Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in grave concern about the situation of our mothers in the South West Slopes of my region. There is a proposition that is afoot at the moment in accordance with the government's proposed legislation known as the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2016. The advice that has been passed on to the service provider of the mobile child-care service Puggles, for those South West Slopes mothers and their young children, is that the potential for them to lose their entire service could result from the formulas that will apply under this legislation. It has been put to them that, unless they increase the number of children that are using the service, funding will be withdrawn. This is a service that operates under the auspices of the Snowy Valleys Council and it supports a number of remote and isolated rural communities in that region, including the Indigenous children of the Brungle settlement, not far from Tumut.

I met with a very concerned group of mothers and the organiser of that service over in Tumut on the weekend, and they are deeply distressed by the prospect of losing this service. This is for children usually at the ages of around three, four and five, who are getting not only very important support for their early learning activities but also assistance in relation to child care support in general. Sheridan Ingold, one of the mothers, said to me: 'Puggles provides a service for our children to thrive and get early intervention and education care where otherwise they would miss out. It also serves as a hub for families to meet and socialise in our small village'—and we are talking about very small settlements and farms. These are mostly farmers' wives that I was talking to. Kylie Wilesmith, who runs the Puggles service, says that well beyond this they effectively provide a social glue service. They sit down and work with families on resolving a whole range of issues other than just providing the support to these children.

We have to have this service. Children in remote and rural areas will definitely benefit and are benefiting from the cognitive development and early learning that is provided to them, giving them those important social and cognitive skills before they go to school. All sorts of studies have proven how important this type of service is. We cannot afford to lose it, and I am warning the government that, if these proposed amendments do result in the loss of a service like this, they will see more bushfires like the Orange by-election bubbling up all over rural and regional New South Wales. We have suffered enough hits from attacks on our education, attacks on our lifestyle through the forced council mergers, the attacks on the TAFEs and the attacks as well, in the forced council mergers, in the management of that process, which is not playing out. We are not going to put up with it. (Time expired)

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