Senator JACINTA COLLINS (2:03 PM) —My question is to Senator Patterson, the Minister for Family and Community Services.

Honourable senators interjecting—

The PRESIDENT —Order! Are we going to start our last question time for these sittings with that sort of noise? I am not going to accept it today. We will have some peace and quiet.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS —Does the minister recall the leaked cabinet minute of 17 December 2002 which states that cabinet had noted:

Why has the government still not acted on this 2002 cabinet minute note, which recommended improving financial assistance at the time of the birth of a child? Will the government now deliver on its three-year-old promise to help families balance their work and family responsibilities by developing an alternative policy which would deliver timely assistance on the birth of a child?

Senator PATTERSON (Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women) —The question gives me the opportunity to remind honourable senators and the community of what the government have done for families in assisting them to balance work and family. We have given families $19 billion a year in assistance. That is almost $2 billion a year more in family assistance since the introduction of the new family tax system. We have given families assistance—particularly where one member of the family chooses to stay at home—through family tax benefit B, by providing almost $2,900 for each child under five. We have also given families assistance with child care by doubling the amount of funding that has been spent on child care from $4 billion to $8 billion since we came to government.

Senator PATTERSON —Senator Collins does not want to hear this, but she is going to have to listen to the facts. She does not like to hear that we have actually doubled spending on child care. We have increased the number of child-care places by 210,000, to 530,000. We have also assisted families to balance work and family by introducing much more flexible workplaces. Labor are so inflexible in their slavery to unions that families do not have the opportunity to have flexible workplaces that deal with balancing their work and family. Labor have always failed to cost and fund their policies. When they were in government, they racked up $60 billion worth of debt, on which we were paying almost $5 billion a year in interest. You would think they would have learnt that when you borrow you have to pay interest—in this case, $5 billion in interest. That is money we can now spend on assisting families through the Stronger Families and Communities program. We can assist them in caring for their families.

But Labor did not care. They borrowed from the next generation of children. They did not build for the future. Senator Collins shrugs her shoulders and closes her eyes because she does not want to hear that we have increased assistance to families by almost $2 billion a year since the introduction of the new family tax system. We have doubled the spending on child care, we have increased the number of child-care places by 210,000 and we have increased flexibility in the workplace to assist families to balance work and family.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Is the minister aware that there are no budget papers or portfolio statements in existence that can verify the Treasurer's extraordinary claim that the baby bonus spending has been revised down by $347 million in the forward estimates? Has the government hidden these budget numbers because there is a secret plan to scrap the baby bonus, or is it just that Mr Costello cannot admit that a policy that he once described as `the centrepiece of the government's election platform' is a massive flop?

Senator PATTERSON (Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women) —I always say that as soon as Labor have a policy with a problem, and their child-care payment policy has a problem, they concoct a conspiracy or they scaremonger—one or the other. What you ought to be worried about, Senator Collins, is that you got rolled. Your side have been talking about a paid maternity leave scheme, and it has gone off the agenda. Where is the Labor Party's paid maternity leave scheme? Surreptitiously they got rid of that and substituted it with this baby care payment which is not fully funded.