Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am not. The Gillard government is very proud and very pleased to have entered into a COAG agreement with all of the states and territories to lift the provision of kindergarten for four-year-olds. That is an important initiative. It is an initiative that will give all Australian kids the best opportunity to access schooling in the following year. The universal agreement was entered into with all of the states and territories and it led to a very substantial amount of money flowing to those states and territories to deliver 15 hours of kindergarten for four-year-olds. That is something that I am very pleased about. I actually, just this last week gone, read in the local newspaper that Minister Wendy Lovell, the state Minister for Children and Early Childhood, was at the Inverleigh Kindergarten within my electorate. I read with some interest that she was opening a new kindergarten room within that facility to provide for the Inverleigh community. I thought I might do a bit of a Google search to see where that money had come from and—surprise, surprise!—I found a press release by John Brumby, the then Premier of Victoria, announcing that under the universal access agreement with the Commonwealth they would be providing money to the Inverleigh Kindergarten to provide the infrastructure required to deliver kindergarten facilities in the area. I thought, 'Perhaps I will go back and have a look at the source document because there was no acknowledgement about where that money might come from.' So I went onto the Premier of Victoria's website and had a bit of a look and, no, there was no indication that that money actually had come from the Commonwealth government under the COAG agreement. This is the reality: time and time again I see press releases coming out by the new state minister claiming responsibility for opening new facilities and providing money for kindergartens but, time and time again, I see that there is no acknowledgment or at least very, very poor acknowledgment that it comes under the agreement entered into by the Gillard government with all states and territories.

A government member: They think they get it from the Magic Pudding.

Exactly right! I say to the Baillieu government that the—

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