Some families stand to lose in this year's Federal Budget
Childcare rebates will be slashed for 72,000 families, who stand to lose up to $280 next year and up to $1085 in 2013.
The move will mostly hit high-earning working mothers who have their children in top-fee childcare centres for four or five days a week. It will, in effect, function as a means test.
In a bid to meet its own strict spending limits and subsidise national reforms to deliver lower ratios of workers to children in long-day-care centres, the government has vowed to cut the cap on its childcare rebate.
Reducing the cap to from $7778 to $7500 and then freezing it for four years will initially hit 3 per cent of families, who would lose an average of $5 a week in the first year.
But the cuts will bite harder and wider in subsequent years, costing tens of thousands families up to $20 a week for each child they have in care.
It will cut the size of the rebate for 26,000 households from July 1, rising to 72,000 by 2013.
Mr Swan made no apologies for the austerity measures, saying such moves were vital to return the budget to surplus.
The government also presented the move as a de facto means test, saying 98.6 per cent of families affected by the cuts had a household income above $100,000. The measures will save the budget $86.3 million over four years.
In other cuts, subsidies for people starting up a business as a family day care provider will also be axed, saving $14.8 million.
The government argues the measure is justified by the high rates of churn in the sector in recent years, making it harder to rationalise start-up spending.
In a bid to prevent a repeat of the collapse of a major childcare operator, as with the giant ABC Learning empire, Labor will move to give the Childcare Minister new powers to inspect the books of major providers.
Operators with more than 25 centres could be subject to an annual financial viability check by the department.
And if concerns are raised by banks or other parties about the finances of a company, the minister would be able to commission a formal review and have the department access detailed financial and property records.
Childcare Minister Kate Ellis has pledged to consult industry before setting the rules in stone.
The government trumpeted its investment of $273 million over four years to bed down the national reforms to ensure better standards in childcare centres, including forcing staff to have higher levels of qualifications and improving staff-to-child ratios to give children more attention.
The extra funds will also boost subsidies for 142 rural and remote early childhood services.
In other social policy changes, looser rules have been adopted to let people who have failed to lodge a tax return continue to claim Family Tax Benefit B - as long as they don't have a debt for past overpayments.
And $29.2 million has been set aside over five years to fund the new national indigenous body, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples.
After last year's apology to the Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, $26.5 million has been devoted to delivering Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's pledge to heal the wounds of the past by helping reunite families.
The funds will deliver a website and a hotline to help separated children trace family records, plus specialised case managers and new counselling services.
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