Page 2606 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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Mr Kaine: Except the train coming the other way.
MR HUMPHRIES: Except the train coming the other way.
Mrs Grassby: Do you want to bet?
MR HUMPHRIES: I will bet you anything, Minister. We will take a bet at the next election. In the Minister's statement he focused on what he thought might be the effects of the economic plan on the most needy in the community.
I would like to turn for a short while to the subject of child-care. The Minister spent a lot of time talking about child-care. The Liberal Party's child-care rebate has already attracted strong support from women. Under the coalition's tax policy, a rebate of $20 a week will be paid for the first child under five years of age; for each other child under five and for each child aged between 5 and 12 years the rebate would be $10 a week. The total cost of the rebate is estimated at $820m. That is $820m which is going to be delivered to families, the same families that Labor has neglected, the same families that heard the Prime Minister state that no child will be living in poverty by 1990. It is little wonder that the Liberals' child-care rebate is attracting so much community support. Let me turn to what Minister Berry said. He said:
... the child-care rebate proposal is an elitist scheme which will benefit those in our community who are able to afford the high child-care costs.
In fact, this was a parrot-fashion quote, based on what the Federal Minister for Health, Dr Neal Blewett, said on 12 October.
But let us get a much more meaningful comment from one divorced from the political process with a strong interest in family matters. Let me quote the reaction of the director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Dr Don Edgar. He said the child-care rebates were long overdue, because child-care was a major cost to many Australian families. He said that it is a very significant move that will be welcomed by many families. The Age editorial summed up the child-care rebate by saying that, if tax cuts are affordable at all, then the priority of directing them towards families with dependent children is certainly the right one.
A Labor Government consultant, one Eva Cox, who for many years has espoused the need for child-care costs to be recognised as a major expenditure for families, stated in the Financial Review that the Liberal Party has taken the initiative and was the first political party to acknowledge the fact that child-care does cost and has made provision for it in its economic plan.
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