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

What a tattered Labor legacy in child care the Labor Party have left us. In fact, the only thing right about Labor's childcare policy was its title 'Labor's Affordable Child Care Plan.' In fact, they sat on their hands while childcare costs went up and affordability went down. Who can forget the double drop-off where 260 centres were promised and only 38 were built? What about the introduction of a new framework, which was just as much about red tape as it ever was about quality? We appreciate the quality, we sign off on the quality, but we do not sign off on the red tape that comes with it. In centre after centre that I go into I see trained, passionate, intelligent preschool teachers locked in an office, just filling in the paperwork. If the children want an exercise where they make a cake, they have to do a risk assessment on the hand-held beaters. That is just one example. Paperwork after paperwork, all shoved in a corner, all archived for 21 years, with no coherent narrative, no plan—just one dog's breakfast of a policy after another. And then, on the eve of the election—

Ms Kate Ellis interjecting—

See this speech in context