The long and costly road to school. - Women's Agenda

The long and costly road to school.

If you woke up this morning and took your kids to child care you would be forgiven for thinking that your child care fees would be cheaper.

Unfortunately this is not the case. Parents are going to have to wait a further two years before they see any additional support from this Government.

The reality is, many kids accessing care now, will be out of the system by the time these proposed changes come into effect.

Though the government have finally realised how vital investment in childcare is, many opportunities have been missed, and that’s a shame. The childcare package does nothing to address the real issues facing Australian families when it comes to finding and paying for child care.

 Year-long waiting lists and inflexible intakes do not match the realities for many new mums looking to return to work. The fact remains that many new mums prefer to ease back into work on a casual, part-time or seasonal basis.

Although increasing funding for some families, the package will make many poorer families worse off. Cracking down on the number of hours parents have to work in order to access childcare subsidies will have a detrimental impact on children. Under the new activity test poor kids are going to have their access to child care slashed in half and will only be able to access one day per week. If the government believes early learning for low income families is important then they should be listening to the experts and delivering a minimum of 2 days of care.

Children should not be cut off from accessing early learning just because their parents don’t work enough hours to satisfy the government. I am concerned that without proper safeguards vulnerable and low income families will lose out. This is about early intervention and providing quality educational outcomes for children, not just balancing the budget. How can children “get out there and have a go” at primary school if they don’t have the early learning they need to be school ready when they get there?

The social and economic benefits that come from investing in early childhood development are unequivocal. Research has shown, and it is blindingly obvious, that educational outcomes are improved dramatically by investment in pre-primary education. Children who have more years of early learning access perform better at school. This government is missing an opportunity to create a nation of smarter children.

On top of this, from next year, new mothers will lose access to the government’s paid parental leave scheme. This means that from next year families will be left out of pocket with no government Paid Parental Leave, without the benefit of the new childcare subsidy and with cuts to the family tax benefit. The government knows full well that the scheme is an extremely modest benefit that was intended to operate together with employer-funded schemes. To describe claiming both schemes as a double-dipping is cruel, nasty and just plain wrong. In effect the government is robbing new families of $11,500. 

If there was ever an example of what a woeful Minister for Women Mr Abbott is, this is it. Taking Australia backwards on Paid Parental Leave is simply shameful and ill conceived. He trumpeted a world-class PPL scheme as his signature policy as Minister for Women. Not only has he failed to deliver on this, he has completely reversed his position by cutting the existing, bare-bones PPL scheme. Australia already has one of the weakest PPL schemes in the OECD. The proposed cuts to this scheme will drop us further down the list, to our national shame. Tony Abbott needs to seriously reconsider his position as Minister for Women.

How can the government say they are making families better off by boosting childcare funding when at the same time they are stripping other family payments and cutting Paid Parental Leave? Tony Abbott is doing nothing more than creating a false economy for families, giving with one hand and taking with the other.The Greens want to work to fix the childcare system and we’re willing to talk to the government to do that, but let’s get real about helping mums and dads and caring for our children and ditch the smoke and mirrors.

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