The government’s desperation to dig itself out of the deep pit of gender damage it blundered into in February will yield benefits for a targeted section of working families, with an extra $1.7 billion a year in childcare subsidies. From next year, this will benefit families with more than one child in childcare and families earning higher incomes.
It’s possible that this package, or perhaps a small version of it, would have happened anyway before the events of February and March. Anthony Albanese spotted and hammered a Coalition weak point in his budget reply last year with his much larger childcare plan to lift subsidies and income thresholds (the Coalition’s response at the time, via Jane Hume — present at yesterday’s policy announcement — was to complain the policy wasn’t properly funded…)
Scott Morrison’s shrillness and tin ear on gender issues was on display back then. But Brittany Higgins, the Christian Porter allegations and the Coalition’s toxic attitude to women made sure that the budget would have to include a substantial bribe for women to take another look at Morrison.
Like any politically driven policy, it’s betwixt and between. It’s not as big as Labor’s policy, and not intended to properly address the systemic problems around childcare and its interaction with the tax and transfer systems, but it’s still substantial.
Grattan Institute head Danielle Wood, always a reliable guide on public policy who has a strong background on childcare economics, described it as modest but well-targeted. This was part of a broader consensus that it was a step in the right direction. But as Kate Noble and Peter Hurley point out, it won’t do anything to improve affordability for three-quarters of childcare users.
It’s also a bit neither fish nor fowl in terms of its policy goals, which are both to make childcare cheaper for, primarily, low- and middle-income earners, and to increase workforce participation. The Grattan Institute found that is was low- and high-income earners who faced the biggest disincentive to working more than three days a week, compared to middle-income earners. It also found that high-income — over $100,000 a year — earners faced the biggest disincentive to working five days a week.
Still, the policy will generate further pressure to increase subsidies for the other three-quarters of childcare users, and in particular one-child families, when no benefit flows through to them despite the inevitable government advertising campaign.
And the delayed start date of July next year, beyond the next election, might yet neutralise the political benefit of the scheme. If it’s all about practical support for suburban women and not the complex gender relations obsessions of the Canberra bubble, the money might need to flow a little sooner for parents with kids who’ll be off to school before much of that extra $1.7 billion reaches them.
Must have seen warning signs in the latest focus group.
“We’re unpopular with women, Scott!”
“OK – throw them a weaker version of what Labor proposed on childcare. And start briefing the media that this is going to be a ‘women focused’ budget”.
Does the Coalition seriously still plan to run Christian Porter in the seat of Pearce?
This and other issues with women are not going away. Not even with a mediocre childcare policy that someone else thought of.
Yet more Liberal mirroring of Labor policy – after Labor gets mercilessly mocked for suggesting the thing in the first place.
I remember when Albo was championing his childcare policies, most of the reactions were “who cares?” and “Albo’s ideas are irrelevant” etc.
Now Morrison’s weaker version will be heralded as visonary, and proof that he now profoundly and sincerely gives a toss about women’s issues.
Labor need to make a list of all this co-opting, and make the point that Morrison steals good Labor policy only after his natural instincts – whether it’s wanting to stay in Hawaii, not wanting to lock-down, backing Clive Palmer against WA, going all-in with Astra Zeneca, not going to the women’s rally, waving lumps of coal around – are shown to be wrong,wrong, wrong, and not just a bit wrong. Really badly wrong.
His first reaction is his genuine one. Not the rejigged third backflip that’s been massaged and reframed by marketing to get him out of the soup. The real Scotty didn’t want to come back from Hawaii for the bush fires. The real Scotty didn’t want to know about Brittany Higgins. And he absolutely doesn’t want to do anything real on the climate issue.
He will keep on heading the ship in this direction, allowing for deviations after every wrong call, before slowly nudging back to where he was going before the annoying humans got upset.
The more elections he wins, the bolder he will become, until there is a day where he tells his marketing team he doesn’t want to listen to their advice anymore, and it’ll be Morrison in all his warped ugliness.
While Labor needs to continue to come up with good policies, the election will be won or lost depending on how effectively they can make the public feel that Morrison is an unfaithful, unfeeling and incompetent leader.
He has supplied all the ammunition, now what’s needed is a relentless, carpet-bombing campaign with one aim, and that is to destroy Morrison’s image. They need to get in his face and inside his head, and mentally break him. He will break, guaranteed.
But the ugliness needs to be on full display, for the punters to really feel it, as the walk into the polling place.
A relentless carpet bombing campaign…with the ugliness on full display…couldn’t agree more
If the Lincoln Project were an australian group, they would rip Morrison to shreds without breaking into a sweat.
The Lincoln Project have given the ALP a clear template for how to dismantle populist fakes, like Morrison, and they have proven that it works.
Now we just have to hope that there’s someone in the ALP with the sense to recognise it, and DO it!
Ouch… does he realise that THIS is what so many people see????
Read Kate Noble and Peter Hurley in The Conversation…as mentioned in this article…to get the TRUE story of this so-called ‘great’ policy from this putrid government. Just another marketing exercise, which leaves three-quarters of parents no better off after July 2022! Shameful manipulation of voters is all!!
Half baked and not until 2022 anyway – it’s just another announcement then? That we’ll look back on in hindsight and realise was a cynical bait and switch?
The more money is pumped into families desperate for houses, the more the price of houses goes up. Ditto when parents guarantee their childrens’ loans. And also when people are allowed to use superannuation for a house. Etc, etc.
Time was when women wanted to work. Now they have to work. Kids too, nowadays. It’s amazing what people will do, and what they’ll believe, and come to think of as normal. Me too, but.