Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Page for her question. I know she is very concerned about the future of child care in this country and the future of ABC Learning. Yesterday I informed the House that the receiver of ABC Learning is undertaking a review of the operational data of ABC Learning Centres. I also informed the House that my department’s task force has engaged the insolvency firm PPB to work with the receiver on this matter. I would like to give some further details to the House about the role of PPB in this situation.

PPB is one of Australia’s foremost insolvency firms. Mr Steve Parbury, a partner of the firm, is working closely with the department’s task force. He, of course, has performed work for previous governments on complex insolvency issues. For example, he was engaged by the former government in relation to the Ansett matter. Steve Parbury represented FAI as a special-purpose liquidator when HIH collapsed, so Mr Parbury is no stranger to complex situations. Mr Parbury has previously played a prominent role in the Insolvency Practitioners Association and he is able to provide objective and highly informed advice on how the government can most constructively play a role in dealing with the situation with ABC Learning.

The receivers have advised the task force in my department that the quality of ABC Learning data and their information management systems are poor. Therefore, PBB and the receivers, McGrath Nichol, have had in effect to start from scratch and work out what to do with the centres, particularly those that are currently understood to be unprofitable. Obviously, you do not need to be an insolvency practitioner to intuitively work out that this is a difficult, time-consuming and complex task. They have developed a work plan to compile, assess and analyse data and information on ABC Learning Centres that have been identified as unprofitable under the current business model.

Firstly, a template will be designed for assessing and compiling key financial and other data from ABC Learning’s systems on a centre-by-centre basis. The templates will include costs, revenues, occupancy and trends for each of the centres, and that work has started. The team will need to then take data and financial details and verify those against the records and documents of individual centres. This will be done by tracking back to the original source documents. For example, this could include lease documents, invoices for food, toy delivery invoices and/or, depending on the circumstances, staff pay records. This is clearly a time-consuming task but the work is proceeding and people are working hard on it.

Of course, there is a question of: how did we end up here? We ended up here because of the neglect of the former government over more than 10 long years when they let the market rip. It is not often that one would come into this parliament and refer to the Nationals leader in the Senate, Senator Barnaby Joyce, as a man of great and quiet reflection, but today I will refer to him because he is clearly thinking about the circumstances of ABC Learning. He said publicly today:

The reason we have got such a fiasco with ABC—

and then he diverted a little by saying that he agrees with the Greens—

… is because one organisation dominated too much of the market. That is what you get when you get market centralisation.

Senator Barnaby Joyce is thinking about these issues, thinking about the policy and thinking about the consequences of letting the market rip. Over there we have the Liberal Party, which has not reflected at all on its policy failures. The Liberal Party was not just neglectful when it came to ABC Learning; it was complicit and connected with the circumstances of ABC Learning.

Let us take one example of that connection—the member for Dickson. He and his family own a building leased to ABC Learning for $100,000 per annum. We know that in the recent election campaign the member for Higgins, the then Treasurer, toured an ABC Learning Centre with the member for Dickson for the publicity that it would generate. And the member for Dickson has referred to Eddy Groves as a friend and supporter. This shows the connection—

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