Page 1452 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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Holder centre is an important investment that will not only boost childcare places but also support local community organisations to run high quality childcare that Canberrans can expect.
Contrast this with the policy vacuum from Mrs Dunne and the Canberra Liberals. Indeed, we saw how clueless Mrs Dunne was on childcare when she was interviewed by Ross Solly in February this year. When asked by Solly: “So what should the government do then, Vicki Dunne, to try and get costs down? It’s really out of their hands, isn’t it?” Mrs Dunne responded: “No, look, it isn’t entirely out of their hands. We need to be looking at diversification of the modes of childcare. Family care in the ACT is somewhat in decline.”
We hear that classic cop-out line from the Liberals every time they are asked what their policy is: “We need to diversify.” Just as Brendan Smyth is the great diversifier for the economy, Mrs Dunne wants to be that for childcare. Of course, we have Mrs Dunne’s only other childcare policy—the centralised waiting list that no-one wants. Now, we can forgive Mrs Dunne for not having any sound policies. Indeed, she is not alone in the Canberra Liberals on that one. Let me reiterate that I think even the Canberra Liberals are trying to bury their centralised waiting list policy.
We know that the Canberra Liberals are not opposed to having the government build childcare centres. We know this because on the eve of the 2008 election they stole our policy of building two new childcare centres, one in the north and one in the south, because they had not come up with any policies themselves. The Canberra Liberals, in the 11th hour, are trying to stop the Labor government delivering on that policy. What absolute hypocrisy, but, again, it is no surprise.
I ask Mrs Dunne and the Liberals: where do you stand? Do you support the community sector or not? Do you want to do something about childcare or just take petty swipes from the side? Mrs Dunne’s motion would see more than $7 million taken from support for childcare in the ACT. What would that do for the cost of childcare, Madam Deputy Speaker? What are her plans for that $7 million? Perhaps it can go into her centralised waiting list. The fact is that the opposition is just not prepared to consider how we support our community.
The government has a strong and proven commitment to increasing childcare places and equipping parents with a greater choice about where they send their children. We have, over a long period of time, built capacity in both the private and community education and care sectors. This mix of providers allows a diverse range of services and programs to be offered to children here in the ACT. The range of private and not-for-profit providers is a strength of the ACT’s childcare sector that also provides parents and carers with choices and helps the sector in the ACT to be robust in times of external change in the individual sectors. This mix of childcare providers has been delivering to Canberra families the best quality education and care services in the country, according to the 2012 ROGS.
The achievement also reflects the significant investment that the ACT government has made in recent years. Our investment includes capital upgrades to expand existing centres, such as the Baringa Childcare Centre in Spence. Further upgrades are planned
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