Page 1094 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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on by Dr Foskey and by Mrs Burke. One of them was the real concern in the community that, if every block of land that is made available for childcare goes to auction, we will see a real diminution of choice in providers in the ACT because large, stock exchange listed corporations which provide childcare will be able to come in with a very large chequebook and snap up all the land available.
This is not necessarily to criticise the service they provide. I do not have first-hand experience of that service and I suppose I have never had much experience of childcare centres because I was always a great advocate of family day care, but lots of people say to me that they would prefer either community-based childcare or a childcare centre that is run by an organisation, even if it is a private organisation, that is part of the Canberra community. So it might be a commercial job, but what we want is to have local people running it.
They do not want, when they have a problem, to be dealing with people whose first responsibility is to shareholders and a board of directors in another city. They want to be dealing with someone who has hands-on experience of childcare and who understands childcare and whom they can contact when they have a concern. What this government is doing by saying that it will provide the space but the person with the biggest chequebook will get it is removing that sort of choice that the people of Canberra, the mothers of Canberra, are telling me that they want when they go looking for childcare.
They want a community-based centre or they want a centre where they can actually eyeball the person who owns the centre and say, “I have got a problem and I want you to fix it.” That is what the women of Canberra are telling you, minister, and you are not listening. The women of Canberra, the mothers who send their children to the Teddy Bears Child Care Centre, have said that loud and clear to this government. The mothers, fathers and grandparents of the children who go to the Teddy Bears Child Care Centre have signed a petition, 597 people signed the petition, and members of this Assembly attempted to have this matter investigated by a committee but, again, the majority Stanhope government thwarted that attempt so that there can be no discussion in this place about the provision of childcare and there cannot be a proper inquiry.
If Minister Gallagher is absolutely convinced that there is no need for more childcare places and that by the time the ones that are currently being built are open everything will be hunky-dory, let her show us that that is the case. Let her show how much ticker she has and let her put those facts on the table so that members of this Assembly can scrutinise those facts and members of the community can have their say. Let us not have it handed down from on high by the minister responsible for childcare that everything is fine in the garden, because the parents out there do not believe that.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (11.30): Mr Speaker, I rise to talk briefly to the amendment. I need to make it clear that I am really disappointed with it. I thought I made it clear that I understand the federal government’s part in this issue. I see the amendment moved today by Ms Gallagher as, sadly, a thinly veiled attempt to try to cover up the mess handed to her by Mr Corbell. The government have to acknowledge that they have made a complete mess from beginning to end with respect particularly to the Teddy Bears Child Care Centre. It is a disgrace that someone who is trying to provide a much-needed service there is being forced now to compete, as Mrs Dunne put it very eloquently, on another playing field possibly by having to tender for this block of land.
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