Page 4835 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
No-one suggests that providing the best quality education and childcare services that we can for our children is a bad thing. No-one thinks that; clearly quality childcare is important. But if real reform is to be made, it must be done holistically. This legislation does not do that. Its lack of a holistic approach is demonstrated by the concerns expressed by the Australian Childcare Alliance. This legislation sets up the standards but does not provide the solution or the assistance for the education and childcare services sector to implement them.
This is typical of Labor’s approach—not just in the ACT but nationally. There is an attitude of no care and no responsibility. They will sit here and say, verballing me, that Mrs Dunne does not support quality childcare. Mrs Dunne, as a mother of five, supports quality childcare. I heard the minister on the radio this morning saying, “We will do whatever it takes to provide quality childcare.” That quality childcare comes at a cost that the people of the ACT, the families of the ACT and, nationally, Australian families cannot bear.
We see already that childcare in the ACT is, on average, $65 a week dearer—$65 a week dearer—than it is anywhere else in the country. These changes that we will see here today will add to that cost. Depending on which childcare centre it is, somewhere between $5 and $15 a day has been reported to me as the amount that costs will go up as a result of the changes to the child to staff ratios and the requirement for further study. This is on top of the fact that we are already seeing that we pay $65 more than the national average, and that rises every year.
This minister says that she is not responsible for that, that there is nothing that the government can do that can impact on the cost of childcare. She just throws up her hands and at the same time says, “The research that we did four years ago about this shows that it will drive up the cost of childcare by the cost of a cup of coffee a week.” It is a pretty expensive cup of coffee for most families in the ACT. I would like to know where the minister gets her cup of coffee from and whether she thinks that it is reasonable that families will see at least a $25 increase every week in their childcare. That is $25 after tax. That is $50 that they have to earn before they have to pay that.
This is the problem that we see over and over again. The costs are going up because of this and other aspects of changes in the childcare sector. And this minister, this government and Labor federally do not care.
I have had lengthy communications with Minister Burch. When Minister Burch became the minister, one of the first things I said to her was “Let’s sit down and work out what we can do to facilitate the transition to this arrangement.” She said, “We will have a meeting.” We had a meeting about that and other things and we never got on to this issue. I kept saying to her, “I would like to sit down and work with you and talk through what I think needs to be done to enable people in the ACT, childcare centres in the ACT, to make these adjustments.” I made that offer in February last year. The meeting has not been held.
This minister does not want to engage. She is afraid to engage because she does not know her brief well enough to really stand up for the policy and she does not know
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video