Today the International Monetary Fund has  recommended that Australia invests in child care spending to increase female labour force participation.
 
This latest G-20 Report on Strong, Sustainable, Balanced and Inclusive Growth prepared by the staff at the IMF “discusses the G-20’s progress during the past year toward the goal of strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth and provides policy recommendations to help reach this goal.”
 
The report recommends advanced economies implement labour market reforms, and identifies boosting female labour force participation through child care spending as a priority measure for Australia.
 
The Morrison Government seem to be the only ones who do not understand the importance of investing in child care for our economic recovery.
 
The evidence is overwhelming that investing in child care is needed to address the financial disincentives that stop women working.
 
Yet Scott Morrison’s Budget has no plan to boost female workforce participation or to make child care more affordable.
 
Just last month the Government’s own data confirmed that child care fees have soared by 35.9 per cent since 2013, crippling family budgets and locking women out of the workforce.
 
That is why an Albanese Labor Government will introduce Labor’s Cheaper Child Care plan, which will:

• Scrap the $10,560 child care subsidy cap to stop women losing money from an extra day’s work;


• Lift the maximum child care subsidy rate to 90 per cent; and


• Increase child care subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000.

 
Labor will keep working to fix Australia’s broken child care system, which currently locks out more than 100,000 families because they just can’t afford it.
 
The Productivity Commission will review the sector, aiming to implement a universal 90 per cent subsidy for all families, while the ACCC will design a price regulation mechanism to drive down child care costs.
 
The evidence is clear that removing the financial disincentives for women to work more is great for families and great for the economy.
 
In the worst recession in a hundred years, we have to make sure women aren’t forced to choose between their family and their jobs.
 

TUESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2020