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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (22 September) . . Page.. 1971 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I noticed that after the out-of-session tabling of this report Mr Stefaniak suggested to the media that, while he was supportive of the report in general, he believed that closures were an acceptable part of normal annual adjustments. That was certainly news to the preschool community - and to most members of this place as well, I am sure. Most people think that closure of a local preschool is quite a major adjustment for the community concerned. In fact, you could not get much more major, we would have thought. The Minister needs to understand that he has lost credibility through this process, and if he wants to regain it he must acknowledge the importance of working with the community, not against it. He must acknowledge that this report is a useful starting point for a government rethink on how this area is being managed. This report has depoliticised the issues to some extent, and it would be most unwise for the Minister not to take on its recommendations with genuine goodwill and commitment.

Mr Speaker, if the Minister does take the provocative line that closures are part of annual adjustments and proceeds with them, I believe that we will have lost an opportunity to get the community on side to work through what probably will be some quite difficult issues. No-one is denying that demographics are changing and there may have to be hard decisions, but there does have to be full debate on the issues. The committee was not able to see the current enrolment figures, but unless the numbers were absolutely and clearly unworkable it would be very concerning to the community if the Minister did choose any closures.

The Minister needs to acknowledge that the process to date has been inadequately managed and that there is an opportunity now to work out a long-term plan which takes into account changing demographics as well as the needs of the community. This unanimous report has given the Minister support for looking at how we deliver early childhood services. We have also recommended that government must ensure ongoing mechanisms for community consultation. There is a disturbing reluctance from some public servants to engage the community on these important issues, and that does a lot of damage to government. Mr Speaker, if the practice does not fit the rhetoric, there is loss of trust from the community in its politicians, as well as growing cynicism.

The Minister suggested to the media - he can clarify this if it is not correct - that if he felt any major changes were necessary there would not be time for consultation and that the committee had already done the consultation. I want to say - and I believe I have the support of the committee in saying this - that at no time during our inquiry did we discuss with the community the particular merits or otherwise of closures of any particular preschools. That is not what we saw our task to be. Under the short timeframe we had, it would have been impossible, in fact. I want to make that quite clear.

Another important issue that was raised during the inquiry was the importance of placing policy development related to preschool provision in the context of general early childhood services. There was concern that government has not taken a strategic long-term planning approach to early childhood service; that they have certainly not been proactive in unifying the different sectors; that in fact they have taken a hands-off approach, because there were differences between the sectors. This is not in the interests of the children and families of Canberra.

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