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

I thank Senator Hume for a very appropriate, important and relevant policy question. Since 1 January 2016, under our No Jab, No Pay policy, only parents of children who are fully vaccinated or on a recognised catch-up schedule can receive the childcare benefit or the childcare rebate. Childcare payments are conditional upon all children meeting their immunisation requirements. We have made it the case that conscientious objection is no longer a valid exemption category. The only exemption now available in these circumstances is, quite rightly, a medical exemption. The Turnbull government's No Jab, No Pay policy has, I am pleased to inform the Senate, been a massive success. Thanks to No Jab, No Pay an additional 225,000 Australian children have been immunised. I invite the chamber to seriously reflect upon that achievement: thanks to this policy initiative, an additional 225,000 Australian children have been vaccinated, providing much safer conditions for those children and for many children around them.

Immunisation is an important health measure for children and their families because it is the safest and most effective way of providing protection against harmful and often deadly diseases. Parents deserve to know their children will be safe when they drop them off at child care. Parents of children too young to be immunised deserve to know that every effort is being made to make safe the community in which their children live. Parents of children who cannot be immunised for medical reasons deserve to know that every effort has been made to ensure the community in which their children live is safe. Thanks to our No Jab, No Pay policy the communities for these children are safer and lives will be saved.