Senator CHRIS EVANS (3:03 PM) —I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Family and Community Services (Senator Newman) in response to questions without notice asked today, relating to welfare reform.

A range of questions asked of Senator Newman today went to issues arising out of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare state of the nation report released last week. In fact it was officially launched by the minister. The reason the opposition asked those questions is that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report provides a very good picture of what is happening with welfare and social programs in Australia today.

We constantly get from the government rhetoric about how much money they have spent on each program and how much investment they have made, but the true comparative picture is never really revealed. What the AIHW report shows is that the callous underfunding of social programs by the Howard government, the cutbacks they made, particularly in their first couple of budgets, are just starting to bear fruit in our society. That neglect, that underfunding and those cutbacks mean we are starting to see the services available to families and to people in need in Australian society severely reduced. The squeeze is coming on and the evidence is now very clear in that report. If you look at disability, if you look at child care, if you look at aged care, the impacts of the Howard government's cutbacks are starting to be felt.

In the area of disability services we see evidence of the $20 million reduction in services to the disabled at the same time as the minister is talking—in terms of her welfare reform paper—about reducing entitlements to those people. So we are seeing a two-pronged attack now from the government. They cut the direct funding to disability services, they are refusing to cooperate with the states in being proactive and addressing the unmet need problem and now we are going to witness an attack on the disability support pension.

In the area of child care we have conclusive evidence that the cutbacks the government have made have resulted in funding for child care in the year 1997-98 being reduced by 10 per cent from the previous year. The minister came in here only a couple of months ago after releasing a report called Child care in Australia and attempted to paint a picture of child care in Australia that showed all was rosy—that funding was up, that the number of centres were up and that the number of children in care was up. It was a complete shonk—they had misused the figures, they had used old figures, they had picked different time lines to try to paint that picture. We argued at the time that it was one of the most dishonest documents ever released by a government, but we had very little success in winning that debate because people said, `They are official government statistics.' Well they were not; they were grossly misused statistics, they were shonky statistics.

What you get from the Institute of Health and Welfare, who have an independent charter, is an independent view of what is going on in child care in Australia, an independent assessment of what has happened. What they show is that funding has been dramatically reduced under this government. Despite the minister's talk about the overall expenditure, child-care funding in Australia has fallen—partly because of demand but partly because of the $850 million that this government ripped out of child care, partly because of the child-care assistance freeze that they placed on Australian families for two years and partly because of the other cutbacks they made in child care. Sure, that has helped drive down demand. There is no question of that.

There are other things going on in child care, and I am the first to admit that, but the government refuses to acknowledge that its funding cuts and its policy have driven down the demand for child care in Australia. A lot of Australian families now cannot afford good quality child care because the cost has just become too much. The cost has risen because of the government's funding cutbacks. The government has attacked child care. It has reduced the services available to Australian families and has driven up the cost.

The Institute of Health and Welfare report also reports on aged care. Senator Hutchins asked a question today about that as well. Despite all the government's claims, waiting times for people to get into nursing homes or hostels are increasing. The number of beds available per thousand people over 70 has been reduced. There are serious pressures in aged care, where people cannot get into a facility and cannot get the sort of care they need. We have further evidence that the level of care in some institutions is falling, as they are unable to cope with the various pressures that apply to aged care.

It is very important that we have some concentration in this parliament on the Institute of Health and Welfare's state of the nation report because it starts to paint a picture of what the first couple of hard Howard budgets in particular have done to social infrastructure in this country. The failure to invest and the withdrawal of funds from social infrastructure in this country are starting to have their impact. The services that should be available to Australian families, to those in need and to those relying on government support are not there because of the cutbacks. We are getting an independent assessment now of what those cutbacks have meant. (Time expired)