Labor lets down Queensland families on child care

Labor is taking its child care scare campaign to Queensland today but its Shadow Ministers and candidates still refuse to answer questions about what a Shorten Government would do to fix Australia’s broken child care and early learning system.

 

Like Queensland families, the Turnbull Government knows the current child care and early learning system is broken.

 

The Turnbull Government’s reforms will deliver an extra $2.5 billion for the child care and early learning system meaning more support for more low and middle-income families and a $1.2 billion Child Care Safety Net to help those in need.

 

Queenslanders are some of the biggest winners from the changes, potentially better off by hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year with around 198,000 families set to benefit. In Forde, around 8,900 families are set to benefit, around 7,100 in Longman and 7,500 in Bonner.

 

A family earning $80,000 a year with two children in care for three days a week, for example, will be around $3,000 better off each year. A family on $150,000 will be around $1,000 a year better off.

 

Labor like to distract attention with the small proportion of families that may not win from our changes but ignore the fact that these are either families with a parent not working, looking for work, studying or volunteering for an average four hours a week or are high income families earning more than $350,000 a year.

 

We are proud to target more Child Care Subsidy to those working longer hours or on low or middle incomes and estimate these changes will result in 230,000 Australians choosing to increase their workforce participation, a fact ignored in the figures Labor is peddling.

 

The Turnbull Government has also committed around $88.4 million in preschool funding to ensure around 68,000 children in Queensland have access to 15 hours a week of quality early learning in the year before school.

 

In contrast, just like Susan Lamb couldn’t be bothered getting her citizenship paperwork sorted, the Labor Party hasn’t bothered doing the paperwork to develop any sort of child care or early learning policy.

 

What’s more, despite their posturing Labor’s Amanda Rishworth admitted Labor has no policy and would just adopt the detailed work the Turnbull Government has done.