Page 2391 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Mr Smyth: Where did you get them from?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson! Mr Smyth!
MS BERRY: Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I did not actually make the quote. I did say “something along the lines of,” and I do not think that I was incorrect in what I was saying.
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! Ms Berry, continue.
MS BERRY: I think it is really disappointing that a person can come into this place and make assumptions about the ACT government being able to have any control over the affordability of early childhood education in the ACT when that absolutely and primarily sits in the federal government’s pocket. If we are serious about having affordable education in the ACT then the federal government needs to fund it completely. That would make a perfect world for the early childhood sector. But what is happening right now is that they are putting the cart before the horse, asking for the workers in the early childhood sector to be underqualified and underpaid, and then expect parents to pay for poor quality care. It is unacceptable.
The ACT government are doing everything that they can to make sure that people who work in this sector have the highest qualifications and are able to access the education to have that highest qualification level.
With respect to the availability of services in the ACT, the ACT government needs to take into account what is happening in employment in the public sector in this town. That is being cut by the federal government right now. So flooding the market with additional education and care places is only going to lead to bigger problems in the future. I was working with the union that represented early childhood educators in 1996 when centres closed down because the federal Liberal government cut the public service so badly. Centres were shut down because there were no children in those centres. Families had to pull their children out of those centres because they had no job to go to.
Mr Hanson: Rudd took a meat axe to it, didn’t he? Weren’t those his words?
MS BERRY: It was your mate John Howard, actually. I want to talk about the human services blueprint as well. If you talk to the people who have been part of the development of that human services blueprint, they have real hope that it is going to have a real impact on the people who need it. It is people focused. The community sector appeared before the estimates committee and talked about their hopes for the success of that project, particularly in west Belconnen, where the need is felt by everybody in that community.
They recognise that the human services blueprint starts from the bottom up. It does not start from the top down. The community services sector are the ones that will be
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