E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA LIVE WITH LEON DELANEY
FRIDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2021
SUBJECTS: The cost of child care in Canberra; Labor's child care policy; Brittany Higgins and improving safety in Parliament.
LEON DELANEY, HOST: First today, data released by the Productivity Commission shows that child care fees rose by 5.6% nationally. But guess where the biggest increase of all happened to be? Oh, wait, you figured it out yet? Yep, Canberra, where parents now pay $595 a week per child on average. In fact, in the past eight years, Canberrans have experienced a 35% increase in child care fees, which is keeping many parents out of the workforce. Joining me now the Federal Member for Canberra, Alicia Payne. Good afternoon.
ALICIA PAYNE, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good afternoon, Leon.
DELANEY: Thanks for joining us today. There's a lot going on. But let's start with the child care. Of course, we all know that it's expensive. We all know that the Government had a very successful experiment during the COVID lockdown, making it free for everybody. But we've gone back to the way it wasn't. It's not really a very satisfactory arrangement is it?
PAYNE: No, it's not. The current system is not working for Australian families. And that Productivity Commission data that you mentioned also showed that 90,000 parents were kept out of the workforce this year by the cost of child care. And then it was too expensive for them to access child care so that they could return to work. And that's really a handbrake on our economy that we really can't afford, particularly as we're trying to come out of the recession.
DELANEY: You know, one of the big obstacles is that in many instances, the cost of the child care is actually more than the amount of extra money you would earn, if you went and took some extra hours or got a second job or even got a first job. That's not really the right incentive to set, is it?
PAYNE: No, that's right and in Canberra, where we have the highest average child care fees in the country, I very often hear from families, particularly women who want to either return to work or increase their days of work and just find that it's simply not worth it. So we're really, the current system is really not supporting families to balance work and family and in making the decisions about how to do that. And it it does, of course, impact particularly on women. And then these decisions, if they're not able to increase their work as much as they would want to, they can end up, this follows them through to their retirement where they have almost half the superannuation on average of men. And we're seeing a third of women in poverty in retirement age, which is just not acceptable, really, in a country like Australia.
DELANEY: Now, we know that child care across the board is expensive, but why is it more expensive in Canberra?
PAYNE: I think it's not really clear exactly why, but it might have to do with demand in Canberra. It may also be that on average, we do have relatively high incomes, and therefore they find that they can charge more. But I do also hear from families in Canberra that they have trouble accessing the care or getting the days that they want. So I think there is a high demand and probably pricing it is a way that centres manage that as well.
DELANEY: What's the answer? I know Labor's already announced their child care policy, how can we make it more affordable?
PAYNE: So our policy will make it more affordable for 97% of families that use child care. And what we will do is remove the cap, which is a cap of almost $11,000, which means that that is the most that a family can receive in a year. And that means that they end up at a point that their child care subsidy doesn't cover them for the full year. So we'll remove that cap. We'll also increase the maximum subsidy to 90%. And this will mean that many families, including those on middle and higher incomes will benefit from this. And an important part of our policy is also to task the Productivity Commission with looking into a universal 90% subsidy. So that would mean that all families could access child care that was almost free.
DELANEY: I know some people always argue if people are well enough off to be able to afford to pay for it themselves, they should. But what's the economic argument? What's the economic return by subsidising child care?
PAYNE: Well, exactly. We could greatly increase our labour force participation, particularly of women, if people could access affordable child care. And we've seen this around the world. Many other countries provide free or highly subsidised child care, and they have much higher labour force participation rates, particularly of women. So that's the economic argument. This is not about, it's not a social security payment. It's providing something that will enable Australians to return to the workforce and this is a key objective as we're trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. Another objective, of course, is gender equality because as I said, this massively disproportionately affects women because usually they are the lower earner in the household. So it's their work that is affected the most by unaffordable child care.
DELANEY: Now, of course, there's a lot going on at the moment. And Scott Morrison is facing new questions now about when his office learned about the allegations that Brittany Higgins was raped by a fellow staff member a couple of years ago. But because of these text messages that have been leaked today. The Prime Minister maintains that his office was only made aware of the issue last week. Are you satisfied with the Government's response to this story?
PAYNE: No, I think this has been a very disturbing week to hear these allegations that that could happen to a young worker in our Parliament. I mean, I just first of all want to say it was, I want to commend Brittany Higgins for her bravery and coming forward with this story. And it is just been incredibly concerning to hear how it was dealt with by the Liberal Party. But I think it's a border issue than that. It is about our Parliament. It's about the way that we treat women in our society. And I think we really need to hear the truth from the Prime Minister and other members of his Government about when they knew about this and their role in dealing with it, because it is incredibly concerning to hear that this, you know, young woman who has come forward with this very serious allegation was not, that her wellbeing and the way it was dealt with was not at the absolute forefront of their response as it should have been. It's a criminal matter, and it should have been dealt with as such from day one.
DELANEY: Now, of course, this is not an isolated incident. There's a long history of allegations of this nature taking place over time in the Parliament and a suggestion that the workplace culture in the Parliament is severely deficient in this respect, and also the structures in place to deal with any complaints and to deal with this sort of situation, also found to be severely deficient. Are we going to see some genuine reform now?
PAYNE: I hope so. Because we have, this is not the first serious allegation we've heard this year about the culture and about problems with it. Anthony Albanese has called, and Tanya Plibersek and the Labor Party have called for an independent review, a proper, serious review of this culture. And it would be wonderful to see that. It's also being called for by other colleagues that we see an actual body that deals with staffing issues within the Parliament, which is independent of political parties and bosses, which would be, I think, a very good idea. My colleague, Peta Murphy, the Member for Dunkley gave a speech about this on Monday. And I think that that is really important because there's no sort of central HR for staffers working in the Parliament. You know, you go to your own boss, and, as Brittany Higgins has talked about, people are often worried about how it will reflect on their party or how it will affect their job prospects. And this is just completely wrong. None of this should be relevant in an issue of abuse or harassment or assault, even in the workplace. People should be able to come to an independent body with that issue and have it dealt with in a very professional way.
DELANEY: Indeed. Thanks very much for joining us today.
PAYNE: Thanks, Leon.
DELANEY: Thanks very much. Alicia Payne, the Federal Member for Canberra.
ENDS
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