Page 5788 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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at the point of publication—
15,988 places available across long day, family day care, outside school hours … and independent preschools.
Excess demand, shown in low vacancy rates, is a determinate of fees.
Over the past two years, the … Government has invested $2.4 million in childcare capital upgrades. These investments go directly to providing more accessible, quality childcare … in areas of demand … reducing the costs for families. Given the high demand for childcare in West Belconnen, the Government provided—
in last year’s budget a sum to create 110 childcare places as part of Flynn. Baringa has been extended to include additional spaces. It continues:
The Government has announced several new initiatives to increase accessibility and affordability …
These initiatives will see the government increase childcare places by up to an additional 500 places. That is what the government is doing to support families to access childcare and return to work.
I do hope my amendment gets supported. Again I call on the Canberra Liberals to provide to this Assembly, given that they have reaffirmed their commitment to their waiting list, the details of that so that Canberra families, indeed, can make a judgement on the better childcare policies.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (11.38): The ACT Greens will be supporting the motion today, subject to the government amendment which we agree better reflects the situation and is reasonable in the time frames they propose for the work to be done.
On 1 December the Productivity Commission released its report on the early childhood development workforce. The report is a large and thorough piece of work that sets out a range of recommendations and findings, including that many more workers would be required in preschool and long day care, that the level of workers’ qualifications would also need to increase and that the wages of workers in those early childhood education and care roles that require a relatively high level of vocational education and training or university qualifications would be expected to rise as a result.
With implementation due to start in January 2012, the Productivity Commission also found that the supply of the most suitably or highly qualified workers, particularly teachers, is likely to take some time to respond. The report notes that to sustain the benefits of higher levels of qualification access to ongoing professional development and support for staff will be very important, including in relation to training in the expanding integrated early childhood development centres.
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