Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Reflecting on the parliamentary secretary's comments then and on what Senator Nash and Senator Ian Macdonald brought up reminds me that there are very few in this chamber, particularly on the other side, who run a business of any significance. I do not mean that in any belittling way but running a business does give you an understanding of the financial burden on those who have capital invested, in ensuring they can provide value for money to their customers. Many childcare centres—until they were nationalised in part by this government, which seems to want to nationalise many things—are run as independent commercial entities which need to provide good value for money with minimised cost increases.

On the other side of the equation we have families. It has been acknowledged by almost everyone in this chamber that families are doing it tough. Many families struggle every week to balance the budget, to make ends meet. There are people living on borrowings, using credit cards. That is something I would not like to see continue.

Inflation is starting to pick up. We have seen that from the RBA. When Mr Rudd was Prime Minister, before he was brutally knifed and politically dismembered by the Labor faceless men, he had a war on inflation—with GroceryWatch, and Fuelwatch, and watch everything except his own back—which clearly failed. Inflation is now coming home to roost.

A quick economics lesson here: inflation is purely driven by money supply. When the money supply increases, you have price increases. That is what we are seeing. We are seeing price increases as a direct result of the injection of money into our economy by this government—money they do not have, might I add. It is not backed by anything except the government's full faith and credit. It is money that has been borrowed from overseas and injected into our economy, and that is why we are seeing increases in the price of a range of things that we need. I touched on this yesterday.

One of these things that we need in this country is child care, and of course the cost of child care is increasing. There are enormous burdens on the operators of these childcare centres to provide adequate facilities and services. Senator Macdonald touched on one of these important things, which is air conditioning. Air conditioning takes power to run and a new tax will be placed upon electricity in this country by the Labor Party. I would remind those on the Labor benches that this was the tax you promised never to introduce. You promised that to the Australian people, and it is an unnecessary broken promise because we all know that your carbon dioxide tax is not going to make any difference to the environment.

That brings me back to the cost of childcare centres. I have had experience in this—both my children in an earlier day and age attended child care on a couple of occasions per week, and this was done for my wife's sanity. She maintains she needed to get out and do something else on occasions and this was a reasonable alternative. It was very expensive then. The childcare centre that we attended was trying to minimise the costs to families, and so families were asked to pick up a range of additional imposts to help facilitate the operation of the centre—little things that perhaps people take for granted. We were all required eventually to take a piece of fruit for the shared fruit time at morning tea and things like that rather than have the centre itself do it because that would involve formalising a delivery or paying someone to go out and pick it up. So that was a way they could limit the fee increases.

There was another thing they did which I disagreed with fundamentally, but they said it was to reduce costs. That was that they basically diluted the Christmas show into an end of season gathering. They dressed it up and said there were a whole range of justifications, but I suspect it was because they did not want to offend non-Christians, which was just ridiculous and once again an enormous leap into a politically correct society.

One of the important points is that, whilst childcare centres are doing their best to reduce their costs to provide a more competitive service, we have a government that is so keen on increasing the costs of not only childcare centres but every single business. While we know that the govern­ment is going to impose this carbon dioxide tax supposedly on the 400 or 500 'big polluters'—you can never get to the bottom of this—we also know that costs are going to flow on everywhere, to every small business. Unfortunately, because so many small businesses are doing it quite tough now they are going to be forced to pass these costs on to consumers. In the case of childcare centres those consumers are families, and families are going to have to wear it. There is no doubt about that. Yes, the government will pay this rebate on childcare costs, but they are capping it and the costs are going to increase, on the government's own figures, I think—it relied on Access Economics—by $8.80 or $9 per week on average for some 20,000 families. Once again, that is an additional burden. I have my suspicions and they have been vindicated or validated by industry, who says the increase is going to be between $12 and $20.

But what I am really struggling to come to terms with, and I want to specifically address the government's amendment here, is that this initiative was originally slated to operate for four years and it was going to save the government $86.3 million over those four years. Of course, as Senator Nash so elo­quently pointed out, a saving for the government is an additional cost for families. So there are $86 million in additional costs for families over those four years. This amendment that we are considering, though, is to reduce this savings measure to only three years. So we are reducing the time period in which this bill applies by 25 per cent, and yet the government maintains that the change to three years will still effect a net saving of $81 million over those three years. Over four years the saving—the additional cost to Australian families, who have been ignored over and over again by this government—was $86.3 million, but now the additional cost over three years will be $81 million.

Parliamentary Secretary, I would be interested in an explanation, because it is not contained here in the documents I have in front of me. Why does a reduction in the time period of a full 25 per cent, from four years down to three years, only result in a $5.3 million reduction in the additional cost you are imposing on Australian families? This is just back-of-the-envelope stuff and you may have more detail—I know you have lots of advisers there to tell you about this. But the back-of-the-envelope stuff would suggest to me, just in round figures, that if you are reducing the time period over which this bill applies by 25 per cent you would have a commensurate reduction in the saving. I must have missed something. Parliamentary Secretary, I would invite you to address that and to perhaps explain why, whilst Australian families have been saved a full 12 months in the application of this flawed bill and this flawed process, this amendment does not save as much money through the reduction?

Parliamentary Secretary, I note you are getting some advice, and I still have five minutes in which to reflect on a number of other issues that are related directly to this bill whilst you are getting that advice. We have to understand that ultimately Australian families are the nurturers of the next generation. While much of the learning and teaching is done at home, and should be done at home, we recognise that child care plays an important role in enabling families to live the lives that they choose, to make ends meet and to climb the aspirational ladder. Some­times, as in my own case, it provides a welcome respite from the day-to-day tests that young children apply to, in my family's case, a mother. But having been at home with my children, I know that even fathers can be tested on occasions.

Parliamentary Secretary, I presume you have your advice and are able to answer my serious question which is about, as I will remind you, the reduction in time for the application of this bill from four years to three years, and why the cost savings do not seem to be relative to that time period.