Jobs summit: Push grows for earlier childcare reforms

The Albanese government is facing mounting pressure to bring forward its childcare reforms and improve paid parental leave.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil says the 18 weeks of paid parental leave was not adequate and needed to be as high as 52 weeks. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The Albanese government is facing mounting pressure to bring forward its childcare reforms and improve paid parental leave, as ­unions, industry and Labor premiers push for the overhaul of the sector to be expedited at the Jobs and Skills Summit.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil said the 18 weeks of paid parental leave was not adequate and needed to be as high as 52 weeks. “(We need to) increase paid parental leave to 26 weeks, with a path to lift us to 52 weeks by 2030,” she told the summit.

Ms O’Neil also joined calls for Labor’s $5.4bn childcare package to be expedited to January 1.

Independent MP for Goldstein Zoe Daniel also called for the package to be expedited, with a veiled swipe at the government’s claim it could not afford to bring the reforms forward but could ­afford stage three tax cuts.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said cheaper childcare was the closest thing to a silver bullet the country had to fixing skills shortages.

“Of all the things we’ll talk about over the next two days, this issue and unlocking the amazing under-utilised potential of women … because of a childcare system that doesn’t work … is perhaps the biggest lever we can pull,” he said.

“Better early childhood education … and making childcare work for families has never been more important.”

Georgie Dent, executive director of The Parenthood, Australia’s leading parent advocacy group, backed the call for the reforms to be brought forward.

“Not being able to access and afford quality learning and care remains the single biggest impediment to women workforce participation and women’s economic security in Australia,” she said. “In terms of concern about cost, we must remind ourselves that the cost of inaction is higher.”

Former South Australian Labor premier Jay Weatherill urged the government to spend what he estimated would be $900m to bring forward its childcare reforms to January.

The childcare package will lift the maximum subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families for the first child in care and increase subsidy rates for every family with a child in care earning less than $530,000 in combined household income.

The government has all but ruled out bringing the changes forward because of the expense.

“Bringing the subsidy forward is financially difficult, given the trillions of dollars of debt we’ve inherited and there are significant system changes with a reform of this size that will take time to implement,” Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly said.

Meanwhile, the Coalition raised the alarm on Parliamentary Budget Office documents showing that new childcare subsidy rates would apply only from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2026, and then “revert to existing policy settings”.

Ms Aly said: “Labor’s plan for cheaper child care is ongoing and will be reflected in the budget in the usual way.”