Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is important to return to some of the information I was speaking about earlier, because I know how much colleagues opposite like to talk about women in work and the gender pay gap. We now have a wealth of evidence that shows that improving affordability, flexibility and accessibility will remove significant barriers to women returning to the workforce. Those opposite know all about this—and they spent six years doing absolutely nothing. They were happy to jump up and down. They were happy to adopt a soapbox whenever it suited them and complain about the issues, but when it came to actually doing something they were invisible—nowhere to be seen. In fact, they sat back and presided over a 53 per cent fee increase in child care. That is an absolute disgrace. It is a lazy, wasteful approach to governing in this area. We are taking real action to make child care more affordable, more accessible and more flexible. (Time expired)