the different working and living patterns of Australians in the 21st century. In an electorate like mine, Greenway, there are a high number of people who are working shiftwork; often two parents in the home are working shiftwork. What are their options for child care?

We need to continually assess the rigidity of the child-care system in this country and we need to adapt. But this readiness to adapt and the willingness to adjust where necessary is not a responsibility that is solely shared with this government or indeed this parliament. It is an issue that requires input and flexibility on behalf of all levels of government and by the community as a whole.

It is important to note at this point that, while vacancy rates have been mentioned throughout this debate, the figures will vary from electorate to electorate and across this nation. In the northern part of my electorate, there are a number of new centres and they do indeed have vacancies. The members opposite talk about their electorates having unique characteristics, but we need to look at the whole picture here. Anecdotal evidence has been given by members opposite, but it is also important to acknowledge that there is a family in my electorate earning around $34,000; there is a child-care centre that has just opened in Quakers Hill; and, after government assistance, that family only needs to pay $13 a day per child. Here is a business that is working with government to ensure that there is flexibility and affordability for families.

This government has invested significant resources in assisting Australian families. Spending on child care has doubled when compared to the Australian Labor Party’s last efforts. Over the four-year period to 2008-09, this government will spend $9.5 billion assisting families. Good initiatives such as the child-care benefit and the child-care tax rebate have been introduced over the past decade. The child-care benefit sees families receiving over $2,000 per year in real assistance. This is real money. Similarly, the child-care tax rebate provides up to $4,000 per child per year additional assistance for working families. For low-income families, the government assists them with nearly two-thirds of their child-care costs. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.