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

I thank Senator Anning for his question. Senator Anning has asked about a particular and specific instance, and I will more than happily take the particulars, in terms of that instance, on notice and, if I can, provide further information to Senator Anning about that individual case.

What I can inform Senator Anning, through you, Mr President, is that the Turnbull government has taken a number of steps over a period of time to ensure there is a zero-tolerance approach to fraud, particularly in the family day care sector. Our actions have seen significant savings accrued. Over the course of the first six months of this year, we delivered an integrity surge that generated savings of around $1 billion in claims that would otherwise have been wrongly made. We did that through cooperation with different departments, between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments, data-matching to identify those who may be doing the wrong thing and making erroneous or illegal claims.

We have suspended many services, and we have upped compliance activity. When we took office, just a few hundred checks on family day care services were conducted per annum. Today more than 4,000 checks on services are conducted per annum to ensure we have a much tougher audit regime that's catching more people out and leading to the suspension of services. It has seen dozens of matters referred for legal action and resulted in a number of individuals either facing criminal charges or having been convicted and serving time as a result of their defrauding of the Australian taxpayer. We will not tolerate it. We have taken whatever action we can. Our new childcare system, which is coming into effect on 2 July, has stronger safeguards and a better data system to help ensure we prevent this even more effectively in the future.