Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow spokesperson for her questions. On that first question, I am happy to take it on notice and we will provide an appropriate answer once we have sought advice from the department. On the second question, what I would say is this: again, as I was saying in response to the question of the member for Sturt before he fled the Federation Chamber having been in here for all of 10 minutes instead of the one hour that we spend in here for this important consideration in detail, the level of investment that the government has made in early childhood education and care is substantial. In fact, if we look back we can see that there has never been a time when a federal government has provided so much policy rigour, so much lift in terms of effort and so much specific support in terms of ensuring that young children get the appropriate care and sometimes instruction that best suits them before they enter the school years. This is an investment of $22 billion by this government—triple what was spent by the previous government. Attached to that is a National Quality Framework making sure that as a nation we recognise the importance of the quality components of early child care, professionalisation of the workforce and lifting of standards in childcare centres. All of these things are absolutely central to the approach that this government has taken and a great deal of the very good work that has been done by my colleague Minister Ellis.

We are also working very closely with the states in terms of the delivery of a commitment for universal access for kids in the year before school through the delivery of some $990 million to ensure that universal access, the goal we have set ourselves, can be reached.

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