The federal government has announced the continuation of funding for accessing preschool, as further leaks on its yet-to-be-released childcare package emerged ahead of next week’s budget.
News Ltd reported the government would means test its new childcare assistance measures, with families on a combined income of $165,000 or less getting the greatest benefit. The assistance would be tapered up to and above $250,000.
The new assistance would replace existing childcare rebate and subsidies, and would reportedly be paid directly to childcare centres rather than parents, as recommended by the Productivity Commission.
As a driver to increase workplace participation, parents would also be subject to an activity test to determine if they can receive the new assistance.
“What we want to do is to ensure that childcare is affordable and accessible,” prime minister Tony Abbott told reporters on Sunday.
“We said that, first of all, we’d have a Productivity Commission report,” he said. “We’ve taken those recommendations. We’ve subjected them to pretty fair consultation and scrutiny and we’ll have some very good announcements to make in the budget which I think the Australian people will welcome.”
Labor said supporting parents who work should only be one aspect of the Coalition’s childcare policy.
“Will the government’s policy meet the needs of families who have small amounts of work, irregular work, parents who are looking for work, who need access to childcare while they’re looking for work, while they’re studying?” the shadow families minister, Jenny Macklin asked. “We also have to remember for very vulnerable children how important childcare can be for them.”
The Greens have expressed concerns over the activity test, which could see parents working, training or studying one day a fortnight.
“Putting a hard test on their workforce participation is only going to make it harder for new mums to get back to work,” the Greens’ childcare spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, said. “It seems to be a bit of a catch 22 for those mothers who often need to have childcare first before they can commit to taking on an extra day of work.”
The social services minister, Scott Morrison, defended the government’s pilot program for subsiding nannies, which will be available for families on a joint income of $250,000.
“There can be families who are trying to help here who have disabled kids, who live in regional areas, who don’t have access to services,” Morrison told Channel Ten on Sunday. “So I’m not going to put a set of rules which is going to disadvantage a family which is genuinely disadvantaged.”
Disadvantaged children are also the focus of the continuation of funding for the National Partnership Agreement on universal access to early childhood education, a program that many in the sector had feared would be axed.
The program aims to give children, particularly those from disadvantaged and Indigenous families, access to a minimum of 15 hours full-time of preschool education, and will cost $840m over two years.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, labelled the program “one of the best ideas that Labor introduced for Australian families”.
He lambasted the Coalition for waiting until the week before the budget to announce funding certainty for the program.
“The best they can do is simply say they won’t cut Labor’s good ideas,” Shorten told reporters on Sunday.
For the first time, the program will be indexed to inflation, giving state and territory governments who have prime responsibility for delivering childcare an extra $30m over the two-year time frame.
The Australian Education Union welcomed the funding certainty, but wanted it extended further.
“The Abbott government has finally listened and made preschool a priority – but it is disappointing that they have refused to guarantee funding beyond 2017,” the union’s federal president, Correna Haythorpe, said.
Abbott said the funding was only extended for two years because the upcoming white paper on federalism will examine how early education responsibilities are shared between states and territories and the commonwealth.
“We have provided the money to ensure that every Australian four-year-old will continue to get a guarantee of access to preschool,” the prime minister said.
