Page 1065 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
of in excess of 590 signatures of people—family members and those close to those people—who are concerned about the future of childcare. This is no small issue when we are talking about work/life balance, but it has been a constant failure on the part of this government.
Mrs Burke touched on the issue of the catch-up notification of release of land in Yarralumla, which the Minister for Planning says will come on line to fill the gap. But even if, as the Minister for Planning says in his media release of yesterday, the auction for proposed land comes on line in October 2006, there is no way that that childcare centre will be built before the two-year lease on the teddy bear centre expires, and this will create grave issues.
I also will digress a little to pass some comments on the press release produced by Mr Corbell yesterday, to show how slapdash it is and how quickly it was put together. There are some startling errors that a minister of planning of such standing, and who considers his reputation so highly, should not have made in this press release. Mr Corbell says in the third paragraph that he has directed the relevant government agency to identify a site for development of a new childcare facility. Under the planning and land legislation, if the minister has made such a directive, that directive should have been tabled in this place six days after it occurred.
He also says, two paragraphs later in relation to the auction, that the land use will be restricted for the purposes of a childcare facility. We cannot restrict land use in this place, as you know, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker Gentleman, as the chairman of the planning and environment committee, without the involvement of this Assembly. It is not something that this minister can do by himself. I suspect he means that the terms of the lease will be for a childcare centre, but it shows a sloppiness and a slapdashedness that typifies this government’s approach to this very important issue of work/life balance, of making sure that the working conditions of people who currently use childcare facilities in south Canberra are made smooth. This is what a government can do—and this is what this government has failed to do.
MS MacDONALD (Brindabella) (4.36): I would like to begin by apologising to the house for not having been here earlier to listen to members’ speeches and I will look with interest at the record of those in the Hansard, because this is an issue in which I have longstanding interest—that is, looking after the working conditions of people living in the Canberra region, and Canberra families specifically.
As members would be aware, I was the organiser for the Australian Services Union, clerical branch, which is now known as the United Services Union. I was the organiser for that organisation for five years, and I have some quite good memories of that time, but I also have some fairly shady memories of the behaviour of certain employers in the Canberra region—and, I have to say, that was under the previous industrial relations system.
I was around when Laurie Brereton was the federal minister for industrial relations and he changed the act. There was a lot of discussion amongst the union movement and employer organisations at that time about the changes and what the impact would be, and I was not necessarily one who was totally opposed to some of the changes that the federal minister, a Labor federal minister, was putting in. But of course I did not agree
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .