Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday we saw in the parliament a debate on child care, which I would have thought—given the views of the member for Lindsay, who has been very critical of the government—would have been non-partisan. Unfortunately, the debate was characterised by an amount of divisiveness from the members for Bowman and Lindsay that completely neglected this important issue of child care. The presentations we had from both of the government members focused on the fact that subsidies to parents—which are running at 72,000 across Australia, according to the member for Bowman—were the only thing that this government needed to do to support the increased requirement for child care around Australia.

This is patent, free-market nonsense. Obviously, people working and sending their children to private child-care centres such as the ABC child-care centres all over Australia are, hopefully, having their children well looked after. Private child care is an issue which is very controversial in other countries such as Canada, which ABC are trying to move into at the moment.

The point that seemed to evade the member for Bowman completely is that in cities right across Australia there is an increased demand for community child care with people who work in community child-care centres that are not for profit; people who do it to help the community—volunteers; people who do not look after children for money. This is done in a completely unplanned way because the federal government, although it is providing huge amounts of money for the private sector, has no idea of where the demand for child care is. The current Victorian government has had to take up the federal government’s slack in Victoria by pointing out that it is going to run a pilot program into the needs of child care just as the federal government does in aged care. It would seem a very wise idea, for the best application of federal government money, to know where the needs are in order to be able to apply the money into those areas.

In my electorate there is a very interesting difference between two different councils, the Glen Eira council and the Port Phillip council. They have to take up the slack that the federal government should be providing in this area. The Port Phillip council is spending a huge amount of money on community based child care, money that it should be given assistance with by the federal government.

Labor at the last election, had it been elected, hoped to give money to community based child care for capital expenditure. These are the kinds of imaginative ideas in the inner cities all around Australia that are necessary. I commend the ideas of the member for Sydney in assisting parents with the rebate on child care.

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