Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has welcomed the Government’s $246 million two year pilot programme to extend subsidy support to home care services provided by nannies.

Mr Taylor said the two year interim Home Based Carer Subsidy Programme announced this week represented the first major tranche of the Government’s new child care package and would provide subsidies for about 10,000 children, especially in middle to low income families.

“The world of work is changing and many of us have jobs now which aren’t traditional hours. We have many more women in the workforce than was traditionally the case and I think there is potential for more women to join and stay in the workforce. We want to increase participation rates of women who want to work and that means childcare has to adapt,” Mr Taylor said.

“Nowhere is this more true than in Hume, where we have many reasonably isolated communities and a lot of people commute long distances to go to work. Traditional 9 to 5 child care simply does not work for so many women. Many of us need much more flexibility than the child care system provides at the moment.”

The two year pilot programme will commence in January 2016 and determine whether a more sustainable programme can be affordably put in place for in-home care nanny services, including necessary integrity measures and quality standards.

The subsidy will be paid directly to services and will be adjusted according to family income. “Clearly if you are on a relatively low income, the choice to go to work is much more contingent on how much you have to pay for childcare. I think it’s right and proper that there be some means testing of the subsidies for childcare in whatever form, whether it is traditional childcare or nannies,” Mr Taylor said.

“A lot of criticism of nannies is that it will only apply to wealthy people, however there are a lot of people who are not wealthy who have to use nannies because they do shift work, because they live in a remote area where there is no accessible child care centre, and the only option many of these people have is to use a nanny. I think this pilot which Scott Morrison has announced is an excellent step forward to try and address that problem.”