Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, it is true. I would invite you to come to Willaura and to meet with the community and the people involved with the kindergarten and to ask them what they think about this universal access reform for early childhood education. Your government is about to close that kindergarten and it will close other rural kindergartens across the state and no-one is doing anything about it. No-one has thought about what the implications of taking it from 10 to 15 hours are, what it will mean.

Rather than having universal access, young children in country areas are going to have no access at all. I would invite the relevant minister to go to Willaura, meet with the parent group and to hear firsthand about the difficulties they are going to have in the next couple of years. Go to Lake Bolac—a community of 150 people—and meet with them and see the difficulties they are going to have. You are asking them to fundraise $40,000 a year to keep their kindergarten going.

The Gillard government has to be stopped in its tracks; otherwise it will rip the heart out of regional and rural Australia. It is time the Independents, who represent regional and rural electorates, recognised this. They need to cross the floor and they need to bring down this government before it destroys the fabric of our rural communities.

See this speech in context