Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this urgency motion before us today—the need for the Australian government to consider the increasing accessibility and affordability issues that are preventing Australian families from accessing quality early childhood education and care by imposing a 25 per cent tax on gas exports. Well, we don't need to introduce a 25 per cent tax on gas exports to fix our childcare and early learning system. We do need to address the deficiencies in our early learning and childcare system, but we don't need to impose a tax on gas exports to fund that.

What the government needs to do is to stop trying to impose a one-size-fits-all system on Australian families. Australian families need flexibility. They need choice when it comes to how they care for and see their children cared for. We don't need to see this one-size-fits-all system further expanded and developed in a way that would lock that in. We need to ensure that families are provided with that choice and that flexibility.

I think Senator Payman always brings really interesting motions into this place, and I appreciate that she brings them. It gives us a chance to actually have a debate, to have a discussion, about what's right and what's necessary for this country. But I've got to say, in this sense, she's channelling the Australian Greens when she brings a motion like this before the Senate.

The Greens's solution is to impose new taxes on everything. I guess they have to because, if they were to implement everything that they have on their agenda, then they would have to increase taxes all the way right through the economy because there's no way you could possibly pay for it. They're never happy in this place unless they're taxing something. In this case they're wanting to tax something in order to increase the big expenditure that would be required to achieve universal child care. That means we're going to get rid of the means testing for early learning in this country. It would mean that people on $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 a year would get the same subsidy as someone that was on a lower or more modest income. Surely that's not the sort of system we should have.

The government needs to come clean as to whether or not that's what they mean when they talk about universal child care, because that's the only way you could interpret it. The Productivity Commission talks about this and says that, if you were to impose that—if you brought that in—it would cost up to $8 billion to the budget, and it would mean that you're not directing the support and the services towards those who are most in need. We've got to think about the most vulnerable families in this country. We've got to think about those families that need child care and that need access to good quality child care, those that are living in a childcare desert. If there's going to be any sort of funding, it needs to go towards where the needs are. Simply providing universal access would just mean that we're not really directing it in a way that it should be. Of course the only way you could do that is to raise taxes. That's what Senator Payman, and the Greens in supporting it, are proposing here today—that we just impose those sorts of taxes.

Now Australian families are paying more for child care than ever before, even though we've heard, for two elections now, that the government are going to make childcare cheaper. They said they're going to make child care cheaper but all that's happening, all we know, is that parents are paying even more for it. This is the problem. You throw subsidies and you throw money at these sorts of things. Unless you deal with the underlying issues then you don't really address the challenges that are in this system.

I was proud to put my name to the committee report today that was tabled that addressed the issues around childcare safety. There was a chapter in there also about choice and flexibility, because we must provide choice and flexibility in the childcare system. Only about 50 per cent of children are actually in centre based care. What about the other 50 per cent? What sort of support is there for those families? This government needs to do more. That's why the coalition is taking this on as a challenge—to ensure we provide choice and flexibility to families who really need it most.