Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the parliamentary secretary for her answers. I think the chamber also appreciates the parliamentary secretary being prepared to offer at least some answers to the chamber. While we do appreciate her contribution, and the minister before her, we are still left in doubt. We have not in any way had our concerns alleviated that there are going to be families who have increased costs as a result of this legislation. It is as simple as that. As I said earlier, in spite of the parliamentary secretary's view that it will be only a minimal number of families, in my view and in the coalition's view there should not be one family having to undergo a single dollar of increased cost because of this legislation. The reason I say that is this: if this government had managed the economy properly, if they had not got us into $198 billion debt, and if they had not done things like spend $80.9 million on administering an emissions trading scheme that does not even exist then we would not be in the position of even having to be here today. We would not be in the position of having to deal with this legislation because it would not be necessary.

This is the point that is being made in the community: why is child care the place where the government is finding money for, as they said, their savings measure to go to the National Quality Framework? Why should any single Australian family have to bear the burden of one dollar more because this government is inept and cannot manage money. That is the only reason that this piece of legislation is here. It is a savings measure. It stands to reason—you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out—we would not be debating this if the government had done a better job managing the economy, if the government had not wasted so much money on different things. There is now $33 million going in grants to livestock exporters in the industry because the government completely stuffed up the live export industry by banning the trade.

Senator Adams interjecting—

I note my colleague Senator Adams, who is here, is a tireless advocate for Western Australia. How stupid was that? So there is $33 million that the government has had to find because of a stupid government decision. The point is that people out there in the community realise that this government has a piece of legislation relating to child care as a savings measure. On the table we have a percentage for how many families will have to bear an increased cost. I ask the parliamentary secre­tary this, and if she needs to take this on notice and come back to the chamber, I will be most appreciative: we have a percentage of families that the government says are going to have to bear an increased cost, but exactly how many families are going to bear an increased cost at all across the country?