Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I'm yet to see a piece of credible work come from The Parenthood organisation, I've got to say. The Parenthood, whose previous executive director I note was a Labor Party candidate at the last election, is largely funded by the trade union movement, so I have to say that their survey methodology is not one that I'm likely to take terribly seriously.

The point that I would make is precisely the one that I made before: we overhauled the childcare system to provide additional investment and to better target it, to make sure that we supported families and enabled people to have the choice to go back to work if they wanted. And our reforms have worked. Our reforms ensured that as we went into the COVID-19 pandemic we had female workforce participation at record levels in Australia—that we had driven up the number of Australian women working to record levels. Our determination is to use those same types of policy settings to get people back to work—not to be reckless in spending but to be targeted to those who need it.