More than 800,000 families will benefit from the government's proposed overhaul of childcare rebates, the minister in charge says and Parkes MP Mark Coulton expects the changes will be welcomed within his electorate.
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The new childcare package included more than $3 billion in additional funding and would support about 1.2 million families in 2017-18 as they balanced work and family responsibilities, Education Minister Simon Birmingham said at the weekend.
The Jobs for Families package would also protect those most vulnerable, and continue to ensure a high-quality learning experience, he said.
Media reports show Labor has previously said the changes would be detrimental, and the predicted increases would make childcare too expensive for some families, but on Sunday Mr Coulton shrugged off the criticism.
"I expect Labor would not be overly supportive but certainly (the reform) will be welcomed here I believe," he said.
Mr Coulton said a lot of the proposed changes were in response to meetings with childcare operators, including one he hosted at his Dubbo office with Mr Birmingham's predecessor.
He said he had found childcare had always been an underlying issue in his eight years of representing the Parkes electorate.
The MP says with the proposed changes, families in the low to middle income bracket "the ones who can least afford it are getting the most help".
From July 2017 about 250,000 families earning $65,710 or less per year would have access to a subsidy rate of 85 per cent of their fee, which is up from the current subsidy rate of about 72 per cent, modelling provided by the minister's office shows.
The majority of these families - about 104,100 - would be better off or would experience no change - about 81,000.
About 52,100 families in this income bracket will receive a reduced subsidy because they are not "working, training, studying or volunteering, but will still be eligible for 12 hours a week of subsidised access to early learning opportunities, in addition to the universal preschool entitlement.
For the low to middle income bracket, the subsidy rate would taper from 85 per cent for families earning more than $65,710 to 50 per cent for those earning $170,710 and, families would on average be about $1500 a year better off.
About 565,400 low to middle income families would be better off and about 32,800 would experience no change in support
It was anticipated from the modelling that "many of the around 55,700 families in this income bracket who may receive a reduced amount of support will either increase their activity or move to lower cost childcare services".
