Mrs MAY (3:14 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Community Services. Would the minister advise the House of recent tax reforms that have significantly reduced the cost of child care. Is the minister aware of any alternative policies in the area of child care?

Mr ANTHONY (Minister for Community Services) —I would like to thank the member for McPherson, a very fine member and my electoral neighbour. She knows, as do all members of the coalition—it was even in the ABS statistics recently—that child care is becoming substantially more affordable under the Howard-Anderson government. It is interesting that recently ABS statistics were saying that more Australian families are using child care now than ever before. What was interesting in press comments over the weekend was that the largest fall for the CPI recorded in the last three months was a 15 per cent reduction. Where? In child care. We certainly did not see that on the Lilley price watch list, did we?

What is even more important is that 94 per cent of families now, according to the ABS, are happy with their formal child-care arrangements. They are happy. Why? Because we are meeting the needs of Australian families. Why is that? Because we have put substantially more resources through the child-care benefit into child care. We are making it more affordable, particularly for low and middle income earners. These are the policies of the new tax system, where child care is GST free and rebatable, but most importantly there is new money. Some $900 million of new money went into the child-care benefit for the next four years, which is part of the $5.6 billion that we are putting into place. In the last four years, we put $4 billion into child care, which was 30 per cent more than the Labor Party did in its last four years of stewardship.

You can ask a lot of organisations about this. The national children's services forum came to see me the other day. It is made up of long day care centres, family day care, community day care and after hours school care. All of them were saying that their services are running at maximum capacity—are being used by more families—as a direct result of the child-care benefit. I mentioned once before in this parliament that, even in the electorate of the member for Lilley, St Paul's Lutheran child care—I am sure the member for Lilley knows it well—recently told my office they have seen big differences, that they are now full, that there have been no fee increases, that parents are happy and things are a lot better.

What are the comments of the member for Lilley? We know that back on 28 March you were beating your chest in here, claiming how unaffordable child care was. Even back in August you were claiming that we have cut funding from child care. How can we cut it when we put $900 million more in? We have actually increased funding. You are terribly confused, because the only policy the Australian Labor Party have when it comes to child care—well, they do not have a policy or they have rolled it back—is the scare campaign and the damage the Labor Party have done to the child-care industry over the last couple of years in basically claiming that prices have gone out of control. Prices did go out of control when the Labor Party were in government. Why? They accelerated at twice the rate. You had an ad hoc system, you had no quality and planning and you had no control.

What the government is continuing to do through our stronger families and stronger communities package is put in more money to allow for more flexibility in child care, particularly for shift workers, particularly for families who have sick children or families in regional and remote Australia who do not have child-care services. That was never done by the Australian Labor Party. My advice to the member for Lilley is this: you should spend more time on the ground in your own electorate than abroad; go along and visit some of your child-care centres. While you are at it, you might take some of your mates from the AWU with you. You could even enrol them. It would be cheaper than attending the CJC inquiry, and they could do with some supervision from what they have been doing in cooking the electoral books.