Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the government's cheaper child care plan and our update to paid parental leave make life easier for Australian families?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canberra for her question, and it was a delight this morning to be with you at the childcare centre at Manuka, along with Minister Clare and Minister Aly, and it was great to meet with young Olivia, Bradley, Lulu, Beau, Sophie and Claire. They were a delight to spend time with and they're a credit to their families, but they're also a credit to the early learning educators. Every time you go into an early learning centre you see children learning social interaction. You see children benefiting from these skills that early learning educators have. You see the benefit of child care. And our policy, passed through this parliament, which will make child care cheaper from 1 July, will benefit those children. It will also benefit families and will also benefit our national economy, by increasing women's workforce participation and by increasing productivity. That's why it received such strong support from the business community.

Today we announced that Professor Emerita Deb Brennan AM will co-lead the inquiry for our next step. What we committed to during the election campaign was to make sure that not only would we put in place this policy, which we announced in my first budget reply—in the days when opposition leaders had policies in their budget replies—and it will float through from July, but also that a Productivity Commission review would occur to look at universal affordable child care. These terms of reference that we announced today will look at affordability, access, and workforce issues going forward. This is part of our plan to improve economic security for Australians. It goes together with the legislation that has been passed to update Australia's paid parental leave scheme so that it better reflects modern family life, to give families more flexibility. These changes mean that parents can return to work part-time using paid parental leave and mean that both parents can take part of their leave at the same time. These changes mean it's easier for dads to take leave. These changes mean that single parents will get the same number of weeks as two-parent families.

There's more to come: six months of paid parental leave, which will benefit about 180,000 families. This government is committed to making a difference, and our plan for early learning will do just that.