STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (12:45): Over the last five months I've had the immense privilege of meeting with parents, educators, providers and communities right across Australia, and these conversations have reinforced something very important to me. Before we can talk about child care, we need to talk about Australian families.
Australian families are facing the largest collapse in living standards in the developed world. Since this Labor government came into office, average inflation has almost doubled, from 2.2 per cent under the coalition to 4.1 per cent under Labor. Underlying inflation has remained above the Reserve Bank's target band in 13 of the last 16 quarters, and government spending is now at its highest level outside of a recession in more than 40 years.
Families don't need an economist to tell them that things are tough. They feel it every single day. They feel it every time they open their electricity bill, every time they pay their insurance, every time they fill their car, every time they buy their groceries and every time they pay for their child care.
Since Labor came into office, insurance costs have increased 42 per cent. Electricity is up 38 per cent, gas 37 per cent and rent 23 per cent. Education costs have increased by 21 per cent.
Food is 17 per cent up, and health costs are up 17 per cent as well. Every one of those increases is making raising a family harder. Every one of those increases forces parents to make very difficult choices.
And every one of those increases should concern every member in this chamber. Families are not asking the government to raise their children; they're asking the government to stop making it so expensive for them to be able to do it themselves. Before the last election, the Albanese government made a simple promise, which was cheaper child care.
It's one of Labor's signature election commitments. Four years on, Australians are entitled to ask: where is it? Where is it cheaper?
The latest consumer price index showed that childcare costs have risen by 9.4 per cent in this last year alone. Since Labor came to office, childcare fees have risen by 27 per cent. Almost 40 per cent of providers were already charging above the government's hourly subsidy cap before the latest changes to the worker retention payment.
Then, instead of putting downward pressure on fees, the government quietly increased the allowable fee growth cap from 4.2 per cent, and it's about to hit 5.8 per cent. Families were promised cheaper child care. Instead, they're paying more.
Meanwhile, taxpayer spending continues to soar. The Child Care Subsidy is projected to cost more than $20 billion a year by 2029-30. That's $20 billion.
Yet around half of young Australian children are not actually using CCS approved care. That should make every policymaker in this place stop and ask a very simple question: that is, is the issue really how much we're spending, or is it a question of how we're spending it? This is the coalition's concern.
This is what I've been looking at. This is our concern with Labor's approach to family policy. When a problem emerges, the answer always seems to be the same from those over there.
They spend more, they subsidise more, and they announce more. But where is the long-term vision? Child care is not just an employment policy; child care is a family policy.
It shapes how parents spend their time with children, it influences decisions about work, it affects household budgets and it influences whether Australians feel that they can afford to have children at all. Australia deserves a government with a long-term vision for families, not simply a government that spends and reacts, because, if we're serious about improving outcomes for children, then we have to start where every child's journey begins, and that's in family.
There is overwhelming evidence that the first 1,000 days of a child's life are critical for brain development, attachment and long-term wellbeing. That is why paid parental leave matters—not because it benefits governments but because it benefits children. Today the government will claim that it has delivered six months of paid parental leave, but the fine print tells a different story.
The primary carer receives just five additional days of leave, bringing their entitlement to around 5½ months. The remaining four weeks are reserved for the secondary parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis. If those weeks aren't taken, the family loses them.
They cannot be transferred to the primary caregiver. Many fathers simply can't afford to take four weeks at minimum wage. It might be something they would like to do, but they may not be able to afford it, and that's completely understandable.
They already use annual leave so that they can be home during those precious first weeks of their child's life. Under the coalition's Dad and Partner Pay scheme, families had greater flexibility, and today that flexibility is gone. Ironically, a single parent can access the full entitlement, but a two-parent family cannot choose to transfer those four weeks to the primary carer.
If government decides who gets to use that leave, that isn't family choice; that's government choice. The coalition believes that we should trust families. Parents understand their own circumstances better than the government ever will—certainly those sitting in here.
That same principle should guide our approach to child care. Every family is different. For some, long day care is the right choice—a perfect choice for them.
For others, it's family day care or in-home care, or maybe it's using grandparents or having one parent stay at home while children are young. None of these choices is more valued or more important than another. They're simply different choices for different families and we should back those choices.
Governments shouldn't be in the business of picking winners. It should be in the business of backing families to choose the care that works best for them. Whenever we talk about child care, we have to remember one simple truth: there is no such thing as the average Australian family.
Every family is different; every community is different. Government policy should reflect that. That is especially true outside our capital cities.
Regional Australia is not remote Australia. Each has different strengths, different challenges and different needs. Yet too often we write one national policy and expect every community across Australia, no matter where they are, how remote they are or how distant they are from a capital city, to fit within it.
Well, it doesn't work, and communities across Australia are experiencing that right now. There's a term that's been out there now for a while: childcare deserts. These are communities that do not have access to child care.
The government speak about universal child care and how it's their dream that that would be available to everyone across the country. How universal is it if you don't even have a childcare centre within 50 or 100 kilometres or more of where you live? The childcare solution for a regional city won't necessarily work in a farming community and won't necessarily work in an Indigenous community.
That's why consultation matters. The people closest to the challenges are often the people closest to the solution. The government doesn't always just need another program.
Sometimes it's simply just needs to listen, to remove the barriers and to back communities already finding innovative ways to support children and families—because good policy isn't written for communities; good policy is shaped with communities. Australia is the best country in the world, and it should be the best country in the world to raise a family—a country where young Australians don't put off having children because they can't afford to, a country where parents have genuine choice in how they care for their children, and a country where government backs families, not one model of care.
That means asking whether our childcare system is delivering the flexibility, choice and support that Australian families need. These are conversations worth having not because we want to spend less but because we want to spend better. Child care alone won't solve Australia's declining birthrate, which now sits at 1.48 children per woman.
It won't solve housing affordability or the cost-of-living pressures making it harder for Australians to start and raise a family. What Australia needs is a genuine family agenda, one that asks a simple question every time a policy comes before this parliament: does it make it easier to raise a family here in Australia? That should be our benchmark—not how much government spends but whether Australian families are better off.
Government cannot love a child the way that a parent does, and it cannot replace the role of a mother or father. (Time expired)