Senator JACINTA COLLINS (3:01 PM) —I move:

I will focus first on answers to questions raised with Senator Patterson. I note that the last answers she gave in relation to disability and employment services also relate to this government's record on disability, with respect to my earlier question about caps on family day care. These are affecting the many disabled kids who would be able to utilise family day care if the government removed these caps. Child care is most definitely in crisis. The junior minister, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Mr Anthony, recognised that today when he gave what now appears to be a fairly weak and uncosted promise that he would remove the caps on family day care and outside school hours care some time—he said—next year. This is simply not good enough. What optimism can we now have when the Minister for Health and Ageing, Senator Patterson, his senior minister, stresses `keeping within our means' in the context of a record $7.6 billion surplus? I think we can have very little confidence. We know that Minister Anthony has recognised the problem and we know that the Prime Minister, in some recent reports, has recognised the problem, but Senator Patterson is refusing to act.

Senator Patterson harks back to the Howard government's record on spending in child care, so let me take a few moments to cast it into a different perspective. The Howard government's record on long day care over the last six years is deplorable. In 1996 Labor was spending $400 more per child-care place than the Howard government is spending today. Under Labor, from 1991 to 1996 there was an increase of more than 80 per cent in the number of long day care services. Under the Howard government, there has been less than a 10 per cent increase in the number of long day care services and, between 1998 and 2000, there has actually been a decline in the number of long day care places. In 1998 it was 194,555; in 2002 it was 193,809. That this government can rationalise and claim additional spending on child care, when the number of long day care places has declined, is ludicrous. Under Labor the growth in centre based care places was 120 per cent from 1991, while under the Howard government there has only been around 15 per cent growth in places over the six years to 2002.

We all know—and in fact the Department of Family and Community Services annual report tabled this week highlights—that there will be ongoing considerable growth in demand for access to formal child care places. But is this government acting? No, it is simply reframing figures to try and cast its spending in the most favourable light, and any exploration of that data beyond the most superficial shows what that record is. For instance, if we graph what has happened in respect of spending on child-care places between 1991 and 2003, we find a continual increase under Labor up to 1996, dealing with growth in demand. After 1996, we then find savage cuts delivered by this government and a decline. Since then, all we have had is some staggering increases in funding to try and repair what this government did in 1996.

This, of course, was compounded when former Senator Newman introduced caps to family day care and to outside school hours care. Those caps have meant we now have a spiralling demand in the market, and the government is refusing to respond. This refusal is affecting those very disabled people—the disabled kids—about whom Senator Patterson claims to be concerned. These disabled kids cannot get access to family day care places. Their parents are being told, `There is this artificial cap that the government has had in place for more than two years now, and there is nothing we can do to free up a place for you.' At the same time, we have child-care workers being told they cannot operate to maximum efficiency—they cannot be given their full quota of children—because of this artificial cap. So there are many small businesses out there—women working, looking after children in their homes—whose income the government is containing by refusing to allow them to have their full quota of children. This is containing the market in a way which is dangerously skewing the way it can respond to child-care needs. (Time expired)