Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, in this House, the Assistant Minister for Education suggested that the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education would be axed as part of their red tape repeal day. I am sure the previous speaker, the member for Pearce, knows there are child-care centres in WA, and that is why it is relevant that that issue be raised in this matter of public importance. I cannot believe that the minister stood here and said that quality child care was red tape. I cannot believe that she stood here and suggested that we need to get rid of the quality framework that ensures good child care. To have good child care we need a system; a system that will ensure good child care. The minister went on to say that she thought it was okay to have less-qualified staff. Part of the quality framework involves ensuring that there are trained staff and ratios setting the requisite number of qualified staff to educate and care for our youngest Australians. But yesterday the minister suggested that this framework was nonsense. In fact, she used the word 'madness'—it was madness to suggest that child-care centres should be required to have qualified staff working in them. She thought it would be okay to have not a kindergarten teacher but a cert III, or rather than having a qualified kindergarten teacher we should have someone with absolutely no qualifications teaching children. It is hard to believe that part of getting rid of red tape includes completely axing the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education. It is what ensures that our youngest Australians get the care and education they deserve.

To be honest, the stunt yesterday was a smokescreen. It was about trying to cover up what this government is trying to do—trying to do in terms of cuts in jobs, cuts in health and cuts in education. It is also hard to believe that the minister, who was saying it was okay to have less-qualified staff, comes from the same government that says they are going to help people to go from a good job to a better job. Yet, they are saying it is okay to have people work in a child-care centre without qualifications. What is next? Are we going to see further cuts to higher education? That is where people get their qualifications. Are we going to see further cuts to health care?

Some time ago, the Abbott government was handed the biggest review into government spending in a generation. Because of the confusion, because of the mixed messages coming from government, Australians need to know more than ever what is in that Commission of Audit. Is the government hiding it? Is the secrecy because there are plans for privatisation? Is it the fact that public sector jobs will go?

We all know what happens when we cut public servants numbers: there is a reduction in the quality of service, there are fewer services and services are outsourced. There is only one reason why governments outsource services and that is so those workers get paid less. We see a dumbing-down of the workforce.

It will not come as a surprise to anybody opposite that in WA there are public servants. There are public servants working really hard to ensure that Centrelink queues are not 90-minutes long and there are public servants working really hard to ensure that Medicare offices stay open and people get help, but all we are seeing from those opposite is secrecy around the cuts. They are trying to hide the cuts because they do not want people in WA to know that they are about to axe their Centrelink staff, that they are about to axe any number of public sector jobs.

I want to touch on a couple of statistics that the CPSU brought up in a recent Senate inquiry. Twenty years ago the Public Service employed roughly 160,000 people for a population of 17.8 million, yet today they employ only a few thousand more. There are 167,000 employees working for the Public Service, yet our population has grown to 23.1 million, suggesting that we are already understaffed in terms of public servants. If you think that we had the ratio right 20 years ago, then we do not have the ratio right today. Every time I am out there talking to people, they always tell me about their need to get access to our services, but if we continue these cuts, if we continue to wind back the jobs, we will see longer queues and more people waiting. That is not what Australians want.

See this speech in context