Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is actually the resumption of debate on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 from discussion we had in June. It boggles the mind, really, that I come back to the House now to report that things have gotten worse for the childcare sector rather than better in the months the government have had to repair the damage they have done with the COVID response to an already crisis-ridden sector.

We know that things have gotten worse because we have uncovered more information about the status of the childcare sector since June—for example, information from the department of education, which shows that 25 per cent of families are still waiting for the reconciliation of their 2018-19 childcare subsidy. Just to be clear, we are in the 2020-21 financial year. This means that the government have withheld money from some families for over a year—not a standard I think they would accept in reverse. In the same period, the government have collected $130 million in childcare debts from families, despite ongoing concern about the accuracy of their debt collection system. The hypocrisy of this is absolutely staggering. The government are gung-ho when they are accusing families of owing them money, but they move at an absolute snail's pace to hand money back when it is rightfully owed to Australian families.

The second failure that we have seen from new information released by the department shows how high childcare fees had already gotten pre the pandemic. Fees had jumped by 4.6 per cent in the year to December 2019, with CPI only rising by 1.8 per cent in that same period. This was supposed to be reform brought in by Prime Minister Morrison, when he was the responsible minister. It was going to fix childcare affordability. This was supposed to be the fix, yet fees jumped 4.6 per cent in that year. With the childcare subsidy pinned to CPI, this data shows that the financial burden carried by families has been snowballing. Around the country the hit has been even worse. Brisbane families, who I represent, were slugged with up to a 14 per cent fee increase in child care.

Stepping back to these high fees in the middle of a recession will simply put child care out of reach for many, and that is to the detriment of us all. Families who have taken a pay cut over the past few months will now be forced to give up child care, and, in turn, parents will be forced to give up work. We've also had reports emerge since we last debated this in June showing the deep flaws of the additional childcare subsidy, which the minister claims is the panacea for supporting struggling families to access early education. This subsidy was shown to be wrapped up in red tape and completely insufficient to cover the tens of thousands of families now facing hardship.

All of this new information is evidence of a government that is letting families down when they are doing it tougher than ever. Its decision to snap back to its old, pre-pandemic childcare system has left many Australian families wondering how they will get by. They were already crippled by high childcare fees before the pandemic, with out-of-pocket costs soaring by 7.2 per cent in one year alone. Now, in the middle of a recession, when parents rely on mortgage and rent moratoriums, JobKeeper and JobSeeker to survive, childcare fees will simply be out of reach. If these families can't afford early education and care, it will hurt the parents. Without access to affordable care, many parents will simply be forced to give up or turn down work—a sacrifice most often taken by women. In the midst of a recession the last thing our economy needs is working parents being unable to take up work because they cannot find child care. One of the key levers to drive economic growth out of a recession is workforce participation. Yet here we are with the government making these policy decisions that, day by day, make workforce participation more and more difficult for Australian mothers.

It will also make the children suffer. Unaffordable child care means some kids miss out. They miss out on receiving an early education, which is of particular concern for our four-year-olds, who are at risk of starting primary school in 2021 already behind. We know that vulnerable and at-risk children, who stand to benefit the most from an early education, are the first to miss out in these circumstances. We know that this new information and these decisions hurt providers, because if families begin unenrolling their children from early education the resulting drop in demand creates significant viability issues for providers.

We're also now in a world where JobKeeper has been ripped away from childcare educators. The current situation in Victoria has shone a light on why early childhood educators still need support to stay connected to their employers. Without JobKeeper there is no guarantee that early childhood educators will continue to get paid if Victorian providers are forced to close due to a drop in demand or a potential government directive. If a provider shuts its doors, early childhood educators could be pushed onto Centrelink queues rather than receiving JobKeeper payments.

The Morrison government have bungled early education and care throughout the pandemic, and it is parents, children, educators and providers who have paid the price every step of the way. Their free childcare policy left many providers struggling to stay afloat and families without access to care. Now their snapback and removal of JobKeeper will create further pain for families and the sector. Australians need an early education and care system that ensures early learning is affordable and accessible for families. It needs to keep educators in jobs and protect the viability of providers.

With my remaining time, I want to bring to parliament—I faithfully promised someone who came to one of my mobile offices in McDowall—an idea to put to the government about how to help the sector. This person said to me: 'For a Prime Minister who is obsessed with high-vis, obsessed with construction and very keen to grab a shovel at every opportunity, why does he not use the recession and the policy responses he has before him to build more childcare centres? It gives him jobs for construction workers. It gives him infrastructure being built. It gives him high-vis announcements. It also gives more early educators jobs, which they desperately need right now, and it gives more Australian families places in childcare centres, which they need in order to participate in our workforce and work together to get our economy out of recession. I thought it was a good idea, I thought it had merit and I promised faithfully to bring it to Canberra and put it to the government. I will conclude my remarks at this time because I already had a good go at this in June. Thank you very much.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would say to the member for Lilley and to her constituent that our Prime Minister is obsessed with one thing, and that is to support all Australians during this pandemic—and the government is working very hard to do just that. The Morrison government's primary aim is to support families and the childcare sector during the COVID-19 crisis to ensure that quality early childhood education and care is available to vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families.

The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 makes improvements to the operation of the additional childcare subsidy (child wellbeing) and the childcare subsidy and makes some other technical drafting improvements. The Morrison government is improving access to childcare for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families. We're cutting red tape that impacts providers, families and governments to improve access to services for vulnerable children. The period of time a provider can apply for an additional childcare subsidy, or ACCS, determination will be extended from 13 weeks to up to 12 months for children under a long-term protection order, such as those who are in foster care. This means that families and state and territory governments are no longer required to reapply for subsequent determinations with supporting evidence every 13 weeks. It recognises the support that vulnerable children need over longer periods.

Other amendments will enable providers to apply to backdate a family's additional childcare subsidy beyond the current limit of 28 days—up to 13 weeks in exceptional circumstances. This means that providers can receive the additional subsidy in respect of a foster child who is at risk of serious abuse or neglect while the foster family confirms its childcare subsidy eligibility. These children will have immediate and streamlined access to child care. Childcare providers will also be able to enrol children who are in foster care under the ACCS for an initial period of up to 13 weeks, giving an individual foster family sufficient time to lodge their childcare subsidy claim and have it assessed by Services Australia. Existing provisions, where providers are required to notify Services Australia when a child is no longer considered to be at risk, will continue to apply.

This bill demonstrates that the government remains committed to making life easier for providers and vulnerable and disadvantaged families and continues to make improvements based on feedback on how the childcare package is operating. The changes in this bill will reduce the regulatory and administrative burden on families and childcare providers, support vulnerable and disadvantaged families to access quality early learning and childcare and help parents to access financial assistance.

I take this opportunity to commend the Morrison government's commitment to child care during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of the pandemic the childcare sector was on the brink of collapse as many families withdrew from child care. Swiftly, the Morrison government introduced a temporary childcare relief package to ensure childcare services were available for essential workers, to ensure the sector remained viable and to ensure that childcare centres would be available after the pandemic. Under the childcare relief package provided at the onset of the crisis, around 99 per cent of childcare providers kept their doors open.

Now, as our economy starts to open up, a transition package has been put in place that provides fairer, more equitable and more appropriate support to transition the childcare sector. We are replacing one type of support with another type of support that includes a safety net for families who need it the most. From 13 July, the government has continued to support families by providing more than $8.3 billion a year, through the childcare subsidy, to help them with the cost of child care. We will provide around $2 billion in childcare subsidy in the coming quarter. The government will also provide support to childcare businesses in addition to paying the childcare subsidy, with a transition payment of 25 per cent of fee revenue in the reference period—a $708 million package. This is being paid from 13 July. In return, services will guarantee an average employment level. The Gold Coast based childcare company G8 Education says it expects to be in no worse a position under the revised federal government support package. They've said this would leave it financially in no worse a position relative to the prior support measures, even at more subdued occupancy levels. The G8 managing director, Gary Carroll, has welcomed the transitional arrangements. He said:

The transitional arrangements announced today are welcome as they provide operators with increased flexibility to support families as the economy recovers. We look forward to continuing to engage with government and other stakeholders to ensure the right settings are in place to support our families and team members.

The Gold Coast has not been immune to the economic blow of the pandemic. There have been jobs lost, and many businesses owned by mums and dads are still hurting. To help those families doing it tough, the childcare subsidy, CCS, is means-tested to ensure that those earning the least receive the highest level of subsidy. As a family's income decreases, the amount of subsidy it receives increases, up to an 85 per cent subsidy. If a family has experienced a decrease in income as a result of COVID-19, it will receive more subsidy and will pay less out of pocket for child care. In the September quarter last year, under the CCS, out-of-pocket costs were less than $5 per hour per child for the parents of 72.4 per cent of children in centre based day care. Further, out-of-pocket costs were less than $2 per hour per child for the parents of nearly 24.4 per cent of children in centre based day care. After nearly two years, our childcare package has a lower out-of-pocket cost than previous arrangements, with out-of-pocket costs still 3.2 per cent lower than they were two years ago. Our government supports families and services as we transition to the original CCS system. Stopping fee increases during the transition and relaxing the activity test will relieve financial pressure on families that may be doing it tough.

I want to thank everyone who works in our childcare sector, particularly in Moncrieff, for their hard work and commitment as we act to contain the coronavirus. Many services faced challenging circumstances in Australia's lockdown response to COVID-19, and, because of their perseverance and commitment, they have emerged intact and ready to continue to provide child care for around one million families nationwide.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During this pandemic, we've heard a lot about how we're all in this together. We've heard a lot about governments supporting people in times of need. We haven't heard so much about supporting the predominantly women who work in the childcare and early education sector. What we have heard is that they were the first industry to have JobKeeper ripped away from them by the Morrison government. This has had significant consequences for the women who work in the early childhood care and education sector, for the children who are not getting their early education and for the women who are no longer going to their workplace, because they can't get child care. It's not the way women in my community deserve to be treated.

Today's piece of legislation is about improving the new system set up by this government to help vulnerable and disadvantaged families. Of course Labor is going to support it. Fundamentally, our reason for being is to help families when they need help. The COVID pandemic and this recession have taught us that vulnerable and disadvantaged families are a much wider cohort than perhaps we thought. In Victoria we're experiencing stage 4 restrictions, and we know that many people are experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage that they've never experienced before as a result of the social restrictions and being at home. It is a sad indictment of the Morrison government that, while they've got legislation that is said to be helping vulnerable and disadvantaged families access child care, their policies are stopping many families across Victoria, and in my electorate of Dunkley, from accessing child care.

On Friday I held a Zoom forum with Labor's shadow minister for early education and the state Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education, the wonderful Sonya Kilkenny, the member for Carrum. We invited people from across the electorate who are early educators, childcare workers, parents with children that need to be or are in early education and providers of family day care. There were a number of really strong themes that came out of that fascinating, informative and interesting conversation. The first one was that, to a woman—because they were all women—the people on that Zoom forum felt that child care and early educators were undervalued. They felt that, as we've been going through this pandemic, in particular, when there has been a lot of talk about the sacrifices of people working at the front line, too often they haven't been acknowledged by this federal government as people at the front line. They are workers that have continued to work, to look after children, so that our health workers, our emergency services workers, our essential workers, can also continue to go to work. They've been at the front line. They've been looking after children in circumstances where, for many of them, they have been quite frightened about the spread of COVID.

In my small way, I want to rectify that lack of acknowledgement and say here today, to the women that were on the Zoom meeting with me and to everyone who is a childcare worker, an early educator or runs a child care facility: you are seen, you are heard and you are valued. The work you have done—always, but particularly during this pandemic—has been fundamentally important. But it's not enough, is it, for those of us with the privilege of representing you in this place to simply say that you are seen, you are heard and you are valued? We need to put policies where our words are. We need to make sure that early educators and childcare workers are paid in a way that reflects the value that you provide to the community. We know that those early years of learning are fundamentally important for all children, for their chances of success and for their education levels later in life. And we know that those early years are even more important to children who are vulnerable or from disadvantage. We need to value people like you who work in our social support services for what you do for the rest of us, not just with our words but with appropriate pay and conditions which reflect the contribution that you make.

We also need to acknowledge those of us here who have the capacity to make policies and acknowledge that early education and child care are an important economic stimulus—in fact, one of the most important economic stimuluses—that we can look at investing in for the future years. It ticks the boxes. It's an investment which is an economic stimulus because it increases jobs. It increases jobs predominantly for women. It increases productivity, and women are in the workforce. It also provides the opportunity for women who work in other industries, in other sectors, to go back to work, which is good for women, good for their families and good for the economy. Child care and early education are fundamentally important. Women having the opportunity to work is fundamentally important. Children having the opportunity to get early education is fundamentally important. And yet we have a federal government who chose early education and child care as the first industry to take the wage subsidy away from. It doesn't make sense, and the transition funding has not delivered for people who need it in my community.

We've heard from Julie, whose daughter is a childcare worker who was on maternity leave just as the pandemic hit. She was supposed to go back to work and wants to go back to work, but because JobKeeper has been ripped away from her workplace she can't go back from maternity leave, and her leave has just been extended and extended.

Caitlin from Langwarrin is a single mother who owns and operates her own not-for-profit childcare centre. She's the shining light of what we want women to be able to do, particularly when they're in a circumstance of raising children on their own. She is working to support her children and to care for other people's children but, since JobKeeper was taken away, she's had to close her business, and she's now applying for JobSeeker. She wants to work, but she hasn't received any extra funding as a not-for-profit. She loves the families that send their children to her centre and she understands why many of them are scared to send their children to early education and child care at the moment. She understands why many of them aren't sending their children, because they have lost their jobs or they can't go to work. She doesn't blame them, but she clearly stated to me that if JobKeeper hadn't been ripped away her business would have been able to survive and she wouldn't be nearing the poverty line.

Our childcare workers have been working harder than ever during this pandemic. At Jo's centre in Frankston South her workers have been doing double the work, learning how to provide education online. We heard at our forum about education being provided online for children who are 12 months and younger. Jo's biggest gripe is, again, this lack of appreciation of the importance of valuing child care and early education. Because this federal government won't go beyond one-year funding cycles, Jo is always having to say to her staff: 'I want to employ you next year. I value you. I want to keep you on, but I just don't know until I find out whether or not this funding for three-year-old kinder is going to be extended'. She's always saying to the parents: 'We want to have places for your children, but I just can't tell you whether they'll be there or not until I know whether there's going to be funding.' There needs to be more than one-year funding. It's just not good enough. This government needs to commit and actually put in place three-year funding cycles for early education.

Linda is an early childhood educator who has two bachelor degrees and has been working twice as hard during lockdowns. She doesn't understand how a 75 per cent approach was reached and why JobKeeper was ripped away from a sector that is vital for parents to get back to work. She's also proud of the fact that she provides nurturing and care for the children she looks after as well as education. She had a message for me to bring to this parliament: 'The government's so-called triple guarantee has not worked for Victorian parents and childcare providers. In fact, between families and centres it's caused some tensions that just don't need to exist at a time when stress levels are at their highest.'

Bernadette is a terrific parent who attended my forum because she just wanted to know whether there was an answer. It seemed crazy to her that the government could have used this time to redesign the childcare scheme but in fact hasn't. She's one of many women who want to go back to work but has done the financial calculations and says that if she returns from maternity leave she's going to have to pay more for child care than she will receive from her income. That is the opposite of the kinds of policies we need to have in place for women and the workforce—for the women, for the work that's done, for their children and for the economy.

We're in a special position, a unique position, in Victoria because of the difficulties we're going through now with stage 4 lockdown. That is absolutely correct, and the Prime Minister should be fleet-footed and innovative enough to acknowledge that there's a special case to return JobKeeper to early education and childcare workers in Victoria. It is absolutely essential. As the shadow minister for early education has said, there is nothing in the government's measures that protects casual or part-time educators from being stood down, and it's a serious problem because only 32 per cent of the sector is full time. That's what we are hearing.

Kerry told me about her centre, which she loves. The management are terrific. She loves working there. But full-time staff are now essentially on day-to-day calls to see whether they're going to get shifts, because there's not enough work. That translates, without JobKeeper, to working women being without income, and it's not good enough. JobKeeper should be returned to the early education and childcare sector in Victoria.

This is our chance, with this COVID recession, to say not that we're going to snap back to where we were in 2019 but that we want to build an Australia which is based on the fundamental beliefs of our community. It's about a good quality of life and a standard of living that everyone can attain, not just a privileged few. When a federal government makes decisions about investment and budget it should look at three factors: at the economy and the stimulation of jobs that are part of growing an economy; at a better future that guarantees the environment and the climate; and at whether the investment also builds on social capital, on community connectedness and on a society where everyone feels valued and everyone feels that they can contribute. Investment in early education and child care so that the workers are valued and can contribute and so that every family can send their child to get the early education they need—can you think of a better way of not just stimulating the economy and jobs but also building social capital and connectedness? It's about equity. It's about fairness. On behalf of the community of Dunkley, I'm asking the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to invest in our community, to return JobKeeper to child care and to use this opportunity to build a better system.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020. Like many of my colleagues on this side of the House, I take early childhood education very seriously, particularly now, when our nation is dealing with the first recession in 30 years, huge unemployment rises and a dislocation in our economy. More than ever, we need to make sure, when we sit in this place and come to Canberra, that we get the policy settings right so that people who are struggling to get a job, or people who are in the workforce at the moment and are struggling to hold onto their job, have as much support as this nation can give them.

As we've heard, Labor will be supporting this bill, and I also support strongly the second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister, the member for Kingston, which has to do with a whole range of surrounding issues that it is incumbent upon this parliament to listen to, to deal with and, hopefully, to take action on when it comes to early education. We know that child care is increasingly becoming unaffordable under this government. We know that fees have soared in the last year. We know that child care is becoming more and more unaffordable, particularly in regard to women in the workforce and those considering returning to the workforce. It could potentially be a handbrake on Australia's economic recovery.

The final point in today's second reading amendment is to highlight how this government has treated early childhood educators—particularly the disgraceful way that they have been treated, with such little respect, as to JobSeeker and JobKeeper. We all know that the Prime Minister is pretty loose with his words from time to time. We had one promise, and then, three days later, we saw the JobKeeper program announced and educators ripped aside, ripped apart, due to the disrespectful nature of this Prime Minister.

When I spoke about this new system when it was announced in 2018, I pointed out that we were aware, and I warned and the Leader of the Opposition and Labor warned, that the changes would leave one in four families worse off. That's what was projected under the government's changes. Now they're not better but worse off. My electorate and the electorate of the member for Rankin in Queensland have had the worst impacts as a result of these changes. That's in my home state of Queensland. Across Australia, 330,000 families have been worse off and a further 126,000 would be no better off. So we're looking at around half a million families that would be worse off or no better off.

What do we see when we look at this government's approach to early educators and child care? Cuts, cuts, cuts. As the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, mentioned when we last gathered in this House, roughly 10 weeks ago, we saw the withdrawal of child care. The week before that, it was the $720 million cost of robodebt, which we now know was an illegal scheme imposed on more than 300,000 Australians. The week before that, it was the $60 billion accounting error. We're seeing, time and time again, more and more mistakes.

What we really need, and what we really have needed from the government, is a transition plan, rather than the snapback plan they have delivered for early education in this country. The additional child care subsidy for child wellbeing is a vital program that provides a safe and nurturing learning environment for children in extremely vulnerable situations at home.

I often tune in when the minister is delivering his remarks or in the limited opportunities when they take him out of witness protection and let him speak on early education—that's when he's not trying to dismantle our higher education system—and he bangs on about how they have a so-called plan for the future and a plan to keep everybody safe, a plan to keep the country moving forward. How often have we heard the old saying, 'We're all in this together'? Well, we are—except if you have a disability or are a teacher or an Indigenous Australian, or you're poor, unemployed, an artist, an asylum seeker, young or old, or an early educator. We're all in it together—but apart from those people!

So we know that, even when the government try to spin it that they are doing something in the early education space, the facts speak for themselves. When you look at the record of child care under this government, it's a system that's been forcing childcare providers to act as unpaid debt collectors for the government because families are struggling to stay on top of the complicated activity and means tests. It's a system that has been riddled with software glitches that have left providers and families in the dark and has left staff without pay—and I will come back to that in a moment. It sends out blunt letters telling families they owe the government money, without any explanation. So far, 91,000 families, or 16 per cent of all families audited, have been hit with a childcare subsidy debt notice, which is more evidence that their new system is too complex and not working for families.

We know that childcare fees are already out of control in the new system. The latest CPI figures show that childcare costs increased by about 1.9 per cent back in the December quarter—the fourth successive increase—and have now gone up 7.2 per cent in the 12-month period. Let's put it on record: fees under this third-term Morrison government are now 34 per cent higher than when those opposite first came into government.

What does this mean in a practical sense for families living in the south-western suburbs of Brisbane and Ipswich? Families are now paying, on average, $3,800 a year more for early education and care under this government. We were told by the minister and by everyone else in the government that they were very confident the new system would 'put downward pressure on fees' and that they were 'driving down the cost of child care'. If 'downward pressure' on fees means $3,800 a year more for early education and child care, I'd hate to see what driving down the cost of child care would be.

As I mentioned, when the new system started in 2018 the government introduced new requirements on providers and families trying to claim the ACCS. The federal opposition warned that the changes would have a detrimental impact on vulnerable families, which the government ignored and which has now come to pass. We know we've seen a 21 per cent drop in children receiving the subsidy, just in the first six months of the program. What's even more shocking is the fact that 20 per cent of at-risk and vulnerable children are no longer getting the support that they need to remain safe. The government doesn't seem to be concerned about this, but I am. As I said earlier in my remarks today, getting the early education systems in this country right is of direct economic benefit to our nation—looking after the future of this country, looking after the future of early educators.

In my own electorate there are 78 childcare centres, which I'm proud to represent. I haven't been to all of them, but I've been to many of them. I have reached out to them on many occasions about some of these changes and I've had incredible feedback from parents and from the owners of the centres and also from the early educators. As the federal member, I've had numerous childcare facility coordinators reach out to me about their desperation and confusion and the clarification they need regarding the changes. Add in a global pandemic on top of this, and we've seen a huge burden on these businesses. It's created an even larger impact on families. They've had to make a decision between working, sending their young children to childcare centres and protecting the safety of their children during this pandemic.

Just recently, about a week ago, I spoke with Kerrie Wilson from the Aspen Community Early Learning Centre in Inala. I know the minister at the table, Mr Ted O'Brien, is a big fan of the suburb of Inala, like I am. It is a great suburb, and there are terrific learning centres right throughout that suburb. When Kerrie told me what was happening with bookings at that centre, she said they'd lost three families in two days and that, as families are scared of the virus spreading, they were expecting to lose more. Kerrie is a fantastic leader in the Oxley community. I've had the privilege of visiting the Aspen Community Early Learning Centre many times in my previous role, as a Brisbane city councillor, and now, proudly, as the local federal member. I also invited the shadow minister, Amanda Rishworth, to that centre so that she could see what is happening on the ground in a fast-growing community with huge numbers of people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and with complex social issues but with amazing support staff and the amazing leadership provided by Kerrie.

Why is the government choosing to neglect centres like this and make it harder for early educators to do their job? Of course, on top of this we're seeing more and more concerns about parents' financial ability to send their kids to childcare centres—the so-called con of free child care, which was just another marketing slogan—when, as the centres themselves and the parents themselves will tell you, there was no free child care; it didn't exist. It was just media spin putting extra pressure on our centres, putting families in a position where they had to choose whether they were going to go to work or stay at home, putting employers in the position of not knowing whether they'd be able to keep their employees on.

So many families have had their incomes or their hours or their jobs slashed, yet they still want to look for work, build their businesses and try to reinvent what they can do and how they can participate in the economy. To do that, they do need to send their children to early education and care. In addition to that they may want their children to actually get the benefits of early education and care. But what the government has said is that, despite being in the depths of a recession, it's going to rip away that support and make sure that parents are going to be charged some of the highest fees in the word for child care.

I've also been visiting a number of our centres with the help of Act for Kids, and I want to place on record today in the parliament the work that they are doing. I was able to donate hundreds of crayons to childcare centres around the Oxley electorate and the hardest thing that I've heard from a number of centres is: 'We can't afford crayons. We can't afford materials.' I want to place on record my thanks to Act for Kids, because it is the basic resources that some of these centres are now going without.

It's incredibly tough to see the staff who love what they do—and I want to place on record all of my thanks to the amazing early educators, support staff and carers who do such wonderful work every single day, getting up extra early to set up the day ahead. To all the cooks and the cleaners: I've been amazed at how everyone has worked so hard during this pandemic, particularly in the early education space. But it's had a huge toll on their mental wellbeing as well, and I think we need to acknowledge that. I want to say thanks to the United Workers Union for the work that they've done in supporting the workforce. I've been involved with the Big Steps Campaign for many years now about respecting our early educators and paying them what they deserve. We know that, time and time again, when this government comes to the most vulnerable and needy in the community they are irrelevant and invisible.

I know that families are doing it tough. I know that in my own electorate from doing a Zoom meeting with early educators and the shadow minister, who was able to present Labor's strong alternative vision and policies around support, around respect for our early educators but, more importantly, around support for families. I'm going to keep standing in this parliament to make sure that this government listens to what is happening on the ground and that this Prime Minister takes action and delivers support that is needed by the owners of the centres, by the early educators and support staff who proudly work every single day in complex and difficult circumstances and also by the parents. If there was ever a need for this government to show support for parents who are desperately struggling to hold onto their jobs, the need is in the early education sector. I'll continue to speak out and make sure their voices are heard and that this government delivers more for early education in this country.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nothing I have done in my life has been as rewarding as being the dad to three little boys. Spending time with them, reading and playing games, is one of my true delights in life. But it's hard too. That's just dealing with one or two or sometimes all three of them. When I look at early educators and the work that they do every day, I do so with huge respect. This isn't babysitting; this is education.

As we learn more and more about neuroscience, we get the sense as to the importance of quality early education. That's why when Labor was last in government we pursued both a quantity and a quality agenda, ensuring that early childhood education was more broadly accessible but also raising the standards and the qualifications and ensuring that the ratios were right. That's vital not just for now but also in the future.

Investing in early education is a productivity measure. We know from studies such as the Early Training Project, Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian Project how much of an impact you can have on lives if you invest early on. A study in Heidelberg West, a new Australian randomised trial, is adding to that evidence base as well by randomising disadvantaged children into high-quality early education and comparing them with a similar control group to look at the impact. We need to learn more about the impact of high-quality early education, because it is potentially one of the greatest investments that can be made. As various studies of the Perry Preschool experiment have shown, when you're working with children who might otherwise end up committing a felony—as the typical child in the control group in Perry Preschool did—then you can get a return something in the order of seven to one for every dollar that you're putting into early learning. So we need a strong focus on early education, not only because it is absolutely vital in improving workforce participation, particularly for women, but also because it's critical for kids.

We know that raising the accessibility of early education is vital for improving the labour force participation of parents, but we also know that we need to do a lot on the quality agenda. That's why Labor has been so concerned at the haphazard way in which the government has handled the early childhood sector. On 20 July the government announced that JobKeeper would be withdrawn from the early childhood sector. This is the only sector in Australia now that is specifically banned from receiving JobKeeper, alongside universities, which, through a variety of subterfuge measures, have also been kept out of receiving JobKeeper subsidies. Enormous pressure has been placed on early learning centres. As the shadow minister, Amanda Rishworth, has pointed out, this has been done too hastily and it has caused significant problems right across the sector. So we're calling on the government to put in place a more consistent approach, with more consistent supports for early learning centres.

This bill puts in place a number of sensible measures which improve assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged families. Labor supports those measures. But we do so in an environment in which we're aware that the government was claiming that there would be free child care, without funding free child care. We saw, for many centres, their inability to access JobKeeper prior to 20 July because they used casual workers who'd been employed for less than 12 months and were therefore ruled out, due to this arbitrary distinction that the government made. As the member for Kingston has said, this is 'a broken promise by this government, a broken promise to families right across Australia'.

In my electorate of Fenner I've been in touch with a range of early learning educators who are frustrated at the situation that they've been placed in this year. One educator wrote to me, prior to 20 July:

… approximately 30% of our employees will not qualify for the job keeper incentive because they have not been with the service for 12 months.

She also said that they were frustrated at the lack of access to protective clothing and equipment. She said:

This tells us that the Australian Government as well as families don't care about us.

I am a grandmother myself and I have not had any contact with my own children or grandchildren for weeks and yet I am expected to come to work every day and hold other children and work in close spaces with co-workers. Early Childhood environments are, in nature, breeding grounds for germs and so we are attuned to the effective prevention of the spread of infectious illnesses. But we are being taken for granted and left without any acknowledgement of what we actually do each day and how our jobs are placing us at risk.

Another early learning educator wrote:

… I'm writing to ask for your support of early childhood educators who have been defined as essential workers recently with lowest pay & highest risk. Other essential workers such as nurses, doctors, retailers etc are allowed to wear masks & protective clothing but we are not. We cannot practice social distancing, so putting ourselves & our families at very high risk of being infected by Coronavirus.

Another early learning educator wrote:

Each and every day we are putting ourselves and our families at risk just for the government with no personal protective gear or anything, we even find it hard to get simple things like gloves, soap and hand sanitizer.

She went on to say:

All I ask is think about us, recognise us as a profession and not as baby sitters, lower-class shit kickers because this is how we feel. I have worked in the sector for 5 years and have gotten many sicknesses like gastro, colds, cases of flu and more from the children. We don't receive any support for the hard times we go through. This needs to change before it's too late and the economy begins to fail even more because all childcare centres close and families can't go to work. Just remember this lies in the government's hands so we ask please support us as educators.

Labor will continue to be a strong voice for early learning educators and for the families that depend on them. Labor recognises the crucial role that early education plays in our community and will continue to maintain the pressure on this government to do right by the early learning sector in the course of this pandemic.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I really loved the way that the member for Fenner opened his contribution today with his acknowledgement that one of the most valuable jobs he has is being a father to his boys. I've often spoken in this House about my own experience as a single mother raising two young boys. It seems like it was many years ago, as my eldest son is turning 30 this year—which perhaps shows my age. It does seem like many, many years ago that I, too, relied on Australia's childcare system and on the fabulous and invaluable work of our early childhood educators and childcare givers in supporting parents who go to work—single parents, single mothers in particular—and in raising generations of Australians in their early years. Childcare is not just about wiping bottoms and wiping noses. As the member for Fenner rightly pointed out, it is, in fact, about developing our most precious asset in this country—our children.

This amending legislation makes some really positive and, might I add, long overdue changes to improve access and continuity of care for some of the most vulnerable children—children at risk. It also makes some minor technical amendments. Our shadow minister for childcare put forward a second reading amendment, and I want to draw attention to two aspects of that amendment—firstly, that unaffordable child care will force families, particularly women, to reconsider returning to work and could act as a handbrake on Australia’s economic recovery; and, secondly, that early childhood workers were ripped out of the JobKeeper program three days after the Prime Minister promised there would be no changes until September. While we welcome the positive and long overdue changes to improve access and continuity, this bill does nothing to address the concerns of parents for whom the cost of childcare is prohibitive and it does nothing to improve the value that we should have for our childcare workers and our early childhood educators.

We all know this Prime Minister loves a headline. In the midst of the first wave of this pandemic 'free childcare for all' made a great headline—it was a fantastic headline. In my electorate of Cowan, many people welcomed the relief from having to pay childcare fees, particularly if they were essential workers. The Prime Minister declared then that every person who was going to work was an essential worker and, therefore, every person would receive free child care. What a wonderful utopia it would be if, indeed, Australia had a longstanding commitment to free, or at least affordable, child care. The reality behind that headline was that providers weren't getting paid and that families were locked out of the system. Childcare workers were the first—the first—to have JobKeeper ripped away from them.

Much will be written and spoken about how this pandemic has offered us all an opportunity—an opportunity to reassess our lives, an opportunity to reassess our priorities and an opportunity to think about what's important to us. Often, when we're faced with a crisis, it has that impact on us, doesn't it? It makes us reconsider what we think is important, and, for some of us here, it may also make us reconsider what our future holds for us. I'm sure that's the case for many people around the country. I'd like to see this also provide us, here in this place as leaders, with an opportunity to reassess what we hold important and who we hold important and valuable. What this pandemic has shown us is that our front line has been those essential workers: our retail workers, security guards, cleaners, nurses and doctors—all of those people who we are now relying on to get through this pandemic.

Amongst those workers are childcare workers and early childhood educators. They are our front line in this pandemic. They are essential workers. Unfortunately, to date we have not valued them to the level that they should be valued at. Raising, educating and socialising a child is the most important job in the world. What we do here pales in comparison to that, and I know that many here would agree with me, whether or not they have used the childcare system. Our early educators and childcare workers are poorly valued. They do not receive remuneration that accurately and adequately reflects the important work that they're doing. Like one of the previous contributors to this debate, I too have been a longstanding supporter of the Big Steps campaign, which seeks to have our childcare workers and early childhood educators valued in the way that they should be.

While we may all acknowledge that childcare and early childhood education are really important and that these are really essential workers who've been part of our frontline defence in these times, and while we can take that opportunity to reflect on just how important good health and our children are, we still have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world. The other day I made a phone call to one of my constituents, Matt, who wanted to speak to me about child care. Matt works, as does his wife. They have one child, Noah, and another one on the way. Matt and his wife and family are doing what many of us who have raised children and utilised the childcare system have done: they have sat down and calculated whether or not it is worth it for his wife to go to work when the cost of child care is so high that the amount of money that she will earn at work barely covers the cost of child care.

We might say, 'Well, if they can afford it, they should pay it,' and all of those things, but there is a broader cost here, a much bigger social cost that is often not counted or recognised when we talk about economic costs. The bigger social cost is that we have women who won't go back to work or can't go back to work because it's not worth their while to go back to work if they have to pay high childcare fees. They have their careers interrupted and then find it more difficult to get back into the workforce. I haven't done the sums, and I don't know if anyone has, about the economic costs of women being out of the workforce for longer because they can't afford the child care or because paying childcare fees is exorbitant and not worth their time, but I'm sure that there is an economic cost here. I'm not interested in the economic cost, but I do want to focus on the social cost and what that means for us as a society in terms of building women's economic freedom, building an equal and just society and the opportunities that we give to our future generations.

In closing, once again, I reiterate that Labor supports this bill—of course we do, because it does make some sensible measures. But we don't support this bill without standing here and drawing attention to the fact that there is more reform that's needed—a lot more reform that's needed. Reform is needed to ensure our childcare workers and early childhood educators are valued in the way that they should be and in a way that we should all now at least be able to recognise at a time when we rely so heavily and so strongly on them, if we haven't recognised it before. Our childcare system does need reform, and it needs much more reform than what is contained in this bill. Reform is needed because our childcare workers are so undervalued that they have been the first to be ripped out of the JobKeeper program. That needs to be rectified. We need to focus on providing affordable child care for families in Australia, particularly for women. If we don't, the social and the economic impacts of that will be felt for many years to come.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Link to 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.

Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Improving Assistance for Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Families) Bill 2020 and to talk about the need to streamline the childcare system. The changes in this bill are important for making sure vulnerable families can get the support they need when they need it. It also aims to reduce the administrative burden on childcare providers, working to help and support children and families.

Our early learning educators are vital in our community. They help to nurture our children by teaching them and caring for them. They also support parents returning to work, and this makes them critical to our overall economy. This legislation will help to fix some of the system flaws that came into place under the government's new system in 2018. At the time, Labor and the industry warned that this would have a negative impact on vulnerable families and providers. Nonetheless, the government pushed it through. As often seems to be the case with this government, it has resisted our calls to make these amendments ever since.

The additional childcare subsidy for child wellbeing is a vital program that provides a safe and nurturing learning environment for children in extremely vulnerable situations at home. For most of these children, it can be the difference between staying at home and having to go into the child protection system. It is critical that the government treats this program with sensitivity and ensures that families and providers are not overly burdened with red tape. But the changes the government introduced in 2018 meant there were new rules and requirements which restricted access.

In the first six months of the new system, there was a 21 per cent collapse in the number of children receiving the child wellbeing subsidy. That is a significant number of vulnerable children that were no longer receiving support. Since then, the numbers have recovered to pre-July 2018 levels, but only after significant efforts and resources from providers. The government has treated families, providers and children reliant on this system with absolute contempt. The new system leaves one in four families worse off than before. It forces overworked and underpaid early childhood educators to become debt collectors for the government because families can't stay on top of the paperwork. The bungled implementation of this system is just one example of the government's mishandling of the childcare and early learning system.

When the government announced during COVID that it was making child care free for everyone, it sure sounded like a great headline. The Prime Minister loves doing that—flashy announcements for ill-considered policy ideas. We have seen plenty of that with the drought and the bushfires. We know where that leads us: to phantom funds. Local families, in the immediate aftermath, were thrilled that they would receive this much-needed help, particularly our essential workers. But, as is too often the case with those opposite, they didn't fund it properly. It didn't take long for local families and educators to work out the program was riddled with problems.

I was inundated with concerns from local family daycare operators and parents of children that attend family day care. The initiative to provide free child care effectively halved operators' income, making it impossible to survive. These aren't just words. These aren't just platitudes. These are real people who have felt the very real impacts of these changes, and I rise today to tell their stories.

We know that children of essential workers, and vulnerable children, utilise family day care. It is a popular and common form of care. But family day care suffered a huge blow when the government decided to make child care free. I wanted to share the stories of some of the local people who contacted me about this. Lee said: 'My daughter runs a family day care business from her home. This announcement takes away her income and effectively closes her down for the duration. The family day care people, mostly small operators, often caring for and educating children of essential workers, are effectively shut out of this arrangement.' Lee wasn't alone. Erin, a mum, said, 'We need our day care but now it faces closing as it is not viable financially for her to keep her doors open.' She went on to say that, to be honest, she probably wouldn't close, because that is just the type of amazing person she is. She said, 'We would have liked to have been able to opt out of free child care.' She said, 'As much as free child care would be great, and very helpful in these times, not when it is at the expense of our beautiful family day care educator.' In the days following the announcement, I had so many people with the same story to tell. Parents and educators alike felt that the government's announcement only punished them.

These changes locked so many people out of the system and left workers with nowhere to take their kids. What did this mean? They had to stay home and turn down work. We know that no-one could afford this, especially not in an area with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. The government tried to shift the blame onto providers, but many local providers told me how desperate they were to keep providing as much care as possible. To keep their doors open with such a reduction in revenue, some early-learning providers are left with no choice but to reduce staff, cut opening hours, deny care to new families, or cancel existing enrolments.

In the days after the announcement I spoke with so many providers who just wanted to be heard. Just a day after the announcement, Barry said, 'Unfortunately, the initiative announced yesterday by the coalition to provide free child care to the larger childcare centres has counterintuitively affected the funding model of the smaller, home based, family day care providers and has in fact halved the income available to family day care providers.' Barry's concerns were echoed by so many.

To blame the childcare providers simply missed the point and showed the government's complete lack of understanding of the sector. Perhaps the government should have listened to people like Tina, a family day care operator. She said: 'Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been able to continue running my business without a loss in enrolments. I have been able to provide a safe place for the children to be to escape the stresses of the outside world at present. I did not ask for a bailout. My business, luckily, was pandemic-free. Then came the government's announcement. Now I am left feeling undervalued and insignificant. On top of losing 50 per cent of my hard-earned income, I will probably lose much more than that as there are administration levies deducted from our income.' Tina said: 'I am baffled how this idea was even given approval. What other essential service in our community right now still fronts up every day, works their shift, does their job, acts professionally, gives service with a smile and then happily accepts a 50 per cent pay cut?' A great question, Tina. Chloe is local to the New South Wales South Coast, but she has been delivering essential early-learning services on a sheep station in outback New South Wales. She had a particularly unique story to tell. She said: 'These changes mean that I will be working for considerably less than half my current wage. I am very concerned for the hardworking farmers that myself and others work for. If forced to leave their role on these stations because of severely reduced wages, someone would be required to take over the role as supervisor of the children doing School of the Air.' These are more examples of the government ignoring regional and rural Australia. Emma, a parent, writes: 'What was not fantastic, however, was when I was also informed that because my family receives zero per cent childcare subsidy payment, my daughter is not eligible for care at all under the interim relief package. This means that now, for the next three months, either my husband or myself cannot work in our businesses. We employed 20-plus locals. We are doing everything in our power to work within our businesses and keep them afloat so that we have employment for our employees to come back to after this terrible time. I'm not asking to get free care—I'm happy to pay—but to be denied care at all is unacceptable and discriminatory. I implore the government to revisit this decision.' But it wasn't just family day care. I've had feedback from childcare centre after childcare centre. They told me their concerns about—

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.