Page 3180 - Week 10 - Thursday, 17 September 2015
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community support program—is eligible. Let us look at two local services that are serving many Canberra families. Indeed, we have here one service that will have potential combined losses, thanks to the cost of a family day care coordinator of educator ratios combined with CPS funding cuts—this is one stream—of $339,555. Service number one has potential combined losses of $339,555. That is a good outcome for Canberra families! The element that is in point (c) in Ms Lawder’s amendment will see one service lose over $330,000. Service number two, another good ACT family day care family provider, will have combined losses of $153,940. Over 150,000!
Combine those—I know maths is not always my great point—and we are looking at half a million dollars or thereabouts coming out of service provision in Canberra. Where are those costs going to be applied? Canberra families. So the Canberra Liberals, by the very amendment they put in here today, are saying that Canberra families cannot have service provision through the nanny program which is outside the national quality framework, that Canberra families will actually lose places and that Canberra services can be out of pocket by close on half a million dollars. That is not very good, I would not think. It is not what we think is a useful proposition.
Mr Doszpot raised some other comments around the BER. BER in the ACT has been a great success. He has asked for certainty for families around the 15 hours. In today’s announcement, in spite of having a signed national agreement with the commonwealth, this government, this side over here, is so committed to providing certainty to Canberra families that we will put in our money from our own pockets to make sure Canberra families get those 15 hours. I will not wait any longer, because of the faffing about on behalf of the commonwealth officials and the commonwealth government, to make sure Canberra families rightly know by September that they have certainty for 15 hours of preschool.
I am very pleased with my announcement this morning that will give Canberra families certainty and I will not in any way, shape or form, be supporting Ms Lawder’s amendment that will see Canberra families miss out and service providers miss out.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.39): I am happy to support the motion moved by Ms Burch today which in essence goes to the heart of the last federal budget and the broader policy direction of the federal government. I also note that since the time this motion was first placed on the notice paper we have now received word from Minister Burch that the ACT and federal governments are finally moving closer to signing a new national partnership agreement for universal access to early childhood education for the 2016 and 2017 school years. This is, indeed, welcome and hopefully bodes well for many of the other essential services that are co-funded by the commonwealth or are reliant on commonwealth funding.
It is a shame we had to once again call for clarity, transparency and certainty. Be that in health funding, education funding or today’s motion in relation to the childcare sector, we seem to be constantly reeling from one policy objective to the next, and the negative impacts on local providers trying to keep up is something that each minister in the Assembly is keenly aware of. As we all know, we are now having to deal with
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