Page 1968 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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MR BERRY: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Would the Minister detail the expansion of child-care which ACT Government Service employees will enjoy?
MR LAMONT: Madam Speaker, I think it is appropriate that in this budget the ACT Government is showing its commitment to the provision, again in the International Year of the Family, of affordable day care services and child-care services for its employees. Madam Speaker, 110 long day care places for the use of ACT Government employees have already been established at Acton and Campbell. The ACT Government will be providing funds to fill some of the gaps in the existing child-care provision for its employees.
Pilot programs will be set up to care for four to eight children aged between five and 12 and with disabilities requiring considerable extra support in existing outside school hours care and vacation care programs. We will provide outside school hours care and vacation care for adolescents with disabilities and aged 12 to 19 years. We will also provide 40 vacation care places in various locations to suit the needs of ACT Government Service employees. We will also extend the family day care scheme to enable the provision of child-care for shift workers, workers with unusual or extended hours and workers needing overnight care occasionally - for example, single parents attending conferences. We will also provide child-care for children who are ill and cannot attend child-care centres. We will employ a child-care adviser to implement these pilot programs and liaise between service providers and ACT Government Service employees. Madam Speaker, despite some of the rhetoric that we have heard spew forth from the other side of the chamber in the last 24 hours about the new ACT Government Service which we hope will come into effect on 1 July, this is another positive commitment from this Government to its employees.
Government Service - Voluntary Redundancies
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Chief Minister. I note that the budget has provision for $17m worth of voluntary redundancies. Chief Minister, noting the difficulties that you had last year regarding voluntary redundancies, how do you intend to proceed with them this year, which particular areas have you targeted, would you accept redundancies from wherever they arise - if you have not targeted any areas - and, if the answer to that question is yes, how does this accord with your budget plans?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mr De Domenico for the question, Madam Speaker. I should advise members that one of the greatest difficulties we had with our redundancy program last year was that the demand exceeded the available funds. Despite the fact that we had seen in the Industrial Relations Commission a move against voluntary redundancies and against the service-wide approach which the Government had taken, when we revised our approach to make these redundancies available on an agency by agency basis there was, in fact, an enormous take-up of them. In particular, the take-up in the Department of Education was very strong indeed. There would have been a second round of voluntary redundancies in Education had the funds been available. They were not.
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