Page 1091 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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MR SPEAKER: You will need to move the amendment.
MS GALLAGHER: I move:
Omit all words after “situations in the ACT”, substitute:
“(3) acknowledges that the ACT Government has:
(a) incorporated the use of schools and other community buildings for childcare where available; and
(b) ensured an adequate supply of designated land and facilities, including direct sale to approved providers where appropriate;
(4) calls on the Federal Government to:
(a) look for opportunities to work with private, co-operative and community childcare providers to ensure the level of supply for childcare is adequate and developed in areas with current shortages;
(b) fund an increase in long day care and outside school care places;
(c) remove the ever-widening gap between the Child Care Benefit and childcare fees to ensure childcare does not become a luxury service available only to certain parents; and
(d) heed calls by the Australian Council of Social Services to make early childhood sector ‘simpler and fairer’; and
(5) calls on the Chief Minister to write to the Federal Minister responsible for childcare communicating the Assembly’s resolution on this issue.”.
The ACT government does not have control over the allocation of childcare places or funding for childcare benefits.
Mrs Burke: Let’s just debate it.
MS GALLAGHER: It is all linked, as we have just heard from your speech. It is all linked. Childcare places become available only when the childcare benefit is attached to them so that parents can get the rebate. The ACT government cannot go out there and build centres without the agreement or the support of the commonwealth government. It simply cannot do so.
So, more appropriately, this amendment actually links the motion to areas where the commonwealth government has responsibility. We are asking them to do this work. I have met with federal ministers and I have met with childcare ministers across the country. These are areas that state and territory governments do not have responsibility for or the capacity to deal with the issues that parents are talking to us about.
The affordability of childcare is not something that the ACT government has control over, nor can it do anything to alleviate the escalating costs of childcare. The issue is
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