In the final sitting weeks of parliament before the May budget, the Coalition is attempting to win over crossbenchers and pass childcare changes through the upper house.
The government had proposed 16 welfare cuts, including a reduction to family tax benefits, in a bid to save billions of dollars that would be redirected to childcare subsidies and disability funding.
"The important thing is, for the sake of these little kids and their parents and many others like them, that these reforms are passed," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at a Canberra childcare centre on Wednesday morning.
"We are urging the Senate and all the parties in the Senate to get behind it."
The government's $1.6 billion childcare plan would streamline subsidies into one means-tested payment.
Watch: Education Minister Simon Birmingham on the government's childcare reforms
Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the proposal would "remove the $7500 cap, the cliff that many families fall off mid-year in terms of the support they receive".
"They remove a whole lot of red tape for childcare providers that will enable them to spend more time caring for children, educating children and less time worrying about the paperwork of running a childcare system," he said.
But it was combining that proposal with plans to cut money from payments under the Family Tax Benefit scheme that has concerned Labor and members of some minority parties.
"This new package leaves a third of families worse off, and most particularly kids on welfare," Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek told the ABC.
"Kids growing up in small areas, Indigenous children are actually going to lose precious hours through this package.
"If the government is back to the drawing board, then perhaps renegotiating some of these other elements would be wise at the same time."
- with AAP
