Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You have got a little bit down there; I agree. Thank you, Senator Farrell—and Queensland and New South Wales.

First, to pull this one out and think this is quality policy that all Australians would fall over—I'm not one that attends all the football grand finals and everything with the oil and gas industry, but I will say this, coming from WA: you go through the airport in Perth, and what are you looking at in the airport in Perth? It's not full of tourists, unfortunately; it's not. We'd love more tourists. It's full of fluoro vests, and a lot of those fluoro vests are engaged in hard-rock mining. I don't have a lot of friends in hard-rock mining, but in gas—I have the greatest respect for the gas industry. Do they pay their way? One can argue, but I will say this: we have the PRRT. Could it be brought on earlier? There are all those sorts of arguments that we can have, but, yes, they employ a heck of a lot of Australians. Yes, they are working within the taxation realms that this nation has set for them. The first thing is, I think, if you were to raise this argument just to kick the living daylights out of the gas industry in Australia, there'd be a lot of opposition.

But, more importantly, let's talk about childhood. Early childhood care is important, and Senator Marielle Smith put it succinctly. She put it better than anyone that I've heard today. We know that this government has done so much for early childhood, and we know that every child deserves to have access to quality care—there's no argument. It doesn't matter what your postcode is. We also know that the government are backing in families with our three-day guarantee and cheaper childcare reforms.

I mean, this government is investing no less than $1 billion to build more centres in more places. We are doing that. We are investing $1 billion under our Building Early Education Fund. We're building more early learning centres where families need it most, including in the outer suburbs and in the regions. I know because I've seen what we've been doing in the Kimberley, and in May we went to the election proposing for the Pilbara, which is all good stuff. We're building more quality not-for-profits. We're building more centres co-located with schools—heaven help us!—to help families avoid a double drop-off while we're strengthening the sector to improve quality.

We've announced four agreements with the states and territories to deliver almost 2,000 new early learning places for families. Eighty per cent of those places will be, once again, co-located with schools. If you were to listen, or if you had no idea what was going on in this nation and you read Senator Payman's proposal, you would think that nothing is being done about early childhood. For goodness sake, this Albanese government's been groundbreaking. We've got more agreements to follow soon.

Just like every child has the right to go to school, every child now has the right to three days of the child care subsidy, and every parent has the subsidy support they need to get back to work when they're ready. Our parents would have loved that, Senator Whitten! Wouldn't they have loved to have had that opportunity? I think my parents would have put me in care for more than the three days if they'd had their opportunity! We have cut the cost of early learning for more than one million Australian families. On average, families will pay $3½ thousand less this year because of our cheaper-childcare reforms. We've capped the amount childcare centres can increase their fees, through the worker retention payment, and because of that fees have gone up by 3.5 per cent for those services in the last year. That's the sort of practical support parents need. Thought bubbles like we've seen today from Senator Payman—well, maybe keep them around the barbecue, and we'll put some serious policy in place with the Albanese government.