child care, child care providers, Childcare, Childcare Rebate, children, EMC, ER, Essential Media, Essential Report, families, Network 10, Network Ten, Polling, polls
Q. The Federal Government currently pays parents 50 per cent of money they spend on childcare via its childcare rebate. Which of the following policies would you support most?
| Total | Vote Labor | Vote Lib/Nat | Vote Greens | Men | Women | Age
18-34 |
Aged
35-54 |
Aged 55+ | |
| Maintaining the child care rebate at current levels | 22% | 23% | 23% | 25% | 21% | 22% | 33% | 18% | 14% |
| Limiting the rebate to families earning less than $150,000 per annum | 42% | 46% | 41% | 44% | 42% | 42% | 38% | 42% | 47% |
| Scrapping the rebate and paying the money directly to child care providers to contain costs and improve services | 21% | 25% | 18% | 18% | 25% | 18% | 12% | 24% | 26% |
| Don’t know | 15% | 13% | 11% | 14% | 12% | 18% | 17% | 16% | 12% |
Only 22% favour maintaining the child care rebate at current levels – 42% think it should be means tested and 21% think it should be scrapped and the money paid directly to child care providers. There were no significant differences by voting intention.
Those aged 18-34 were more likely to support maintaining the rebate at current levels (33%) as were people earning over $1,600 pw (31%). Limiting the rebate to families earning less than $150,000 was supported by 55% of people earning $1,000-$1,600 pw.