Page 3472 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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To give one example, the preliminary commitment the ACT has given on child-care is to "support the broadbanding of child-care programs, with minimal conditions to allow joint Commonwealth-State involvement in the development of national goals and performance outcomes, but to enable States to have a clearer responsibility for service delivery". That is an endorsement, so far as I interpret it, of a hands-off arrangement to allow States to have primary responsibility for service delivery. The word "clearer" is a euphemism. Mr Berry's Government has endorsed, really, easier handovers of national performance setting goals to the States.
Queensland is a classic example of this, and this is why the Left in this country, particularly, is so perturbed. You have only to go out and talk to the various lobbies in this community and ACTCOSS, the Women's Electoral Lobby, and all of the other organisations who have traditionally been sympathetic, to some extent, or empathetic with Labor's position on social justice, to know how deep the concern is in the community at the moment.
Queensland, on child-care, is a great example. They cannot possibly come up to any national goal on child-care. In old buildings throughout the State of Queensland there are child-care centres that do not fit the accepted standards, led, in part, by the ACT and South Australia, for child-care accommodation - standards on space, safety, hygiene and staffing ratios.
At the time I was the responsible Minister I heard my then colleague Anne Warner in Brisbane make clear that Queensland was back in the Dark Ages in this respect. That is understandable, given the years under Bjelke-Petersen government and the far-flung and difficult economic circumstances of many communities that have child-care responsibilities. I do not believe that we are attending our national conscience by handing child-care responsibility back to the Queensland Government, whether it is a Labor government, a Liberal government, a National Party government, a coalition or what.
The Commonwealth should retain the national drive on child-care. It should not go over. The preliminary support the Follett Government has given is wrong; it is fundamentally wrong. It should not have occurred. I formed a very strong view on that when I was at a meeting with Minister Staples, Anne Warner and other Ministers. Queensland, above all, has a dire situation that requires the Federal Government to drive them to reform. We know that Western Australia and Queensland are conservative States. They are conservative by nature and regardless of the political machine running their Treasury.
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