Page 4837 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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of flawed legislation that does not look holistically at the provision of childcare, the needs of families and how they interact. That is why the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting it.
I know that Minister Burch will come out and say: “Mrs Dunne and the Canberra Liberals don’t care about quality childcare. If they cared about quality childcare, they would sign up like lemmings to this piece of legislation.” We are not lemmings. We look at the whole issue. Looking at the whole issue shows that there are considerable problems with this legislation—real problems with this legislation—which will only come home to roost after 1 January next year.
Minister Burch has had plenty of opportunities to ease the transition. Minister Burch has had plenty of opportunities to go out and really make the sector aware of what the implications will be. When I talk to the people in the sector, they are really not switched on to what is going on. They all know that it is coming; they all know that it is a problem. But very few centres are in a position to actually address the real, everyday issues. They know that they are going to have to put up their charges; they know that that is going to have a big impact. But there are very few childcare centres, especially in the community sector, who have the time to really concentrate on the impact that this will have.
We have to remember that many of the community childcare sectors are run by parent-run boards. They are busy people. They usually have two jobs in the family, if not more. They usually have young children. And then they take on the responsibility of running a multimillion dollar childcare centre in their spare time. On Thursday nights after dinner when the kids have been put to bed, they do the books, they go to meetings and things like that. These organisations have not had a chance to focus, and they will not really focus on this until it comes home to bite them on 1 January.
Quality childcare is something that we should all aspire to. I believe that, for the most part, in the ACT we have quality childcare already and that these changes will not make a great deal of difference to the way childcare is actually delivered on the ground or the interaction between a worker, a child carer or child educator, and the young person they are looking after. The people who are there are there because they love kids and they want to work with kids. But it will make it difficult for the administration; it will make it difficult for families.
The level of regulation is quite unbelievable. There have been some improvements. It is now not the case that Christmas will be banned. We will be able to have Christmas carols, if everyone agrees to it, and we will probably be able to have an Easter egg hunt. There are some improvements there, because the community was outraged by the level of regulation. But there are still onerous levels of regulation there. Ticking off whether a child has a pleasant toileting experience or the nappy changing experience is fulfilling for both the child and the carer—it makes you wonder about the priorities amongst the regulators. That childcare providers will be marked on how appropriately they deal with the nappy changing experience is a real problem and shows that the priorities are wrong.
The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this bill, because it is the wrong bill at the wrong time and it will not provide the quality of service that this minister maintains that it will.
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