Page 1405 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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I need to address some of the falsehoods that have been put out there by the Labor Party about the policy and that have been perpetuated, I think, by the Canberra Times. They are simply wrong. They are wrong. They have not read the policy. They do not understand the funding model and they have overstated the potential costs to families in quite an irresponsible way, a grossly irresponsible way. I do not know whether it was the Canberra Times egging on the Labor Party or the Labor Party egging on the Canberra Times. Either way, they got it wrong.
Let us have a look at what they said on 26 September. They claimed that it was based on a model that charges families fees in excess of $20,000 a year. That is wrong. That is wrong, because it does not take into account the numerous rebates that actually come back to families. That is what the model is based on. It does not take into account childcare rebates, childcare benefits allowance, helping children with autism funding, carers allowance and carers bonus payments to minimise out-of-pocket expenses. It does not take into account any of that, which significantly brings down the costs to families.
Furthermore, when they were looking at the ACT model it did not take into account that there was an extra $13,000 per annum per child funding in our model, an extra $13,000 per student, per child, per year. They ignored that part of it and somehow suggested that there would be high costs. The costs on this model would be from zero for low and middle-income families who are eligible for various rebates, up to a maximum of around $7,000 per year for higher income families.
Let us compare that to childcare costs. This is full-time care. We are talking about full-time care for some of our most vulnerable kids, for some of our most vulnerable families. $7,000 for high-income earners who are not eligible for all of the rebates is less than $30 per day. How does that compare to child care in the ACT? This is more than child care. This is respite care for families. This is early intervention. This is intensive support for children and families that is simply not available in other forums. The Labor Party and the Greens want to suggest that that is not value for money—where we can deliver a product, where there is an investment from government, an investment in this case of $1 million recurrent funding per annum, with out-of-pocket expenses, with the commonwealth contributing and with individual families paying either nothing or up to $7,000 where they have the means to do so—but that, to me, seems like a good model.
In addition, we have groups like the Ricky Stuart Foundation who have committed hundreds of thousands of dollars that they will raise here in the ACT to further support such a model, whether that is capital funding or whether that is recurrent funding. And the good thing about this model is that it engages the community. We do get the business community getting behind it, because they know that it is a partnership between government and the community sector and it is an independent school. Fundamentally I think there is an ideological objection on the other side, the fact that these are independent schools. They are independent schools that are supported by government, supported by business, supported by parents as they see their kids getting that type of early intervention.
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