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

Only the Labor Party could suggest that budgeting $9 billion for the childcare subsidy in 2020-21 was 'nothing'. We are budgeting $9 billion in expenditure to support child care in this financial year alone. This is about $2 billion—from memory—more than was being spent a couple of years ago prior to our reforms. We came along as a government, we introduced reforms to create the childcare subsidy, we increased the rate of spending on child care and that spending has now reached a point where in this financial year we will spend and invest $9 billion to support the hardest working Australian families, to give the greatest support to those earning the least amount of money, and yet those opposite come in here and they pretend that $9 billion is nothing at all! It's certainly not nothing at all!