Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Subsidy) Bill

 I'll start by thanking the early childhood workforce of Australia: the educators, directors, cleaners, cooks—everyone who makes this amazing sector of our economy and our society work. Sadly, it did take a global pandemic for some people to realise just how important your work is. Early childhood education and care is essential. Your work facilitates the labour market of today while training the labour market of tomorrow. Some 946,000 families across Australia rely on this sector so that they can live their lives, engage in our economy and give their kids the best opportunities for the future.

I know that the 195,000 people who work in this industry have felt forgotten at times. As we've seen in lockdowns over the last 18 months or so, when we talk about what's happening in education, often we'll see people announce what's happening with the schools and what's happening with the universities and the TAFEs, forgetting that 946,000 families are relying on one of these childcare centres—not knowing whether they have to wear masks, whether the centres are closed, or what the rules are around what is and isn't essential. I hope that this renewed political attention on child care also leads to some greater appreciation of the work that this workforce does—and it's a workforce that we need to grow. We need more people to become educators in our childcare centres. Estimates are that we've got a shortage of some 39,000 staff coming to us over the next few years. If we don't do something about it, we're going to see prices go up, availability decrease, and an even tighter labour market.

It does frustrate me if I think about what the childcare industry had to do last year, when the government implemented free childcare and very quickly expected childcare centres to change a range of their arrangements. The government said 'You've got a couple of weeks to do this.' The government is now telling us that they can't implement this very simple change for 250,000 families—just 250,000 families—without having 14 months to do it. That infuriates people who work in the sector, because they know that they were expected to change practically overnight.

I know that this sector, the early childhood education and care sector, makes a huge difference to families. Both my kids have used child care. Leo has been in there for three years. He went in at five months old, and I remember being very nervous, handing over my precious little baby boy to someone else. He was going to be there for a whole day. I didn't get much work done, as I sort of waited for the clock to tick by. But, actually, today my daughter Ruby had her first day at child care. There was far less of the nervousness, because I knew just what a great level of care and education she was in for and how much she would grow, like I've seen my son Leo grow, learning numbers, having his favourite letters, and the letters that he hates, and developing social skills, empathy, emotional regulation—all of the things that come from high-quality education and care.

If you believe that it's important that we as a nation have high-quality childhood education and care, then you'll know that the next election is a choice about the future of child care. When the Prime Minister reformed childcare, he said the changes were 'once in a generation'. He promised he was going to make child care more affordable, but that wasn't what happened. Just like he has failed on his two jobs this year of national vaccination and quarantine, he failed when it was his job to make child care more affordable. Under the Morrison government, we have families paying more out-of-pocket costs for child care than ever before.

Before the pandemic, just seven per cent of parents worked from home on a regular basis. Last year, that went up to 60 per cent. The number of families using parent-only care more than doubled from 30 to 64 per cent. Forty per cent of parents said they cared for children while working from home. And parents are doing that again across Australia, as we have more and more lockdowns, reminding us once again just how important the work is and the education is. It's reminding us that it's some of the hardest work—educating a young child who doesn't have all of those emotional skills yet and is still trying to figure out how to regulate their energy and how they fit into the world. It is incredibly tough work. Child care matters. It's a vital part of our society, and it's a vital part of our economy.

We learnt at the skills summit that was held in Western Australia last week that child care was identified as vital to the issues in the Western Australian economy that have arisen out of the pandemic. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA and the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia both identified the need for more childcare incentives as critical to addressing the skills shortages brought on by the pandemic. As previous Productivity Commission reports have demonstrated, the cost of child care does lock people out of the workforce. There are estimates that up to 300,000 Australians are not in the labour force because of their responsibility to care for children. Alarmingly, the number of parents saying they are not working because of the costs of child care has gone up by 23 per cent. When we have a pandemic leading to dangerous skills shortages, surely we should have more than the legislation in front of us. Surely we should have a comprehensive plan. Surely the government should swallow their pride and accept that maybe, just maybe, Labor's plan is the plan this country needs right now.

Lately we've heard a lot from the Prime Minister about how much he's proud of the Olympics. He has an Olympic analogy for everything but a plan for nothing. He told us all about where we finished, first place with gold medals, and where we are. But when it comes to the hard data reports that economists put out, that researchers look at, we don't hear much from the Prime Minister. We haven't had the minister for social services put out a press release about UNICEF's latest report when it comes to childcare centres in developed countries. UNICEF looked at 41 different countries. Where did Australia rank? No. 37. Not in the top 10, not a medal-winning performance, not in the top 20, not in the top 30—fourth last. That's where we finish when it comes to the question of how our childcare system is working in terms of accessibility and performance.

We have costs that are out of control and a government with no plan to do anything about it. In the last quarter the consumer price index rose 0.6 per cent. Childcare costs rose 2.2 per cent. This wasn't an irregularity; this has been happening and compounding quarter on quarter. Over the past 12 months, childcare costs rose 33.7 per cent while CPI increased just 1.1 per cent. The government's own advisers in the department of education are telling them fees are going to increase 4.1 per cent every year for the next four years—4.1 per cent this year, 4.1 per cent the year after that, 4.1 per cent the year after that and 4.1 per cent the year after that. That is going to take hundreds and hundreds of dollars out of the pay packets of Australians every fortnight just to pay for their child care. The total record of the government so far is a 36 per cent increase in childcare costs. It has never been more expensive to get early childhood education for a child in Australia than it is today.

When it comes to balancing the family budget, this is what families talk about. They don't understand why this government only wants to help some families if they have two children born relatively close together. With the way this legislation in front of us is structured, it's a penalty for parents who choose to have, or by circumstance find themselves with, children further spaced apart in their ages. It lacks any level of foresight and only helps a very small number of those families who access child care on a regular basis. I don't know if the government is trying to incentivise people to have more children closer together. We heard just before about when the government did believe in cash incentives, back when John Howard—the Prime Minister's mentor—and Peter Costello believed in cash incentives; they gave $5,000 to people for having a baby. Apparently that was totally fine and a highly appropriate incentive, but when dealing with a one-in-100-year pandemic no incentives are necessary.

I did find, digging into the history books, the press release from former Prime Minister Abbott and then Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison announcing 'no jab, no play and no pay for child care'. That was back when they were happy to have punitive measures on families for not getting vaccinations. I wondered, 'How bad was the vaccination rate when they brought this legislation in, when they started to say they were going to take this money off families?' I found something from the Medical Journal of Australia that noted that, before they introduced that policy, the rate of vaccinations for kids in child care was already at 90 per cent. Yet the Prime Minister, when he was the social services minister, knew it was worth having incentives to get it even higher than 90 per cent. Now ambition has gone so low that we're refusing even to have incentives for 70 or 80 per cent of the population. I've never said that policy consistency is a strong point of this government, but when it comes to the Prime Minister, particularly on incentives and particularly when it comes to childcare policy, it really is all over the place.

When it comes to the alternatives available to the Australian people, Labor understands the vital role that childcare plays in our society. I want to congratulate the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Kingston on the work that they have done on childcare policy. We've done the work. The government could just borrow it tomorrow! Labor's policy will have a lasting impact on generations of Australians. What we know is that, because of the government's slowness to act, either the Labor policy or the Liberal policy—whoever should win the next election—could be implemented in July 2022. That means that Australians do face a clear choice on child care.

Under Labor's policy, some 860,000 families will be better off. When it comes to the changes in front of us, 727,000 families will receive no lift in their childcare subsidy as a result. That's 727,000 forgotten Australian families under this government. Under the Labor policy, if you have a single child, by choice or by circumstance, and are on a family income of less than $530,000, Labor will support you. For families with two children, the support the government provides is temporary. Labor's policy is different. We will provide an increase in support for every child because we know that every child deserves a quality education, not just when they get into formal schooling but also in the years leading up to it. Our plan, over time, will make one million families better off—four times the number of families who will benefit under the Liberal Party. We will lift the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent. More importantly, we'll look, with the Productivity Commission, at how we can make that part of a universal childcare system for all Australian families so that in this place we value child care just as much as we value our schooling system, recognising that it's the child's right to receive quality education and quality care and that it shouldn't just be attached to their parents' means or income.

I've been fortunate to visit a number of childcare centres in my electorate in recent months. I do that all the time. I love learning from the educators, I love learning from the children and I love hearing from the parents. Last week, for Early Learning Matters Week, I went with the CEO of the Thrive by Five initiative, Jay Weatherill, to the Leederville Early Childhood Centre. Centre Director Sally Whitaker was very generous in showing us around and introducing us to some of the children who were at her centre. We spoke with Sally about the challenges of workforce. This is a problem that is going to hit Australia hard. It's hurting centres now. They are struggling to find staff with the qualifications they need, and it's only going to get worse. We know that there are problems with training quality. Not every person who gets a certificate or a diploma in early childhood education is getting the full set of skills they need. That's unfair for those people who've gone and done that study, because they are paying for something and not getting the economic benefits of furthering their career through that study.

I also recently visited the Akidamy, a fabulous centre in the Perth electorate, where the kids were kind enough to pick out a book for me to read. I read I'm Australian Too, by Mem Fox, celebrating the great diversity of this country and indeed the diversity of the children at the Akidamy. I also visited Mount Lawley Child Care Centre, at ECU, where I've been fortunate enough to be able to help them support their vegetable garden through a community grant. They are another great centre in the Perth electorate.