Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not deny the member for Werriwa's passion. I do not deny that at all. Indeed, good providers all around the country have struggled. They provide really important services, but under the previous government the budget for this program blew out by $200 million. It was just another in the long list of poorly managed programs. There is no doubt it was well intentioned, but the program was poorly managed.

I note the minister's comments in recent days on radio and in an interview, I think, a couple of days ago, with Louise Yaxley—who was born in my electorate some time ago and is now living in Canberra—that there are scams and rorts that are being undertaken in some parts of the country. Nobody accepts that, and this tarnishes the reputation of the good operators—where the money should be going.

I am very interested in this subject because Tasmania was one of the first places in Australia to provide this valuable and different kind of childcare service. In fact, family day care started in Tasmania in the mid-1970s, more than a decade before the national body claims the start of Family Day Care Australia in a cottage in the beachside suburb of Avoca in New South Wales in 1988. That is something we will have to rectify the record on, because the first day care centre service was actually established in Glenorchy, in the electorate of the member for Denison—a Hobart suburb—in 1974. It was followed closely by the Launceston Family Day Care service in northern Tasmania in November 1975. The Glenorchy service is no longer operating, but the Launceston one very much is. It has developed to provide child care across northern Tasmania—not just within Launceston, I should add, but in the country towns and regional communities in my electorate in northern Tasmania.

The northern Tasmania organisation was started by a woman by the name of Sheena Butler, a pioneer in her field who lived for many years at Rosevears in my electorate of Lyons. The organisation that Sheena established and ran for many years fills a void in childcare services and now provides services across northern Tasmanian country towns. It is a multipurpose service now and has even raised funds to build centres in rural areas as a base for additional services. It has just leased new premises at Longford, which will open part time in a couple of weeks and which will be fully up and running after Christmas as a base in northern Tasmania, alongside its Launceston central office.

Its regional arm, called Launceston Regional Family Day Care, is still often the only childcare service in towns across my electorate of Lyons—towns such as Cressy, Perth, Longford, Carrick, Evandale, Westbury, Campbell Town, Scamander and Beaconsfield on the West Tamar. All 25 educators of Launceston Regional Family Day Care services are located outside the organisation's central city office and provide more than 3,500 hours of child care to 300 children across the electorate of Lyons every week. The Launceston Regional Family Day Care director, Pam Johns, contacted my office last month to seek clarification regarding the Community Support Program funding for family day care services nationally. We were very happy to inform Ms Johns that we are making sure that the money goes to support the sorts of organisations it was originally designed to support. She was a little concerned about future eligibility, and we were able to tell her that the changes to the community support program this year were not in fact a budget cut but will benefit services very much like the ones she is concerned about. In fact, because of the extraordinary growth in the family day care sector since 2006, the Community Support Program exceeded its budget under the previous government, as we are all well aware, by $200 million.

Indeed, it was another Labor budget blow-out. Unfortunately, coming to light there were areas of the country that are inappropriately using this very worthwhile scheme. We will get it back under control. It cannot go on like this, particularly under the budget circumstances we have inherited. We will fix this. The Community Support Program has in fact been brought back within its current funding allocation. The introduction of eligibility criteria for family day care services will enable Community Support Program funding to be directed towards services in regional, remote and disadvantaged communities, which was its original intention, so that funding is targeted where it is most needed.

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