Senate debates

Monday, 7 July 2014

Questions without Notice

Child Care

2:30 pm

Photo of Marise PayneMarise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is a very good question from Senator Seselja; you will not be surprised to hear, Mr President: do you know that there was one childcare centre in Queensland which was marked down in its accreditation assessment because, in the room for children from zero to two years old, there were not enough pictures at children's eye level? A similar service, also in Queensland, was conducting Earth Hour during the day so that the children could be involved. That service was marked down in their assessment because it was too dark for the children. How can they win? They turn on the lights, they get hit by the carbon tax; they turn off the lights, they get hit by regulation. What are they supposed to do? A service in Katoomba told us that their service was marked down because a child fell asleep, and the assessor told the service they had failed to provide adequate rest periods. The service in Penrith that I was speaking about earlier had 700 different regulations to comply with daily, and it was absolutely constraining the capacity to run their service. (Time expired)

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