Page 504 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006

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I will return to this motion at the next possible opportunity. However, that will not be until May, I believe. I do not get the chance the next time we sit. The reason I put this motion on the notice paper was that the best present that we could give to women of Canberra on International Women’s Day is the promise that we will look at issues that are of great concern to them relating to their ability to find access to quality, affordable childcare.

Members will be aware that a document published on Monday by the Australian Council of Social Service not only made some very good recommendations but also showed that the ACT has the highest costing childcare in Australia. Therefore, it is important to look at ways that the ACT government can assist parents not only to face the fact that they have got the highest childcare bills in Australia but that often childcare is not conveniently located near their work or their homes and it is often not easy to find a place.

I heard today at the WorkChoices breakfast run by the CPSU that the ACT public service must be one of the few public services in the country in which more than 50 per cent of the employees are women. We know that Canberra, unlike most towns of this size, is a town with many women working and many women juggling the double day. The one thing that would most help with their wellbeing is conveniently located, high-quality and affordable childcare.

While we might imagine that children are a whole-of-society concern and that fathers are equally responsible with mothers in sorting out the care of their children, the reality in our society now is that childcare is essentially a woman’s issue. So that is why I deliberately put this childcare motion up for debate today.

Fortunately, I can expect good support from the government because the ACT Labor Party’s 2005-06 policy platform includes a strong commitment to accessible and high-quality childcare. For example, ACT Labor recognises “the vital necessity for quality, accessible and affordable childcare for women to have [real] work choices”—not WorkChoices, real work choices. It acknowledges that “women’s full participation and independence must be supported by access to quality, affordable childcare, including community based, respite, occasional, work-based and work-related childcare”.

It concedes that substantial work needs to be done locally and nationally “to ensure equity in access is not compromised through either a reduction of the number of childcare places or an increase in care costs”. It commits to the development of “a full and comprehensive policy on childcare, which covers respite care, occasional care and the needs of shift workers”. It supports “the establishment and continuation of out-of-hours school childcare centres using school property at appropriate concessional rates”. It promises “to ensure the availability of adequate and affordable high quality childcare and facilities to enable full participation in the labour market”.

So I am confident of the government’s support for this motion in general. I am sure, if the detail of this motion were calling on the Australian government to take up the key suggestions in ACOSS’s latest policy paper, which is to scrap the untargeted and

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