Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator McLachlan, for what is probably one of the most important questions you could ask, and that is: how do we support our children and make sure that we have well-functioning families to ensure that that support is able to be delivered? We know that children's development and growth is so important to what happens to them later in life.

Each year, the federal government invests more than $260 million in early intervention and prevention services under Families and Children Activity and Family Mental Health Support Services. The programs we invest in as a government are about giving children the best possible start in life. Early support for families plays a really important role in making sure that we prevent family breakdown, child neglect, family violence, substance abuse and mental illness and, of course, making sure that the transitioning of young children into school is the highest possible priority for any child.

The flow-on effects of this are really very clear. It builds protections, skills and resilience in our young people so that they can go off into their lives and we can avoid intergenerational disadvantage, which is so, so important. Intensive family support programs are one example of the kinds of programs that we have been targeting. Early intervention programs, we know, reduce child neglect, by working intensively with vulnerable families to improve parenting capabilities. On top of this, obviously, a childcare subsidy is a very, very important part to help working families make sure that they are in a position to be able to access early learning opportunities for their children. We are listening to providers and working collaboratively to make sure that we achieve the outcomes for our children that we'd like to see. We know longer-term ongoing funding is absolutely critical to future planning. Over the next five years we will invest more than $1.2 billion. A major task we are now undertaking is the development of a successor to the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children.