Page 4859 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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at the centre—
which will ensure its long-term viability.
In summary, the president concludes that, while the centre supports the regulatory changes:
we would like more time to ensure that they are implemented with sufficient resources to ensure a quality outcome.
The president of the childcare centre urges members to support the amendment proposed today. It would have limited implications for the fewer than 30 childcare centres that meet the criteria of being small and not for profit. It would not actually apply to all of those but for those organisations who do not receive capital funding from the government, who are not eligible to receive capital funding from the government—the touted capital funding. This particular childcare centre misses out on that because of a quirk of history and, as a result, it cannot make it work by 1 January. Even if the money fell out of the sky today it would be impossible for it to make it work by 1 January and to make the necessary physical changes. Therefore, I think that, in recognition of the hard work that childcare centres are doing to try and comply with this, giving the minister the capacity to allow exemptions in very limited circumstances would benefit the provision of childcare across the ACT community.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (11.46): We will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendment today. I take on board the issues she has raised, but I do not think it is the right thing to not implement the overall scheme because of a small number of compliance issues. But those issues should not be swept under the carpet and ignored; I agree there.
There are exemption provisions. There are childcare centres across the territory today that have been granted exemptions for certain standards and conditions, having put forward a reasonable argument. I would certainly expect that to be the case for those centres that may not be ready to go on the first day that all of this kicks in. I would expect that there would be some consideration and that exemptions would be allowed so that they could continue to operate. I have met with this particular childcare centre and I know they wanted this amendment to get up today.
We cannot stop the whole scheme for another year, but we need to ensure that these centres are supported to transition. This should not be a system where, if you are not all ready to go on day one or for some months or a reasonable period of time into it, no support is given. Support should be given. We cannot afford to lose childcare places in the territory. In fact, if anything, we have to expand childcare places, and that is why it is so important to ensure that centres can transition, are given support to transition and are not forced into the difficult position of having to close down or cut back on the number of places available, which means that in fact they will close down over time because they are just simply not viable. We cannot have that situation in place. It does not make sense. I urge the minister to give attention to this issue to ensure that they are supported to transition and that those exemption provisions can be put in place.
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