Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to also support the motion that has been moved today by the member for Charlton. It shows another example of cuts that have been made by this government to the early childhood education sector, and the cuts continue. This is $1 billion that has been cut from a sector that is vital not just for ensuring women's increased participation in the workforce but also ensuring the education of our youngest Australians. This particular motion relates to family day care services, which provide another option for families instead of enrolling their children in long day care. Family day care is an alternative option, and in regional Australia it is an important option.

I want to focus on what this family day care model means for regional Australia. In a number of towns they do not have the population to sustain large or small classes of organised child care or early childhood education. Family day care is an alternative model and it is proving to be quite popular. There are some towns in my electorate that do not have a day care centre; they do not have formal child care. The option they do have is family day care that is being run from people's homes, predominantly by women as they establish themselves as small businesses.

What we are seeing from this government's proposed cuts is that more than 80 per cent of all family day care services will lose funding from next year. Next year 80 per cent of services will lose funding—in my electorate alone that is 16 services—and the majority of them will lose their funding or some form of funding as a result of this government's attacks on early childhood education. As I have mentioned, in some of our towns it is the only form of child care that is available. It is also a flexible model that does help parents who may be working shift work. It is a flexible model—parents are able to enrol their children in family day care whether it be one day a week or for half days—and it is a bit of a pay-as-you-go model. Currently a lot of the services in my area are full. They have waiting lists because some parents prefer the option of the family day care model. However, these services are under threat. What that means is that families in my electorate will have fewer options available to them.

The facts are these: family day care has operated for more than 35 years; more than 94,000 families currently use family day care and more than 150,000 children are enrolled in family day care as I speak to this motion; there are more than 18,000 family day care educators. Most of those family day care educators are small operators, they are small businesses. Essentially the educator is also the owner of the small business. Family day care provides the majority of flexible non-standard hours of care—it is an alternative model—and it is also part of the national quality framework that provides for early years education. These cuts to family day care are just another attack by this government on the national quality framework.

If we are serious about ensuring that our youngest minds, our youngest Australians, have the best start in life, then we need to ensure that we can continue to fund the national quality framework and the services that underpin it whether it be preschool, early childhood education through childcare centres and long day care centres, or family day care. Concern about these funding cuts was first raised with me when I met with the CWA in my part of the world: the Mount Alexander CWA, the Castlemaine CWA and the Harcourt CWA branches presented me with a letter condemning this government for its funding cuts to family day care. They are an active network that ensures a number of single mums in the area have a service that they can rely on when they go for job interviews, when they do their mutual obligation to ensure they can continue to receive some form of benefit from the government. These cuts now put that service for those single families at risk, and that is one of the main reasons why I support this motion, which has been moved in support of and in defence of family day care.

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