United Voice Tasmanian’s Jannette Armstrong said she was pleased Nick Xenophon had pledged to block the federal government’s childcare and welfare omnibus savings bill, but that reforms were still desperately needed.

Without Senator Xenophon’s three votes, the Coalition’s attempt to push through $4 billion worth of savings and reform measures would be unlikely to pass.

The legislation contained cuts to family tax benefits, paid parental leave and unemployment payments.

“I think the reforms to childcare and early learning are really important but I totally understand and am quite pleased that Xenophon will be blocking this omnibus bill,” Ms Armstrong said.

“It’s just totally unfair the way they’ve paired the two things together. We would like to see any boost to funding in quality early learning be separated and argued on its own merit and own right, not coming at the cost of other families. It’s not about welfare, it’s about education. They’re two separate issues.”

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the government would continue negotiations with the crossbench.

“I hope that the Labor Party reconsiders, that they take a look and realise in this omnibus savings bill, there are measures that they should support.”

Ms Armstrong said there were some “decent proposals” in the childcare and early learning section of the proposal, but, by pairing them with cuts to family tax benefits, it showed “how little the government cares about investing in our early education system”.

“They have been elected promising to make sweeping changes and greater investment in early learning and childcare, yet they’ve again paired these two issues together knowing it would get blocked.”

Mr Birmingham released the new data on Thursday, revealing more than 3600 Australian families had already hit their  $7500 childcare assistance rebate cap.