Families in the New England are being urged to sign on and start their changeover to the Coalition Government’s new child care and early learning system which starts soon.

Member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, said with nearly 4,500 families in the electorate set to benefit from the Government’s new package, it was time for them to “make the switch” to the overhauled system starting on 2 July.

“Our new child care package will provide the greatest hours of support to families in the New England who work the longest hours, and the greatest subsidy and financial support to the families who earn the least,” Mr Joyce said. 

“With more support just around the corner for more families from Walcha to Willow Tree, Tamworth to Tenterfield, they should visit education.gov.au/childcare and make the switchover as soon as they can so they’re ready for the new system from day one.”

Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham said the child care changes are focused on helping the families that need it most.

“The Coalition Government’s overhaul of child care and early learning subsidies and extra $2.5 billion investment in the system will introduce hourly rate caps to put downward pressure on fee increases and abolish the annual rebate cap for most families,” Minister Birmingham said.

“The biggest winners will be families working, studying or volunteering that earn less than $250,000 a year and even if your family has a higher income, you’ll still stand to gain from our change to lift the annual rebate cap to around $10,000.”

Recent changes to the Consumer Price Index have also seen hourly rate caps and annual caps increase and will mean under the Coalition Government’s child care and early learning package:

• More than 370,000 families earning around $66 958 or less a year will have their base subsidy increase from 72 per cent to 85 per cent
• Families earning up to $186 958, will no longer be limited by an annual $7,613 cap on the amount of child care they can access – that’s more than 85 per cent of families using child care/early learning and means families won’t run out of subsidy mid-year as happens now
• Families earning between $186,958 and $351,248 will benefit from an increased annual rebate cap of $10,190 per child