Page 2389 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Hopefully, they may think about child care as part of that. Whilst you can see there are some differences, it is an important aspect of child and family services.
The government have told us today that they will not table a report on that; instead we will hear about the human services blueprint fixing it all. As I said earlier when I spoke on community services, despite what Ms Burch might think, I really do hope that the human services blueprint is successful in making all aspects of community services delivery better. However, we cannot rely solely on this. We do not want to find ourselves in the same situation all over again a few years from now, and having a blueprint is not the only way to fix things. There were certainly some large community sector organisations that were not, or chose not to be, involved in the development of the blueprint.
This budget does not appear to be doing anything to improve affordability and access to child care in the ACT. I am disappointed that for perhaps another year, families may be left hanging out to dry by this government.
I encourage the minister to read some of the submissions that people have made to the Productivity Commission and that are included in the draft report, especially those from people in the ACT.
We cannot keep doing the same things and expect to get a different result. We need to consciously make those changes. We need the government to start aiming to decrease the cost of living for our families, rather than continually being happy to put our families under cost-of-living pressures. Child care is an area that has a direct impact on women’s participation in the workforce and it is an area that needs to be addressed as a matter of priority. This has not happened in this budget.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra) (8.54): I want to speak on a couple of things in this line item—education, to start with. One of the estimates committee recommendations was that the ACT government set out a time line for the completion of the Belconnen High School master plan. I am looking forward to hearing about that time line. It is scheduled for completion before the end of 2014. I know this is an area that you have worked on for many years as well, Ms Porter, so we will both be celebrating when we get to see the results of the time line for the completion of that plan.
Also, during those committee hearings, I asked a number of questions as a member of the estimates committee around schools infrastructure, particularly around west Belconnen, for the new development of Riverview. The government’s response to that recommendation was:
Agreed in principle.
The Education and Training Directorate undertakes analysis of projected need for public schooling as part of its ongoing planning processes. This planning will continue to analyse the need for schooling in West Belconnen.
The timing of advice to Government, however, is dependent on input from estate developers, including private developers (in the case of Riverview) and the Land Development Agency.
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