Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

(—) (): Mr President, all I can say to Senator Bushby is that only the Turnbull government has a comprehensive plan to fix the broken childcare model in Australia. Those opposite went to the election proposing a continuance of the current broken model. Then after the election, they went to the National Press Club and promised consultation. Well, there has been plenty of consultation—there has been a Productivity Commission inquiry, there have been several different Senate inquiries—all of which have essentially found that the proposals that the Turnbull government has on the table are the right reforms to fix a broken system, to put in place mechanisms to keep a lid on fee growth in the future, to provide more support to the lowest-income Australian families, to ensure that we do not have families falling off a cliff mid-financial-year in their childcare support, to have better compliance powers in place to stop rorting in the family day care sector or elsewhere, to have a strong safety net to guarantee two sessions of care per week for Australia's most vulnerable children—these are valuable reforms and the Senate ought to support them in these two weeks. (Time expired)