Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

At the moment under Labor's red tape mess there are 58 elements in the quality standard that centres have to pass in their assessment and rating process. Some centres report that it can take up to 200 days to get a draft report back to the centre. The problem is with the inconsistency of this assessment and rating. Centres email me daily with their experiences—experiences which I have to say are ridiculous.

Last week I reported to the House on the expenses that centres are facing around the carbon tax. One centre got a 'working towards' rating—which is, let's face it, not very good—because they were too dark, because they turned the lights off for an hour so that the children could recognise Earth Hour. They did not exactly get the best rating that they could. Childcare centres just cannot win under Labor's hypocrisy. Another example is that you cannot administer first aid on school sites if you are not an educator, even if you are the school nurse. That is another example of Labor's completely ridiculous red tape and regulation. Who can forget the birthday cake example, where the member for Adelaide and the member for Sydney talked about the individual cupcakes with an individual candle because they were too worried about germs in childcare centres? What about the sanitising every time you get in and out of the sandpit? There are sanitiser stations sprinkled around the yards. (Time expired)

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