Page 149 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There are other figures, but I really need to look at the childcare figures, which are something that I am particularly concerned about, because people in my electorate are particularly concerned about it. We will be discussing this later in the day. The report shows that we have a very high proportion of not-for-profit providers of childcare services in the ACT, higher than anywhere else in the country. I do not know that that is particularly a problem, but it does belie a point that Ms Hunter made when Mr Seselja made the point that we had the highest fees in the country. It is in fact that only ACT families pay more than $300 a week for centre-based or long-based care. She said, “That is all right, because the market sets the fee.”
However, we have to remember that most of these organisations are not-for-profit. They do not go out there looking for a profit. What they do, if you actually talk to them, is that they look at their costs and they work out how much it costs to provide the service and that is what they charge. There is no profit. All they are doing is covering costs. When we have nearly 80 per cent of our service providers being not-for-profit, they are not out there looking for a profit margin, and they are not out there looking at what the market will bear. They are looking at what it costs them to run a childcare centre and that is what they charge for clients.
One of the other things that is most important in this figure is dealt with in paragraph 3.63. It show that the out-of-pocket expenses, particularly for people on low incomes, are far and away the highest in the country. They are far and away the highest in the country. It is no good saying, “We have high incomes so we can afford to do this.” It is a stand-out figure, and I draw members’ attention to the figure in table 3.27, because it shows just how poorly we are performing in comparison with the rest of the country.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Women) (11.47): I rise again to say thank you for giving us an opportunity to provide clarity to the nonsense that is contained in this motion. Each year the Productivity Commission, as a secretariat producing the report on government services, releases a report on the provision of a range of government services, including housing and childcare fees.
What we see in this motion is a cynical and deliberate simplification and misrepresentation of the facts. I think others in this chamber have agreed. But as always, the ACT Liberal Party is not about facts. It is around cherry-picking a little bit of data, suiting it to their own purposes and trying to make out that they have actually got something to say and a policy to work around. But this unfortunate motion has made some serious misrepresentation of the facts.
Mr Seselja states that the ACT has the highest median childcare fees of any state or territory at $65 a day. I think we have just heard Mrs Dunne talk about that. But childcare fees are a matter for individual childcare service operators to determine based on their business model. This applies to both private and community-based childcare services. The setting of childcare fees is not, nor should it be, the role of the government. The Productivity Commission’s report on government services is quite
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video