Page 313 - Week 01 - Thursday, 17 February 2011
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I do understand the issue of cost. In fact, I raised this issue in the MPI the other day on the cost of living. I began paying for childcare 18 years ago and I am still paying for some childcare. I do understand the impact it has on family budgets. That is why I was very concerned to see in the Canberra Times, as I said in the MPI the other day, that many parents—and that is, as Ms Burch has stated, 2,000 parents—are not accessing a non-means-tested rebate of 50 per cent; that is, $15 million worth of out-of- pocket expenses rebate is not being claimed. I understand the intersection with national policy but ask that the minister also communicate with her federal colleague Ms Ellis and ask that an awareness and information campaign commence in the near future to ensure that parents are aware that they can access that rebate.
Regardless of national funding, Minister Burch and her department certainly have a role to play in this area and I think that Ms Burch just outlined in her speech that she was going to take an active role. I would encourage her to do that because that is a heck of a lot of Canberra families who really should be accessing that rebate and that, in turn, would assist to take some pressure off their family budget.
The Greens believe that childcare must be a community resource rather than a for-profit industry. Current funding arrangements are based almost entirely on parent affordability. And this has huge impacts for groups such as sole parents, where paid work is often marginal. The Greens support calls made by the industry to establish a fair wage structure for childcare professionals, subsidising workers’ wages, with a mindset of keeping fees equitable for parents.
We acknowledge that funding is a federal government responsibility but the Greens urge all MLAs to acknowledge that quality childcare with appropriate worker remuneration is very important to the health and wellbeing of our children, enhances the participation rate in the workforce of women in their childbearing years and will help to attract and retain qualified staff.
I acknowledge that the ACT does have a high rate of community-managed not-for-profit centres, at 80 per cent, but I do not agree with the view that the setting of fees is a commercial arrangement and there is no place for the government to enter and to be part of this. Clearly, the collapse of ABC Learning and the subsequent $22 million bail-out is a terrible example of commercial greed and incompetence by a number of players. At the end of the day, the most important people, children and their families, suffer.
As a parent of one child who has after-school care at the moment and children who have been in long-day care and after-school care over many years, I am actively aware of this issue and I find it unacceptable that the notoriously underfunded community sector is forced to really run sometimes on very lean budgets. And I have known over the years of the amount of fundraising that childcare centres have to engage in. Of course, once you get to school age you find that some of that fundraising keeps going, but I really do believe that we need to make sure that this important part of the sector, that is, community-based and run childcare, is appropriately supported and resourced.
From my own experience too—I think that Mr Doszpot mentioned parents who had to pay fees to be on waiting lists and so forth—I just share that that was the case
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