Page 3172 - Week 10 - Thursday, 17 September 2015
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benefits will continue for many years to come. So it is quite disturbing to see the brinkmanship from the commonwealth on this matter. I am pleased to say that, months on from the budget, the ACT government and the commonwealth government are very close to an agreement, but we are not there yet.
We are committed to families being able to access affordable high quality preschool, and we acknowledge that lifelong learning is the foundation for Canberra’s ongoing prosperity. The ACT continues to be one of the only jurisdictions to offer free public preschool for 15 hours for all four-year-old children in the year before formal schooling. This is a significant investment and reflects our belief in the critical importance of a quality early childhood education system to positively impact on a child’s development.
I can provide a guarantee that the ACT government remains committed to that provision of affordable education and preschool. That is why I am very pleased that this morning we announced that the ACT government will continue to offer 15 hours of preschool education next year in 2016. We will continue to call on the commonwealth to honour its commitments to early education, but in the ACT we will show leadership and provide certainty to Canberra families.
This brings me to another point concerning this year’s federal budget. While I am generally pleased they are looking to support families, the growing cost of child care and some of the narrative is quite concerning. I am very concerned in particular about the changes being made at the expense of family tax benefits and paid parental leave. It is concerning that, while on one hand the federal government is taking the needs of families seriously, on the other it is taking the support away through cuts to family benefits and paid parental leave. This is a great example of some of the inconsistencies that are of concern to us as a government and certainly of concern to Canberra families.
Another one, of course, is the example expressed in today’s motion regarding family day care. For many families in the ACT, family day care provides a fantastic option for child care for families. It can give families the option of having a professional take care of their children in a family setting, but it also provides great flexibility for families in terms of hours and location. Nationally, family day care makes up 16 per cent of the early childhood education and care sector, with over 28,000 educators supporting close on 180,000 children. In the ACT there are 18 approved family day care centres supporting over 1,200 families.
However, this sector’s entire viability is being challenged by the federal government’s cuts to child care and to family day care particularly. As a result of last year’s federal budget, the funding forced new, tighter criteria on the community support program which has resulted in a cut to funding made available to many family day care providers. As I understand it, the community support program has existed since 2004 to provide both funds for the services to start up as well as ongoing support to providers. This money was used to support the growth of this vital sector and to ensure that access to high quality child care was made available to families in a variety of settings.
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