The Family Unfriendly Government

Date: 19 April 2000

Statement by opposition Leader Kim Beazley

Since its inception, the Howard Government has dealt harshly with Australian families, and no cobbled together $240 million package will fool people into believing otherwise.

Yesterday, the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Newman, denied that the Howard Government had cut $5 billion from social programs.

The attached summary confirms that Senator Newman is wrong, and details the areas in which this Government cut funding for family-related expenditure in each of its Budgets.

If Senator Newman still thinks the attached figures are wrong, she should immediately alert the Treasurer to errors in his Budget Papers.

Senator Newman has also tried to defend the Howard Government's miserable record on child care funding, but again she flies in the face of the facts. As the attached graph drawn from the Budget Papers shows, the child care funding announced at the weekend is miniscule compared with the massive cuts previously imposed by this Government.

The announcement on the weekend of a $65 million program for "flexibility and choice in child care" is laughable, and an insult to working mothers and fathers trying to deal with the demands of modern working life and families.

The $65 million over four years represents a little over 1.6 per cent of the total Commonwealth expenditure on child care.

The Government's glossy and expensive puff material says that under this initiative "families will now be able to have their children cared for in their home by a trained child care worker." According to the Government, this will be available to shift workers, families who have a sick child, and families who live in rural and regional Australia.

Shift workers alone represent around 1 million Australian workers. If you assume conservatively that only half of these workers have children, the Government's big child care bonus works out at around $32 per family per year.

This is a complete farce, and shows yet again that this Government is more interested in cheap headlines than in serious policies for all Australians. Mr Howard's recently acquired family friendly clothes are looking completely threadbare.

CANBERRA
18 April 2000

For further information

Contact:	Kim Beazley
Union:	ALP Federal
WWW:	http://www.alp.org.au

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