Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Both sides of this chamber value child care and the $28.5 billion that we spend every four years on it. Both sides would agree that we need to be looking after disadvantaged, remote and regional communities. Where we differ is on this motion. Normally the member for Charlton brings high-quality motions for debate here, but alas not today. This was a fund designed specifically to make sure that childcare services were available to—let me say it again—remote, rural and disadvantaged communities. That was why the fund was created. If we did not have a problem with misdistribution, we would not have needed the community support fund. That is its job.

We know that, in the end, large numbers of areas in Australia that do not have a disadvantaged, regional or remote population were accessing these funds. At some point you need a certain amount of ability to target resources, and that simply was not happening. What we have here is the notion that every childcare service, both family and long day care, is deserving, but not all of these services are remote, rural or disadvantaged. If those who are accessing the money are none of those three then a responsible government would do something about it—and an irresponsible government, like the Labor alternative, would not.

Since 2006 the floodgates have been open and effectively this money, instead of being appropriately targeted, has been spread fairly homogenously across the sector. What of course happened was you did not actually fix the problems you set out to address. Of course you do not need to just ask me that. You can ask the Audit Office, which recognised that 80 per cent of these funds were being directed into areas other than where they were needed and so a refocusing was required. Do not even ask the Audit Office. Let us look at the name of the program. It is the Community Support Program. The CS in CSP is 'community support'. It is not the 'long day care support program' or the 'family day care support program'; it is the Community Support Program.

The program is to look after communities that do not have access to the day care they need and look after the regional, remote areas of Australia where it is not viable and the highly disadvantaged areas where it is not economically viable to build a day care centre. That is the problem the government set out to fix, but we were left with the Labor alternative who really had no fiscal clue, did they? No. The Labor Party—and I have said this before—never saw a special cause that they could not fund and they never saw a reason to take someone's dollars away without giving them to someone else, with no concern for quality. In the six years of the Labor government effectively we had a complete focus on the cash and no focus on the quality. So as long as the money was being taken from someone and given to someone else it really did not matter if any problems were fixed or not. That was the great challenge.

We were left with massive draw downs of nearly $200 million to keep funding a system of child care that was sending money off to the communities that did not need the money to remain viable. It simply went in to help with the operational costs of providing child care. But that is not the point of the fund. The fund was set up to fix inequities. It was set up to help communities that could not get day care, particularly family day care.

The bell is tolled in the motion from the opposition member. It says that up to 80 per cent of these services stand to lose, whatever that means. How on earth can 80 per cent of these services be at threat of non-viability? How can 80 per cent of the services all be disadvantaged, remote or regional? It is a preposterous case and it just shows that the program, as the Audit Office indicated, was poorly directly and not doing the job it was designed to do.

Let us remember that we are taking over from the Labor government that allowed childcare costs to skyrocket 53 per cent over the six years that they were in power. They promised us 222 childcare centres to end that double drop-off but barely built a dozen, probably due to simply the weakness of the will of the minister. Lastly, of course, we saw costs for families increase by $3,500 per child. As I said, they lost control of the agenda and simply started funnelling the money out for no good purpose.

Governments will have to slow down. They will have to calm down in tough periods and focus the money right. The point of the CSP was to ensure that there were childcare services all around Australia, even in areas where the member for Charlton has not visited and even in those remote parts of Australia where he will probably never visit. We know there are Australian families who deserve a childcare service that they can access so that they can go to work. Seasonal workers, harvest workers and mining workers—sure, they do not cross our paths every day, but they have just the same rights as those who live in the electorate of the member for Charlton in metropolitan Australia, which does not have the need for those extra subsidies. It is completely viable in many parts of metro Australia. I support the government's decision.

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