Page 2507 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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MS LAWDER: To continue, as Sir Robert Menzies said, we have the rich and powerful, and there is the mass of unskilled people. Government does have a role in providing them with security and improving their conditions, although this is more the job of their own trades unions. And most importantly, there are the forgotten people, the middle class, many of whom live in my electorate, and I would have thought many in Ms Berry’s electorate too, those who want and need to work and for whom child care is a pressing concern, especially women.
What we have here is a tired old government who are out of ideas. To cover their tracks, what they say is that the opposition have not come up with any policies about child care. This is where they bluster and use personal attacks to fill up this empty space left by their own lack of effective policies.
Well, I have some news for those opposite. This is your job. You are the government. Get on with it. It is not the opposition’s fault that child care is becoming unaffordable for Canberra families. How about if the government stopped making the cost of living so high and life difficult for people, if they got on with fixing the problems?
Think of it as a simple join the dots picture. See if you can make it all work out so that you understand how the constant rise in fees and charges, in rates and in the cost of living contribute towards making life unaffordable. We, the opposition, are here to hold you to account and make sure your spending is transparent to the public. Quite frankly, putting $1.3 billion in the budget without explaining how you will spend it is not transparent.
I repeat one more time, in the hope that it will break through the little self-imposed cone of silence over there: we need affordable, available, quality child care. That is what is at issue here, not some clumsy trumped-up class war reference—affordable, available, quality child care. If those opposite take issue with that—that I said last week, that I said last night, as I have said again today—they are clearly out of touch with Canberra families.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra) (5.24): I would like my second 10 minutes, please.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: It appears that I might have gotten under somebody’s skin in some of the comments that I have made about early childhood education. I am very happy, however, to hear that the Canberra Liberals appear to be 100 per cent rock-solid supportive of affordable, quality early childhood education and care.
When we are talking about quality early childhood education, yes, it does cost money, because it costs money to get people qualified. And parents expect the highest quality education when they are putting their children into early childhood education. It is not about putting them into a babysitting service and paying a teenager a small amount of money. The people who work in this sector have fought for over 20 years to have the recognition of their qualifications and their work valued. By making statements around quality, it undermines the work that the people who work in that sector are doing every day—that is, providing the highest possible care and education for our children.
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