Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. It is a very important question because we do want to make sure that the sector can continue to grow as we come out of the pandemic. What we put in place was a significant package to enable the sector to get through the pandemic, and it included free child care. It had three priority areas that we wanted to achieve through this, including making sure parents stayed engaged with their childcare centre so that, when we came out of this pandemic, they would be able to go back to that centre as they went back into employment. When we announced this, we said that we would have a four-week review process. That four-week review process has taken place, and we are now looking at that review and will have further refinements to play.

As you know, when you make a significant change like we did—we paused the existing system and in the space of days put in place a new system. We knew at that time that there would be certain unintended consequences that we would have to work through, and that's why we put a four-week review process in place. But I stand here today thanking the childcare sector for the way that they cooperated with the government in putting the new system in place. I also thank all those departmental officials who worked tirelessly to help us put this new scheme in place. It was those efforts which mean we stand here today and can say quite proudly that 98 per cent of the childcare sector is open, is operating and is looking after those children to make sure that they get the care and education that they deserve, despite what we've been through with the coronavirus pandemic. This is something that all of us, all of us in this House, should be incredibly proud of. In particular, there are those early childhood educators who have provided those services. They stayed open to make sure that those essential service workers could get the care that they needed for their children and that those vulnerable children could continue to get the care that they needed. If we had seen mass closures of the sector—and that is what was going to happen; Paul Mondo, who I quoted before, said that that was going to happen—those vulnerable children would not have gotten that care, those essential service workers would not have gotten that care and, as a nation, we would not have dealt with this pandemic as well as we should have. So this package was incredibly important for this nation, and I look forward to continuing to work with the sector as we come out of the pandemic to make sure that the childcare sector continues to thrive.

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