Page 5784 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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It is worth seeing the opposition’s track record on childcare. In their 2008 election policy, the word “childcare” did not appear—not once. For the 2012 election policy, they have one policy so far, an articulated waiting list that everyone I have spoken to thinks is probably the most useless policy ever brought forward. So I would ask, given it is a costed policy, that Mrs Dunne table that policy, its costings and how it would work, because there are so many questions around that detail that it really is quite concerning.
Mr Coe: You are better when you read the speeches, Joy.
MS BURCH: I will read on. Thank you.
Members interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Coe and Mr Hanson, thank you for your commentary.
Mr Hanson: Pardon?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: I said thank you for your commentary.
MS BURCH: It shows that for almost two years the Canberra Liberals’ rhetoric has not changed. I well recall some comments in the CityNews:
… the director of Northside Community Services, which runs Civic Early Childhood Centre, Majura Early Childhood Centre and Treehouse in the Park in Turner, says there seems to be a lot of scaremongering on the issue. ‘I think what the government is doing is a good thing …’
There are a number of issues with the Productivity Commission’s report which I will draw to the Assembly’s attention, and it is for these reasons that both the federal and the ACT governments dispute some of the report findings. The Productivity Commission has assumed this reform agenda comes into operation all at once, and this is incorrect. The reforms are being introduced gradually over almost a decade and that does make a considerable difference to how the sector nationally will transition to the new standards.
The commission also relies on data which predates the federal government’s significant increase in the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent. As a result of this investment, the proportion of family income being spent on childcare has almost halved since 2004, dropping from 13 to just seven per cent in 2010—families with one child in care and earning $55,000 a year. Again, this does not suit the Canberra Liberals’ fear campaign, but it is worth repeating. Families are paying less for childcare today than they were four years ago, when the federal Liberal government was in power.
The Productivity Commission does not properly account for the significant policy decisions and financial investments the government has made to support growth of the
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