Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (12:01): I rise to speak on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment Bill 2014, which amends provisions in the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Act 2003. I know for a fact that this is one of the most eagerly anticipated pieces of legislation to be considered by the 44th Parliament.

Appropriate cost recovery by both the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority and the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator is critical to ensuring that these entities are resourced in order to effectively administer the offshore petroleum regime, an area that has brought so much wealth to Australia over the last 30 or 40 years. NOPSEMA was established by the former Labor government on 1 January 2012 as Australia's first national independent regulator for (1) health and safety, (2) well integrity and (3) environmental management for offshore oil and gas operations. NOPTA was also established by the former Labor government on 1 January 2012. It administers titles, undertakes data and resource management and provides technical advice to the joint authority.

This bill before the chamber ensures the commencement of amendments to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 that were put in place by the former Labor government. The amendments seek to clarify and strengthen the compliance monitoring, investigation and enforcement powers of the National Offshore Petroleum Regulator and to ensure that enforcement measures for contraventions of the act are appropriate in application and severity in the context of a high-hazard industry, which is obviously the case when you are dealing with oceans and petroleum substances. We do not have to cast our minds back very far at all to find that there have been fatalities in Australian waters and as well as international waters.

These amendments continue the work of Labor to implement the lessons learnt and agreed in response to the report of the Montara Commission of Inquiry. On 21 August 2009 uncontrolled oil and gas were released at the Montara oilfield. Furthermore, there was an incident on 20 April 2010 at the BP operated Macondo oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico, which tragically saw the loss of 11 lives. These incidents serve as a strong reminder to governments, regulators, the offshore petroleum industry and the broader community that there are risks, particularly if we are complacent about the operation and regulation of offshore petroleum activities.

Labor is committed to doing everything possible to avoid incidents like the leak of oil and gas from the Montara Well Head Platform in the future. The former Labor government worked to ensure that we achieved the best and safest offshore petroleum industry in the world. Obviously safety has costs associated with it, but if it prevents fatalities and environmental damage then it is money well spent.

This bill ensures the commencement of amendments to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 that we put in place. I would point out that there are great environmental opportunities, particularly in places like Bass Strait and other depleted fields where perhaps in the future we will be able to store greenhouse gases safely to contribute to combating dangerous climate change. Industry, government and regulators must be absolutely committed to a culture of high safety standards and environmental protection within a framework of continuous improvement. We must work and learn together. Applying the lessons from the incidents that I have mentioned is vital for the effective regulation of the offshore petroleum industry and its ongoing licence to operate, both in a legal sense and in a social sense.

The amendments seek to clarify and strengthen the compliance monitoring, investigation and enforcement powers of the National Offshore Petroleum Regulator and to ensure that enforcement measures for contraventions of the act are appropriate in application and severity in the context of what is of course a high-hazard industry. It continues the work of Labor to implement the lessons learnt and agreed in response to the report of the Montara Commission of Inquiry.

The first major initiative towards a national occupational health and safety policy came in 1985 with the establishment of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, a tripartite body comprising representatives of the Australian federal, state and territory governments and of employers and trade unions—three entities working together. The NOHSC's powers were quite limited, being largely concerned with promoting occupational health and safety awareness and debate and providing a national focus and a forum for OH&S policies and strategies. Today Australia has some of the best occupational health and safety standards in the world. But we have also learnt that we must recognise that offshore regulations are implemented in a growing globalised world where capital is being sought by other countries with oilfields. The jobs and prosperity that flow from Australia's offshore petroleum industry, which has made a nearly $28 billion contribution to the Australian economy, are vital for our economy and energy security in the future. But this cannot come at the expense of the protection of human health and safety or the marine environment.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority was established in 2005 for the regulation, and health and safety, of the offshore industry around Australia. It was established as a jointly administered authority required to report to the Australian government, and all state and territory ministers were responsible for the offshore petroleum industry and the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources. In 2009 the Productivity Commission considered the complexity of the regulatory burden of approvals and reporting on the offshore petroleum industry and recommended that there be a single national regulator for Australian waters. I also point out that there are slow steps being taken onshore to achieve a similar efficiency, without lowering standards everywhere. Obviously, as a Queenslander, I always push for our mining industry's standards and think they should be rolled out around Australia, but I am sure other members of parliament will have their own views.

Whilst the Productivity Commission report was being considered, the Montara oil leak and wellhead platform fire occurred. A subsequent inquiry concluded that the operator of this facility did not observe sensible oilfield practices and that there were major shortcomings in systems, processes, communications, risk management and contractor management. These problems were widespread and systemic and they directly led to the blow-out. Obviously there is 20/20 vision with hindsight.

The environmental management authority will present its own challenges. There has always been a focus on trying to prevent environmental incidents, and the role of NOPSEMA is to strengthen that focus by actively managing incidents if they occur and ensuring that robust monitoring is in place to assess the environmental impacts of such incidents and the background impacts of general operations.

Obviously this industry does have some hazards. It is changing. It is catching up with the world. I would like to particularly mention one of my constituents, a young engineer who I follow on Twitter and who has given me some insights into life on an offshore oil rig: Yassmin Abdel-Magied. She is a young Muslim lady who is an engineer out on the oil rigs. It just shows you how much Australia has changed in the last 20 or 30 years of this industry. I commend the amendment bills to the House.

Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (12:10): I take the opportunity to speak briefly on these two pieces of legislation. The Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment Bill 2014 amends provisions in the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Act 2003. Amongst these changes the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator is able to fully cost-recover its activities. The changes also enable an applicant, as opposed to a titleholder, to submit an environmental plan or a revision of an environmental plan, the intent of that being to reduce environmental approval times for offshore projects.

The Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Regulatory Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2014 makes technical amendments which aim to strengthen the offshore petroleum regulatory regime in respect to monitoring, compliance, inspection and enforcement of objectives, which resulted from the Montara Commission of Inquiry. It is important that NOPSEMA and NOPTA are adequately resourced in order to carry out their responsibilities. As the member for Moreton quite rightly pointed out, we have an obligation and a responsibility to ensure the protection of both the people who work on these sites and the environment surrounding them. Cost-recovery of activities is indeed appropriate, as is ensuring that the responsible agencies have adequate powers and that penalties are sufficient to act as deterrents. There are, however, some matters that I wish to raise with respect to the practices and decisions made by the Abbott government relating to offshore mineral, oil and gas exploration and mining operations.

There is considerable interest in Australia's offshore oil and gas reserves. In particular, gas reserves are attracting a huge amount of interest from around the world. It appears that gas is replacing oil, and fracking is opening up new opportunities for gas projects. All mining operations, both onshore and offshore, have environmental risks attached to them. Those risks have to be managed. It is, however, more difficult to manage the risks associated with offshore projects, particularly when something goes wrong, and we have seen that with respect to some of the incidents around the world. When something does go wrong—as was the case with the Montara oil spill, or as we still see with the Fukushima nuclear plant incident in Japan or the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010—those incidents come at considerable economic and environmental cost. In the case of some of those incidents, my understanding is that damage is still being caused as a result of what happened some time ago. So managing those risks becomes truly a challenge. I want to put that into context with respect to the environment. Those risks are only one part of the risks that are currently being faced by our ocean waters.

Right now the ocean is at serious risk as a result of climate change. I for one accept the science and the facts related to climate change. Climate change means that the earth is heating up and that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The reality is that most of the CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, as is most of the heat that is in the atmosphere. So the rising temperatures that we are seeing on the ground are also occurring within the ocean environment. As a member of the House Standing Committee on the Environment, I have heard much evidence about the rising water temperatures and the rising levels of carbon dioxide. On top of that, extreme weather events, such as typhoons, hurricanes and the like, also affect the ocean environment. When you add those risks to the risks associated with the kinds of activities we are talking about—mineral, oil and gas exploration—the risks compound. Each risk in isolation can perhaps be dismissed as trivial, but, when you combine them, the impacts are multiplied many times over.

Mining activities which disturb the seabed and/or pollute the waters around the sites of those operations can have serious environmental risks, so they have to be managed—and managed well. Whilst this legislation relates to some of the agencies tasked with managing our environment and regulating mineral, gas and oil exploration permits in our waters, the reality is that the risks are very serious and difficult to manage.

Australia is blessed with minerals, gas and oil. We therefore attract interest from developers and mining companies from around the world. Indeed, international investors and transnational companies are behind most of our largest offshore mining operations. A concern I have with respect to these operations relates to the Abbott government's decision to remove the market-testing requirement for 457 visa entrants to this country. That decision effectively enables operators of gas and oil exploration sites to bring labour in from other countries—in fact, to employ their own labour. That was an easing of a restriction that the previous government—in fact it was the member for Gorton, who I notice is here in the chamber—brought in to ensure that we employ Australian labour, if available, ahead of international labour.

There is a second aspect to employing Australian labour on these sites. It relates to the management of the environment. I believe not only that Australian workers have the relevant knowledge and experience but that, more importantly, they have national pride. They would therefore work to ensure that these projects are operated consistently with the standards we expect. I cannot say that about the foreign workers who come in and work on these sites. My concern about the environmental risks attached to operations at these sites is magnified when the projects are being resourced, run and worked by people from other countries, people who do not necessarily have Australia's interests at heart. That is one of my concerns.

Another concern I have is that only last week we saw a reversal by this government of Labor's decision to reinstate Australian sea waters within the Australian migration zone. By excluding Australian coastal waters from Australia's migration zone, it increases the likelihood that the operators of these projects—who, as I said earlier, are often international operators—will want to employ their own staff and, in doing so, bring people in from other parts of the world. So we have now seen the Abbott government change two critical policies, with the likely result that these projects will increasingly recruit people from other countries. That to me raises concerns, because the risks attached to these sites—both environmental risks and risks to safety procedures—are very high. I would have much more faith if Australian workers were on these sites rather than foreign workers.

I understand that we are seeing that right now at the Ichthys project in north-west Western Australia. Foreign vessels with foreign crews are being brought in to lay the pipeline to Darwin. Apart from the fact that I have no doubt that the work could have been carried out by Australian vessels and Australian crews, I believe that it is in our national interest to make sure that those projects are conducted in a way that complies with our laws. I believe the best way to do that is, where possible, to have Australians carrying out the work.

The environmental track record of this government since coming to office has been woeful. We also know, from the track record of offshore mining operations, that they do present risks—and that, when problems occur, the implications can be very serious. Also of concern is that, in comparison to projects on land, offshore projects are much harder to monitor. Effectively, they are out of sight and out of mind. That, however, does not mean that the environment is not being damaged, it does not mean that things are not going wrong and it does not mean that we should put our trust in the operators of those ventures.

These regulations certainly allow the agencies tasked with carrying out monitoring to do so more effectively and to recoup the expenditures they incur in doing their work. I have no problems with that. But the matters I have raised are matters we should take very seriously. Whilst the legislation is well intended—and I support the legislation—I have raised these matters because on one hand we are bringing in legislation to try to protect our workers and the environment, but on the other hand we are bringing in policies that I believe do the exact opposite. With those comments, I commend the legislation to the House.

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (12:22): Madam Deputy Speaker—

The SPEAKER: No, 'Speaker'.

Mr BALDWIN: I am sorry, Madam Speaker—old habits die hard. I apologise sincerely. Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise—

Honourable members interjecting—

The SPEAKER: You can't be that intimidated!

Mr BALDWIN: I do not doubt your ability there, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I rise to sum up on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Regulatory Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2014. The Australian government is committed to providing a strong, effective and properly resourced offshore petroleum regulatory regime to safeguard human health and safety, as well as the Australian marine environment. In line with this commitment, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Regulatory Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2014 proposes amendments to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 to strengthen the offshore petroleum regulatory regime in respect of compliance, safety, integrity and environmental management objectives.

These objectives will be achieved by ensuring the commencement of important measures to clarify and strengthen compliance, monitoring, investigation and enforcement powers of the national offshore petroleum regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, and adjust enforcement measures for contravention of the act to ensure they are appropriate in application and severity in the context of a high-hazard industry.

Amendments made by this bill will ensure that the relevant standard provisions contained in the proposed Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, which is currently also being considered by parliament, are triggered for use in the offshore petroleum regulatory regime. Use of these standard provisions is testament to this government's continued commitment to reducing unnecessary regulation and avoiding duplication of legislation by negating the need to include those provisions in the OPGGS Act itself. These combined measures strike a balance between minimising regulatory burden and maintaining this government's commitment to appropriate regulatory oversight for safety and environmental matters.

I wish to thank the members for Brand, Mitchell, Moreton and Makin for their contributions to the debate, and I note that this bill has the support of both sides of the House. This industry is an extremely hazardous industry that requires absolute commitment from industry, from the workers and from government to ensure safeguards for the people who work in the offshore oil industry. When I filled my current role in the previous Howard government, under Minister Macfarlane, I had the opportunity to go out onto the Stag platform and see first hand the issues involved in the offshore oil and gas industry. Safety is paramount. I agree with the comments by the member for Brand, who said yesterday:

It is a dangerous industry. It is an industry marked by great capability and great risk.

He went on further:

Work on the offshore hydrocarbons environment is important for our country. It is important for the economy. But it is not so important that it should bring with it unacceptable risk to the environment or to the health of our workers.

I know that Minister Macfarlane, who has asked me to introduce this bill and then to sum up for him, is as committed today as he was when the original bills were introduced in 2006 to ensuring the safety of Australian workers. That is paramount for this government and I am glad that we have the support of the opposition.

I do take objection to one of the comments by the member for Makin, who said that the coalition, as a government, had an appalling track record in this industry. I point out to him two disasters that have occurred. The Montara disaster occurred in August 2009, and if my memory serves me correctly Labor were in power in 2009. The Stena Clyde incident, which cost Australian lives, occurred in 2012—again, if my memory serves me correctly, Labor were in power in 2012.

But this is not about playing the blame game—this is about addressing the issues and making sure that compliance and health and safety are paramount. I congratulate the member for Brand on his comments. He was a standout minister, along with Martin Ferguson—as, indeed, was Minister Macfarlane in his previous term. They had the attitude and took the actions to make sure that safety measures in the offshore gas and oil industry had bipartisan support. There was not a hair between us in making sure that we supported actions to preserve life in this industry. We remain committed to continuing the improvement of the offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage regulatory regime. In line with this commitment, the government intends to bring forward further measures currently under consideration and development for progression in late 2014. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (12:29): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (12:29): I rise to sum up the debate on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment Bill 2014. Again, I thank the speakers who have contributed to the debate—the members for Brand, Mitchell, Moreton and Makin—for their contributions.

The Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment Bill 2014 amends provisions in the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Act 2003 relating to the imposition of an annual titles administration levy and environment plan levy.

The National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator, NOPTA, and the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, NOPSEMA, are both funded on a cost-recovery basis and perform important functions in Australia's offshore petroleum regulatory regime. NOPTA assists and advises the joint authority and the responsible Commonwealth minister on titles administration matters. NOPSEMA regulates safety and environmental matters.

Amendments in this bill ensure appropriate resourcing by making necessary adjustments to the levy arrangements. Firstly, it provides that NOPTA has the ability to collect a full-year annual titles administration levy for titles in force for less than one year. Its equity is ensured by the insertion of a regulation-making power, in a consequential amendment in the amendment bill to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, to allow for the refund or remittal of part of that levy as appropriate.

Further amendments in this bill extend NOPSEMA' s ability to collect a levy for the submission and revision of environmental plans and related ongoing compliance activities. This is directly related to recent regulatory reform allowing an applicant for a title, as opposed to a titleholder, to submit an environmental plan to NOPSEMA for certain activities, delivering a more streamlined and efficient process. Such measures demonstrate this government's commitment to streamlining and reducing regulatory burden through the principles of efficiency and fairness while maintaining a high-level commitment to environmental and safety matters.

Appropriate cost recovery by both NOPTA and NOPSEMA is critical to ensure these entities are resourced effectively to administer the offshore petroleum regime in the context of a high-hazard industry. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (12:32): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms BIRD (Cunningham) (12:33): I rise to speak on the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014. This bill seeks to abolish the Australian Workplace and Productivity Agency, commonly known as AWPA. In his speech on 4 June 2014, the minister took just two minutes to abolish AWPA—to disband our key national policy and research body on skills—while we have jobs being lost across the country.

The opposition will not be voting against the bill; however, we do feel it is important to move an amendment to recognise the importance of the work done by AWPA and the need to preserve this in the new arrangements. Therefore, I move:

That all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the Bill a second reading the House notes that the Government has failed to guarantee that the critical independent research to Government and industry in relation to Australia's current, emerging and future skills and workforce development needs will continue to be carried out and made public."

To put the government's decision to abolish AWPA into context, it is important to understand the history of AWPA. In government, Labor made a record investment of over $19 billion in skills and training for smarter jobs and a stronger nation. The Rudd Labor government established Skills Australia in 2008 as part of the Labor government's Skilling Australia for the Future policy.

Skills Australia was an independent statutory body set up to provide advice to the then Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research on Australia's current, emerging and future workforce needs and, in line with that, our workforce development needs. Skills Australia's advice covered a broad range of areas including migration, the resources sector, the defence industry, the tertiary education system and the effective use of skills in the workplace. The then Labor government sought to ensure that the government's investment in education and training was focused on providing a highly skilled workforce, increasing participation, increasing access to the workforce by less advantaged groups and producing a workforce that met the needs of industry and increased Australia's productivity.

In 2012, the Labor government expanded the role of Skills Australia and transformed that organisation into AWPA. AWPA was established to provide advice on a broad range of areas that affected the demand, supply and use of skills and was also responsible for providing strategic advice and recommendations for priorities for the Labor government's National Workforce Development Fund—which, I am very sad to say, was abolished in the most recent budget. AWPA liaised directly with industry to provide expert, independent advice to government on current, emerging and future skills and workforce development needs. The AWPA team has been led by its chief executive, Mr Robin Shreeve, and chair, Mr Philip Bullock.

After so much important work, over several years, in the national service it was particularly poor form that the Minister for Industry did not even bother to announce that the government was abolishing AWPA. This was revealed while Mr Robin Shreeve was giving evidence at a Senate inquiry in Sydney on 11 April. A statement by the chair, Mr Bullock, dated 9 April 2014, was subsequently posted on the department's website. The minister also failed to take the opportunity to properly recognise and thank AWPA for the excellent work, good quality analysis and advice, and important strategic direction that it had provided over the past eight years.

Mr Bullock provided significant leadership. He has had more than 25 years of experience working with IBM and he has served on the board of the Australian Information Industry Association; the Business Council of Australia, also chairing their skills and innovation taskforce; the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission; and the advisory committee to the Australian Graduate School of Management. He also provided advice for the Labor government's Education Investment Fund and he serves on the Australia India Education Council. He was appointed as chair of the National VET Equity Advisory Council.

AWPA's Chief Executive Officer, Robin Shreeve, has worked in the skills sector for over 30 years, both here in Australia and in England. He has served as CEO of AWPA, Skills Australia, the North Coast Institute of TAFE and another tertiary institution in Westminster, Central London. He also worked for the Department of Education and Training in New South Wales, finishing there as Deputy Director for Technical, Further and Community Education. Between them, Robin and Philip have almost sixty years experience in industry and the vocational education and skills sector.

AWPA's board was formed by the following members, who should also be publicly thanked for their service: Peter Anderson, the then CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Andrew Dettmer, the National President of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; Dr John Edwards, a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute, an adjunct professor with the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University and a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Ged Kearney, the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions; and Innes Willox, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group. This team harnessed a wealth of experience across academia, education and training, economics, industry and the representation of workers, and drove a massive research and analysis agenda that saw a number of workforce studies in key sectors of the Australian economy completed.

I want to touch on some of these studies to give a sense of the significance of the work that was done by the organisation. The Building Australia's defence supply capabilities: main report for the defence industry workforce strategy was a strategy developed to assist Australia's defence industry to access the skilled workforce it needed to participate in Australian government defence procurement. The Energy efficiency in commercial and residential buildings: jobs and skills implications report found that while there were going to be few new skills requirements in energy efficiencies for buildings, there was a need to update current skills and knowledge. The Food and beverage workforce study put forward recommendations to build an adaptive, skilled and innovative agrifood workforce. The ICT workforce study presented a number of workforce development strategies to increase supply of specialist ICT skills, improve skills development in the ICT workforce and promote the effective utilisation of ICT skills. Most recently, the Manufacturing workforce study—very pertinent to the challenges facing many of our regions today—put forward recommendations to build an adaptive, skilled and innovative manufacturing workforce that would be well-placed to manage the transition to more advanced and diverse manufacturing.

In preparing the Resources sector skills needs report, AWPA commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to develop a comprehensive five-year outlook model to estimate trends in employment growth and occupational supply for the resources sector against three economic growth scenarios to develop a series of recommendations to ensure the sector's workforce is ready and able to meet future demand. A final example that demonstrates the widely encompassing nature of their work is the Retail workforce study, which found industry must shift its recruitment profile towards a larger share of recruits who see retail as a career, and that a more highly skilled workforce, together with strong industry leadership, was critical to a successful transition for this industry. AWPA has also produced important labour market information including the development of the Specialised Occupations List, the Skilled Occupations List and the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List.

Skills and workforce productivity has been a major focus for AWPA's research. One of AWPA's key projects was the development of the 2016 National Workforce Development Strategy. I remain keen to hear from the minister as to whether the department is going to continue work on this strategy, which is a follow on from the 2013 National Workforce Development Strategy.

Future focus 2013 looked at positioning Australia as a knowledge economy through investing in skills development, targeting planning, lifting productivity, raising labour force participation, improving language, literacy and numeracy, and ensuring quality in the tertiary sector. AWPA also commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to develop high-level economic modelling of skills demand and supply as part of its scenario approach to future workforce development. AWPA also developed and updated key industry snapshots which provided information and analysis on key industries and assisted stakeholders in planning for the future of their industry or sector.

The National Workforce Development Fund was a partnership between industry and government to help industry address current and future workforce development needs. The fund was facilitated through the Industry Skills Councils network and AWPA provided advice on prioritisation, applications of significance and performance of the fund in meeting skills needs. In 2012, AWPA commissioned the National Institute of Labour Studies to conduct research to identify the under and oversupply of qualifications. The project also aimed to develop a methodology and tool for forming an assessment of current and emerging skills needs in Australia in the case of priority occupations or policy relevance.

AWPA has long advocated for demand-driven funding across the tertiary education sector. In Skills for prosperity, AWPA also recommended governments ensure a level playing field between VET and higher education providers so that there were no perverse incentives for students to choose courses or institutions on the basis of fee structures rather than career choice, interests and aptitudes. AWPA also reported on quality assurance in Foundations for the future.

While the time frame for submissions to the Senate inquiry into this bill was severely limited, many of the submissions have acknowledged the work that AWPA did. I would like to put those on the record. The submission to the Senate inquiry by Professor Gavin Moodie of RMIT and Dr Leesa Wheelahan of the University of Toronto said:

The Agency has been a great source of new ideas stimulating fresh thinking and innovation amongst employers, institutions, sectors and representative groups. Government departments usually don't have the freedom to promote new ideas nor the discretion to advance them provocatively.

The Agency's research on the demand and supply of skills in a transforming economy has been well received and been particularly influential. It is precisely this work which will be needed as Australia's economy further restructures.

The submission by Innovation and Business Skills Australia to the same inquiry said:

IBSA has worked closely with AWPA and has greatly appreciated the initiatives to improve productivity, management, innovation and skills utilisation in Australian workplaces. It is important also to acknowledge the high level of industry expertise on the AWPA board which has made it an authority on the workforce development and skills needed to respond to industry needs. Their experience has greatly contributed to forward thinking beyond the bureaucratic frameworks.

And the submission from the Australian Council of Trade Unions stated:

AWPA, and its predecessor Skills Australia, have been an invaluable source of independent tripartite advice, research and advocacy in relation to the national skills agenda.

At a time when there are considerable skills challenges ahead, a decision to abolish the independent national skills agency is a retrograde step.

In this submission, we also express our disappointment in the way the whole process has been handled by the Government, even putting aside the merits of the decision.

The ACTU wishes to place on record its appreciation of the work done by the Board and staff of the Australian Workplace and Productivity Agency, and its predecessor, Skills Australia.

And, finally, the submission by the Australian Council for Private Education and Training said:

I would like to note my support for the unfunded and additional work taken on by the Chair of AWPA, Mr Philip Bullock, to lead the engagement for Australia with the Indian VET sector. Mr Bullock did an excellent job and leaves an important legacy for the sector beyond the work that AWPA was charged to do.

There were a variety of views about the decision to abolish AWPA amongst the submitters, but there was a consistent view that the work that had been done was important and deserved recognition; and it deserved to be on the public record. Key industry stakeholders have also been critical of the government's decision and grateful for the work and expertise that AWPA has provided in the past. Thus, the amendment I am proposing to this motion recognises the critical, strategic significance of the work performed by AWPA and seeks to ensure that the rigour and independence of this work is not lost when the tasks are taken into the department. For that reason I commend the amendment to the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Craig Kelly ): Is there a seconder for the amendment?

Mr Brendan O'Connor: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I second the amendment.

Mr LAMING (Bowman) (12:47): When we consider the repeal of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, it is important that we appreciate the very good work done by staff since the establishment of Skills Australia, but I must say the reluctance of the opposition to defend elements of this agency is somewhat concerning. No doubt there was good intent within this agency—they produced some very important reports—but, with an increasing Public Service, can the nation afford to support yet another statutory authority operating independently of the department that was initially commissioned to simply do a job? The test should be: how often did the former government—and the member for Cunningham was part of that government—respond to the reports that were prepared by AWPA? The answer is: never! That is right—a big zero. This was a government quite prepared to set up statutory authorities, very willing to dream up acronyms, quite happy to see expansions of publicly funded high-rise buildings, water bubblers and the like, but, ultimately, it did not even formally respond to the very good reports prepared by AWPA. Rather than reading out names in a valedictory speech today by the opposition and commending union mates for a job well done, that should be the measure of affection. Did they actually pick up the reports and did they read them? Did they respond to them?

AWPA did some important work, but, as I will argue today, that work has always been the job of our fine Department of Industry. It is a large and capable department which was actually commissioned to do such a job. We had a Labor administration that—whenever there was a speed bump somewhere or a napkin to be written on—would dream up a new agency. And that seemed to be done every week for the first couple of years of the Labor administration. Let it be recorded that we admired the good work of the staff at AWPA and we were impressed with the quality of their reports. But, in the end, you need to ask: are there other agencies out there prepared to write similar reports? Industry bodies should be writing these kinds of reports and university post-graduate facilities are perfectly placed to be informing these kinds of analyses.

Alas, what we had instead was a shuffle between 2009 and 2012 under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to create new agencies. Why? It was to have a press conference, wasn't it? They would write a press release and, of course, everyone scurried around trying to work out the implications. Luckily for the former Prime Minister there were good people who picked up the press release and said, 'What will we do with it? Given these resources how can we best spend them for the nation's future?' For that reason, I really commend those at AWPA, but I do note that that original $2.6 million investment into Skills Australia soon ballooned out—it trebled. The commissioning was no greater, but by 2011 we had 53 staff and a trebling of the budget. I appreciate that gave opportunities to certain people to travel around the country doing PowerPoint presentations on industry requirements—and I know plenty of people turned up to listen—but, ultimately, we need to ask whether public funds are best used by simply expanding the Public Service and creating new bureaucracies? When I sense the lack of passion from the member for Cunningham, it is fairly clear that even the Labor Party is admitting that they probably went a step too far. They had almost run out of acronyms in creating so many authorities, but that is not for one moment to understate the great work done by individuals initially in Skills Australia and then at AWPA.

Clearly, the new government is going to streamline operations. Clearly, the new government is going to say: 'You're a department of industry. This is exactly what you are commissioned to do.' It is a new government that is going to say: 'If we need advice about industry, we are going to talk to industry.' What a revolutionary concept that would be! Ultimately, they have said, 'We can merge back the activities of AWPA and ask the secretary'—that is right. What a revolutionary notion to actually commit the secretary of the department to provide the direct advice that is coming from their own department!

The new government will be supporting the Industry Skills Fund. That is common sense, isn't it? The industry that is doing the training can seek public funds to perform private training for public benefit and get a co-contribution—that is right! What a novel concept that is for the Labor Party—a co-contribution: for every public dollar, the private sector puts in a dollar and says, 'This is training well worth doing.' The Industry Skills Fund will operate on merit. I am looking forward to businesses from all over the country picking up on the opportunity to train young Australians—which brings me to the skill shortage list.

AWPA did such a wonderful job maintaining this list over the years. It was commissioned with the task of looking after labour market issues, analysing education and training outputs and migration and general economic conditions. That is no simple task; I will concede that. Coming up with the SOL, or the Skilled Occupations List, was a very important job. In this contribution, I want to make a point about what the SOL truly is. The SOL is our failure list. It is the list of areas for which this nation never managed to provide adequate skilled labour and so look after the needs of this great country. Let us never forget that the SOL, where we basically find skilled independent migrants to do the work that we cannot train our own people to do, is fundamentally a policy failure. It is a failure we must continue to address and not to give up on by just making a bigger, longer list. The SOL was a very important job performed by AWPA. As I said, it was complex. It involved analysing a large number of sectors—labour market, education, training, the outputs from universities and employment needs. Those things change very rapidly. The ability of the department of immigration to meet those needs in a delicatessen-style 'take your number and wait' operation can mean real pain and genuine economic loss for business from those delays. So the Skilled Occupations List plays a very important role. It is also important to mention that the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List, the CSOL, pertains to other migration categories and was not something that AWPA looked after.

What you will see with this bill, which I think even begrudgingly the opposition supports—as long as they can make the appropriate 'thankyous' and valedictories; and despite the proposed amendment, which I am yet to see—is that we now have a system where a government can turn to industry and ask them, 'What are the problems, and how do we fix them in a team based arrangement?' We do not need a raft of publicly funded individuals to do the job that the department should be doing.

It is the reports of AWPA which I am most impressed with. From their original incarnation as Skilled Australia they have produced reports: three reports in 2008, six reports in 2009, four in 2010 and, in 2011, they hit their straps with 11 reports—none of them were responded to by government. What was the minister doing? Were they too busy reading other stuff that was not prepared by an expert statutory body? There was no response to the 10 reports written in 2012 that sat on the minister's desk and collected dust. I respect the Left for their love of a large bureaucracy. I can understand it. From where they come from, they think that is how the world should work. But, for goodness sake, if you are going to devote millions of public dollars to funding a statutory authority, just respond to the report, just thumb through it, just read it—but there is no evidence that that ever happened. So, once you get this bureaucratic loss of control, these reports just cause the minister's eyes to glaze over; the minister does not even respond to them.

The former minister, the member for Cunningham, is now talking about what a wonderful report was done last year. I simply ask her: 'So wonderful that your government did not respond to that report? It didn't bother to word-process just a couple of paragraphs about how that report actually informed decision making? No. What you saw in the Labor period was them utterly losing control of their own public administration. They were chasing up prime ministerial press releases and doing the best that they could with authorities who barely knew what their commission was. I have criticised many authorities in this place but I want to say that AWPA, through that period, managed to produce quality reports—and it is that that should be remembered in this contribution today.

Labor may attempt to amend this bill, but hidden behind it was that their idea of outsourcing ultimately became a public service that could have been done by others. The crowding out of the industry groups, universities and other technical bodies and the ability to specifically commission reports, which remains a job that government can do, was one that they forfeited and simply handed over to this body. For that reason, I strongly support the repeal bill. I am confident that the Department of Industry can pick up a significant number of those staff and virtually all of the activities which AWPA was engaged in. I commend the work that that body did while it was commissioned.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (12:57): I rise today to speak on the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014. The purpose of this bill is to repeal the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Act 2008 and, hence, abolish the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency. AWPA was established in 2012 by the former Labor government, the Rudd and Gillard government, replacing Skills Australia. It provided expert independent advice to government on the country's currently emerging and future skills and workforce development needs. Obviously, when organising a large economy such as this, it is important to focus on things such as productivity. For those introductory economic students out there, productivity is basically where we work out how the engine of the economy is running—not the size of the engine but how it is running, whether it is doing things efficiently. It is not a case of how many jobs there are, because that is not necessarily a guide as to how the engine is running. Just because people are digging holes does not mean that it is a good thing, because someone could come along with a post-hole digger and do things much more efficiently. Productivity is something that I think the Howard government dropped the ball on. When we came to power in 2007, for that quarter under the Labor government productivity was actually at zero. The heavy lifting had been done by the Hawke and Keating governments—that was particularly heavy lifting. They were challenging times for Labor supporters and for the labour force and labour market—but we did it. Now we have some particular challenges.

A highly skilled workforce is something that Labor fundamentally believes in and in the benefits it brings for all of our community. A highly skilled workforce ensures that our businesses are resilient, innovative and competitive, especially when it comes to a global economy. Individuals achieving recognised and useful qualifications is one of the most effective ways to secure a job and then to earn a decent income. Obviously, we are seeing changes and the idea of having one job for life is fast disappearing. A job that you will be able to continue to evolve in is important, and training will provide that. When I grew up, my very first piece of paid employment, where I received a $1 note, was in a shearing shed. Nowadays, I go to my hometown and I do not think there is a single shearing squad in St George anymore, whereas when I was there there were six or seven teams of shearers. I cannot remember the exact numbers, but the ratio of personal trainers to shearers in Australia is about 20 to one. It is just how things have changed in the 40-odd years since I received my first pay for working as a rouseabout in a shearing shed. I think I was about six or seven at the time. Things change.

Australia needs to build a more highly skilled workforce that will help Australian workers get ahead. Obviously, this helps advance our community and economy and the social fabric that makes this such a wonderful country. We have seen over the years, although you have to go back a while, what happens when unemployment creeps into society. One of my proudest achievements is to be part of that Labor government that protected jobs during the global financial crisis. You look around the globe and see the horrors still being inflicted on communities because of the unemployment that was associated with the global financial crisis.

I think the government is actually at an interesting tipping point with its philosophy around what sort of social fabric it supports. This budget seems to be taking Australia down that low-wage, Walmart plan where people, when they are in paid employment, almost still need to beg to survive. That undermining of the minimum wage—that extreme right-wing Tea Party policy—seems to have gripped a couple of people in the government. I know there are still some sensible people over there, who might be able to speak up and do what they know is the best thing for Australian society. From 26 January 1788, we have always supported the idea of people having a fair go. In court case after court case, with central fixing of wages or enterprise bargaining, we have always believed that Australia looks after the bottom two quartiles of society and says, 'You're as good as me, Jack.'

The role of government is to help Australian businesses adapt and innovate in this new economy. It needs to increase Australia's productivity and respond to a shrinking workforce. Obviously, we guide and assist—there is still a market mechanism, but the role of government in this situation is to guide and assist, and the purpose of AWPA is to accommodate such tasks. However, with this bill the government basically seeks to abolish AWPA's effective operations. There is an urgent need for training reforms to open the doors of training and skills development to those Australians without minimum qualifications, particularly in a society that has announced, out of the blue, that blue-collar workers will work until they are 70 years old—the oldest working people in the world. It might be okay if you are a lawyer or a politician, but try being a 70-year-old cleaner, having to get down every day and clean, as I heard about at the front of Parliament House yesterday from the cleaners. Try being a 70-year-old post-hole digger, where you rely on the muscles in your back. An increase in the retirement age to 70 makes a significant difference. It would take us to having the oldest workers in the world. That is a bizarre thing that should have been stated before the election, rather than just being introduced out of the blue afterwards. It is bizarre. I do not see a lot of support in my community coming from people, in labouring jobs particularly, who will have to keep working. But that is not what this legislation before us is about.

We also need to reduce the up-front costs facing Australians who want to participate in higher level training. We need to ensure that Australian industry has the skilled workforce it needs to adapt and innovate in a rapidly changing economy, by lifting the overall quality and performance of our national training system. All Australian governments recognise that the training system is under pressure to be more responsive to the needs of business and students. The former Labor government achieved substantial results in building a highly skilled workforce. We increased annual investment in vocational education by 35 per cent in real terms, adjusted for inflation, between 2007 and 2010, while, sadly, the annual overall state and territory commitment increased by only five per cent—and I am damning Labor and Liberal states with those figures. Sadly, in my home state of Queensland, we have TAFEs being closed down now and more are on the book. I heard a suggestion from Minister Langbroek that up to one in three TAFE campuses could be closed in Queensland. Contrast that with the Commonwealth Labor government's investment in these skills.

Labor also substantially increased investment in higher education, trade skills, and language, literacy and numeracy programs, demonstrating the Commonwealth's commitment to providing skills for all Australians. If we are to meet the current and future needs of our economy, responsibility for meeting the growing training needs of Australian businesses and workers must be more evenly shared between all governments, as well as business and individuals. We cannot just let the market rip in this area.

Already, entry-level positions in growing sectors such as aged care—as those baby boomers move into more challenging times—child care, transport and logistics increasingly require higher minimum qualifications such as a certificate III. On average, wages for people without a certificate III qualification are at least $180 per week lower than for those with a certificate III or above qualification.

The AWPA was introduced so Australians could receive effective resources to achieve the following: the first ever guarantee for all Australians from post-school to the age pension age to have access to a government subsidised training place for a first certificate III qualification so that more Australians can participate in building a modern, advanced economy. Students can access the entitlement through any training provider approved by the relevant state or territory to deliver publicly subsidised training. That is the filtering of some of those skills that have perhaps been a little dubious over the years. Students are able to access foundation skills training necessary to complete the certificate III qualifications—such as language, literacy and numeracy, depending on the student. While students' fees charged for study may be different in different jurisdictions, all states and territories have been provided with appropriate concessions so that disadvantaged students do not face additional financial barriers to study. Students who are clients of Job Services Australia and Disability Employment Services now pay the same fees as other students and will benefit from any relevant concessions applicable to them. Students must meet the relevant entry criteria for the course and must not already have a qualification at certificate III or higher—we cannot just have frequent flyers going through this study process. Access to a particular course will be subject to the availability of training places in the relevant location. One of the key reforms that Labor implemented through the Skills Australia Bill was increased transparency of the VET sector. It was introduced to provide clearer and more accessible information about vocational education and training to employers, students and governments.

The AWPA is vital for Queenslanders now more than ever. Sadly, the latest labour force data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that Queensland lost 11,700 jobs in a month, bringing unemployment up to 6.1 per cent. My home state has been suffering under the Newman government's economic mismanagement. They continuously give us excuses and no solutions and, after more than two years, are still blaming the former Labor government. These unemployment figures suggest that real people and families are doing it tough in my electorate under the Newman government's growing list of broken promises. Just last month, we saw a 13 per cent hike in electricity bills, increased water prices and all the other associated cost-of-living increases—including rates in the City of Brisbane. Premier Campbell Newman promised a four per cent job target to be achieved over six years. Here we are in our third year and they are nowhere near target. They seem to be 100 per cent on target to give jobs to their mates, but horribly falling short when it comes to finding jobs for the majority of Queenslanders.

My electorate contains Brisbane's southern outer suburbs and, since the LNP was elected in 2012, my community has sadly suffered from rising unemployment figures. Suburbs like Acacia Ridge, Rocklea, Archerfield and Coopers Plains have concerning unemployment figures of around 15 per cent compared to an electorate average in Moreton of 6.6 per cent. The people in these outer suburbs are in need of training opportunities so that they can re-enter the workforce. This repeal bill that is before the chamber is a step in the wrong direction.

On top of this, people in these suburbs are some of the hardest hit by the federal government's latest budget. The current government lied about Medicare, pensions and no new taxes. Now those in my electorate have been hit with a $7 tax when going to the doctor. This $7 is made up of $2 of red tape and $5 for the never-never. It is a bizarre imposition on the sick. Also, they are going to be hit with an increased cost every time they fill up their car—extra money every time they fill their car, a tax that will go up and up. The member for Warringah said he would help families with the real cost of raising children, but, sadly, he has cut $7.5 billion in family payments. These cuts will leave some families in my electorate around $6,000 a year worse off. Disgraceful!

Queenslanders depend on legislation such as the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Act. The decision to axe the agency is short-sighted, myopic. It is depriving Australians of their key independent skills advisory body. It eliminates any questioning of policy and research and what Australia needs for the future. Instead, like the Tea Party, we will rely on the market.

The facts clearly identify AWPA's effective suggestions for changes in policy, linking tertiary education to the needs of the labour market. Expertise and knowledge will disappear from the sector with decisions being left to those in Canberra who get kicked around, people who have little experience with the effect of vocational education particularly down on the coalface. The AWPA provides advice to the Australian government on current, emerging and future skills and workforce development needs and opportunities. The repeal of AWPA will deprive the sector of an important independent forum where employers, unions and industry could freely discuss the big issues, oncoming issues and the over-the-horizon issues. I urge this government to reconsider their approach to the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill as the decision would be very short-sighted and damaging to the effective progress made by former governments.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks) (13:12): I rise to speak in support of the legislation before the House, the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill. AWPA is an independent statutory body at present, which has the main function of providing advice to the Minister for Industry in relation to skills and training issues in particular as they pertain to the VET sector and related issues. This bill abolishes the AWPA and transfers those functions to the Department of Industry itself. It is important to note that there is no suggestion of anything other than professionalism on the part of the staff of AWPA—and no doubt their efforts have been sincere—but this is a very clear example of the difference between the previous government and this government when it comes to the administration of a government policy.

This government says that when we can do something more efficiently, we should do so. We should not create committees unless they are absolutely necessary. We should not create new statutory bodies unless they are absolutely necessary. We should make sure that existing government resources do as much work as possible because that is what they are there for. Therefore, rather than effectively outsourcing this function to an independent statutory authority with all of the governance and associated costs that go with that—a board, a separate secretariat and all of the administrative issues that are related to an independent authority—we should bring that back within the department where of course there are very substantial resources and expertise in this space.

It is important to note that the previous government, for all of its support or supposed support for AWPA, never formally responded to any report that that statutory body put forward. Again, if it is so important that this independent statutory body exists you would think that we would see clear evidence of the previous government responding to its reports—but that evidence does not exist.

Streamlining government management is a core value of this government, and it is in huge contrast to the previous government because the previous government never saw a committee they did not like. They never saw an acronym they did not like. They never saw a problem that they did not think could be solved if only they created a greater bureaucracy to address it. We on this side of the House know that bureaucracy must be minimised and that taxpayers' money should be spent in a wise and cautious fashion. The creation of new administrative bodies, new committees and new public sector bodies is generally not the right path to go down. We saw their general philosophy embodied under the previous government with a 50 per cent increase in government spending over six years—a huge increase in government spending. That is what happens when you have the philosophy of throwing more money at a problem, creating more government expense and creating more bureaucracy. For those opposite there is no problem that cannot be solved by just creating some more bureaucracy.

That is the wrong approach. Whilst those on the other side kicked off 'spendathon 2007' seven years ago and merrily went on their way over the next six years, we on this side of the House have a very different approach, and that is to be thoughtful, cautious and judicious in the use of taxpayer funds. We did not see that from the other side. Whilst there is obviously a school of thought that says the philosophy on the other side is just to say no and stand in the way—and there is clearly great credibility in that position—there is another philosophy on the other side of the House. That philosophy is very simple: it is to simply spend more money. That is their philosophy. There is no problem, it would seem, according to those opposite, that cannot be solved simply through the spending of more money.

We on this side of the House have a very different view, which is to spend government money in a very, very cautious fashion. We did not see that caution in the period from 2007 to 2013. Instead, we saw some very troubling examples of government mismanagement. We saw credit card spending by public servants increase by 100 per cent in four years. That is a lot. That is a growth rate of 25 per cent per year. That is a real concern. We also saw $600,000 spent on a study on 'an ignored credit instrument in Florentine economics'. Even the member for Fraser, I suspect, would not find that to be particularly interesting or a good use of government money. So there was a lack of respect for taxpayer funds generally and a bureaucracy-centric approach.

This was nowhere more evident than in the grotesque misuse of public funds that was the NBN under Labor. It was an appalling example of how not to manage a government program. When they write the textbook on the early part of the 21st century Australian government experience and they show the good examples of government expenditure and the bad ones, the NBN will absolutely be at the top of the list of bad ones. There was $6.5 billion spent for three per cent of the population to get broadband, and there was no relationship between that three per cent of the population and their need for broadband. There was no correlation between the need for broadband and the rollout of the plan. The reason there was no correlation is that nobody ever asked the relevant question. The previous government never actually asked the question, 'Where do we need this broadband the most?' It seems like a very logical question but it was never asked. In fact, it was not properly addressed until earlier this year by the current government. That is a really dreadful example of a lack of respect for taxpayer funds.

We know the other examples—the misuse of funds in the Building the Education Revolution program, the Pink Batts program and so many more. We also saw this lack of respect for taxpayer funds as it pertained to border security. The previous government pursued a policy which was very unfavourable in terms of humanitarian results. It was in no-one's interests, least of all the people who come on boats, given the consequences of that on occasion. There was a horrendous financial blow-out of $11 billion. Again on the point of management and respect for government funds, it is very important to note that, because the flow of boats has stopped completely in the last six months, the government has been able to move to close a significant number of detention centres, saving about $2.5 billion. That is in very clear contrast to the previous government.

The abolition of AWPA is demonstrative of taking a sensible and streamlined approach to government expenditure. It is important to note that one of the important functions in this space is to make the VET sector function efficiently. The member for Moreton, in his wide-ranging remarks before, said that one of the successes of the previous government was clearer and more accessible information about the VET sector. Having spent a little bit of time looking at that sector in some detail, prior to coming to this parliament, I can tell you that it is an extremely complex area, where government involvement is high and there are many sometimes conflicting rules between different systems. There is a huge degree of complexity for operators in that sector. That is why it is so important that VET reform is so high on the government's agenda.

Those opposite would say, I presume, that VET reform cannot be done successfully in the absence of AWPA. We would say that that is certainly not the case. A well-managed and disciplined Department of Industry, in consultation with the states, through COAG, should in fact be able to address the very significant issues in the VET space.

As you no doubt are aware, there are many different standards applying in the VET sector. There are different funding models. Some funding models pertain to individual students and some run across the whole sector in block-funding type arrangements. There is massive exposure to changing government policy, with many providers literally becoming unviable when government policy changes. That is not a good situation. We do not want the VET sector to be as complex as it is. It is certainly heartening to know that the minister recently met with his COAG colleagues and established the Industry and Skills Council, in Brisbane, to really constructively look at the various problems across the sector.

It is certainly not a reflection on any of the individuals involved in AWPA that the government is moving to abolish this body. It is much more a reflection of the fact that we have got to get serious about streamlining government in this country. It is very easy to say that to solve a problem we need another committee, another working party or another council of some kind, and we need all the attendant bureaucracy that comes with it. It is very conceptually appealing to do that, because people think that it sounds like someone is addressing the problem. But as you know the more you build up the bureaucracy, the more you create these institutions, the greater the burden you place on the taxpayer and the greater the complexity that often arises. So a smart, focused Department of Industry addressing these issues, with the minister and his state colleagues, is certainly the way to go. I commend the bill to the House.

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (13:25): I also rise today to speak on the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014 and the amendment moved by my fantastic colleague the member for Cunningham. It is disappointing to see that this bill abolishes a key national policy and research body on skills and workforce development, and seeks to fold its duties into the Department of Industry. We want to see the sort of advice and analysis provided by this body continue, and that is what our amendment is all about.

By abolishing this stand-alone body, the government is once again proving its inability to anticipate the jobs and the workforce of the future with foresight and intelligence. I have spoken in this place before about the challenges that lie ahead of us in developing a workforce ready for the industries of tomorrow—challenges like rapid technological advance, the globalisation of the workforce, and the rise of intergenerational disadvantage, which are the sorts of things we need to be thinking about now when it comes to our approach to human capital in the workforce.

These challenges are having real effects on the face of the Australian jobs market. The job numbers have bounced around a bit and there have been some patchy outcomes. For a good discussion of the labour market I commend to the House the speech yesterday by Chris Kent of the Reserve Bank. We get some very good, clear-eyed analysis out of our central bank, and I encourage people to check it out.

Members will recall that over the first several months after the election of this government, the prevailing theme was announcement after announcement of job losses. Across thirty of Australia's largest employers, over 28,000 job losses were announced: 5,000 at Qantas, more than 6,000 in automotive manufacturing, and many more at manufacturers around the nation. The sad reality is that a great deal of the jobs lost or announced to be lost are likely gone forever, at least in their most recent form. And while aggregate job creation figures have been stronger over the last couple of months, many of the job losses that have been announced are yet to take effect, and they are concentrated in the outer suburbs of our major cities, places already shouldering most of the burden of this government's budget decisions. The result is a labour market characterised by volatility and uncertainty, even if the headline rate does not reflect this.

For thousands of Australians there is not only the uncertainty of whether their job will be secure into the future but there is also the uncertainty of whether they have the skills required to move into a new job. For young people contemplating their future careers, there is uncertainty about whether the types of jobs their parents and grandparents went into will even exist in Australia in the years ahead. So there are real challenges associated with the rapidly changing labour market in Australia.

But there are even greater opportunities for us, and it is our role as policymakers and decision makers to identify these opportunities and to equip people with the requisite skills to take advantage of them. Since 2012, this has been the function of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, and prior to that it was the task set for Skills Australia.

The great advantage of the AWPA is that it was an independent advice body for the government on current, emerging and future skill needs. It brought together peak national bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the ACTU, to achieve genuine cross-sectoral industry leadership.

Over the last twelve months, the AWPA has conducted studies into the state of manufacturing, retail, resources, food and beverages, and the ICT workforce in Australia—all sectors that are key to the future of our country and our economy. Their reports have included recommendations for government, for industry and for the education sector to improve Australia's skills and productivity base in these sectors. And with the labour market in Australia in a state of volatility, uncertainty and transition, these recommendations have never been more important. This is particularly true for the higher and vocational education sectors, which are charged with preparing our young people for the jobs of the future. That is why some key figures in the higher education sector have come out in opposition to scrapping the AWPA. Leesa Wheelahan, associate professor at the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management at the University of Melbourne, said:

There is now no source of independent advice—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ): Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue his remarks at that time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ) (15:41): I have received a message from the Senate informing the House that Senator Waters has been appointed a participating member of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia.

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (16:42): As I was saying before, there have been some key figures in the higher education sector who have come out in opposition to the scrapping of the AWPA, as proposed in the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014. Leesa Wheelahan, who is associate professor at the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management at the University of Melbourne, said:

There is now no source of independent advice to government, no way of questioning policy and no research on what Australia needs in the future.

There are others as well who have come out against the abolition of this key body. The current chairman of the AWPA, Philip Bullock, said while confirming the agency's 'disestablishment'—his words:

There are few times in our working lives where we contribute in an area which has the potential to positively impact so many people and for this opportunity we remain grateful.

I think Mr Bullock is right that real people have brighter career prospects as a result of the work that the AWPA has done, and this makes it all the more disappointing that the agency is to be abolished. We are moving these amendments to see that the advice and the analysis is still provided.

Today the opposition is calling on the government to guarantee that independent advice on workforce and productivity issues will continue to be provided and continue to be made publicly available. This advice is much needed. It is crucial to assist government, industry and the education sector to develop the human capital required to create the jobs of the future, in the economy of the future. We are seeking this assurance from the government because the signs so far about workforce issues from this government have not been encouraging, whether it is this abolition of the AWPA; whether it is the abandonment of the Asian century white paper, which has been abolished not only from the departmental website but also from the approach and strategy of the government when it comes to the sorts of jobs that we want to be creating in the Asian century; whether it is the deregulation of university fees, which will make it all the more difficult for young people to undertake meaningful training; whether it is the government's harsh cuts to welfare for young people, their attacks on Medicare, their defunding of future trades training centres, their $30 billion cut to schools, their cuts to Youth Connections, their broken promise on Gonski funding—all of these sorts of things. The cumulative effect of all of these unwise and unfair cuts will be a less skilled, less productive and less dynamic workforce in the future.

It will, unfortunately, risk us missing out on the huge opportunities that are just around the corner for Australia as part of the Asian century. We are witnessing an unprecedented transition in our region and our engagement with Asia has never been more important. The rise of the middle class in Asia will be the most important economic phenomenon of our time. Asia will soon become not only the world's largest producer of goods and services; it will also be the world's largest consumer of them. Australia is perfectly placed to take advantage of the monumental changes underway in our region, but only if we get our workforce right—only if we sort out our human capital and we give our people the best chance to succeed. We need to invest in the tools of success necessary for our young people to succeed right through their working lives. As the authors of the Asian century white paper put it, the tyranny of distance to Europe is being replaced this century by the power of proximity to Asia. We have a lot to offer Asia—our workers have a lot to offer—not only by way of our resources but also in terms of our strong, world-leading institutions and our open and resilient economy. But, as I said, to fully take advantage of these kinds of opportunities, we need to have a highly skilled and dynamic workforce. We need to find ways for our workers to be part of the elaborate global value chains that now characterise world trade.

As the McKinsey Global Institute report Global flows in a digital age has found, by far the greatest growth in global flows lies in knowledge-intensive goods and services. In fact, knowledge-intensive goods flows are growing at 1.3 times the rate of labour-intensive goods. While the developed world is leading the way in exports and imports, China's knowledge-intensive flows are the world's second largest already. So, to be a competitive part of the interconnected economy of the Asia-Pacific, Australia must continue to be a leader in knowledge exports. We need to be innovative and creative, and this all depends on a well-educated, well-trained, modern workforce here in Australia.

The Labor Party, while in government, anticipated these opportunities that lie ahead for Australia and sought to position our country to benefit from the regional economic transition underway. That is why we invested $19 billion in skills and training for smarter jobs and a stronger nation. It is why we developed a needs based funding model for schools, to give every child in Australia—every child, including kids from the poorer areas in my electorate—the chance to get ahead. We introduced the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, the agency we are talking about now, to identify the challenges and strategically determine solutions to strengthen our workforce.

As I said before, the Labor opposition do not want to see the coalition dismantle our plan for future prosperity in Australia based on human capital and the tools of success in our workforce. That is why we are seeking to amend the bill today. I commend my very good colleague the member for Cunningham for her amendments, which call on the government to guarantee that the independent advice and analysis on workforce and productivity issues will continue to be provided and publicly available, even if and when this particular agency is abolished. This advice is vital for government, industry and the education sector to respond to the challenges that lie ahead for our economy. With the demise of this body we need to find an alternative way to get that advice.

The last thing I will say is: we need to do all we can to take advantage of the Asian century before us, and that is why this side will be doing its best to make sure Australia moves forwards in this regard, and not backwards.

Mrs PRENTICE (Ryan) (16:48): I rise today to speak on the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014, which is part of the coalition government's agenda for reforming and streamlining governance arrangements for vocational education and training. After six years of Labor waste and fiscal recklessness, the coalition pledged to the Australian people that the days of waste and mismanagement were over. On budget night, the Minister for Finance indicated that the intention of the Smaller Government Reform Agenda was to ensure the Public Service is as efficient, as effective and as accountable as possible.

Those opposite seem to think that, when it comes to the federal budget, the money just magically appears and is there to use at will, however they wish—and when it runs out they can always borrow more. However, on this side of the chamber we have a different view, indeed one based on reality. On this side of the chamber we understand that Commonwealth money is not for the government of the day to splash around as they please on any whim or impulse of the moment. Instead we believe that the Australian taxpayers' hard-earned money belongs to the Australian people, and every dollar of it must be spent responsibly and in the best interests of the taxpayers. This means that, when there are opportunities to eliminate duplication, remove waste, enhance accountability, streamline government services and reduce the cost of government administration for taxpayers, we take that opportunity.

The previous Labor government set up the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency to advise the federal Minister for Industry in relation to: Australia's current and future skills and workforce development needs, improving the productivity of the Australian workforce, and the allocation of Commonwealth funding. All of these tasks can be carried out more efficiently by the pre-existing Department of Industry. This agency is an unnecessary and expensive duplication. In winding down the AWPA's operations, AWPA staff and functions will be transferred into the Department of Industry. These functions are core public policy activities and, therefore, do not require an independent statutory framework to be carried out.

It is important to note that activities undertaken by AWPA will continue to be priorities for the Department of Industry, and the valuable work that has been undertaken will continue. The new arrangements will allow the Department of Industry to deliver its core functions more efficiently. These arrangements will streamline processes and strengthen the resources and capability of the Department of Industry to provide targeted advice to the minister.

There will be efficiencies associated with the abolition of the AWPA, through reductions in corporate overheads and costs associated with the AWPA board. There will also be improved accountability, with future advice to the minister being the responsibility of the Secretary of the Department of Industry. There will be streamlined program administration as we will no longer have an industry training program administered by AWPA, the Department of Industry and Industry Skills Councils. Instead, the new Industry Skills Fund will be administered by the Department of Industry. It will be delivered through the single business service delivery initiative, which will make delivery and access simpler and more streamlined for business. This will allow the Australian government to better deliver on its competitiveness agenda through assisting businesses that are seeking to improve their productivity and competitiveness in a global market.

The abolition of AWPA is only one part of the Australian government's broader vocational education and training reform agenda, which has a strong focus on ensuring that the national training system is more responsive to the current and future skill needs of businesses. Other key elements of the VET reform agenda include providing industry with a formal role in relation to policy directions and decision making in the national training system, easing the regulatory burden and creating a more effective and efficient skills and training system. Good progress is being made in all of these areas.

I am proud to stand on this side of the chamber. Despite six years of the previous Labor government's engaging in the largest spending binge in our nation's history, despite saddling Australia with $123 billion in deficits and an interest bill of $1,000 million a month, despite causing the fastest deterioration in debt in dollar terms as a share of GDP in modern Australian history, despite all of that, we on this side of the chamber are determined to be responsible with the Australian taxpayers' money, spending it efficiently instead of wasting money on duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy. We are focusing on delivering crucial services, support and education for all Australians. Through this bill, I look forward to seeing the coalition government continue to implement our wider vocational education and training reform agenda. I commend this bill to the House.

Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (16:54): Today, I stand to raise my concerns about the abolition of this very important body that addresses the growing skills crisis that we have in this country. It is wrong for people to say that it is red tape, that it is time to move forward and that we do not need more great bureaucracies. The fact is that government has a role to play when it comes to addressing the skills problem we have in this country. We cannot continue to rely on imported skills. We cannot continue to fill our gaps in the skills needs we have in our economy with 457 visas. We need to continue to invest in skills and we need to understand what those skills needs are, which is why this particular agency was established.

It replaced Skills Australia and provided expert, independent advice to the government on the current and emerging future skills and workforce development needs. The Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, which this bill seeks to abolish, was doing exactly that, providing the expert, independent advice that we need. One of the roles was in the area of industry. For example, the manufacturing sector recently released their report. Manufacturing is an issue that a number of people stand up in this House and present a very doom and gloom picture about and, yes, in some parts of Australia manufacturing is facing a crisis But in my own electorate of Bendigo, we have a good news manufacturing story to share. One of the challenges we always face in our area—and it is one of the issues that manufacturers always discuss with me—is the need for skills, that is, the need to have a workforce that is skilled, a workforce that is ready to work in manufacturers' businesses. Locally, our manufacturing area continues to be strong. Roughly, there are over 6,500 people working in manufacturing in the Bendigo electorate, ranging from food and beverage production to metal and mining equipment and engineering. Central Victoria still continues to be a major producer of food. Currently, there are just over 1,200 people working in the food production sector. There are just under 600 people working in our building manufacturing sector and just under 1,000 people are working in metals and engineering.

One of the reasons for the success of our manufacturing area and why it continues to be strong is that our manufacturers are not afraid of innovation. But with innovation comes the need for a skilled workforce. With innovation comes the need for partnership between industry, government and our education providers to ensure that we have the skills that these manufacturers need. Take, for example, one of our local manufacturers, Keech Australia. Only recently they opened their new innovation centre where they have engaged a workforce producing patterns. They have the biggest 3-D printer in the Southern Hemisphere, at home in Bendigo. In talking to them, I know that the people working in this part of their business have a patchwork arrangement of skills. Some of them have certificates from RMIT; some of them have diplomas from Geelong; some of them have diplomas from Ballarat University and some have degrees from La Trobe University. One of the challenges that the managing director at Keech talks to me about is the frustration of finding the people with the right skills. He is concerned that there will not be people in Australia in the future with the skills that he requires to continue to grow this part of their business. Again, this is why we need our governments to invest not only in skills but in research and conversation with manufacturers like Keech Castings to ensure that we have the skilled workforce we need.

Another manufacturer we have in Bendigo is Thales. As we stand here today debating this bill, Thales are in Paris as part of a big roadshow releasing the Hawkei, which is a vehicle designed and tested in Bendigo and Central Victoria. It is a vehicle that is world-class. It is a vehicle that we hope this government will sign the contract for so that Thales in Bendigo can then produce and manufacture this vehicle going forward. This vehicle which we hope this government will sign the contract for so that it can follow the success of the Bendigo built, designed and manufactured Bushmaster. It is not something for which you can get out a sketchbook and develop overnight. You require a skilled workforce. You require an ongoing and maintained skilled workforce. This is another example of why we need to continue to invest in training people to have skills. Who knows that we need these skills in Bendigo? It is more than just the federal member who knows. It is universities, TAFEs and industry. It is through having bodies such as the one we are seeking to abolish today that we can have a national map of the skills that are needed.

Another manufacturer in my area that speaks to me quite often about skills is Hoffman Engineering. Yes, they have a strong manufacturing facility in Perth, but they also have one in Bendigo. I visited their site last week and I asked them, 'Why did you choose Bendigo?' They had a couple of reasons. They could have chosen anywhere on the east coast. They said the first reason why they chose Bendigo was the support from local government, the former Labor government and the former federal government for establishing themselves in Bendigo. But the second and most important reason why was that there was already an established heavy and metal engineering skilled workforce. The fact that major manufacturers like Hoffman are willing to move to a town like Bendigo to establish and expand their business is testament to our local skills and our local manufacturing sector. But it also points to the need to continue to map out a plan for where we need skills, who we need to have these skills and what kind of skills we need them to have.

The final example of a local manufacturer that I have discussed skills shortages with is Barker Trailers in Woodend. Currently 10 per cent of their workforce are apprentices. They also have some 457 visa workers. They say the only reason why they have these workers is that they cannot get enough skilled people locally. Woodend is a small town. There are about 6,000 people living there, if you take in all the extra areas. One of their challenges in recruiting young apprentices is that they have to travel to do their coursework. To encourage their workers and apprentices to stay on they have gone to the next level of actually hiring a bus. The company, out of their own pocket, hire a bus to drive these workers from Woodend to Ballarat to do their coursework. There is no local TAFE for these apprentices to do their coursework. Getting on a train to Melbourne is fraught as well because of the constant cancellations in the train system. That makes it very hard for their apprentices to get there on time.

When we talk about skills, we need to look at the map of Australia and what we need not just for our current manufacturing and to ensure that we continue to have the skills to keep the businesses such as the ones I have mentioned but also to help us go forward and make sure we continue to support them in the expansion of their businesses, helping small businesses become medium businesses and then large businesses.

But what we have seen from this government so far is that they are smashing any role that government plays in building and developing industry. They are also smashing an entire generation of young people. When I say 'young people' I am not talking about people under 30. About 25 to 30 tends to be the age when people have started their first job, bought their first home and started having children. I am talking about people who are in high school and just about to finish secondary school who are deciding on their career choices. This government are targeting these particular young people through cuts to TAFEs, universities and apprenticeships, ensuring that their pathways through to a good job do not exist.

Take, for example, the changes to university and my own local university of La Trobe. The vice-chancellor and the campus director are worried that the deregulation of university fees, coupled with the funding cuts, will discourage local students from attending university. Right now there are about 4,000 students at La Trobe University. Of those, about 25 per cent are the first in their family to go to university. Linking into the local skills needs they have an engineering course, but the university is worried that because of fee deregulation the cost of that course will discourage local kids from enrolling. That will then put pressure on our manufacturers in making sure that they have the skills they need to continue to grow their businesses. La Trobe University this year welcomed just under 1,400 new students to their campus. What will their numbers be next year? With the government's plan for higher education and its cuts to universities and apprenticeship programs, we just do not know.

Choices for young people in the region are being limited because of this government. What we need to see from government is investment in pathways. We need to ensure that from secondary school through to that first job we are creating pathways and ensuring that people have access to education, whether it be through apprenticeships, TAFE or university. But right now the government has no plans for that and is, in fact, deregulating that and completely smashing what infrastructure we had available.

Suggesting that people should get themselves into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to obtain their skills is simply not fair. The government's logic that taxpayers are paying for 60 per cent of university fees is also misguided, because people who are taxpayers include people who have university degrees.

This government basically does not have a plan to create jobs in this country. The budget they handed down actually smashes jobs in this country. It is a budget that attacks our industry. It is a budget that has no vision.

I did not think I would be standing here and agreeing with some of the employer associations, but I find myself increasingly agreeing with them, because, like them, people in the Labor Party, people on this side of the House, believe that to continue to have a strong economy we need strong businesses with a skilled workforce. From this government what we have seen is basically the tearing up of that social contract. This bill is just one of many that demonstrate this government's ideologically driven opposition to supporting business growth. The minister took just a few minutes to introduce this bill, and we have seen previous speakers standing up and making short statements. Yet what we have not seen from this government is a plan, a long-term plan, to create jobs in this country. To simply say that people will go out and get a better job, when those better jobs do not exist, is just simply wrong.

This bill establishes a body that was doing good work. This bill will not tackle an issue that will continue to be an issue into the future. This bill does not address our growing need for skills. (Time expired)

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (17:09): I never thought I would stand in this House and utter the words 'bring back Gibbons as the member for Bendigo'. Not only did the member for Bendigo run into this House late, but she obviously did not even read the bill nor indeed her own side's amendment. She did not address one iota of the bill before the House. In fact, in her closing comments she said this bill is about establishing AWPA. It is actually about abolishing AWPA. So I would suggest that before the member gets up and makes long-winded statements in this House she should actually try reading a bill and then not just turning up on time but actually understanding what she is debating.

The Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Repeal Bill 2014 repeals the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency Act 2008 and abolishes the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, known as the agency. The agency was established to provide advice in relation to Australia's current and future skills and workforce development needs, based on an economy-wide analysis of industry trends. There is also a range of other functions relating to research and analysis of industry workforce and skills needs, including developing the Skilled Occupations List. In winding down the agency's operations, the agency staff and functions will be transferred to the Department of Industry. I will restate that for members opposite, who seem to think there will be mass sackings. In winding down the agency's operations, the agency staff and functions will be transferred to the Department of Industry. These functions are core public policy activities and therefore do not require an independent statutory framework to be carried out. They are the core business of government.

The change will strengthen resources and the capacity of the Department of Industry to provide targeted advice, to improve accountability and to make sure they interact with the industry that actually provides the jobs. What is critical is that the Department of Industry, the public servants whom the other side seem to have no faith in to provide advice to the government, actually interact with industry and deliver the necessary requirements so that we can create greater prosperity for this nation.

This bill is a critical part of this government's agenda for reforming and streamlining governance arrangements for vocational education and training, as well as rationalising the number of portfolio bodies across government. As a part of these proposed changes, we will facilitate much stronger linkages between the skills and the industry functions of the department. We will improve the accountability by instituting direct reporting lines through the secretary of the department. There will be efficiencies—small efficiencies—associated with the abolition of AWPA, through reductions in corporate overheads and the removal of the AWPA board.

Let's make no bones about it. This is about providing a straight line from industry needs, through to the department, and through to the minister, and then we can expedite the results. This is about stronger engagement. I will bring up one case as an example. As the shadow minister for tourism during the term of the previous government I understood the need for cooks and chefs, food professionals, to be placed back on the Skilled Occupations List. I had had discussions with industry, and industry said that AWPA, who prepare the information for the Skilled Occupations List, just were not listening. Back on 13 December a round table with the restaurant, catering and hospitality industry was put together, and AWPA presented. It is true what AWPA said: of the number of people who come in under the Skilled Occupations List, cooks and chefs were the highest of any occupation coming into Australia. The fundamental problem, though, is that people were taking up the opportunity to come in under that occupation and were then not working in that occupation. I understand that the minister, Senator Cash, has been doing some work in relation to that with the industry. What is key and critical here is the term 'engagement direct with industry' for understanding their concerns and delivering real outcomes.

The abolition of AWPA is only a part of the Australian government's broader VET reform agenda. We have a stronger focus on ensuring our national training system is more responsive to the current and future skills needs of businesses, because it is the businesses that will employ the people involved in the training.

We will introduce a new Industry and Skills Advisory Committee. This new advisory committee will provide industry with a formal role in relation to policy directions and decision making in the national training system and will include both industry representatives and selected senior officials. It will also have the consideration of VET sector regulation to ease the regulatory burden and create more effective and efficient skills and training systems, including examining the standards for providers and regulators to ensure that they better recognise the different levels of risk posed by different providers in enabling VET regulators to deal more effectively with poor quality in the sector to improve confidence in that sector.

So, we are recommending a change. In listening to the comments and the amendment put forward by the member for Cunningham, you would believe that she had absolutely no confidence at all in the Public Service to provide quality advice to the department. I go back to what I said earlier: the responsibilities of the people and public servants involved in AWPA will be transferred back to the department. They will be the same people. When they worked for AWPA she had confidence in their ability to provide quality information to the government; when they work for the department, she has no such confidence. The member also criticised the government for not making this policy announcement with the bells and whistles. Well, the minister undertook at COAG on 3 April to make the announcement. The minister wrote directly to every board member. The minister does not believe in policy by press announcement, like members of the Labor Party opposite; we believe in talking to the affected people, to the industry stakeholders, and working with them to deliver real outcomes.

As an example of that, as I said, on the public statements that were made in relation to the abolition of AWPA on 3 April 2014, at the first session of the COAG Industry and Skills Council meeting the Minister for Industry advised leaders from various industry sectors of the government's intention to roll the functions of AWPA into the department. In fact, the chair of AWPA, Mr Philip Bullock, issued a subsequent statement on 9 April confirming the government's intention. I will quote part of that statement:

In terms of future arrangements, we are pleased that the Minister has decided that many of the functions of AWPA will transfer and be incorporated into the Department of Industry. The agency's secretariat staff are public servants within the Department of Industry which will assist the transfer process. The Government will in due course initiate the necessary legislative changes—

which is what we are doing today. So, we consulted, we engaged and we led, and we are determined to deliver real outcomes. These outcomes are about driving skills reforms with the industry itself in the driving seat—not in the back seat, not left behind at the bus stop but actually in the driver's seat.

The member for Cunningham also asked about the National workforce development strategy 2016. I would like to remind that member that, again, as with all of AWPA's reports, including the National workforce development strategy 2013, the reality is—and I am just looking at this amendment here again—in relation to the critical independent research to government and industry in relation to Australia's current and emerging future skills in the workforce needing to continue to be carried out and made public, the former Labor government never responded to those reports. So, they did their reports, and such is the quality of the work that the former government refused to respond to those reports. So it is somewhat idiotic for a member to walk in here and put this form of an amendment on the table when their own government, the creator of AWPA, did not even bother responding to the reports. I say to the member for Cunningham, like the member for Bendigo: when you walk into this House, please understand what you are doing when you are debating. The shadow minister should have been better informed of the processes and the outcomes and some of the reports that had occurred in the sector that she purports to represent. The fact is that AWPA, while adding research to the skills productivity base, was yet another body and layer of the skills system that Labor had made so confusing and fractured that it made getting solutions to some of the issues raised by industry and other bodies like AWPA so difficult to address.

The National workforce development strategyexamined the workforce needs under four different growth scenarios. The main finding is that Australia's needs for higher-level qualifications will exceed demand for lower-level qualifications. Under the government's bill the department will have responsibility for skills needs forecasting. This will take a variety of forms, from skills lists to discussion documents. It will be used to inform government policy and ensure that training expenditure matches future skills needs. In other words, we will be building a workforce that is actually employable, that will help our nation's economy grow and deliver real outcomes and results.

But scenario planning is not a function required by the AWPA legislation. Whether it was the best way of considering future skills needs will be considered as part of future work planning. The key will be to ensure that the VET and higher education sectors respond to the changing needs of Australia by meeting the needs of jobs, now and into the future. Some of the work that AWPA has done has been first-class. Some of it has required change, and that is what we are undertaking here today. I say to the member opposite that our intention is to reduce corporate overheads, to bring about a more streamlined, interactive forum where industry can engage directly with the department and through to the minister. And if an urgent requirement occurs it will be delivered very quickly.

So, I am concerned by the quality of some of the debate. But I do want to thank the member for Bowman, who rightly pointed out that it was the Labor government who failed to formally respond to any of the reports put forward by AWPA. I want to thank the member for Ryan for a very concise appraisal of the legislation, a speech whereby the member actually understood what was said. Indeed, the member for Banks pointed out that it was we on this side who undertake the process of spending and investing in skills needs better than Labor. The reality is that Labor will never reform the process; they will just throw more money at the process, and they care very little about the outcomes.

The government will not be supporting the amendment, a pious amendment, put forward by the member for Cunningham. We understand what is required because we have been engaging with industry not just in the last nine months of government but indeed the whole way through the period when we were in opposition. That is why we have come to this decision that AWPA needs to go, that we need to bring this body within the confines of the department, and we will continue to engage and deliver real outcomes. Therefore, we reject the amendment and recommend the bill in its original form to the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Mitchell ): The question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr BALDWIN (Paterson—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) (17:23): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (17:24): The Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Bill 2014 and the related bill before the House today go to a very complex issue. Labor understands this very well. This bill will establish a payment scheme for supported employees with intellectual impairment in Australian disability enterprises, commonly known as ADEs, who previously had their wages assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, commonly known as the BSWAT.

ADEs are commercial businesses employing people with disability who need support to stay in paid work. There are almost 200 ADEs across Australia, supporting around 20,000 workers with a disability. Employees are paid a pro rata wage, determined using a wage tool, including the BSWAT, which was developed in 2003. It was designed to measure an employee's productivity and competence in performing a job. It has been used by successive coalition and Labor governments to determine the wages of about half of all workers in ADEs—around 10,000 people.

However, in 2011, two employees challenged the BSWAT in the Federal Court of Australia. Mr Prior and Mr Nojin did not seek compensation for wages lost. They sought a declaration from the court—a declaration they received. The Federal Court found that the tool was indirectly discriminatory against these two employees with an intellectual disability. The Federal Court reasoned that the BSWAT was indirectly discriminatory because a supported employee with an intellectual disability may never be able to meet the competency component measured by the tool. Further representative proceedings are in train. And the legal proceedings in train may take some time to resolve.

In September 2013, during the caretaker period, the Commonwealth sought a three-year exemption from certain sections of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. As I said, this application was made during the caretaker period. It was supported by both sides of the House. The application was made to allow the continued use of the BSWAT in ADEs while the implications of the full Federal Court decisions are worked through and a new wage assessment process investigated.

In April 2014, the Australian Human Rights Commission granted the Commonwealth a 12-month exemption whilst a new wage assessment tool was developed. Labor understands that the Australian Human Rights Commission did not take this decision lightly. The commission considered a number of issues in making its decision for an exemption, such as whether an exemption would progress the objects of the Disability Discrimination Act. Advancing the objectives of the Disability Discrimination Act is rightly the commission's primary concern—objectives such as the elimination of discrimination against people with disability, including in the area of employment, and to ensure that people with disability get equal treatment before the law and that they have the same fundamental rights as the rest of the community.

As I said, this is a very complex issue. Labor fully appreciates the complexities involved. Labor understands why the government has decided to establish the payment scheme through this bill today. And Labor will support the passage of this bill through the House. The payment scheme established by the bill intends to help employees with a disability. The idea of the scheme is to provide some reassurance to supported employees and their families and carers.

From 1 July 2014, former and current employees will be eligible to participate in the scheme in relation to work they have performed in the past. The scheme will essentially provide a top-up payment to eligible people who have had their wages assessed under BSWAT. Importantly, applicants must seek financial counselling and legal advice before their application is assessed. Access to legal advice and financial counselling is funded through the scheme. This is of critical importance to Labor—that people who choose to participate in the scheme do so because they have made an informed decision. The scheme also includes an internal and external review process so that people with a disability have the opportunity to raise any concerns. The accompanying bill, the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014, provides the consequential amendments that need to be made to Commonwealth legislation in light of the new scheme. For example, amendments to the social security law and the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 will ensure the payments are not income tested and so will not reduce the income support payments of supported employees who receive payments under the scheme.

The former Labor government delivered for Australians with disability and their families and carers after a decade of neglect by the previous Liberal government. Labor very strongly believes that people with disability, and their families and carers, deserve the same opportunities as other Australians to participate in the community and to access better education and employment opportunities so they can achieve their goals and aspirations. Just as Labor built Medicare, so Labor built the National Disability Insurance Scheme—already changing the lives of more than 5,000 Australians, as well as the lives of their families and carers.

If rolled out in full and on time, as the Prime Minister has promised to do, the NDIS will deliver support to around 460,000 people with disability and their families and carers. It will give people with disability more choice and control over how they receive this support. The NDIS is also an economic reform that will create jobs and unlock the productivity of people with disability and their carers.

The NDIS is the most significant reform in a generation. It is also the key plank in Labor's broader plan to give Australians with disability a fair go. The National Disability Strategy developed by the previous Labor government, alongside disability advocates, is a 10-year framework to improve the inclusion and participation of people with disability right across our community. Labor championed the National Disability Strategy as the key avenue for Australia to implement obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Labor has been a champion of the rights of people with disability. Sadly, this government has scrapped the position of Disability Discrimination Commissioner. This would have been a short-sighted decision at any time, let alone when the National Disability Insurance Scheme is rolling out across the country. The loss of Graeme Innes as our nation's first full-time Disability Discrimination Commissioner means that, across Australia, people with disability and their families will lose the protection of one of their strongest and most experienced advocates.

When talking to disability stakeholders about the detail of the legislation before the House today, Labor was very disappointed to learn that the government had not consulted with those key stakeholders on the details of the payment scheme they are seeking to establish through this legislation. Labor intends to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to have their say through a Senate legislative inquiry. It is of critical importance that the government get on with the very important job of developing a new wage assessment process—one that does not discriminate against anyone with disability. The government must ensure wage-setting arrangements are nondiscriminatory and fair for all people with disability and they must work very closely with the disability sector to achieve this.

There remains an enormous amount of work to be done and Labor urges the government to get on with that work. As I said, Labor fully appreciates the complexities involved. Labor understands why the government has decided to establish the payment scheme through this legislation today and Labor will support the passage of these bills through the House.

Mr VARVARIS (Barton) (17:33): I am proud to speak in favour of the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Bill 2014. It is a bill worthy of support because the payment scheme it brings into effect will provide remuneration and certainty for thousands of intellectually disabled Australians while the government seeks to reform wage assessment in this vital area of supported employment. Ensuring the viability of supported employment is absolutely paramount to this government's approach to disability. The government is serious about its commitment to the lives of intellectually disabled Australians and to their ability to make a genuine contribution to society through programs provided by Australian disability enterprises. A payment scheme grows out of this serious commitment. The coalition is the champion both of the fair go and of having a go. Those values are central to the philosophy of this bill and all related measures.

The background of the scheme relates to a Federal Court decision of 2012 which found that two employees had been indirectly discriminated against because of the nature of the Business Services Wages Assessment Tool, or BSWAT, under which most intellectually disabled employees of Australian disability enterprises had their wages determined. This finding of indirect discrimination resulted from a comparison of two workers of equal productivity with different kinds of disabilities. It was found that workers with an intellectual disability were significantly disadvantaged in comparison to their physically disabled counterparts in demonstrating their skill and productivity using the questions asked by the BSWAT.

The BSWAT questions were often of an abstract or metacognitive nature, such as 'How do you help out in the workplace?'—meaning that employees with intellectual impairment were disadvantaged by this means of determining workplace competency. Because of the intellectual rather than physical nature of their disability, intellectually disabled Australians were less able to demonstrate their value through the competency measures in the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool. What was of concern to the Commonwealth government was the Federal Court's finding that indirect discrimination was occurring through the use of a wage assessment tool which was not suited to the needs or abilities of people with an intellectual disability.

The central purpose of the scheme is to respond to that finding of indirect discrimination—for the sake of employees of Australian disability enterprises—while a longer term measure is devised. The indirect discrimination arose from the lesser ability of intellectually disabled employees to respond to abstract questions in a way that would be deemed appropriate by those administering the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, even though their answers and the ostensible implications of those answers were not reflective of the way the employees were really completing their work or interacting with co-workers. Furthermore, the threshold for the 'not yet competent' label to be applied to a category of competency was extremely low. If employees were deemed not yet competent for just one of the several parameters of competency, they would be deemed 'not yet competent' for the entire category.

By shifting the focus from the often hazy notion of 'competency' to the more concrete and relevant measure of 'productivity', the government is taking the Federal Court decision into account and setting a new agenda for the new payment tool that will be developed. This is a government that recognises that productivity is the key feature to consider when determining the value of work, especially when less concrete features are difficult to adjudicate in the case of vulnerable individuals with an intellectual impairment. While the government addresses this issue, a payment scheme fulfils the ongoing needs of intellectually disabled employees to receive certainty about their employment and remunerate them for work provided while the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool was being used. It is important to note that, rather than making a judgement about the level or nature of the pro rata wage in question, the Federal Court decision found that the tool used to assess wages had shortcomings that amounted to indirect discrimination. The fairness and relevancy of the wage assessment tool will be the focus of the government's future legislation in this area, rather than a focus on levels of wages in abstract terms.

This scheme, and the initiative to which it is related, holds a particular significance for my electorate of Barton. A couple of months back, I visited the Intellectual Disability Foundation of St George, one such Australian disability enterprise within my electorate of Barton. Through charitable donations, the funding it receives through the Commonwealth government and its own revenue, the Intellectual Disability Foundation operation Ascalon Enterprises provides businesses with reliable packaging and capping services and disabled Barton residents the opportunity to work. Predominately the enterprise requires workers to engage in simple physical tasks such as packing, capping and sealing, working to a retail standard with a focus on quality and safety. By speaking with the employees at Ascalon Enterprises, I saw that for those involved the opportunity to work meant the opportunity to make a contribution to society—to feel valued, useful, and needed.

For those at Ascalon, the work provides a feeling and a quality of life which cannot be achieved by anything other than employment. The work that the Intellectual Disability Foundation of St George provides is so fulfilling and such a positive force for those that work there that there is a high demand to be employed there, with a long waiting list to come on board. That is why Australian disability enterprises are such an important social investment by the government—one that must remain sustainable and grow into the future. It is impossible to emphasise the value of such schemes enough.

This is the sort of quality of life we should be seeking to provide all intellectually disabled Australians who have the ability to undertake this sort of work. The majority of this work is undertaken by Barton residents with an intellectual disability, many of whom would have their wages assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool. Certainly it is important that these employees know that they are really working for a wage; they have a right to be supplied with reasonable and achievable productivity goals and receive a wage for achieving them, in addition to their disability support pension. However, what is even more important than referring to an hourly wage out of context is to consider the package of support that employees receive through their involvement with Australian disability enterprises and the government more generally. Support packages like the disability support pension, disability counselling and on-site care mean that to look at the reward employees receive merely by isolating the wage of an employee to an hourly wage is beside the point. To drastically increase the wage paid to these employees by Australian disability enterprises without doing so according to a reasoned scheme would seriously threaten the viability of operating supported employment at all.

As a government, our priority is undoubtedly the continuation of a scheme that is adding so much value to the lives of 20,000 Australians. It is very important to remember that a large number of employees with an intellectual or physical impairment who work with ADE would not otherwise have found employment in the open labour market. Therefore, the pro rata wage employees receive should be considered in the context that many of these programs run at a loss and operate for the good of their employees. Our payment scheme and our intention to legislate for a new wage assessment scheme will provide certainty for intellectually disabled Australians who may be unsure about the way in which their wages are determined. It does due diligence by taking the Federal Court decision into account, respecting its finding of indirect discrimination and resolving to attend to issues of discrimination as soon as we become aware of them, out of respect for the valued employees of Australian disability enterprises.

This was an area in which the previous Labor government did not legislate, meaning that the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool had been deemed discriminatory in 2012 but Labor left government in late 2013 without responding to the issue. It has taken a coalition government to respond to the Federal Court decision and reconsider the issue of wage assessment. The payment provides the provisional certainty that the sector needs while we will address the shortcomings of the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool and devise a new scheme for assessing pro-rata wages. In alliance with the NDIS, schemes such as these show that the government is serious about providing Australians with a disability with the support, reward and opportunity they need to thrive as full members of our great Australian community. I commend the government on taking the steps not only to devise a new assessment tool for the wages of disabled employees but also to provide a payment in the meantime which gives assurance and certainty to those affected regarding their employment, until a new scheme is devised.

So what makes this scheme commendable and what makes this bill worthy of my colleagues' support? This bill provides certainty to working Australians with an intellectual disability. It provides economic sustainability, as employers cannot afford to provide the kind of one-off payment to a large number of employees that the government is able to provide as a result of this payment scheme. It reassures employees that the government wants to ensure that they are paid appropriately according to a fair scheme, and pay them for past work that may have occurred under an unfair scheme. It responds appropriately to court decisions and respects the mandate that the findings necessitate change for the sake of the employees. It pays valued employees appropriately for genuine services rendered while seeking to maintain the viability of the scheme by taking the pressure off individual employers. Thus, it secures the valuable work of Australian disability enterprises, ultimately for the sake of the 20,000 Australians that Australian disability enterprises employ. It has extremely reasonable, but non-negotiable, deadlines to apply; it has both external and internal review processes; and the terms of the scheme are well expressed to the relevant parties in ways that make sense to them. One of the best facilities of the scheme is its provision of legal and financial advice free of charge to potential recipients as they consider their options. This is one way the specifications of this bill work to provide choice and control for applicants with a disability. This is a voluntary payment which employees have the right to consider as an individual and with the help of nominees and advisers. They also have the ability to seek review of any decisions made in relation to eligibility.

This is a fair scheme, offered in good faith to those employees of Australian disability enterprises with an intellectual disability who have had their wages assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, in order to provide them with certainty and remuneration. By shouldering the cost of a payment scheme, the government is safeguarding the viability of Australian disability enterprises for the sake of intellectually disabled Australians. It is a bill most worthy of support, and I commend the bill to the House.

Ms HALL (Shortland—Opposition Whip) (17:44): These bills, the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Bill 2014 and the related bill, are important legislation. They are legislation the opposition will be supporting.

I listened with some interest to the member for Barton; he said the previous government did not legislate in this area. The previous government was in the process of consulting with the community—consulting with all the players in the space—and was in the process of developing legislation. I forgive the member for Barton; he is only a new member in this place and his ability to assert such information is probably very limited.

Turning to the bill, I would firstly like to say it is imperative that people with intellectual disability be able to maximise their potential and be given the opportunity of being recompensed for the work they do. I previously worked with people with intellectual disability and other disabilities. I know just how important and how valuable it is to people with an intellectual disability to be able to work and be valued in the way other people work and are valued.

The role of government is to put in place a framework within which they are able to do this—where they are recognised, where they are able to be offered employment and where they are able to succeed. I have a very good business enterprise centre in my electorate, the House with No Steps; also operating in my region is Access Industries. The House with No Steps has created opportunities and employment for many people with intellectual disability over a very long period of time, and working for that business enterprise centre has changed the lives of many people with intellectual disability.

This bill will establish a new payment scheme for supported employees with intellectual impairments, in Australian disability enterprises such as the House with No Steps, who previously had their wages assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool. The scheme will essentially provide a top up payment to eligible people who have been assessed under the BSWAT. If eligibility is established, a payment amount will be offered based on half the amount the worker would have been paid by the productivity element of the BSWAT being applied. This new scheme follows a Federal Court ruling that found the BSWAT to be indirectly discriminatory towards two employees with intellectual disability whose wages were assessed using the tool.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has provided the Commonwealth with 12 months exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act while a new wage assessment tool is developed. I would like to strongly encourage the government to work toward finalising that assessment tool and to consult widely with those involved—both those within the business services industry and people with intellectual disability and their advocates—because it is imperative that tool be developed and people with intellectual disability not be left hanging, waiting for it to be completed. The lack of consultation by the government in developing a tool that is going to be truly useful and truly fair worries me. We need to have the maximum possible consultation.

To be eligible for the payment scheme a person must have an intellectual impairment, and have been employed by an ADE and been paid a pro rata wage determined under the assessment tool. They must have required daily support in the workplace from the ADE to maintain their employment. These are very important requirements because, if they are not met, there is really no strong argument for the payment to apply. Applicants must seek financial counselling and legal advice before their application is assessed. Access to legal advice through Legal Aid, and to financial counselling through the Commonwealth Financial Counselling service, is funded through the scheme. That is to ensure the person with intellectual disability actually gets the information and the advice they need to make the decision. If a person does sign up—if the applicant accepts an offer—they will cease to be a group member of the representative proceedings and will be unable to make further claims in relation to the assessment of wages under the tool. It is imperative that the person gets the right sort of advice and has that legal and financial counselling, so that they or their advocate can determine whether it is in their interest to go that way. The scheme will remain open until 15 November 2015.

The Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014 provides consequential amendments that need to be made to the Commonwealth legislation in light of the new scheme. For example, amendments to the tax law will ensure payments under the scheme are eligible income for the lump sum in arrears tax offsets. Amendments to the social security laws and the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 will ensure the payments are not income tested and so will not reduce the income support payments of supported employees who receive payments under the scheme. The confidentiality provisions in the social security law will be adjusted to make sure that personal information can be obtained and disclosed for the purpose of administering the new scheme.

As you can see, this is quite complex legislation and it is legislation that needs to be put in place so that supported employees with intellectual disabilities in Australian disability enterprises, who previously had their wage assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, will be in a position of security and will have the knowledge that the payments received will be in line with the law.

There are almost 200 Australian disability enterprises across Australia supporting around 20,000 workers with disabilities. That is a very significant number of disability enterprises and a very significant number of workers. These workers really need to be protected by legislation to ensure that they are not exploited, to ensure that they get the recompense that they deserve, to ensure that they enjoy a good quality of life and to ensure that they can go to work each day and receive the same sorts of rewards that other people receive when they go to work.

The Business Services Wage Assessment Tool was first developed in 2003 and the tool measures an employee's productivity and competence in performing a job. It is used to determine the wages of about half of all Australian disability enterprises. However, as has been mentioned by previous speakers, two employees recently challenged the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool in the Federal Court. The Federal Court found that the tool discriminated against these employees and that, hence, it could discriminate against other employees. The Federal Court found that a supported employee with an intellectual disability may never be able to meet the competency component measured by the tool, so further representative proceedings are in train.

This brings me to the comments by the member for Barton. This shows that this is not an open and shut process; rather, it is an ongoing process. There has been a 12-month exemption put in place because this is state legislation. The exemption is giving 12 months for the final tool to be developed and I really hope that it is done with the proper level of community consultation. That exemption was granted in April this year.

This is a very complex issue, as has been stated by previous speakers in this debate, and Labor understands that. We want the best legislation to be put in place and for the best protection to be provided to workers with an intellectual disability. We understand that it is because this issue is so complex that the government has decided to establish the payment scheme set out in this bill today. The idea of the scheme is to provide some reassurance to support employees, their families and their carers. The payment scheme will commence on 1 July this year and that is why it is quite important for it to pass through the House. Former and current employees will be eligible to participate in the scheme and to receive payment in relation to work they have performed in the past. It is critically important to Labor that people who choose to participate in the scheme do so on an informed basis. That goes back to the financial and legal advice funded through the scheme. It is so important that employees are able to access that.

I encourage the government to get on with this very important job of developing a new wage assessment process that does not discriminate against anyone with any type of disability. I encourage the government to consult widely. I know that we on this side of the House want this to go to a Senate committee for an inquiry to look at all aspects of it. I think that is very prudent. I think that the overall emphasis of any legislation in the area of disability—and particularly in the area of intellectual disability—should be ensuring that the people who will be covered by the legislation will be advantaged, not disadvantaged. I think it should be ensuring that the legislation will provide protection, not promote discrimination or set up a situation where people with an intellectual disability are exploited and receive low wages for the job they do and for their level of productivity. So, as the parliamentary secretary has said, the opposition will be supporting this legislation.

I will be watching very carefully to ensure that the government makes sure that fairness is encapsulated in the final legislation when the assessment tool is finally developed. I conclude by saying consult widely with everybody involved in this area. It is important legislation and we need to maximise the potential of people with an intellectual disability. This can best be done by having a proper assessment tool in place so that they get their recompense for the work that they do.

Mr HOGAN (Page) (17:59): I commend the previous speaker. It is a very important bill and it is quite a complex issue that we are talking about. Sometimes when you talk about issues of fairness and equity, it can have the exact opposite effect. That is obviously why this bill is being considered. As we know, this bill is establishing a payment scheme for supported employees with intellectual impairments in Australian disability enterprises who previously had their wages assessed under the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool.

The payment scheme will help provide ongoing employment for employees with a disability. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you are aware—because you are very active in your community and very well respected—that there are 193 organisations operating Australian disability enterprises in communities across Australia, supporting 20,000 workers with moderate to severe levels of disability. You might be interested to know that, as in all communities, I have a number that do absolutely fantastic work. What they provide these workers with disabilities cannot be measured in financial gain; they provide them with a sense of purpose and with social interaction and provide respite for carers and parents. I cannot name all the organisations in my community—there are so many—but some are Caringa, Windara in Casino, Summerland House, the House with No Steps, which operates extensively throughout my community.

Another enterprise is a group called Multitask. The people who run Multitask were so concerned about the issues that this bill is responding to that they asked me to go to visit them and their workers to see what they do and the benefit it provides everyone in that facility. Graham Mapstone, the CEO of Multitask, invited me out. Raelene Vincent, Kim Vincent and Joe World showed me around. I had the pleasure of meeting the 40 or so people working there that day. They all came up to me and pleaded that 'We don't want to lose the option of coming here. We want Multitask to be able to offer this service.' There are many reasons beyond the financial that they are there, but they were so passionate about it. After my visit, Miss Leanne Maree Butt rang my office and insisted that she come to see me to reinforce the importance of the organisation. She wrote me a poem, which she has asked me to read out in parliament, and I will. The poem is headed 'Challenge Multitask Meeting with Politicians'.

Just come and sit down for a while or two,

Politicians, as well as us usual people,

If you take our jobs away from us,

It leaves us poor and bored,

For there is nothing to adore.

Sit for a while

With a happy go lucky smile

Upon our facial dials.

Dear politicians just think for a while

And leave our jobs for us, please,

So that we can wear happy go lucky smiles

Upon our facial dials for a fairly long time.

It is a lovely poem and I think it epitomises the passion and the reward she gets from going to Multitask—the benefits for her from going there two or three times a week are intangible. She engages with her friends there, and she has been doing it for many years.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Broadbent ): I should say to the member for Page that that was excellent.

Mr HOGAN: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Some of the people I met there have been going to this place for decades. Their very elderly parents were with them, and these parents were pleading with me, saying, 'Please don't let the changes that are mooted mean that this won't happen any more.' Sometimes their children were in their 20s and 30s and even older, but the benefits they get—I know, as a compassionate person, you understand this, Mr Deputy Speaker—are not financial rewards but all the intangibles.

Due to legal proceedings concerning the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, which may take some time to resolve, the government has rightly decided to establish a payment system to give reassurance to supported employees, their families and carers to remove perceived liability that could impact the ability of Australian disability enterprises to deliver ongoing employment support. The payment scheme provided by this bill will allow registration from July for payments to former and current employees in relation to work they have performed in the past. The payment scheme will deliver payments to eligible workers as quickly as possible. If a person is eligible, the payment will be calculated based on half the amount the worker would have been paid, had the productivity element only of the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool been applied.

If the payment amount works out to be greater than zero, the eligible applicant will receive a letter setting out an offer to pay that amount and the time in which the applicant may accept the offer. During the acceptance period, the applicant must seek independent financial counselling and legal advice, because we want everyone to go into this informed and aware. Access to a legal adviser and a financial counsellor is funded through the scheme, and certificates from the financial counsellor and the legal adviser must accompany the applicant's acceptance of the offer. Again, as you can see, Mr Deputy Speaker, we are doing everything we can to ensure that people go into this very informed and comfortable with what is going on.

Payment will be made once valid acceptance has been lodged by an eligible applicant. To ensure people with a disability have the opportunity to provide further information or raise any concerns, the scheme will have both internal and external review processes. It is the applicant's choice—again, very important—whether he or she receives a payment from the payment scheme. If the applicant accepts an offer, he or she will cease to be a group member of the representative proceedings and will be unable to make any further claims in relation to the assessment of wages under the tool. In the longer term, a new wage assessment process will be developed for use in Australian disability enterprises. This will obviously be ongoing over the next little while. It is also something that is going to have to be done very carefully, because this is one of those situations where we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a very important sector of our community for people with a disability and we must make sure that it survives. However, the government's immediate priority is to ensure minimal disruption to the employment of supported employees. The payment scheme established by this bill demonstrates our ongoing commitment to improving certainty for those involved.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (18:08): The reason that we are debating the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme Bill 2014 and related bill in this parliament is because of two men, two Australians: Mr Nojin and Mr Prior. Mr Nojin is a worker who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He worked in an 'Australian disability enterprise'—a term of art used in the sector. He worked for a place called Challenge. One of the services that were offered by Challenge in which Mr Nojin was employed was secure document destruction. It is not the kind of business that is limited to disability enterprises but a business of the kind that you see generally in the office world. There were some other services that the enterprise offered but they were often on a fairly small scale.

Mr Nojin was asked to do a number of tests and tasks when he arrived there that corresponded with some of the work that he did. He was asked to collate pamphlets, which involved inserting fliers into pamphlets; pen assembly, which involved fitting a ballpoint ink insert into a wooden pen casing; and feeding one crate of pre-sorted documents through a mechanical shredder. The court ultimately said—and I will come to the court case in a moment—that these tasks were simple and repetitive and involved no element of decision making. There was no need to apply abstract concepts to the work that was being done and, in each case, the work involved simple physical manipulation of limited items.

Mr Prior, the other worker who is the reason that we have this bill, is someone who is classified as legally blind, although he did have some vision. He was also classified as having a mild to moderate intellectual disability. He worked for a different enterprise and, at the time of his first assessment under the test—the assessment tool that is the subject of this bill and the subject of the court cases—his time was split evenly between mowing lawns and some other general gardening tasks. At the time of his second assessment, 90 per cent of his time was actually spent mowing lawns. He was a blind worker, with a mild intellectual disability, who was mowing lawns. The other 10 per cent of his time was spent raking and disposing of leaves, and he worked under direct supervision. When he went to work, they timed him and assessed how good he was at doing this work. It was found that he took 14 minutes to mow a five by 10 metre area of lawn and his supervisor took nine minutes to mow a similar area—so he took longer but it was not even twice as long as his supervisor. Again, you can look at the tasks that he was performing and, like Mr Nojin in the document centre, you can see that they were relatively simple and straightforward tasks that they were required to perform.

Then came the question of how much to pay these two workers, one of whom was mowing lawns and the other of whom was working collating documents and shredding documents and the like. This is when the enterprises applied what is called the BSWAT, Business Services Wage Assessment Tool, which is the subject of this legislation. When the enterprises put them through that assessment and applied that tool, they asked them questions that bore no relevance to the work that Mr Nojin and Mr Prior were doing, but it had a huge impact on them. When they were asked some of the questions—and I will give examples of some of them in a minute—these two intellectually disabled workers scored low; in fact, for some of the tests they scored zero. As a result, their pay was substantially cut.

Mr Nojin, for example, was assessed as competent for everything, except when they asked him questions like 'What workplace meetings do you attend, and what are these meetings for?' I think this is something that everyone who works in an office anywhere in Australia probably asks themselves a lot of the time, but they asked him and he could not give an acceptable answer and so he scored zero on the test for that part. They asked him questions like, 'What are some other jobs that people do here?' Again, it was not very evident that it related in any way to the work that he was doing. He could not answer it, so he scored zero.

Mr Prior was also asked questions which he found difficult to answer because of his intellectual disability and which were not related to the mowing of lawns that he was doing. For example, they asked him, 'How can you help others at work?' He replied that he would try not to get involved—and apparently that was not a good answer and so he was marked down. As a result of going through these tests and scoring zero for a number of things that were not related to the work that he was doing, Mr Nojin ended up being paid $1.85 an hour for doing work for an enterprise that he, by all accounts, including the account of his supervisor, was doing very, very well. It was just that when this tool was applied to him and he scored zero on a number of things, he lost money. It was the same with the other worker. As a result, they very, very bravely took the matter to court.

They took the matter to court believing that they were productive workers who were being massively underpaid, courtesy of a tool that the government had in fact approved. They argued that it was unfair and discriminatory, because someone who had an intellectual disability was never going to do well on that test and was always going to lose money, even though they could do the job very, very well. In fact, Mr Prior, the lawn mower, at the time of the case going to trial had left that job and was working at Stawell Drycleaners, earning five times the wage that he had previously been earning. The full court of the Federal Court said to these two workers, 'You are right. This tool discriminates against you and this system that we have in place does not allow for you as workers with a disability to be paid properly in accordance with your productivity. In fact, by definition, especially if you are a worker with an intellectual disability, you will end up being worse off.' So they won. They were two courageous employees with a disability who took on the system and won. The full court of the Federal Court said, 'Yes, you're right. You deserve to be paid more.'

It takes a lot of guts to stand up and be the first ones to go through a legal challenge, but they did it. They did it not just for themselves but also for all those other tens of thousands of workers with a disability who also feel that they are being underpaid at the moment. Those workers have begun a class action to say, 'Just as Mr Nojin and Mr Prior got their just entitlements by going through the courts, so too are we entitled to do that.' This class action, for up to 10,000 workers, is underway.

It is because of that class action that we are seeing this bill. It is because the government now realises that, if Mr Nojin and Mr Prior were successful and were entitled to the basic principle of being paid in accordance with how good your work is, perhaps all of these other workers are as well. So, in what is nothing more than an attempt to derail this class action and disadvantage up to 10,000 workers with a disability in this country who are hoping for justice, the government has brought in this bill. The solicitor representing these employees with a disability calls this an abuse of power—and she is right. She says that it will mean that those up to 10,000 workers who have a disability are likely, if they are successful in their claim, to have their compensation and their payments, the wages for their productive work, cut by about half. In other words, this bill is being brought in to head off a class action being brought by up to 10,000 workers with a disability.

In that respect, I am not surprised to see the government take action to ensure that the most vulnerable of workers do not get what they are legally entitled to, like Mr Nojin and Mr Prior did, but I must say I am surprised that Labor is supporting them. I am surprised that Labor is supporting the derailing of a class action being brought on behalf of up to 10,000 employees with a disability. I hear some hope in the comments from the Labor speakers that this matter will go to a Senate inquiry and they will look at it. If, when this goes to the Senate, given that Labor and Liberal are going to vote it through here, the Senate inquiry does not change their minds, at a minimum Labor should look at how to protect those 10,000 workers who currently have a class action on foot. Otherwise, Labor will be responsible for saying to those 10,000 workers, 'You are not entitled to the same justice and victory that Mr Nojin and Mr Prior got.' Labor will be saying to them, 'While those two got through the gate early and, my goodness, a court said they were being underpaid and as workers with a disability they should be entitled to payment in accordance with how they contribute to the workplace, no, we agree with the government that you don't have the right to your day in court and that you should be forced into a humiliating settlement of about half of what you otherwise might have been entitled to.'

It appears to be the case that, unfortunately, this bill will get through this House, but I am not without hope that the process of the Senate inquiry, and perhaps a moment's reflection, will lead the opposition to understand that this is an unnecessary kick in the guts for up to 10,000 workers with a disability, at a minimum, let alone what it is going to mean for all of those who come afterwards. Everyone in this chamber and in the other place would agree, without a shadow of a doubt, that we need a system at work that encourages employees with a disability to get into work and stay in work. I think that would be universally shared amongst everyone. The question is: in this instance, with this bill, how much do you pay them? Do you pay them in accordance with their productive capacity and what they can contribute to a workplace? Do you say, 'How do you stack up compared with a worker who does not have a disability? Or do you say, 'We'll apply a test that allows you to be paid much, much less if you have an intellectual disability'? That is what this bill is trying to get around. It is trying to erase the significance of Mr Nojin and Mr Prior, who took courageous action to hold a government to account. They deserve to be applauded and supported by this parliament; so does everyone involved in the class action who is following in their footsteps on the basis of their significant decision.

I conclude by repeating: it comes as no surprise that the coalition wants to take away the rights of low-paid workers, but I urge the opposition to have a rethink before this bill passes the Senate and to choose to stand up for those workers who are currently seeking justice through the courts and seeking the same right that every one of us would ask for, which is, 'Pay me according to the worth of the work that I do, not who you think I am.'

Ms LEY (Farrer—Assistant Minister for Education) (18:22): I am delighted to sum up this bill on behalf of the Minister for Social Services. These bills deliver on the government's priority to ensure minimal disruption to the employment of supported employees. The payment scheme established by the bills demonstrates our ongoing commitment to improving outcomes for supported employees, their families and carers. I would like to note the government's appreciation for the opposition's support of this legislation. I would like to recognise the kind remarks by speakers on both sides of the House and recognise too every member of this place and their support for those who work in supported enterprises and those with disabilities entering, leaving or participating in the workplace. These important bills will provide Australian disability enterprises and the 20,000 workers they support with greater certainty to operate into the future. I thank the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Broadbent ): The question is that this bill be now read a second time.

A division having been called and the bells having been rung—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: As there are fewer than five members on the side for the noes in this division, I declare the question resolved in the affirmative in accordance with standing order 127. The names of those members who are in the minority will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

Question agreed to, Mr Bandt and Mr Wilkie voting no.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Ms LEY (Farrer—Assistant Minister for Education) (18:28): by leave—I move:

That this bill now be read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms LEY (Farrer—Assistant Minister for Education) (18:30): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms KATE ELLIS (Adelaide) (18:30): I rise to outline that the opposition cannot and will not support the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill 2014 in its current form. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House declines to give the Bill a second reading as:

(1) the Government has failed to provide sufficient information about the impact on families of the changes to the Child Care Benefit;

(2) the Government has not completed an assessment of impacts on workforce participation of the changes to the Child Care Benefit;

(3) the changes to the Child Care Benefit should not be legislated just weeks before the Productivity Commission inquiry into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning provides its interim report;

(4) families have not had a chance to have their say on these changes; and

(5) for these reasons, calls on the Government to remove the changes to the Child Care Benefit, set out in Item 2 of Schedule 1, from this Bill, to allow separate and fully informed consideration by the Parliament of the changes to the Child Care Rebate and the Child Care Benefit."

I move this amendment because this is a bill before the House that is built on total and utter hypocrisy. It is hypocrisy because this comes from the Prime Minister who promised 'no cuts to education' but since being elected has announced the biggest ever cuts to schools and massive cuts to universities and is now attacking the earliest part of our education system through these and other cuts to early childhood education and care.

It is a bill based on hypocrisy because the Prime Minister himself wrote to childcare centres across the country in the lead-up to the election promising to address affordability and saying that caps and freezes on childcare assistance would have the impact of 'increasing out-of-pocket costs for families'. But everything this government has done is driving up the cost of child care. Now they have the audacity to come into this parliament and introduce exactly what they were out there campaigning against in the lead-up to the last election.

Ultimately, how can those opposite come in here and push ahead with a paid parental leave scheme that will deliver $50,000 cheques to millionaires while at the same time introducing this bill attacking the existing childcare support that people who earn just $42,000 a year rely upon each and every day? Members opposite might get upset about that—that they are supporting handing out large cheques to those wealthy families who do not need them. But then they come in here and attack low- and middle-income families in this bill which those opposite have the audacity to support.

We also know that this is a government that set up a Productivity Commission inquiry to inform any changes to the childcare system but is today coming in here and proposing significant changes and drastic cuts just weeks before we will see the Productivity Commission's draft report. There is hypocrisy in this bill, because the Prime Minister says that it is a priority for this government to improve women's workforce participation but today his government has introduced a bill that cuts modest, means tested support for low- and middle-income families and women. Those are the very same women for whom the cost of child care is the biggest barrier to them returning back to work.

This Prime Minister said:

We will make child care more accessible and more affordable for Australian parents.

But in this bill he is doing exactly the opposite. He is hitting the family childcare assistance that so many thousands of Australian families rely upon. We also know that the minister at the table told this parliament in 2010 that removing indexation would:

… further increase the financial pressure on Australian families who are already struggling to meet the costs of child care.

But that is exactly what this minister and government are doing in this very bill.

We know that more than 978,000 families across Australia rely on childcare support on a daily basis, and each and every one of them could stand to lose if this bill is allowed to proceed in its current form. Before the election, the government promised more affordable child care. If they were serious, if this were not just another one of the mistruths they peddled to the Australian public in order to get elected, they would not have cut almost $1 billion from early childhood education and care since coming to office. But that is exactly what they have done: $450 million for outside school hours care—gone; $157 million for family day care services—gone; support to help parents complete study and get back to work—cut; programs to increase the number of childcare places—gone; Indigenous child and family centre funding—gone; and support to raise the wages of educators—gone. And now we see before the parliament an attack on the very backbone of the childcare support system—the childcare rebate and the childcare benefit have been cut. They have been cut by those who hypocritically went around campaigning against measures to pause the childcare rebate.

I want to talk for a moment about the measures in this bill and the impact they will have on the childcare rebate. Never before have we seen moves to cap the childcare rebate come before this parliament without that funding being directly reinvested into early childhood education and care. Because of this freeze 74,000 families will reach the childcare rebate cap in 2014-15, and 150,000 families will reach the CCR cap in 2016-17—a total of around 15 per cent of families.

The government knows the impact of this cap will grow in time through bracket creep, but the savings put forward on CCR alone—freezing the cap until 2016-17—will see over $106 million cut from childcare assistance for Australian families. When we were in government we massively increased the cap on the childcare rebate from $4,354 to $7,500. The remarks the assistant minister made about Labor in the past freezing the cap on CCR are quite true, but it was done only temporarily and only ever to offset the cost of important investment in improving the quality and affordability of child care by contributing towards the National Quality Framework and towards wage increases for low-paid educators in order to reduce turnover in the sector.

In opposition, the now government opposed freezing the CCR cap, even when the money was to be reinvested into the childcare sector. Before the election, the now Prime Minister personally wrote to every childcare centre across Australia about the impact capping the childcare rebate would have on families, saying it would mean 'increasing out-of-pocket costs for families'. Yet today that is exactly what he is doing. This Prime Minister and this government are once again doing exactly the opposite after the election to what they told the Australian public they would do.

Childcare support is absolutely essential to provide a financial incentive for parents to re-enter the workforce, particularly mothers. The cuts that are before the parliament will mean that many parents will simply not be able to afford to return to work. This will have huge impacts on productivity, on workforce participation and on women's superannuation savings later in life. We know that once a family reaches the cap for each child, there is no more assistance for child care and they must meet the full cost, and there will be 150,000 families in this situation as a result of this bill and this government's hypocrisy when it comes to the childcare rebate.

Labor does not support cuts to child care. What we see before us now are savings, plain and simple. There is no reinvestment, and there are no new programs and no improvements to services. There are just cuts, and massive cuts at that.

This is a proposal of government and they must take responsibility for it. If the government is listening, and they do respond to our call to split this bill, we will outline our opposition to these childcare rebate cuts and the impact they have, but we will not prevent them from progressing through the parliament.

What I want to particularly focus on is the outrageous attacks that this bill contains on our childcare benefit system. Never before has any government even thought about attacking the means-tested and targeted childcare benefit payment. To understand the impact, and just how outrageous and retrograde this measure really is, it is important that we look at the childcare benefit—who is receiving it and what it goes towards. This is a payment that starts to cut out when families earn just $42,000. That is who this government is attacking in this measure. It is a payment that tapers out as income rises. It is a modest, targeted and means-tested payment. For many women and families this payment means the difference between being able to afford to go to work or not. It is fair and it makes sure that the most help goes to those who need it most.

What better example of just how twisted this government's priorities are than the fact that under the Prime Minister's signature paid parental leave policy they are quite happy to send $50,000 cheques to millionaires? If you want to lift women's workforce participation, everyone knows that you target assistance to low- and middle-income earners. That is where the government can make the biggest impact. But what are they doing for low- and middle-income earners? They are cutting and attacking the modest, targeted childcare benefit that these families rely on.

Instead of investing where it counts, this government is attacking where it will hurt the most. Cuts to childcare benefit —the targeted, means-tested payment for low- and middle-income families, who all too often bear the brunt of this government's attacks—totalling $230 million will permanently decrease the affordability of child care.

The minister opposite knows this. On 11 September 2012, she said:

There are parents having to make the heartbreaking decision to leave the workforce because their wages do not cover the cost of child care.

Yet in government they introduce this never before seen attack on the childcare benefit. On another occasion, the minister said:

We have no intention to make childcare less affordable and every intention to make it more affordable.

Minister, I ask what the intention is with this piece of legislation, because it will make child care less affordable, it will cripple the workforce participation of many families and many women out there, and it will mean that some of the children who have the most to benefit from critical early-childhood education are denied the opportunity to get just that.

It is not families on high incomes who will decide that the cost of child care simply makes going to work unviable. It is people who work in hospitality, in retail, in agriculture, and many of the heath sector workers. They are the ones who this measure will hit hardest. We simply do not know exactly what impact this unprecedented attack on the childcare benefit will have, and we do not know because the government simply did not bother to find out. The education department says that more than half a million families will have their childcare assistance cut because of these childcare benefit changes. But that is where the information stops. Whilst the department has said that 'around 500,000 families will receive less childcare benefit' as a result of this proposal, we do not know exactly who is impacted, where they live, how much they earn, what jobs they do, and what impact this will have on workforce participation. It is arrogant, it is heartless, and it is deeply irresponsible for this government to have made a decision of this scale—one that has the potential to impact up to one million families—without having any meaningful information and without bothering to do any modelling on what the impact of it will be.

Instead, this government is trying to rush changes to the childcare benefit past the parliament in a sneaky and underhanded way. This is not good enough. The government needs to come clean about the facts before even asking this parliament to consider this bill. As the deputy secretary of the education department told estimates, 'We have not done that level of analysis.' They do not know who it will affect, do not know how badly they will be affected and do not know what the impacts on workforce participation will be. I say it is not good enough to bring this bill to this parliament when you have not bothered to do your homework. I say that the Australian public expects better from this parliament and expects better from this government than this cruel and underhanded attack. It shows arrogance and utter disregard for Australian families that the government would press ahead with these changes without undertaking a proper assessment of the financial impact that this is going to have on Australians.

The government is trying to make changes before the community even has an opportunity to understand their impact. In the five days that stakeholders were given to comment on this bill when it was referred to committee there was an incredible response. It was as though the Prime Minister had declared war on parents and children, saying it was some kind of emergency. But so retrograde are these cuts that stakeholders have rallied in just those five days. I want to share some of the thoughts of stakeholders who have actually had the chance to be consulted, unlike the parents and families across Australia. Early Childhood Australia said:

Freezes to the Child Care Benefit thresholds will have a significant impact on low and middle income families accessing early childhood education and care services and should not be supported.

The National Welfare Rights Network's submission on the bill said:

The government has announced a budget that hits families on low to middle incomes the hardest (eg by proposing to cut family tax benefit B payments for single parents with children over 6). This Bill only adds to the financial strain on families and has the potential to undermine their ability to access child care.

Particularly telling was the business perspective, pointing out, again, the government's twisted and wrong priorities. We heard from the Australian Industry Group in its submission on this bill:

The Government's proposed 'gold plated' Paid Parental Leave (PPL) Scheme should be abandoned and the existing PPL Scheme retained. This would allow additional funding to be devoted to child care measures. If additional funding was available through the abandonment of the proposed PPL Scheme, the measures in this Bill may no longer be necessary.

So, if those opposite are looking for a solution, the Australian Industry Group has put forward one option right there—an alternative to cutting the support that is so critically important for low- and middle-income families.

It is also utterly illogical for the government to make these significant changes to the childcare benefit at this time, at the time when their very own Productivity Commission inquiry into child care and early childhood learning is underway. The PC inquiry is due to hand down its draft report in just weeks—in July—and its final report in October this year. The government has put in train its own process for making changes to child care that are ridiculously undermined by pursuing this bill at this time.

The minister has said countless times that the Productivity Commission review will solve issues of affordability, availability and flexibility. If she really believed that, though, she would not be undermining and pre-empting the entire inquiry with the drastic and terrible measures in this bill. There was more hypocrisy from the minister when we heard now Assistant Minister Sussan Ley say in September 2012:

We have a very sensible approach to ask the Productivity Commission to examine those settings, to have a look at the entire world of female participation in the workforce—usually it is female—and at the cost and availability of child care.

These changes to the childcare benefit will create uncertainty for parents and for the sector. And this has not been missed. The submission to the bill by Goodstart said:

Goodstart believes that while the inquiry is underway, current policy settings and indexation should be maintained to ensure affordability for families.

And the Community Child Care Co-operative of New South Wales said:

To make such changes in the context of a wide ranging review into the provision of early education and care in Australia (Productivity Commission Inquiry) seems to be contradictory to the development of sensible, well developed policy.

Also, the government promised that the Productivity Commission review would at least maintain the same 'funding envelope' as is currently dedicated to child care. But this is a government desperately trying to reduce the size of that envelope by cutting $1 billion from childcare since coming to office. Any responsible government would not even pursue these wide-reaching childcare benefit changes without understanding the full impact, without receiving its own Productivity Commission review report first, and without letting families have their say on an issue that is going to be of such critical importance to their workforce participation.

Cuts to childcare benefit will have a huge impact on the workforce participation of parents, particularly mothers and particularly those with more than one child or those who are low- or middle-income earners. Research shows that the relationship between childcare affordability and women's workforce participation is strong—that a one per cent increase in the gross childcare price results in a decrease in a mother's employment rate of about 0.7 per cent. And lower-income families have been proven to be the first to drop out of work as childcare costs increase. This was a point the Australian Childcare Alliance made when they said:

In the 2013 ACA What Parents Want Survey 48 per cent of respondents indicated that they would decrease their usage of childcare or withdraw their child completely if out-of-pocket childcare fees increased by 10 per cent.

Now, we know that the Prime Minister has the wrong priorities. We know that attacking existing practical support for low- and middle-income families and women returning to work at the same time as continuing to argue for the $50,000 payments in paid parental leave for high-income earners is just plain wrong. We know it, the Australian public knows it, and I am sure that some of those opposite might be able to see that that is a clear indication of badly twisted priorities.

The government also looks set to provide taxpayer funding for nannies and au pairs, specifically asking the Productivity Commission to look at how it could be done, even though we know that nannies are one of the most expensive forms of care and that they are not covered by the National Quality Framework. Just like the rest of this unfair, cruel and heartless budget, these childcare cuts will hit those who can least afford it. Early Childhood Australia modelling on the combined impact of the proposed childcare benefit and childcare rebate changes indicates a family on less than $60,000 with one child in care will be out of pocket by an additional $1,800 a year, and a family on $100,000 with one child in care would be out of pocket by an extra $3,600 a year by 2016-17, taking into account these changes and the rising cost of care.

Of course, maybe we should not be surprised by the hypocrisy of the Abbott government when it comes to child care and early childhood education. We have had enough evidence to suggest that this is a very strong pattern. We have seen ongoing and constant attacks on the childcare sector. We have seen the Abbott government declare war on family day care services, with the budget cutting $157 million from assistance to family day care services, which will be passed on to parents through higher fees and will lead to family day care educators closing down. We know that there are more than 400 family day care services and 140,000 children in family day care across Australia. Family Day Care Australia has estimated this one cut, this one attack, will drive up fees by $35 per child per week.

Childcare benefit, childcare rebate, family day care—all of them cut, all of them attacked by this government, who said 'no cuts to education'. Sadly, it does not end there. In one of the most despicable examples of attacking those that can least afford it, of making those that are out there struggling in our community do the heavy lifting resulting from this government's unfair budget, the budget contains changes to the jobs, education and training child care fee assistance. These changes will limit the number of places for those people who are on income support, who are out there studying, trying to get back into the workforce so that they can get off the welfare payments the Treasurer claims he would like Australians to get off so quickly. They will lose access to their JET child care payment. The budget caps assistance at $8 per hour and cuts the maximum accessible hours from 50 to 36 per week. Again, this is total hypocrisy from a government who claim that they want to see people out there in the workforce yet are cutting every support to help them get there.

We saw earlier that this government will not hold back when it comes to attacking the education sector. We saw the Abbott government cut $450 million from outside school hours care. This money would have funded new places, new services and extended hours and would have delivered better programs. We know that work does not finish the moment the school bell rings at three o'clock. Outside school hours care is a necessity if people are going to be able to continue to participate in the workforce. After stagnating under the Howard government, outside school hours places increased by 100,000 under Labor, with over 335,000 children currently in care. There is a shortage of outside school hours care places in many areas across the country, and this savage cut of $450 million—from a government who said no cuts to education and who said that they would make child care more accessible and affordable—will make it harder for parents with school age children to return to work.

Continuing the pattern, the government has cut the $5 million Child Care Accessibility Fund, despite receiving grant applications from councils across Australia looking to increase childcare places in their local area, looking to tackle the waiting lists that meant that people could not take up work opportunities. This funding was to be used to create new places, expand centres, cut planning and development red tape, free up vacant land for childcare centres or incorporate child care into schools and TAFEs.

Perhaps in one of the lowest blows on limiting the access to early childhood education and care for those children who have the most to benefit from it, this government also discontinued funding for the Indigenous child and family centres which were being set up across Australia in the areas they were required in the most, making it even harder to close the gap for these children.

One thing I hope we all know in this parliament is that the first five years are critically important to a person's life outcomes. We have seen all the research. We know that 90 per cent of brain development occurs in the first three years alone. This is why early childhood education and care is so important, and why Labor worked so hard to reform the sector, to increase the funding available, to increase quality and to work to increase staff retention and ensure that we value the educators. Research also shows that early childhood education is particularly important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is why the government's attack on childcare affordability—particularly on the childcare benefit and through JET child care funding—will have such incredibly damaging long-term consequences.

Australian studies show that children who attend preschool or kindergarten go on to score significantly better in their year 3 NAPLAN tests. This is also backed up by international research that shows that Australian students with one year of pre-primary education achieve more highly in year 4 reading, maths and science. We know how important this is. We know that this is one of the best investments that this country can make to ensure that children from disadvantaged backgrounds go on to have improved health outcomes, educational outcomes and social outcomes. Yet this government is intent to slam the door shut in the face of the Australian children who need them and need this support the most.

Labor will be doing what the government has not. We are demanding that this government produce detailed information about the financial impact these changes will have on Australian families, and we will be talking to communities about what impact these measures will have on them. We will be talking to parents looking to return to the workforce to find out whether these changes, these attacks on the childcare benefit, will take away the financial benefit from working—and to find out just how much extra they will be forced to pay. We will find out what stakeholders and employers think of these changes. Unlike this government—who seem intent on undermining their own childcare review by making drastic cuts to the system when the first report is due in just a few weeks—we think that the childcare review report should be available for consideration before major changes to the existing childcare system.

Now it is up to the government to do the right thing—to listen to what Australians actually have to say about these cuts to their childcare support. I challenge those members opposite—each and every one of those who will rise and speak on this bill—to justify how they are defending the Prime Minister's non-means-tested paid parental leave scheme but supporting these cuts to modest and targeted assistance for low- and middle-income families. It is a challenge they will struggle to rise to here tonight. But, even more—and even more importantly—it is a challenge few of them would be brave enough to rise to in their own communities, at their own local street corner meetings or in their own local shopping centres. How can those opposite stand up say, 'We will support $50,000 cheques to wealthy families who have a baby, but we will support cuts to the modest, targeted and means-tested childcare benefit that goes to families on as little as $42,000 per annum'?

I challenge those opposite to say how those priorities are not very twisted and wrong. Why is the coalition defending $50,000 cheques to millionaires but silently supporting these cuts to the practical, everyday support that over half a million low- and middle-income families rely on? How can those opposite defend this bill? How can they defend this cruel budget and these wrong priorities? How can they defend being part of this government at all when they introduce measures such as this unjustifiable attack on the childcare benefit?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Vasta ): Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Butler: I second the amendment.

Mr LAMING (Bowman) (19:01): You could almost be forgiven, having listened to that previous speech, for not realising that we have probably one of the highest quality childcare systems in the world. It is a system that balances affordability with access and the needs of vulnerable children. There is no doubt that all systems can be improved, but there is also no doubt that what the coalition inherited was a system in stress. I will go into a bit more detail about that later.

What is a little more concerning is that the shadow minister sat down with time remaining, ran out of material and virtually exclusively read from notes—speaking with almost no departure from them. Given that she has been in this portfolio now for four years, you would have hoped that she would be in a position to speak extemporaneously about this area. It is breathtaking that she still, to this day, cannot do that.

We want the highest quality child care in the world. There is no doubt about that. We have to cater for the 24/7 needs of families, mostly young families of course, who are moving between needing occasional care, long day care and, in some cases, family based day care. If we want to be a fast-moving economy, we are going to have to respond to the needs of our skilled workers and ensure that at no time does seeking out access to child care become a barrier to entering the workforce. We still tend to forget, however, that child care is genuinely about preparing the child for school as much as it is about freeing up the parents to enter the workforce. Childcare operators and their staff do a brilliant job balancing those competing needs. There will be no easy solutions. As a new father, Deputy Speaker Vasta, you can yourself well understand that there is always a need to balance affordability, the viability of the service and remuneration of the staff who work there.

Labor had a chance to improve the childcare system over the last six years. I think almost everyone would agree, however, that apart from a well-meaning but failed attempt at a quality framework the situation in child care barely changed over that six-year period. The legislation we are considering today quite rightly looks at the childcare benefit thresholds, looks at the limit on the childcare rebate and proposes three-year freezes on those amounts. The opposition has devoted almost all of their attack at the issue of the childcare benefit, mindful that about a million families that are eligible for childcare payments will, on average, be seeing a change of around $230 to $300 per person per year. They fail to mention, however, that that compares to the $3,500 increase in fees for that same child that we saw under the Labor administration. We are talking about an absolute drop in the ocean compared to the loss of control over fees that we saw under the Labor administration.

What do we have here? We have a childcare sector of $28½ billion; we have a commitment from the coalition to look at occasional day care, which was cut by Labor; and we have a determination to make long day care professional development available to all 44,000 educators and all 6,000 childcare centres in the system. We will not embark on anything like what I think was one of the most shameful pieces of social welfare policy that I have seen for a number of years—Labor's Early Years Quality Fund, a program that basically siphoned money to union-friendly applicants.

This was your classic childcare pinata. Labor filled the fund with money, lined up all of their own mates—mostly large providers—and gave them first bite at the cherry. You saw this almost unseemly display of childcare providers in the know scrambling for the dividends, while smaller operators, who did not realise that they had only 13 hours to put in their application, missed out. In Bonner, in Bowman and in every electorate around this country, well-meaning, committed childcare operators missed out completely because they were not in the know and not in a position to apply. It was unseemly and, as has already been independently identified, was really used as a membership drive for the unions to set up enterprise bargaining agreements—which quadrupled over the period of that fund. It was shameful. It was embarrassing. You would hope that no government would stoop to that level, but in fact they did.

The opposition's main attack is on the issue of low-income earners. It is only right that this place focuses on the needs of low-income earners. But, like all payments in Australia and in developed economies, yes, childcare payments taper. I do not think that is news. Between $41,907 and $97,632, you see a tapering of the childcare benefit. In many cases, however, those families are also eligible for the childcare rebate. It is exquisitely balanced and works very well. Yes, we would all like more and, if you are getting one dollar less this year than last year, I guess you can say you are worse off.

But I think everyone appreciates the bigger picture: that we have inherited a massive debt—due explicitly, uniquely and completely to the former Labor Treasurer's inability to balance the books, despite all his promises about one day returning to surplus. So, yes, it is true that there is a tightening of the belts and that we will see that in child care as well. But, as I have pointed out before, that tightening is only between five and 10 per cent of the burden on families that arose out of the total fee change we saw over the six years of the Labor government. There was a 53 per cent increase in childcare fees over that six years—3½ thousand dollars a year, or $75 a week, for the average parent per child in child care. That is a significant increase which Labor never got their head around.

Of course Labor were full of promises about the 53c a day that would be the likely increase in fees as a result of their quality framework. Despite the well-meaning efforts of a minister out of control and out of her depth, what happened was obvious—they created barriers for staff, they raised the requirements too quickly and they made it virtually impossible for a lot of these providers on the margins to remain viable. What did we see? We saw hundreds of providers unable to meet those guidelines applying for waivers, and we had the ridiculous situation where the Labor government was happily collecting $100 off these providers simply when they applied for a waiver.

The common sense approach to this was to be more flexible, but that was a word not in the vocabulary of the then Labor government, who of course brooked no variation. I am delighted that the coalition have streamlined and simplified this approach. They have allowed a three-month probation period for staff before they embark on training. Most importantly, they have offered flexibility for remote and rural providers, who operate in a completely different space. In many cases they cannot always rely on being fully occupied, and even in outer metropolitan areas of Australia—in areas like my own electorate—there is definitely an oversupply of quality providers and occupancy rates sit at around 70 per cent. That has a significant impact on viability, and it makes it even harder for these providers to adhere to the requirements of the national quality framework. Let us get one thing straight—that quality framework does not get diluted. We fully support high quality staff working in child care, but we also understand that these are small businesses who need time to adapt to new regulations and time to bring them into force—and the workers themselves need time to make the arrangements to gain those skills.

I have been distressed by what I think has been an inordinate focus on millionaires, and I have said this before. I have challenged Labor to come up with a millionaire who is in her late 20s or early 30s who might be having a child at the moment who does not work for a corporation that already gives her wage replacement, or who is not a senior public servant who gets wage replacement. The very Labor MPs who sit here and moan about the PPL scheme proposed by the Liberal-National coalition are the same union reps who barged into workplaces insisting on, yes, paid parental leave for their union members. Did one of those union members ever say, 'We want it at the minimum wage, we only want it for 18 weeks and, by the way, forget about superannuation'? Oh no, the unions were right up to their eyeballs wanting wage replacement for the members. That is exactly what they get in the Public Service and that is exactly what they get if they work in this building—wage replacement. That is exactly what they were chasing at every union meeting—wage replacement and not the minimum wage.

I still challenge the Labor opposition to find me that millionaire—find me the millionaire who stands to benefit from this arrangement that does not already work for a corporation or a large company that provides them with PPL or does not work already in a high position in the Public Service that enjoys, yes, wage replacement. That hypocrisy is laid bare. The only problem for Labor with the coalition's PPL scheme is that we proposed it. That is their problem, and that is why they are utterly focused on the search for a millionaire rather than the realisation that we can look in the eye every parent who decides to have a child and is earning more than the minimum wage and say, 'You are worth your wage while you go and do the most important of things for the nation, and that is to have a child—set up your financial arrangements in your household based on that wage and you can rely on a coalition government to continue that for six months and to provide you with the superannuation that you will need in your retirement.' That is why we found the cut-price Labor scheme not only obnoxious but also completely out of line with any other proposal bar one in the OECD.

Let us remember that we have a Labor government that over six years could not stop the double drop-off. Do you remember all the promises around that—the hundreds of millions of dollars that were going to lead to 222 childcare centres being built right next to schools? Every person in their right mind said, 'Gee, that'll be great, built right next to our school.' You would think that a Labor government presented with a job no more complex than spending money could have pulled that off. But no. We appreciate that bringing in a tax can be tricky, we appreciate that doing a major reform can present challenges, and getting legislation through this building might, but it was just a bucket of money and all they had to do was build childcare centres. Is there a simpler job in public life than spending money to build childcare centres? It is probably the easiest piece of contract management you can dream of. Out of 222, they got to 38. They ran out of steam and quietly cancelled the double drop-off program, on the second page of one of those perennial Kevin Rudd press releases.

We know that the quality framework became a problem for the Labor government, we know the double drop-off was too hard and then, to put the icing on the cake, they cancelled occasional care—only a relatively modest amount that looked after people particularly in regional areas who were working in highly variable occupations where they may have needed child care at very short notice. You would have thought that that would be right at the frontier of an adaptable and flexible child care system. You would think that the $13.8 million committed to that area would be money well spent. We all have to accept that we do not all have the same living arrangements, and some people who work in grazing or fruit picking or a highly mobile profession may well need child care at very short notice, with their shiftwork. Of course that was a bridge too far and too complex, for no other reason than it did not suit the unions. So that fund was chopped—but it comes back under the coalition.

In conclusion, the most vivid image that policymakers will have of Labor and child care, apart from a rote read speech from the shadow minister, will be that shameful display of the money grab for the Early Years Quality Fund. Many of my centres called me on the day of application, and I simply said 'I hope you have your application in.' It has been independently reviewed as a sham, and I hope the Auditor-General will look at it in great detail. The money that was promised by the coalition government, that had already been committed, was in fact delivered, and the money remaining will be directed into looking after long day care professional development. You cannot ask for anything more than that—the idea that we will support the providers around the country in the 6,000 centres and give them an opportunity to increase their skills.

It is an impressive approach to engage the Productivity Commission. Just how hard is it to make a phone call or send an email to the Productivity Commission on this most complex area of child care before we dive into any of these policies? Why not engage the Productivity Commission? But it was an anathema to the other side—'No way will we in any shape or form engage the Productivity Commission.' It was a complete scotoma to the very good work that the agency could have done. It was the coalition government that proposed it in opposition and, for no other reason than it was our idea, it was fiercely resisted by the other side. That is disappointing.

There was evidence that it was the right thing to do. There were 1,000 submissions to that inquiry and half of them are online. We will get some fascinating insights into this most complex of sectors. I do not pretend for a moment that fees and out-of-pocket expenses are not a significant challenge, but, as many investigations have shown in the past, the out-of-pocket expenses are in many cases nowhere near as high as made out by opponents of the sector. We know that there is a certain cost that we have to assign to highest quality child care, looking after vulnerable children and making sure that all Australian children by the age of five are ready for school. This sector does an enormous job. It will benefit from the coalition's policies and will benefit more so by seeing the failures of Labor fade into the rear-vision mirror.

Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (19:16): The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill is another example of broken promises by this government to the Australian people. In starting my speech today, I want to touch on a couple of things that the member for Bowman just raised in his contribution. The member for Bowman and I are co-chairs of the group Parliamentary Friends of Early Childhood. Elements of his speech struck me because, in every event that we have held so far in this term of parliament, every speaker and every organisation has said that quality matters. Every speaker has said that our national quality framework is world-class and other nations are looking to Australia to adopt our very own national quality framework as it stands. So the comments made by the previous speaker attacking quality matters and attacking the framework strike me as quite odd because, even when we have the industry experts telling us that the reforms by the former Labor government were making a difference, we still have those in government saying the complete opposite.

There is the claim about paid parental leave. I find this also quite amusing because this is a government that in all other areas of IR is completely opposed to any form of pattern bargaining. This Liberal Party government is ideologically opposed to collective bargaining and workplace entitlements like annual leave and sick leave. My question to the government is: now that you are paying the paid parental leave for people, replacing wages for people, will you start to pay annual leave for people? Will you start to pay sick leave? Will you start nationalising all of industry and taking on the whole role of managing the Australian workforce?

On this side, we recognise and respect collective bargaining. The other side keeps talking about public servants and how they get replacement of wages. Absolutely they do, because they, through their union, collectively bargained for that right. What we have said on this side is that every woman who has a child or a parent who wishes to take paid maternity leave should get some payment. The employer and the workers, through collective bargaining, can then top that up. But what we have seen from this government is a skewing of workplace relations and moving into the space of almost pattern bargaining. If they want to have a debate about pattern bargaining, then bring it on, because I reckon that there are a lot of industries out there and a lot of workers ready to have the debate about bringing back pattern bargaining. But that is exactly what this government is proposing to do with paid parental leave.

As I said, this bill is another broken promise to the Australian people by this government. In opposition the coalition said that they were opposed to freezing the childcare rebate cap. They said that they would continue to fund childcare services through the national quality framework and better wages for low-paid educators, yet in government they have done the exact opposite. When it comes to the critical area of early childhood education and care, this government have broken a number of promises that they made to the Australian people before the election. These decisions are not only broken promises and they are not only mean decisions that will hurt families; they also do not fit with the government's rhetoric about productivity and participation in the workforce.

Let's start with the changes that they are proposing to make to the childcare benefit. The childcare benefit is means tested and it is targeted at low- to middle-income families. The payment increases as your income decreases and it increases as to the number in the family. In my electorate of Bendigo, in suburbs like Golden Square, this particular benefit enables women to get back to work. They are on lower incomes and they have two or three children. This benefit helps them get back to work. This bill will see $230 million ripped from the assistance that helps over 889,000 families who rely on it, including many in my electorate of Bendigo.

The education department told a Senate hearing looking over the bill that almost half a million families will receive less support as a result of these changes, but that is where the information stops. Another critical problem with this bill is that it is rushed policy. It is rushed legislation in this parliament to try to bring it on before families really know the impact, before there can be proper scrutiny and proper engagement with the industry and the families that will be affected. It shows utter arrogance and disdain for Australian families. It shows that the government will press ahead with these changes without taking into account the proper assessment of the financial impact to families. I believe that these changes will also take away the financial benefit of parents returning to work. It will simply be too expensive for one of the parents to return to work, and they will choose to stay at home because it costs them more in child care than what they earn in wages. And what do we know? It will be predominantly women who end up staying at home to care for children.

Perhaps this is the government's plan. Perhaps this is the Menzies in the Prime Minister coming out—that 1950s view that the role of women is first to raise children and then maybe think of a career. These changes will have a huge impact on workforce participation for parents, particularly mothers, those with one or more child and who earn a low income. And let's also be clear about the incomes that women earn. We have still not caught up in the gender pay gap. Women still work predominantly in industries which are lower paid. There will be pressure on them to drop out of the workforce because they are not receiving the support that they need from their government when it comes to meeting the cost of childcare fees.

The research also backs this up. Just a one per cent increase in the gross price of child care sees a resulting decrease in mothers' employment of 0.7 per cent. Every per cent that childcare fees increase, we see a decrease in women participating in the workforce. At the moment, the childcare rebate is non-means tested and covers 50 per cent of the out-of-pocket costs of care. This is where the government also fails to understand the direct link between wages and the quality and cost of care. We have heard speaker after speaker speak about how outrageous the national quality fund was, how it was really unfair and so on and so forth, but what it did was ensure that some of our lowest paid workers—who have skills and an education—got a pay rise of between $3 and $5 an hour that did not increase the cost of fees for parents. We on this side of the House know that, the moment fees increase, women and parents cannot afford it and step out of the workforce. Again, the cuts to the childcare rebate are another broken promise and will have further impact on women's participation in the workforce.

As I have stated, in opposition the coalition opposed freezing the childcare rebate. The Prime Minister even wrote to every childcare centre across the country, claiming that he would freeze the index on the childcare rebate, that it would be an unfair burden to place on families not to increase it. Yet now in government the Prime Minister has done the exact opposite and he is cutting assistance across the board to early childhood education. As I have mentioned, there has been a cut to early childhood educators' wages. Before the election, the government promised that they would honour the commitments made under the Early Years Quality Fund to increase the wages of qualified early childhood educators.

It is vital that we increase the wages for our early childhood educators. It is because of low wages that the sector has a high turnover. These are not low-skilled workers; these are people with a qualification, with a cert. II, cert. III, diploma or even degree, yet they are still on minimum rates of pay. Because of the low wages, there is a high turnover in the sector, and I know this from talking directly with educators in my electorate. They say to me when I am in their tearooms talking to them: 'I love my job. I find it rewarding. But I want to buy a house and, on my partner's income and my income, we simply cannot afford to buy a house because the wages in early childhood education are so low.' Educators are moving in with family members in order to pay their bills because the wages are so low in this industry. It is another broken promise by this government.

Yes, we acknowledge that the long-term correction of wages in this sector needs to be done through Fair Work Australia, but what the Early Years Quality Fund did was provide the early money to help bridge the gap until we got to that point, because Fair Work Australia does take time. It does take time to get the result that these educators are looking for. The Early Years Quality Fund was created as the first step on a very long path to professional wages, and it was essential to address the turnover issue being experienced in the sector. Every week 180 educators are leaving, driven away because of low wages—not because they do not like the job, not because of job satisfaction but because the pay is literally too low for them to survive on. This cannot continue. As an early childhood educator said at the time the fund was created: 'This fund is recognition of my professional skills and qualifications. It's the first step towards a professional wage, and I'm excited.' She was not the only one who was excited for the first time to be recognised in her pay for her quality, for her education and for her skill.

This is why early childhood education and the investment in it is so important. We also know through the research that the first five years are the most important to a person's life. It is when 90 per cent of the brain's development occurs. That is why the national quality framework, which has been so attacked by this government, is so important. It is the framework that sets up early childhood education as education. It is making that fundamental shift from care to education. If we acknowledge in the science and the research that the first five years are the most critical then it is time we acknowledge them in the sector and invest in the sector properly.

Labor and I are not alone in saying that; the industry agrees. Wendy McCarthy from Goodstart said just recently, on Lateline:

… paid parental leave money will be much better put into investing in the first two years. Then women will go back to work.

If you want the best for your child then you want the best education. When asked the government's role in achieving this, Wendy replied:

The Government's role is to fund it.

She is not alone. The Australian Childcare Alliance and Early Childhood Australia have also said that the money that has been allocated for the paid parental leave scheme would be better invested in the early years, supporting the sector and supporting quality.

Quality does matter. If our nation's goal is to increase women's participation in the workforce then the solution is quality early childhood education and care. Parents want, and deserve to know, their children are going not just to a care institution but to an education institution. Without quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care, the Prime Minister's proposed paid parental leave scheme cannot succeed. It will not entice mothers back into the workforce because after six months what happens to those children? That is the critical flaw in the government's proposal. What is the plan? Come clean and tell women what you are really planning. Is it for them to stay at home? Is it to go back to the 1950s view of the world where women stayed at home and took care of the children while the husband went out to work? News flash to the government: the world has changed. What women want and what families want is quality early childhood education and care. That is why I join the shadow minister in opposing many measures in this bill and supporting the proposed amendment she has moved.

Mr VARVARIS (Barton) (19:31): I am pleased to be able to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill 2014, which amends the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999. These amendments are pivotal to the coalition's promise to provide a sustainable, equitable and accessible childhood education and childcare framework. This is also crucial to our promise to restore the nation's finances and bring the budget back to surplus. As the member for Barton, an electorate that is family oriented, I am acutely aware of the impact on working families of the previous social policies surrounding child care.

Child care is one of our most fundamental social investments as a federal government. Child care which is accessible, flexible and of a high quality is indispensable for families not just in Barton but right around Australia. High-quality early childhood education and child care are in increasing demand by working Australian families. As families are increasingly forced to operate on dual incomes, there is a vital need for accessible and high-quality day care, after hours school care and long day care in our society. Some families are fortunate to have the luxury of extended family members to assist with the care of their young ones. However, many families, particularly in my electorate of Barton, rely on high-quality childcare services.

Australian governments have a history of providing funding to assist families with early childhood education and care. This commenced in 1972 and ever since then there has been a significant investment in child care. The Australian government subsidises the cost of child care for eligible families through the childcare benefit, known as CCB, and the childcare rebate, known as CCR, which were implemented in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Families receive these important subsidies because governments from both sides recognise the importance of family units, the early years of childhood education and developmental needs. The coalition understands the cost of raising children as a top priority and that, at times, financial assistance must be provided for families on lower incomes.

Currently, the CCB is a means tested payment based on a family's income. It is financial assistance with childcare costs that is indexed each year with CPI. Whilst this bill will maintain the income thresholds for the next three income years and is part of the coalition's 2014-15 budget measure, the government is still essentially increasing the CCB standard hourly rate, minimum hourly amount and multiple child loadings on 1 July each year. The amount a family receives in CCB depends on the income levels, the type of care used, the number of children and the hours of care, as well as the parents' work, training and study commitments.

These measures will not impact on families on an income below $41,902, which will see families on the lower income CCB threshold receive the maximum rate of benefit. As income increases for a family, the CCB tapers to zero. However, out-of-pocket expenses incurred by families who receive less CCB will be partially offset by the CCR. The CCR is not means tested and provides up to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket childcare costs up to $7,500 per child per income year. This maximum amount of CCR is not being reduced through this bill.

This bill will continue to maintain the CCR limit at $7,500 for the next three calendar years. The freeze was first introduced by Labor in 2011 and they extended this in their last budget of 2013-14 but did not provide the legislative requirements to do so. When the coalition decided to legislate the measure, as first intended by those opposite, Labor colluded with the Greens in the Senate to block it. In essence, Labor introduced their own measures this time last year as part of the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, then a few months later sought to oppose it. Labor claimed at the end of last year that the coalition's attempt to freeze the CCR provision was a cut of $100 million from the Early Years Quality Fund and that there was no justification for that. The coalition did freeze the fund because there was an independent review of the funding being undertaken, which concluded that the fund was flawed and inequitable, benefiting less than 30 per cent of long day care workers, and that it was a tool for union recruitment. This is not a sound business model. There is no evidence of any cost-benefit analysis having been undertaken and now the Auditor-General is conducting a performance audit of Labor's Early Years Quality Fund.

Australian taxpayers and families deserve better. This is why the coalition is following through on current measures to ensure we have a family assistance model that is sustainable now and into the future. There is much work to be done. The CCR and CCB freezes are the first steps in rectifying an untenable childcare sector. The CCR measure is expected to deliver net savings of $105.8 million over three years whilst the CCB measure is expected to deliver net savings of $230.4 million over four years, from 2014-15 to 2017-18, for a combined total of $336.2 million. Overall, this government is increasing childcare assistance to $28.5 billion over the next four years, 2015 to 2018, to assist around one million families each year through the CCB and CCR. The government's total investment between 2013-14 and 2016-17 is expected to exceed $22 billion.

I would like to note that these budget measures are necessary, because in order for families and children to thrive and to access the benefits they require we need a strong economy and a budget surplus. The government considers that maintaining the current CCR limit until 1 July 2017 is a reasonable, necessary and proportionate measure that is in the interests of Australia's current fiscal and economic position, given savings from the measure have already been taken by the previous government.

The government is absolutely committed to ensuring that Australian families have access to high-quality, flexible and affordable child care that really meets their needs—and vice versa, with service providers that are afforded the flexibility and durability to meet the needs of its families. I make no pretence that we are operating under a bleak financial landscape, one that was painted by Labor with six record deficits, meaning $123 billion in cumulative deficits ahead. The untenable position in which the system we inherited has been left means that we need to make the system sustainable into the future.

All families are unique, and no benefits paid are identical. Indeed, the CCB sounds complex because it is. The many variables which determine the monetary benefits that a family receives are an issue that has been raised by families and service providers in my electorate. It also invariably adds to the bureaucratic complexity and red tape burden that inundates childcare workers. Whilst both sides of government recognise the importance of family and how critical the early years are to a child, and that necessary assistance should be given to families, where there is not an option of a stay-at-home mum or extended family help there are ways of going about this which sustain the social policy to maintain longevity. And cost is certainly a factor in child care for many families. From the feedback I have been given in just my electorate alone, the issue is largely one of availability and accessibility.

Too many childcare facilities are burdened with administrative red tape and layers of bureaucracy as part of the national quality framework. Good intentions aside, the reality is that owners, operators and workers are trapped in offices inundated with paperwork instead of committing their time to the needs of children. Labor's way of ensuring childcare workers are doing their jobs properly is by proving themselves through endless piles of paperwork as part of a stringent quality process. The myriad bureaucratic complexities associated with claiming benefits due to several factors at play—family income, number of children, type of care, hours used, which I mentioned earlier—are unnecessary. Families and childcare service providers have provided their concerns on this unnecessary red tape that is getting in the way of providing the actual services that families desire. The impact of this unnecessary burden which has been placed on childcare centres via Labor's National Quality Framework includes things such as childcare centres having to employ extra staff or staff having to work longer hours to deal with additional paperwork, resulting in about $140,000 a year just to administer it. These measures by Labor do not directly impact on the positive welfare of the child and only hit the pockets of families, some of whom are already struggling. This is not conducive to actual needs of children, the parents and childcare facilities around the country. Furthermore, it does not address the issue of childcare needs, because subsidy alone does not sprout much-needed childcare workers.

In other words, the solution is not to just further increase subsidy or lower childcare costs but to actually have more childcare facilities and workers. This is the crux of the problem. As such, the coalition has asked the Productivity Commission to launch an inquiry into child care and early childhood learning as a substantial review into just what is required by the sector and to make recommendations on its sustainability. This bill does not pre-empt that inquiry but is a necessary part of the government's plan to repair the budget and to restore and strengthen the economy.

The stark reality is that childcare costs are rising, and the coalition is acutely aware of this. I suspect Labor knows this as well. Unfortunately, Labor's credibility on child care is negligible. Under Labor, childcare costs skyrocketed. Between September 2007 and September 2013, long day care fees increased from $5 an hour on average to $7.65 under Labor. Over a week, this was almost $75 extra and, over a year, $3,500. This is in spite of Labor's investment in child care fee assistance increasing by 45 per cent over the same period. This is what hurts family budgets the most. That was despite Labor promising it would make child care more affordable. Moreover, Labor created an inefficient system of messy red tape burdens that was complex to monitor and administer, which ultimately meant parents and families were negatively impacted.

Labor also said it would create 260 more childcare centres; it provided only 38. Again, this is what hurts families in my electorate and across the nation. As a responsible government, we have to recognise the reality of the situation and do what we can, right now, to ease the pain of families in the long run. Australian families need a sustainable, long-term solution to high-quality childhood education and child care. They do not want increasing fees with no increase in availability of affordable care. It makes no sense to families that child care should be out of reach when governments are investing money and childcare costs are increasing. Furthermore, only through accessible and flexible child care can we improve workforce participation opportunities, especially for women.

The coalition has been left with the job of cleaning up Labor's mess, from six record deficits, and creating a system of tenable child care that can be sustained for the children of today and tomorrow. The measures put forward in this bill are vital to ensuring that we can produce the best outcomes for the deserving families across the nation and ensuring that these families have a bright future for their children who are not left to pay for Labor's debts for years to come. High-quality affordable child care is a reality that can be matched by the right mix of social policy and business practicality, but reforms must take place to achieve this. This bill is the first step in laying the path of a sustainable childcare sector. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (19:44): In my electorate of Melbourne there are more women as a proportion of the workforce than there are anywhere else in Victoria. In fact, it is the second highest proportion of women in the workforce of any electorate in the country, with 49 per cent of the workforce being women. One thing that is crystal clear is that, if we value people's mental health and family stability and also if we value getting women into the workforce and being able to remain in the workforce, then affordable, accessible quality child care is vital.

In Melbourne the need is only going to grow. More and more people are choosing to live closer to the city. Our state government has a policy of knocking down small warehouses and building the tallest, most expensive thing that you can on the site. That brings lots of people into the city, which is a good thing, but increasingly we are finding that there is no planning for the childcare needs of the people who live in Melbourne.

We have a situation at the moment in Melbourne where 76 per cent of the centres have no vacancies for under-two-year-olds and 43 per cent have no vacancies for three- to four-year-olds. The centres that did have some vacancies were often inflexible—for example, they were only available on particular days. It is not at all uncommon for women in my electorate to have to juggle to get their child to different childcare centres on different days of the week.

Parents will usually spend on average between six and 24 months waiting for a place for their children. Some centres in the electorate of Melbourne have over 300 families on their waiting list. The level of unmet demand—the lack of child care places—in Melbourne is appalling. It is absolutely appalling. We know that these pressures developed under the previous government. I will be the first to say that the previous government did some good things about child care. Labor's focus on improving the standards of childcare workers, recognising their role as educators, and lifting the quality framework were things the Greens were pleased to support because they echoed our view that child care should be treated as an integral part in the education process for young children.

What was not recognised by Labor is that, if you increase the quality of the workforce, as one should, unless you put additional money into the system then the other two key elements of child care—accessibility, the ease to get a place, and affordability, making sure child care is within your means—will suffer. That is exactly the problem that we have seen and that is exactly the problem that we face. It was not made any better by the previous government's decision to abandon building 222 new childcare centres.

We are in a position where there is enormous demand and enormous pressure on the system, especially in inner-city Melbourne. We have to decide now which way we are going to go: do we value child care as a community or don't we? Then into the fray comes this government that says, 'Before we decide to do anything else after freezing some existing funds that were going to find their way into child care the first thing we will do is freeze the childcare rebate for a further three years and freeze the childcare benefit income thresholds.' Taking money out of the system is not the answer for child care at the moment. It is just not the answer.

I think in some respects the opposition needs to tone down its sanctimony on this because freezing the childcare rebate is in fact just extending a policy that Labor introduced. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. That part of it is wrong, but what the government is also proposing to do to the childcare rebate and the childcare benefit in tandem is going to hit low-income earners and it is going to hit a household that earns $60,000 somewhere in the order of $3,000 a year. That is a massive whack. Under the previous government it got to the point where some parents were asking whether it was even worth returning to work because of the cost of child care. To now take an extra $3,000 out of the pockets of a middle- to low-income family is absolutely appalling and wrong.

The sector is outraged by this government's decision to take money out of child care and so are centres in my electorate. Acacia Fitzroy Creche, which I visited a couple of times and which provides services to people on low incomes, believes that helping families get affordable child care is very important. It is a community childcare centre that works with many refugees, single parents and people from low-SES backgrounds.

That centre sees a lot of families who want to contribute and work but cannot get jobs without affordable child care. If parents cannot access child care, the kids end up staying home and falling behind in education. These are often children who have come here as part of a family from a refugee background, who have come in under Australia's humanitarian system. They are living in the flats in Fitzroy. The parents are struggling to break into the labour market or hang onto a job. They are reliant on low-cost child care to be able to stay employed.

Acacia Fitzroy Creche have said that, as a result of changes in this bill and the budget, they have decided to freeze their fees because they know that otherwise parents will not be able to continue. As a result, the staff are not getting a pay rise. Already underpaid staff are not getting a pay rise. They face a big problem with retaining staff, as many childcare centres do, and this is only going to exacerbate it.

What will that mean? It will mean that people—predominantly women—will decide to opt out of the workforce because they are on low incomes and they cannot, now, afford the cost of child care. So that will increase the unemployment rate. That is the effect of this government's policy that attacks, disproportionately, low-income workers. More women will no longer stay connected with their jobs, because they will not be able to afford child care.

Not everyone can do what Fitzroy Acacia Creche is doing. The other centres in my electorate have fantastic staff but many boards of management are tearing their hair out trying to make ends meet. There is plenty of money available for us if we decide that child care is a priority. For example, if the government chose to stand up to wealthy miners like Gina Rinehart and her associates and scrap the subsidies and concessions that they get—we do not even need to worry about a new tax if we make the likes of Gina Rinehart pay the same for petrol as everyone else in this country and stop give them subsidised diesel—$13 billion would be available for the budget. That $13 billion could build a lot of childcare centres, and would allow the existing childcare centres to expand.

It is ultimately a question of priorities. This government is choosing a priority in favour of the likes of Gina Rinehart—the government is letting her off the hook; she is for all and intents and purposes untouched by this budget—and instead saying, 'We don't mind if the women in the Fitzroy flats are now no longer able to continue in their jobs because they cannot afford to send their kids to child care. They have to contribute.' A family on $60,000 has to contribute three grand a year, and that might be the difference between working or not, or child care or not. But the government says, 'We will let Gina off the hook. We will let our wealthy backers off the hook and the top end of town off the hook.' That is what this budget and this bill do.

So we will be opposing it. And that means, hopefully, that this will be opposed in the Senate as well. What is important, and what matters, is making sure Australia is a place where people look after each other, and where, not matter how much money you earn or where you come from, if you want to do the right thing and try and get into work, there will be a childcare place available for you. We are not going to discriminate against people on the basis of their wealth. That is what is at stake in this budget and with this bill.

I am pleased to hear that Labor may now oppose it—even though they proposed some of these measures in the last parliament—but I do want to address something that some of the opposition speakers have said. They have suggested that, somehow, having paid parental leave as a workplace right is somehow wrong when the money should be put into child care instead. If I had an unlimited pot of money, yes, I would probably go and build childcare centres, first and foremost, as well. But I say to Labor: if it is that important why didn't Labor put a 1½ per cent levy on big business and build new childcare centres? They did not. They did not have the guts to stand up to big business and raise the revenue that is needed to fund the services that Australians expect. Instead, Labor said, 'We're going to cut the taxes for corporate Australia and, as a consequence, we are not going to build 222 new childcare centres.'

So, I am not going to be lectured by the opposition about the lack of priorities or that, if you advance the cause of paid parental leave, somehow that is money that should be going to child care. If Labor really believed that they would have acted on it, and they have not. The proposal that the Greens took to the election was to put a new levy on big business for money that would not otherwise be there and use that to fund a paid parental leave scheme, and ask others to chip in so that we can have the child care that everyone deserves. So it is not an either/or. Labor does not come to this with clean hands, having previously proposed one of the freezes in this bill and having failed to act to build those new childcare centres that are needed.

But we have to deal with the bill that is in front of us. The bill that is in front of us will only do one thing—that is, it will make life harder for people on middle to low incomes, and take money out of the childcare system at a time when we need to be putting more money into it. For that reason this bill cannot be supported.

This bill, like many other budget measures, is going to be blocked by this parliament. There is only another week-and-a-bit to go before the Senate changes over. I tell you what—there are billions of dollars in so-called savings measures from the government, which are really attacks on the young, the old, the sick and the poor, which are not going to find their way through this parliament. I hope that after 1 July they will not find their way through the parliament, either.

There is a reason people have been talking about this budget for so long after the fact—and that is that people understand that measures like this threaten what is good about this country. They threaten what is good about this country. The Prime Minister is a threat to the Australian way of life and the principle of egalitarianism. It is our job, as the Greens, to stand up for those principles of compassion, sustainability and equality, and to defend that spirit that beats at the heart of this country—egalitarianism. That spirit says that we will not become a US style of society, where access to health care, access to education, and access to child care depend on your wealth. We do not want to go down that road. We value the fact that here in this country we look after each other. This bill is just one element of a very brutal budget, and I am very pleased that the Greens will block it.

Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (19:58): This bill is part of the coalition government's ongoing commitment to families, particularly those with young children who rely on child care. The Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill 2014, which I commend to the House today, will apply from next month, for three years, to 30 June 2017. This bill maintains the childcare benefit income thresholds for three years and ensures that the childcare rebate limit will continue at $7,500 per child, per year for a further three years. It is an important reminder of how this government is making fair and responsible choices for the people in my electorate on the Central Coast. There are around 7,720 children from 5,760 families who attend child care in 109 dedicated services in my electorate of Robertson. For many of them, child care is essential because one or both parents are commuting to Sydney or Newcastle. We have 30,000 to 40,000 people on the Central Coast, as I often say in this House, who leave early in the morning to work and return home late at night to their families because that is where their job opportunities are. I am actually a mother in one of those families. My own husband, Chris, travels to Mascot every day, relying on the right connecting train to be home in time for dinner. We have been married nearly 18 years and he has never been able to work locally. His story reflects the story of thousands of other people on the Central Coast.

We are fortunate, of course, to have access to great child care for my own two children, Oscar, who is five, and Mollie-Joy, who is 3½. This includes some amazing grandparents—and I acknowledge my parents, Max and Mary Warren, who help out on so many occasions; a fantastic babysitter, Isabella Mitchell, and I thank you, Isabella, for all you do; and an incredible long day care centre, Little Miracles, where Oscar and Mollie-Joy are taken care of every week in a wonderful, supportive, caring and nurturing environment. I take this opportunity to place on record my thanks and my appreciation for the directors of the childcare centre at Terrigal, Rob and Sue Bateman, and also for the centre's supervisor, Sue Noble, and to say thank you to the 109 centre supervisors and operators who do such a great job for our children every single day.

Yes, child care does come at a cost. Childcare fees now average $370 per week for families who work full time on the Central Coast, which is an average cost per hour of $7.15. While this is lower than the national average of $7.35 an hour, $375 per week is a lot of money for most families and it underlines the need to make child care more affordable, more accessible and more flexible. That is why the coalition's decision to task the Productivity Commission with looking at this issue is an important part of the process. While the bill before the House tonight is important, it is also timely to note that the measures do not in any way pre-empt the Productivity Commission's inquiry into child care and early childhood learning.

We need a holistic review into how we can best ensure that child care is affordable, accessible and flexible for families in my electorate of Robertson, for families in New South Wales and, indeed, for families right around our nation—for the sake of our children, for the sake of their parents and for the next generation and generations to come. That is why the Productivity Commission's draft report, due next month, will give us a good first insight into their proposed reforms. In the meantime, the measures in this bill are necessary.

Families are struggling to access affordable, accessible and flexible child care due to fees skyrocketing 50 per cent nationally during Labor's six years in government. These increases are simply unsustainable. The former government, including the former member for Robertson, claimed to support child care and families and yet they watched while family budgets were thrown into chaos due to these soaring prices. In contrast, the coalition government is making decisions that repair the budget and, through our Economic Action Strategy, build a strong, prosperous economy and a safe and secure Australia.

Let us remind ourselves of one salient fact: because of Labor's debt, $1 billion a month in interest is being wasted. If no action is taken now, debt will grow to $667 billion in a decade and that monthly interest bill I mentioned before will become $3 billion per month. It is clear we need to get the debt and deficit back under control and this budget is part of our responsible plan to do just that. Included in the budget is the childcare benefit measure contained in this bill. It is also part of the government's broader measure to maintain eligibility thresholds for Australian government payments for three years. It is estimated that maintaining the childcare benefit income thresholds will provide a saving of $230 million over the forward estimates.

This bill amends the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to continue to maintain the childcare rebate limit at $7,500 for three income years, starting from the beginning of next month. The rebate covers half of the out-of-pocket childcare expenses, up to a maximum amount per child, per year, and it is not means tested. As a result of these amendments, a family on the Central Coast will continue to receive up to the maximum rebate amount of $7,500 per child, per year to help pay for out-of-pocket childcare costs. This will be in place for those three years.

The bill also locks in the childcare benefit income thresholds for three years, again from 1 July this year. Unlike the childcare rebate, the childcare benefit is means tested. It is based on a family's income level and is designed to help with the cost of child care. It is important to note that the government will continue to index the childcare benefit standard hourly rate, the minimum hourly amount and the multiple child loadings by the consumer price index on 1 July each year.

So what this bill means is that families' childcare benefit income thresholds will remain at the amounts on 30 June 2014 for the three income years ending on 30 June 2017. It proposes a three-year pause on the indexation of income thresholds which set out how much parents are eligible to claim. But even with this measure government assistance through the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate combined will still increase to $28.5 billion over the next four years. These measures are about ensuring this substantial investment rises at more sustainable levels over the long term. There is, as any parent or childcare provider would know, a pretty complex way of calculating the childcare benefit. It depends on a family's income, the number of children in care, the type of care and the hours used. But this bill ensures that these measures will not impact families who have incomes below $41,902.

As a reminder to those opposite, keeping the childcare rebate limit at $7,500 per child per financial year for a further three years was a savings measure first implemented by the former Labor government in 2011. Labor announced an extension of the measure as part of their 2013-14 budget and then took the $105 million in savings from the budget bottom line but never legislated for it. The savings were included in their budget, but the legislative amendments that we are debating here today were not introduced in the last parliament. Yet, when this government sought to legislate the measure as part of the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, Labor combined with the Greens in the Senate earlier this year to block its own measure. So, put simply, our hands are tied.

The simplified arguments that we heard earlier tonight about raising the rebate will not work either, as we found in 2008. Back then, Labor increased the amount parents could claim under the childcare rebate from up to 30 per cent to up to 50 per cent of their fees. The result was that out-of-pocket costs for parents soared by up to almost 40 per cent in low- and high-income families between 2008-09 and 2012-13. Raising rebates makes these payments more unsustainable in the longer term without providing a plan to slow the rate at which the fees are increasing.

I recently invited the Assistant Minister for Education, Sussan Ley, who spoke on the second reading of this bill, to my electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast. The minister spoke with parents and childcare providers at a childcare forum in Erina where there was a rigorous debate about the need for affordable, flexible child care. We visited one of our biggest childcare centres, Erina Kindergarten. The owner there, Paul Klumper; directors Melissa Commins and Ashlea O'Rourke and their team do an absolutely fabulous job of providing a warm and caring environment where our little 'coasties' can learn and be nurtured.

During the day we discussed the government's reforms including the coalition's record $200 million Long Day Care Professional Development Program. The program helps day care centres with the cost of upskilling and training educators to meet the requirements of the National Quality Framework. Our Long Day Care Professional Development Program will use the remaining funds from Labor's Early Years Quality Fund, which was shut down after an independent report found it was a vehicle for union recruitment. The minister's visit was a firsthand look at why we have to get the policy around child care in Australia right. Overall, the coalition is increasing childcare assistance to $28.5 billion over the next four years to assist around a million families each year through the childcare benefit and childcare rebate.

As well as increasing support to child care, we are also committed to a genuine paid parental leave scheme for families. This is a commitment we have taken to the last two elections. It is also something that I know is of great importance to people in my electorate of Robertson. Our paid parental leave scheme pays a real wage plus compulsory superannuation. This not only values women's current work, but also makes sure there is future recognition in the form of proper superannuation. It reflects the true value of a woman's lifetime of work and it is about delivering appropriate workplace entitlements for women who choose to work and have a family. This is important as it is often at the crucial point of time in their career cycle that they will have their family.

I firmly believe that paid parental leave should not to be treated as a welfare entitlement. It is a workplace entitlement. The opposition wants to frame the coalition's paid parental leave scheme as a $50,000 gift to rich people, but I know from talking to people on the Central Coast every day that this is a genuine hand-up for families—not the millionaire families that Labor talk about, but for women who are nurses, who are teachers, who are shop assistants, who are factory workers, who are clerical workers, who are casual workers and who are small business owners. For these people, our genuine paid parental leave scheme—especially in those early months of juggling the demands of a family—could be a real help with their family budget.

I want to say in relation to paid parental leave and the current debate in this House that I believe this is about a real cultural change in Australia. It is about moving the paid parental scheme and debate from a welfare entitlement to a workplace entitlement. This cultural change is important for Australia; it is important for productivity in our nation and it is important for our future generations in Australia. In time I believe we will look back in the annals of history at this argument and wonder what all the fuss was about, because why should people be paid at their real wage when they go on holidays, when they take long service leave and when they take sick leave and then effectively be paid a welfare wage when they go on parental leave? It just does not add up.

The coalition government has an Economic Action Strategy that will fix Labor's debt and deficit disaster. We have delivered a budget that ensures we will get back to living within our means, just as households must. We are taking responsibility and fixing up Labor's mess through strong and fair action. I commend this bill to the House, as a parent, as a member of parliament and as a resident on the Central Coast who knows we need to make responsible decisions to get Australia back on track to a secure future.

Ms HALL (Shortland—Opposition Whip) (20:14): I rise to speak on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill 2014. I take great pleasure in following the member for Robertson and I will certainly make sure that everybody in Robertson on the Central Coast—an area that I also come from—is aware of her unconditional support for paid parental leave. I will make sure that all those pensioners, who are receiving a very low income and whose income is going to be affected by the change in indexation, know that she is out there spruiking the $50,000 a year for high-income workers as much more important than ensuring that child care is properly indexed. Just for the record, in Robertson electorate there are 7,130 families that are using approved child care. Of those 6,340 are receiving childcare rebates.

Those families are going to be disadvantaged by this legislation. The member for Robertson is not telling the families on the Central Coast just what this legislation means. This legislation is bad legislation and it shows that this government has its priorities all wrong. It looks after people who are on high incomes whilst at the other end of the spectrum they are making it harder for families who are not on high incomes to enter the workforce or maintain employment. One of the key indicators as to whether a person can afford to utilise child care, research has shown, is that the relationship between childcare affordability and women's workforce participation is strong. A one per cent increase in gross childcare prices results in a decrease to the mother's employment rate of 0.7 per cent. This is what the member for Robertson is advocating—that the people she represents get less money and that child care is made less affordable. She supports that, whilst at the same time she supports women receiving a $50,000 bonus for having a baby. As the Prime Minister said, he wants the right kind of women to have babies. I think the right kind of people to have babies are the people who are hard-working and go out there every day and look to government for support.

One would think that the government would get support from business, but, unfortunately, even business is slow to give support to the government on these measures. Business knows that the one thing that is imperative when it comes to child care and women utilising child care is its affordability. What this government is doing is making it less affordable for those people who need it most. I would like to refer to an article in TheAustralian, which points out that the Australian Industry Group has called for the Prime Minister

…to abandon his paid parental leave scheme and redirect the money to maintaining childcare benefits.

The Australian Industry Group knows that fairness is in maintaining the childcare rebate. It is not fair to give those women who are on high incomes a bonus or a gift of $50,000. The Australian Industry Group, in this article, says that:

…the Coalition's proposed "gold-plated" PPL scheme "should be abandoned" and the less generous scheme introduced by Labor retained.

Can I say that the members on the other side of this House are so out of touch that they do not know what is being said in their electorates. I give the member for Dawson credit for speaking out on behalf of his electorate by saying that this is the wrong way to go, but, unfortunately, many members on the other side of this parliament do not take time to communicate with their constituents and do not listen to what they are saying, rather they just tell them. This article goes on to say that

…the more generous PPL scheme should then be used to reverse the continued freezing of the Child Care Rebate at $7500 a year and the non-indexation of Child Care Benefit thresholds for three years announced in the May budget.

This is to allow extra funding to be devoted to childcare measures.

The one thing we know about this government is that, when it comes to fairness and equity and to seeing that a struggling family gets a fair go, they are always missing in action. This bill will whip $230 million from the means-tested family assistance childcare benefits from 889,000 families. Those 889,000 families rely on this benefit; it makes child care affordable for them. It enables them to go to work and, if it comes to the situation where they receive no childcare benefit or it is reduced to such a low level that they can no longer afford child care, their children will be taken out of child care. When children are taken out of child care, they will be no longer able to work.

This is arrogant and it just shows how little this government is able to communicate or understand the needs of families in Australia. When I look back to the last election, it is very interesting that the minister was floating around the country saying that she was going to make child care more affordable and to reform child care so every child could attend child care. She even came to my electorate with my Liberal Party opponent and argued for more affordable child care and access to child care for everyone. I look back to the community support program that was going to provide grants for family day care services and that has been cut. Family day care is one of the most affordable forms of child care.

The round of grants to local government was also cut. Local government is one of the leaders in providing not-for-profit child care. Grants were put out there for local governments to apply for. The one thing that this government has done is cut that grants program. Everywhere you look, this government is attacking families. It is attacking the family tax benefit. It is putting the GP tax in place. There is its action in relation to the childcare rebate and the childcare benefit. The childcare rebate, as everyone knows, is not means tested and is up to $7,500 for every child. Childcare support is absolutely essential to provide financial incentives for parents to re-enter the workforce and, as I have already stated, particularly women.

A woman needs to know that her child is cared for in a quality childcare centre that is accredited, with well-trained carers. When she knows that, she can confidently go to work and engage productively. But, unfortunately, 74,000 families will reach the childcare rebate cut-off in 2014 and 150,000 families will reach the childcare cap in 2016-17. They are significant numbers, and this measure will have a very significant impact on some people—but the government are not telling the Australian people this. They are making it sound like they are doing wonderful things in the childcare space when, in actual fact, they are making child care less affordable. They are looking to provide taxpayer funding for nannies and au pairs, which is a very expensive form of child care. Their every action is designed to benefit those people who least need help from government. I am appalled at what the government are doing in this area.

I thought a good way to look at how effective the government has been in relation to child care—and to be quite fair about it—was to make a comparison between what Labor did when it was first elected, following the 2007 election, and what this government has done. It is quite interesting when you look at the figures. One of the first actions of the new Labor government, following the 2007 election, was to increase the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent for out-of-pocket expenses and to increase the cap from $4,354 to $7,500 per child. The Howard government had no appetite to make child care more affordable, and those on the other side under the leadership of Tony Abbott are in the same position. They are making child care less affordable. They will make it harder for families to actually access childcare. They stand condemned for that. Labor also gave families the option of claiming their childcare rebates fortnightly, halving up-front costs at the time that they were billed.

The government does not understand just how hard it is for families to make ends meet. Many families go from week to week just trying to balance the budget. As one of my constituents told me recently—a constituent who has been extremely disadvantaged by this government; a constituent who has really done it hard—at the end of the month he just throws the bills in the air, and the ones that land on the table first are the ones that he is able to pay. It is really interesting when you compare a government, as in the Rudd and Gillard governments, which understood how much families rely on assistance such as the childcare rebate and the childcare benefit, with a government which is freezing assistance and making child care less affordable. Childcare fees went up by more than twice the rate under the Howard government compared with Labor. I hate to think what the rate will be under the Abbott government because of their lack of commitment to keeping childcare fees low and making child care affordable. Modelling shows that, under Labor, out-of-pocket costs for families earning $75,000 a year were reduced by 13 per cent of their disposable income. Under Labor the number of children in child care grew; under this government, we are set to see a reduction simply because it is making it unaffordable.

I would like to put on the record that I cannot understand why this legislation has been introduced with only five days of consultation and with very little research evidence from the department and without waiting for the completion of the Productivity Commission inquiry and report, which is due in October this year. The government is not waiting for that report.

This government stands condemned for their action in the area of child care. It stands condemned for not researching what impact this legislation will have on families. This government stands condemned because it does not really care about low-income families. This government stands condemned because it has its priorities all wrong. It is prepared, on the one hand, to give a $50,000 gift to highly paid women or families and, on the other hand, to cut money from those people who look to government most for assistance.

Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (20:29): I rise this evening to oppose the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Measures) Bill 2014 currently before the House. I oppose it like my Labor colleagues because it seeks to freeze indexation not just on the non means-tested childcare rebate but also on the income thresholds of the means-tested childcare benefit.

This bill seeks to cut $336 million from childcare support that lower and middle income families across Australia currently rely on. They rely on this to make ends meet, to pay the mortgage, to pay the bills and to buy the groceries.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not sure if you have ever popped down to my part of Australia, but, if you have, you will have noted that the population is predominantly made up of families. We have a welcoming and affordable community and many families—in fact, almost 60,000—choose to make Lalor their home. We have huge new housing estates and schools that regularly welcome 250 new preps each year. We have the highest number of births in Victoria—in fact, 70 births a week, which sees the maternity ward at the Werribee Mercy Hospital bursting at the seams. It also means we have a huge number of playgroups and a vibrant kindergarten community. It means also that we have a thriving childcare system.

Families in Lalor rely on the provision of child care. They rely on it because cost-of-living pressures mean families have both parents working to make ends meet. They rely on it because women in our community also know the value of being connected in the workforce and the benefits that brings for themselves and for their families. These are not families that choose a nanny or an au pair as a childcare option; that is out of reach. They rely on the usual forms of child care. They rely on well-resourced centres that provide structured early learning. They rely on family day care, particularly valued by the many shift workers for its flexibility, and they rely on out-of-school-hours care for school aged kids. The families in Lalor work hard, often for modest wages, and, as such, these families also value the current childcare assistance provided by government.

There are only five electorates across Australia that have more than 10,000 families utilising child care. Lalor is one of them. Indeed, almost 10½ thousand families in Lalor use formal child care and around 9½ thousand of those receive some form of childcare benefit. The impact of the changes to childcare funding in this bill on our community will be huge.

Families in Lalor may have taken the time to read the coalition's election policy document, titled The coalition's policy for better child care and early learning September 2013. You will note from the date that it was a policy that was taken to the election last year. While it was lacking any real forward direction, it did provide some comfort for families. I would like to remind families of some of its key points. I quote from that document:

Our approach will ease the financial burden placed on child care centres and families, without compromising the standard of care that must be provided.

They went further:

The Coalition understands that many families are struggling to find high quality child care that is flexible and affordable enough to meet their needs.

They quoted ABS data and said that it:

… shows that child care costs to parents have increased by 27 per cent over the past three years.

The coalition said that it was:

… concerned that parents all over the country are reassessing whether they can afford good quality childcare, or the number of days … per week they use.

Another quote says:

We understand that there is a direct relationship between affordable child care and the amount of hours parents—especially women—can work.

I think it is fair to suggest that there is a theme coming from those extracts—that the document developed a theme around the issue of costs of child care. I think it could be said that this policy document that the now government took to the election raised expectations in the community that the cost of child care was something they were concerned about. Some may have even thought that this document implied that they would offer a solution.

As actions speak louder than words, what is it that the government have done to support the working families across Australia to meet the costs of child care? Not much. I would go further and say they are actively making it more difficult for families. Let us look at what they have actually done. They have stripped away almost $1 billion from early education and care. They have taken $400 million from out-of-school-hours care and $157 million from family day care. The support for parents to study and go back to work is gone. Programs to increase childcare places have been slashed. Funding has been taken from the Indigenous child and family centres and $300 million set aside to support low-paid early childhood educators has been cut.

What will they do? The measure that this bill seeks to implement, according to the education department, will leave over 500,000 families worse off through the changes to the childcare benefit alone. This bill will cut modest, targeted and means-tested childcare support from families earning as little as $42,000 a year. Most worrying, however, is that this measure is being introduced with minimal analysis of the impact. Who will these measures hurt and how much extra will families have to pay? The truth is, we do not know; the work has not been done.

It is also worrying that it is being done on the back of the $157 million dollar cuts to family day care that I mentioned earlier. This measure alone is causing enormous angst in our community. A local newspaper reports that family day carers have warned they will be forced to close if a $500 administrative levy touted by local council in response to cuts in the federal budget for family day care is imposed. I can tell you what the impact of that will be if it eventuates in Lalor. Already oversubscribed childcare centres would be swamped with new enrolees. Why is this being rushed through this week, when the government has a current Productivity Commission inquiry into child care and early childhood learning? What will that inquiry find? What action will this government take when those findings are released? Based on current form, more cuts would be my suggestion.

This initiative is yet another example of this government's broken promises and twisted priorities. Why introduce such a measure, such a hurtful cut? And why do it while stubbornly insisting on retaining the deeply unpopular and unfair paid parental leave scheme? We know this government is very keen to provide assistance to allow for nannies and au pairs to be brought into the childcare rebate system. But these are options not utilised by many in our community. Indeed, very few families across Australia can afford them. Whilst doing this, the government sees fit to remove the very support that assists low- and middle-income families and supports women to remain productive in the workforce.

I feel a little like a telemarketer tonight—or like the member for Wentworth on one of his question time rants—because there is more. Whilst this bill introduces measures to reduce childcare benefit payments, there are still more government measures to come. I suspect the government does not fully understand the impact of those changes either. The Jobs Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance program assists parents to return to the workforce. There are over 550 families in Lalor benefiting from this program. There is a similar number of families in my colleagues' electorates, like Watson, Blaxland and Rankin, and in some coalition electorates like Dobell, where 550 families have benefited. But I do not think the Prime Minister, in Warringah, understands. There are only 90 in Wentworth and there are only 60 in North Sydney that are probably not aware of the benefits of this program. Only 70 in Higgins have benefited. The benefits of the JET programs would hardly hit the radar of those on the front bench opposite.

It may also surprise some that out-of-school hours care accounts for approximately 55 per cent of childcare services. This government has cut $450 million from this program. This is money that assists out-of-school hours programs to be established. In an electorate like Lalor where we have new schools opening every year with huge numbers of new students joining our schools throughout the year, this funding is vital. It allows new services to open, for hours to be extended and for homework support to be offered. All of this is now at risk. Labor worked hard to increase access to out-of-school hours care. Over 100,000 more families now utilise this care across Australia, because of Labor. That is all at risk.

Another cruel budget cut is the accessibility fund, a fund designed to assist local councils to increase childcare provision by expanding centres, freeing up vacant land for centres to be built and to allow for centres to be incorporated into TAFEs and schools. Those opposite would have limited understanding of the impact of this measure. Lalor has 123 childcare centres serving 10,500 families; Warringah has 128 centres serving 7,000 families. Do the maths. It is easy to see from these figures where there is pressure for the new childcare centres and the electorates most in need. It is not the electorates currently held by those in cabinet.

For the government to introduce this bill, I naively—like many others—assumed there must have been support. So I looked to some major stakeholders. I found no support. There was no support from Early Childhood Australia. There was no support from Family Day Care Australia. There was no support from the Early Learning Association Australia nor from the Australian child care coalition. There was none even—as the member for Shortland outlined—from the Australian Industry Group. All oppose the measures.

Labor has a proud history of supporting families in the early childhood years. Labor increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. Labor made changes to have the rebate paid fortnightly. It introduced the quality standard frames. It improved the staff-child ratios. It established the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority. It introduced the quality rating system. It provided for 15 hours a week for universal access to kindergarten. Labor did these things because Labor understands that it is not just about cost, it is also about quality. Labor understands both the pressures on families and the way support can assist. We understand that women want to remain connected in the workforce. We know both the value of women's participation in the workforce and the impact on productivity and on the economy of providing incentives to work.

A study by the Grattan Institute in 2012 showed that if Australia could match the level of workforce participation achieved in Canada, it would result in our economy being possibly $35 billion better off. How did Canada achieve this result? It invested in childcare rebates. It did not come cheap. The cost of the rebates went from $300 million in 1997 to $2.2 billion in 2012, but the return was a $35 billion boost to the economy. This current government does not seem to understand that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Labor understands that you need to invest in our children to grow our future and our economy.

There are 10,500 families in Lalor that utilise child care, and almost one million across Australia will be impacted. The sector does not support the measures. It knows both the value of an active, engaged workforce and the impact of childcare support to achieve this. There is a current Productivity Commission inquiry into child care. For some reason, the government is keen to rush these measures through without support, with the huge impact not yet appropriately measured and with the Productivity Commission report coming. It makes no sense.

I would finish with a few observations about this bill. This bill encapsulates all that is wrong with this government's budget and all that is wrong with this government's logic and rhetoric. The implications of this bill for families across the country show us clearly that, contrary to the Treasurer's words, the age of entitlement is not over. Entitlement is very clearly enshrined for some Australians in the policy to give millionaires $50,000 and paid parental leave for the first six months of their child's life. No, Deputy Speaker, with this bill we see clearly that for working mothers and fathers who utilise child care in this country and for countless other Australians being hurt by this government's budget measures, it is the age of fairness that is over.

Dr STONE (Murray) (20:44): I too rise to speak to this bill that amends A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to continue to maintain the childcare rebate limit at $7,500 for three income years, starting from 1 July 2014 and maintain the childcare benefit income thresholds at the amounts applicable as at 30 June 2014 for three income years, starting from July 2014.

As a result of these amendments, to quote from the explanatory memorandum:

Families will continue to be able to receive up to the maximum CCR amount of $7,500 per child, per financial year for out-of-pocket child care costs for the three income years starting from 1 July … and

families' CCB income thresholds will remain at the amounts applicable on 30 June 2014 for the three income years starting from 1 July 2014 …

So the suggestion of the member for Lalor, who should have known better but I guess she was just using 'polispeak', that this is a withdrawal of childcare support from the nation's families is just not the case.

But it was even more stunning when the member for Lalor dismissed out of hand, for example, that we are seriously looking at the needs of all types of child care. This is because child care has to be flexible. It has to suit the needs of country and farming women, women in business, families in a metropolitan area, families with babies, families with toddlers and families with after-school care needs. It has to be a flexible, affordable and accessible program of child care across the country.

I was stunned to hear the member for Lalor, who has an educational background, I am told, say, 'In-home care, for example, is just what rich people want to use and is highly unaffordable.' In fact, in-home care is often the care of choice for families with newborns and very young children who they know should be kept away from perhaps an infectious environment with lots of other children in their earliest years, especially their first 12 months of life. Also women who are shift workers who cannot get child care because they are nursing at night or policewomen working at night might need in-home care support. Why shouldn't we examine that as one of the alternatives available? We need to look at its regulation and the qualifications of men or women who might choose to offer that in-home care, but to condemn it on a philosophical basis as something for the rich—and I think they want to evoke the concept of a nanny on an umbrella or something—is just outrageous and shows you how out of touch the opposition is.

I am becoming increasingly disappointed with the opposition's women who lay into paid parental leave, particularly what is being offered by our coalition, given that their scheme refused to allow superannuation for women. How outrageous that women should be expected to leave the workforce for the period that they nurture their newborns and not receive superannuation payments. That is extraordinary. That is breathtaking because it condemns a lot of those women in older age to being dependent on welfare when if they had had continuous superannuation through paid parental leave they could have been independent, even if they divorced or were, sadly, widowed. This is what we are getting from the opposition's women. It is quite extraordinary.

Then in this area of child care and paid parental leave we are being condemned because we are having an inquiry that looks at the needs of Australians in child care and morphing into early childhood education which can happen in centres that have children from the age of newborns through to the year before they start school. Of course we should have an inquiry, because we inherited from Labor a one-size-fits-all approach.

We were all aghast, particularly in Victoria, when Labor came up with this nonsensical idea without any academic research, journal articles or overseas international comparison behind it that every child should have 15 hours of early childhood education in every childcare centre across the country or perhaps not be eligible for support. The problem with saying that you have to have 15 hours is that in all of our rural and regional childcare centres you could not continue to have one qualified early childhood educator managing one centre. We had two shifts of children—two lots of children doing 10 hours each. That was 20 hours all up, plus preparation time. That worked in rural and regional communities in Victoria—two 10-hour early childhood education programs for two lots of children. But Labor's model, brought in without consultation with rural and regional Australia in particular, said you had to have 15 hours. As I say, there was no research behind that decision. It meant that right across my part of Victoria in particular we had a sacking of full-time early childhood educators and centres struggle because they were required to have an additional person employed. You could not have one woman—it is usually a woman in early childhood education—doing 30 hours, plus preparation, in one centre with two lots of children. So they destroyed the framework for early childhood education in Victoria with the stroke of a pen. They called it a 'national quality framework'.

I used to work in the Institute of Early Childhood as a lecturer in early childhood education for about seven years, so I am familiar with what other countries offer and what they have found to be efficacious when it comes to early childhood education. Nowhere has anyone said nine hours, 10 hours, 12 hours or 15 hours is the magic number. It depends very much on the circumstances in each part of the world and on how accessible the place is to parents when it is 15 hours versus, say, 10 hours. But we had this decree across the country that one size fits all. I am over this one-size-fits-all philosophy that came out of Labor during their six years which forgot that there are communities beyond tram tracks and beyond where buses stop. We do not have public sector transport in my electorate, and so if a family cannot drive a child to a session of early childhood education or child care then quite often that mother cannot get salaried employment off her property or farm or out of her house. I do not think it is right or fair to ignore the special needs of rural and regional families.

I will never forget going to a wheat belt small town quite a distance from Kalgoorlie, but that was the nearest town centre. They had been hit by Labor's latest pronouncement that occasional child care had to go and that they could not possibly accept occasional child care any longer across Australia because, after all, wasn't occasional child care some sort of part-time child care and how could they possibly continue to fund that? Apparently it was not as sustainable economically and financially as full-time, full-blown metropolitan child care. The point about this little wheat belt town in the back-of-beyond, near Kalgoorlie, was that they were farm families who needed part-time, occasional care in the midst of harvest, when the women and men were out from dawn till dusk. The alternative for them was to put their toddlers in grain bins to keep them safe They could not access occasional child care because the federal Labor government had said they would not fund it any longer. I had the then member, Wilson Tuckey, with me in that small community. The women explained that they did not have enough children to have a full-time, 100 per cent functioning, five-days-a-week childcare centre. But their need for child care was overwhelming. Their children's lives were in danger if they were left out on the wheat properties during their peak harvest period, or perhaps when they had to go to an appointment with a doctor or take an elderly relative to an appointment with a specialist. They needed occasional child care, but Labor effectively abolished it. They said you can keep going, but we are not going to fund you. But those families could not afford the funding without the government rebate.

We are completely above that sort of one-stop-shop thinking. We know about rural and regional Australia because the members from the Liberal and National parties represent rural and regional Australia. We know that in-home care is as important for some families, and as affordable for some families, as paying $110 or $120 per day for a child in a professional centre away from the home. We know about that.

We also know that it is not a luxury and that women who seek child care are not wicked people who choose to leave their house and play golf. We get that insinuation when we have the member for Lalor saying, 'How dare we pay millionaire women paid parental leave of $50,000.' How dare the member for Lalor pretend that there are millionaire women out there who are somehow going to rip off the system. She should know that our paid parental leave scheme is going to give a replacement salary to a woman earning up to $100,000—not a million dollars, thank you, Member for Lalor. A woman has every right to be paid at her full salary, just as men have the same right if they are taking workplace related leave. I find it extraordinary that we have statements like that made in a debate like this that deliberately imply we have such a thing as a millionaire woman taking paid parental leave, who would then probably have the cheek to want in-home care for her child. That is the insinuation. This is class based rubbish that you would have thought would have been relegated to the history books. But, no, it is trotted out by the opposition again and again in this place. I find that very disappointing and appalling.

I wish our Labor women members of parliament would tune in to their families and visit some of the women who have newborns and toddlers and would like very much to have the New Zealand option, where they even have a special visa category for women who come in as holidaymakers, but who pass through special regulations and checks, and become au pair type in-home carers. What a brilliant scheme. We are going to keep our minds open about all of those prospects and opportunities, because we understand that for some families in-home care is the answer, while occasional or part-time care is required for families who do not have a full-time need or are lucky enough to have a mother or mother-in-law nearby who can take up some of the child caring for them, but they still need some child care beyond the family.

We have to understand that Australians are a very mixed brood with all sorts of different needs. We certainly do understand that quality child care is the key to all of this. You do not get quality by dictating to the workforce that if they do not get qualifications immediately, with a small fund—and they will only have access to that fund if they join a union—they will not be able to be child care managers. That is what we had under the previous government. We had a requirement identified where you had to be part of the union to access part of the Labor government's funding, which in turn could be used to qualify your child carers to teach the new magic 15 hours of child education a week.

This is an extraordinary time in our Australian history. We have attacks on women and families coming from Labor, and particularly from Labor women. I think early generations of Labor women would be quite amazed about these attacks. We have attacks on paid parental leave, at their replacement salary, as a right for women. We have attacks on paid parental leave, because it is not being offered for a miserable three months but for six months, which the World Health Organization understands is the minimum time for breast feeding to be established and maintained. That is what our paid parental leave scheme gives women access to—six months on a replacement wage, or the minimum wage, whichever is the greater.

How can someone across the aisle in the opposition rant and rave and say it is about millionaires? I find that breathtaking. I say, shame on you. We know, tragically, that fewer than two per cent of women in Australia earn over $100,000. You over there are suggesting that a woman can be paid a replacement salary and superannuation—as she is if she is currently in the Public Service, or if she works for the ABC as a journo, or the police force, or the Defence Force, or for a bank, or in the insurance industry—but, no, we are not supposed to allow that for other women in the workforce. The blue-collar workers, the contractors, the women who work on farms and the women who are casual or seasonal workers are not to be treated as eligible for superannuation and they are not regarded as needing six months to recover from child birth, to nurture their newborn and to establish breast feeding. All of that is not meant to be for them because those opposite think there is a political point to be scored. Child care is beyond politics.

The bill before us is brilliant because it establishes appropriate support and funding for families who need it. I commend the bill to the House and I say to the opposition, particularly the women: shame on you for letting our side down—our side being women who need our special understanding in law making in this place.

Debate adjourned.