Page 211 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Coming back to where I was, instead of making mums and dads go back to their budgets to see whether they can actually afford to send their children to other centres, Ms Burch should be working out why the ACT has the most expensive childcare services in the country. More importantly, she should be telling those mums and dads what she is doing to address this inequity. But we know that Minister Burch has no intention of doing anything at all to answer the questions or address the high cost of childcare in the ACT. She has said before and she said it again only this morning and in question time that the cost of childcare in the ACT is not something in which this government would seek to involve itself.
Indeed, Ms Burch is intent on driving childcare costs up further by imposing more government regulation. In addition to the government regulation, the changes that will be brought forward in 2012 as a result of the COAG agreements will surely drive up the costs of childcare in the ACT and will impose huge changes on community childcare centres that do not have the margins and the capacity to change and make the changes necessary in the time available. In addition to that, Ms Burch has facilitated the introduction of portable long service leave for the community sector, which is fine and good in principle but it will raise the cost of childcare.
What effect do these rising childcare costs have on the economy, the community and labour market participation rates? Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that Minister Burch simply does not know, because the government has undertaken no modelling to find out. Minister Burch does not know and she does not care, and that is why she writes insulting letters to the parents of Gumnut Place.
In washing her hands of any responsibility for childcare costs in the ACT, Minister Burch fails to understand and, worse, does not care that most of the childcare centres in the community are run by community-based organisations. Indeed, as I have said before, the Productivity Commission report on government services shows that the ACT has the highest level of community-based childcare centres in the nation.
These community-based organisations are important, even critical, elements of our large community. They provide many services that, were it not for them, would not be provided by government. Therefore, the government should be doing everything that it can to ensure the viability and sustainability of these community organisations and the services that they provide. It is irresponsible for Minister Burch to stand here so arrogantly, with a very damp hand from washing it, and pronounce that the government is not concerned about the things that impact on the cost of childcare in the ACT.
Here is the bottom line for Minister Burch and this ACT Labor government. There are mums and dads out there right now, including the mums and dads in the 35 families of the 50 children who attend the Gumnut Place Child Care Centre in Evatt, who are wondering whether they can continue to pay for the cost of childcare in the ACT. There are mums and dads out there who are starting to think that they will have to give up their jobs and look after their children at home because they cannot afford to continue to go to work.
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