The Coalition has confirmed its intent to take Australia backwards by reintroducing an unfair, bureaucratic barrier that punishes Australia\u2019s lowest-income families.<\/p>\n
The Coalition\u2019s plan, released overnight, would reinstate the childcare activity test, a policy that locks the children of low-income, unemployed, and underemployed parents out of early education. This move comes despite the evidence, the economics, and the experts who have repeatedly said: early childhood education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.<\/p>\n
The National President of the United Workers Union slammed the Coalition\u2019s plan as “a direct attack on working-class families.”<\/p>\n
Quotes attributable to United Workers Union National President Jo Schofield:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cPeter Dutton\u2019s message to low-income families and women is brutal: if you\u2019re not working enough, your child doesn\u2019t deserve early education, and your support will be the first to go.<\/p>\n \u201cMany across the industry fought hard to scrap the activity test because it was never about fairness. It was about forcing parents, mostly women, into impossible choices between care and work. Reinstating it would be a devastating step backwards.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Albanese Labor Government\u2019s commitment to universal early education has been a game-changer for families and the workforce. With billions invested in improving access to affordable early childhood education, the funding is directly benefiting children and their families.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder Labor\u2019s reforms, families have access to three days of subsidised early learning, giving children the best possible start and freeing up parents to look for work, retrain, or simply get back on their feet.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Coalition’s proposed changes would disproportionately impact women, single parents, and those already locked out of opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real test here is one of leadership and Peter Dutton has failed it.\u201d<\/p>\n The activity test, introduced by the Coalition in 2018, requires a parent or guardian to be in work, study or volunteering to qualify for early education subsidies. In practice, it has acted as a perverse barrier to finding work, especially for women, and has been widely criticised, including by the Productivity Commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Coalition has confirmed its intent to take Australia backwards by reintroducing an unfair, bureaucratic barrier that punishes Australia\u2019s lowest-income families. The Coalition\u2019s plan, released overnight, would reinstate the childcare activity test, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":64749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[203],"class_list":["post-61367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-release","tag-public-policy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65575,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61367\/revisions\/65575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}