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

Presently, families can access the childcare benefit without demonstrating any activity at all in many instances. What we are doing through this, as I said before, is better targeting support to families who meet an activity test. But it is a light-touch activity test; families need only undertake around four hours of work, training or study per week in order to access some 18 hours of subsidised early education and care. Under the reforms, our estimations are that some 230,000 Australian families will increase their workforce participation—that is, these families will be empowered to choose to work more hours or work more days. They have the choice of doing so not just because of our increased support but because of the Turnbull government's growth in employment and jobs across Australia. Our jobs record is that some 403,000 additional jobs were created last year. And through our childcare reforms more families will get more support to fill the greater number of jobs in our economy.