Page 94 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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I am aware of just one family, to take an example, who are on a good income—not a high income but a good income—where the mother works a couple of days a week to keep her skills up while she has three young children in care. She is effectively working for nothing because what she earns pays her childcare fees because they are so high.
That is the point: there are many families out there where particularly the mothers will go back to work after having been out of the workforce perhaps for some time—sometimes going back part time—and where, particularly if they have more than one child, they are essentially working for nothing because they are so desperate to maintain their employment over the longer term and do what they can to pay their mortgages, which is another issue relating to housing affordability that we have discussed many times in this place.
Mrs Dunne said back in 2010:
Well, Ms Burch, it is time that you took responsibility for your portfolio area.
It is worth considering several years on whether the situation has improved, whether the affordability of child care in this jurisdiction has improved or whether it has got worse. What has changed? What has this minister done to make sure that child care is more accessible and more affordable for families and single parents in this territory?
A few weeks ago a regular federal government childcare and early learning report confirmed what, sadly, many young Canberra families already know: childcare costs for Canberra families have doubled over the last six years. I think the predictions of Mrs Dunne back in 2010 have sadly been realised—that is, whilst Ms Burch has been on watch childcare costs for ACT families have continued to go through the roof.
This phenomenon is not hitting all families across Australia equally, and it is important that we compare jurisdictions in this regard. Canberra families are worse off. The same report tells us what Canberra families in many ways already knew—in Canberra childcare costs account for approximately 12 per cent of gross income after subsidies. In the rest of the country, child care accounts for only eight per cent of gross income after subsidies. That is a significant disparity.
The young family in Canberra working hard to pay the rent—rents which are if not the most expensive some of the most expensive across the nation—or their mortgage and struggling with housing affordability is paying 50 per cent more comparatively of their gross income to have their children in child care than anyone else in Australia. That is the legacy of Labor and that is the legacy of this minister. Paying $100 a day for child care or $1,000 a fortnight from your pay is crippling for families. As I said before, in many cases, one family member is essentially working for nothing simply to have their child in child care, and it is rapidly becoming unaffordable in the ACT.
Despite the pleas we had from Mrs Dunne back in 2010, under this minister’s watch, under Joy Burch’s watch, child care has become vastly more expensive and now is more expensive compared to the rest of Australia. It is the most expensive and it is proportionately the most expensive in Australia.
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