Press Conference, Sydney
MINISTER MORRISON:
It is great to be here at Kinderoos in Bexley North with Nick Varvaris and David Coleman and here with Sue and Hassan Awada who have been running this wonderful centre here since 2004, and to be meeting some of the boys and girls, and some of the parents here today. Today as you would already know the Productivity Commission report into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning has been released. The report fulfils an election commitment by the government to ensure we took a very broad and comprehensive look at the very many challenges that are facing the childcare and early learning sector. The report makes some very important observations and some very important recommendations which will play a critical role now as the government moves into its final phases of its childcare package which will be the first instalment of the families package that we are looking to introduce over the course of this year. Of course this is a report to government not from government and it does bring forward I think some very important understandings of what is happening in this sector. I want to thank the Commission for their work, I want to thank all of those Australians, child care professionals, teachers, those who run centres, the families and parents who got involved in the inquiry for the time that they invested so we could learn from their experience, from their expertise.
The report really is trying to do a number of things in helping us understand what is needed in this sector. From the Government’s point of view what we want to be able to do is help families to be able to make the choices they need to make to better support their families. Now for many families that means they don’t have a choice about whether they can go back to work or not. It is absolutely essential that they do go back to work to ensure that they can deal with the rising costs of living and to be able to give their family the best opportunities and particularly to give their children the best start in life and our childcare package will be all about achieving that goal helping families and parents stay in a job, get in a job, and to give their kids the best possible start in life. The recommendations are very broad, the recommendations say that their needs to be a very significant simplification of the process. It is very cumbersome. It is very hard to understand. We do need to make it simpler. We also need to push down on the cost pressures in the system. Under the previous government the costs of childcare went up by over 50%.
The quality framework that was introduced by the previous Government has introduced better quality standards into the sector but it has come at a big price and combined with the industrial agenda pursued by the Government in this area it meant higher cost for families and higher cost for taxpayers. We spend almost seven billion dollars in this area and it’s important that that funding, that that support goes to those who most need it to ensure that we can get the real outcome of this which is good childcare and support for children, and to ensure that families can maintain the choices that they have to ensure that they can support their families as best as they possibly can, and that is what we are attempting to do. I call on everyone to continue to be part of this process of getting to a position that we can all agree on so we can do the right thing by families right across the country. I will be meeting with the opposition about these issues, I will meet with the crossbenchers about them. Whatever we do we need to be able to fund it and we need to be able to agree on that as well as the context of any package.
I might just ask David and Nick, starting with Nick because we are in Nick’s electorate at the moment to see if they would like to make any comments at this stage and then we will take some questions. Thanks Nick.
NICKOLAS VARVARIS:
Good morning and thank you for all being here today. I’d like to thank Sue and Hassan Awada at Kinderoos for hosting the Minister, myself and my colleague David Coleman here in the electorate of Barton. Obviously the Coalition has been talking and listening to both families and business operators of child care centres to see the issues that are facing them and the Coalition is committed to supporting working families and doing the best that we can to keep people employed. I’d like to thank once again the Minister for coming out and taking the time to be out in our electorate. Thank you very much.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks Nick, David.
DAVID COLEMAN:
Thanks Scott, it is also really nice to be here and especially talking about such an important issue as childcare. It is an issue that comes up time and time again in my electorate and addressing those very real cost pressures and other pressures that families face in childcare is a really important priority so I am pleased to see the Productivity Commission report being released and of course now the government working through its response. Thanks to the Awadas for having us here today. It is a terrific centre and it has been a really great visit so thank you all.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks David. All of the government members now have a very important role to play in taking the feedback from their communities about this report as we move into this final phase of the childcare package. I know both David and Nick and members right across the country will be very active in doing that and I look forward to hearing their feedback as we go into this final phase. Any questions?
JOURNALIST:
Are you open to the idea of a single means tested childcare subsidy?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Already we have the situation where there is a sliding scale where support ranges from a high level of subsidy through the childcare rebate and the childcare benefit through to about a 50 per cent level of support. What the Commission has put forward is a change to that tapering off, that sliding scale. There is still a benefit that would be provided under the Commission’s proposal which isn’t limited by income but what it is saying is that the support and the focus of that assistance needs to go particularly to middle to low income families because that is where we have not been performing as well as we can with maternal labour force participation. That is where we have fallen behind countries overseas and that is where the kitchen table conversation about whether you can go back to work, that is the conversation we need to influence with this package. Where families are trying to decide how they can best afford to go back to work and ensure that they can remain on two incomes or if they are a single parent remain on the one income and not fall into a welfare trap which can really limit the choices for their family for a very long time.
JOURNALIST:
Minister how much focus will you be giving to in-home care such as nannies and au pairs and providing subsidies for them?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I think the recognition of the in-home care options by the Productivity Commission is important. The flexibility and the dynamism of what is happening in Australian families needs to be reflected in the care and services in offerings that are coming from the sector. I think this is the real acknowledgment of that and obviously the government will be looking at it closely. There are lots of issues involved in that, there are the standards, there are the registration issues which would need to be worked through and equally we need to be sure that centres like this rely on having their staff here every day. This is a centre that has had very low turnover of staff, great staff, trained at their expense often going off to get various courses done. We want to make sure that there isn’t a drain of labour out of centres like this because they remain very much the backbone of the system.
JOURNALIST:
Judging by what you’re saying, does that mean that you won’t be looking at reducing standards for childcare centres in order to try and achieve your goals?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The Quality Framework which is in place–
JOURNALIST:
Or childcare workers I should say.
MINISTER MORRISON:
The Quality Framework which goes to the issue of standards, both in training and who works in centres such as these is very important and we’re not looking to move away from that in any way, shape or form but we have to recognise that has come at a significant cost. So the quality debate has been had and those systems are now in place. The debate we now have to have is the conversation that families are having around their own kitchen tables and that is how can we get access to the child care we need so we can work and not just be paying the child care bills and by going back to work we’re helping our families get ahead and not just tread water and go backwards and that’s what the government’s focused on and I believe that’s what Australian families want us to be focused on, that’s why I’m keen to engender some bipartisanship in all of this and there’s an open invitation for everyone to get involved in the solution.
JOURNALIST:
It there anything in this report that you don’t agree with or you think that goes too far?
MINISTER MORRISON:
No we’re not ruling anything in or out on this report. I’m very keen as I said for our government members and others to go out and canvass their communities widely and get the feedback on what’s put forward in this set of recommendations. These are not recommendations by the government, they’re recommendations to the government and we’re taking them very seriously but we’re keen to hear what families in particular but also service providers and child care and early learning professionals are saying about the recommendations in the report.
JOURNALIST:
Families earning over $160,000 will lose out under this proposal so won’t that discourage women from going back to work?
MINISTER MORRISON:
One of the things the Commission observes is that as income levels rise then certainly economic factors in the decision to go back to work are important, but there are a myriad of other factors that are also in play. For middle to low income families those economic circumstances and those economic issues are overwhelmingly important to that decision and I think that’s a common sense observation, so it’s not unimportant as income goes higher and that’s why the Commission maintains a recommendation that there is a subsidy that is not income tested at the end of the day. It goes to 20% and goes on for people of all income levels. I think it is about where you pitch the balance and how you calibrate it and I think that’s an important conversation for us to have and we look forward to the feedback that will come.
JOURNALIST:
This morning Labor says that they would be willing to work with you and talk with you and I think you’ve got a meeting with Kate Ellis next week–
MINISTER MORRISON:
Correct.
JOURNALIST:
What they’re saying is they believe the government should put $1 billion back into the childcare sector which they think that you’ve taken out.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I don’t agree that we’ve taken a billion dollars out, for a start, and I don’t really want to get into a combative process with the Opposition. If the Opposition wants $1 billion put into the system, well the Opposition needs to say where the $1 billion is coming from. I mean the same rules apply for the Opposition as applies to the government. Money doesn’t rain from the sky any more for parents than it does for governments, and it’s important I think that if we are to have a real conversation about this with the Opposition then they’ve got to bring offsets, they’ve got to bring funding proposals to the table if they want to see more spending go into this area. Now that’s not just true in childcare that’s true everywhere and Bill Shorten says that this is the year of the idea, well I’m yet to see a light bulb go over the top of his head when it comes to the policies that are needed and the ideas that are needed to ensure we can deal with the problems and challenges we’re facing.
JOURNALIST:
Just on that, are you, maybe, using childcare reform as a bit of a bargaining chip for the other budget savings measures that are being blocked in the Senate?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I’m just making a common sense observation, that if you want to spend more money in a particular area then you need to identify offsets and savings and other ways of funding that. I mean that’s what families have to do. When families pay out for child care, they have to find that money from somewhere. I think this report recognises that and the government certainly recognises that and the kitchen table conversation that families are having about their budgets, well, frankly, the Parliament has to have the same sort of conversation about the nation’s budget and that kitchen table conversation means you don’t spend more than you earn and that’s what the debate really has to focus on because I know that’s what’s focussing families attention at the moment when it comes to child care.
JOURNALIST:
There’s a big problem with accessibility – there aren’t enough child care places. Does this address that?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well the Commission report I think sheds a lot of light on that question of access and what it shows is that there is sort of no universal position on the access challenges, it’s patchy. In some places there is very good access, in other places there’s not. I think one of the really interesting observations in the report is that in areas of most disadvantage, it’s actually been the private care providers who have been offering the most competitive prices and the lower prices for those families. I think the report recognises the contribution of the broad array of service providers, government providers, not-for-profit providers, private providers. They are all incredibly important in delivering the services and it is going further then to introduce the ideas of alternative in-home care options. I think they are all good observations, the challenge for government is you have got to be able to fund it and the taxpayer who is putting the $7 billion into this programme has to have confidence that it is doing a job. The previous government put up the rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and it didn’t get any more families back to work. Now when you get an outcome like that you have got to think about how you change it to get it to work.
It has been great to be here at Kinderoos today, Hassan and Sue, it has been great to be here with you and to be here with Nick and David. It has been great meeting with the kids and I’m sure we will get the chance to talk to a few more of the parents as the morning goes on and get their feedback.
Thanks for coming along.