Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the opportunity to start off where Senator Sherry left off—talking about rising interest rates. Under Labor, we had unemployment at record levels and we had interest rates at record levels. As Senator Humphries said, the reason that we have increased demand for child care is because we have so many more people in the workforce because we have created jobs by running the economy efficiently and by reducing the future burden of the children who are now in child care. We paid back $96 billion of Labor’s debt. We are putting money into a Future Fund now to pay for unfunded Commonwealth superannuation to make sure that those children’s futures are secure. What we have done is to increase childcare places. When Labor were in government, they did not have sufficient childcare places and they were appallingly distributed, and there was a large demand for it.

There are still some states that need to lift their games in terms of regulation of the childcare industry. In particular, my home state of Victoria needs to do a lot more than it has done. It has been talking about it for a long while. Let me say that it is not just the Commonwealth government which is responsible for child care. The states can also play a part. Some states have started to look at the possibility, for example, of using state facilities—for example, areas within a state school—to co-locate child care. When I was minister, I constantly called upon the state ministers for planning and the state ministers for education to see where they could assist in child care.

One of the other things that we have heard is Labor crowing from the rooftops about their new education policy for children. Mr Rudd is out there. We saw Mr Latham down in the sandpit with the children; we have seen Mr Rudd. Being in the kindergarten or in the childcare centre always makes a very good photo. But what we find is that some of the states are doing appallingly on kindergarten and the provision of early childhood education, which is the responsibility of the states. For every child who cannot get a kindergarten place, what do we see? We see an increased demand for child care. The Labor states are falling down on the provision of kindergarten for every child of four, with a large percentage of children failing to even get one day of kindergarten. Parents who are working then seek childcare places. Do not put all the blame on the Commonwealth. A large amount of money has gone into child care. We have increased the places. You can talk about money going in, but there are increases in CPI; but when you talk about the actual places you get the real picture.

There were 306,000 early childhood places under Labor. We now have 600,000 places. That is almost double the number. As Senator Humphries said, the number of children being born and needing child care has not doubled. There has not been a doubling in the number of children. We have seen a significant increase—almost a doubling—of the number of childcare places available under Labor. We have seen an escalation in the number of after school hours places. Parents concerned about their older children at school needing before- and after-school care say they want those places uncapped. But Labor has failed to commit to keeping those uncapped places for long day care. Labor has a long way to go in developing a policy. Rabbiting on about early childhood education without putting the pressure on the states to actually do something about it is no sort of policy.

To encourage women to go back into the workforce we have seen increased funding through the JET scheme for mothers undertaking training at, for example, TAFE. There are additional childcare places for them. Again, Labor has failed to talk about that. The Labor Party fails to acknowledge that we have a new childcare management scheme that will ensure up-to-date and accurate information is available on supply and demand and use of child care. As Senator Humphries has already said, there is spare capacity within existing childcare centres at a national level. There are some people who do not want their children to go to particular childcare centres. That is their choice, but they will not always get the sort of child care—for example, community child care—they want where they want it. But there are places.

Only six per cent of parents have reported trouble accessing additional formal child care. I can tell you where they will be: they will be in Lilyfield and Glebe in Sydney and they will be in Port Melbourne in Victoria—areas where you have regentrification of suburbs with high land values. There is a difficulty for childcare providers to find places to build childcare centres. That is why I have said that it would assist if the states could look at places where they could provide centres too. We have seen them in Victoria: there is a kindergarten located at the base of a high-rise development block. There are spaces if states want to put their minds to it as well.

For the Labor Party to come in here and to be critical of child care is just appalling. If you look at their record, Labor failed parents. They failed them on jobs, they failed them on interest rates, they failed them on benefits for families and they failed them on child care. (Time expired)