On 23 February 2011 the Government introduced the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Rebate) Bill 2011 to implement its election commitment to provide families with the option to receive Child Care Rebate payments fortnightly from 1 July 2011. As an alternative to receiving the payment directly, families can opt to receive the payment via child care services as a fee reduction. Facilitating this was anticipated to impose a compliance cost on potentially all 14,000 child care services. The RIS prepared by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations concludes that due to the universal use of computerised systems and existing regulatory reporting requirements the impact should be small. The OBPR has approved the RIS.
