Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to give voice to the deep concerns of families with young children across my electorate of Wannon. Accessible and affordable child care is not a luxury; it's a necessity, yet, for people in regional and rural Australia, especially in my electorate of Wannon, there is not the availability of child care that is needed. What this means is young mums, in particular, are missing out on being able to access the workforce as they should be able to. Not only are young mums missing out; businesses across my electorate are missing out because they're not able to employ these young mothers, who they need to work in their businesses. What is occurring is a double whammy.

What have we seen from both the federal Labor government and the state Labor government in Victoria? Everything that they are doing is working against childcare availability, and this means young mothers, especially, in the electorate of Wannon are missing out. We've seen the federal government do nothing about broadening access to child care. We've now had green droughts in the electorate of Wannon and right across Australia when it comes to child care, which the government has done nothing about and has not even tried to address.

In Victoria, it has got even worse. Earlier this year, the Labor state government revealed a very different reality for regional and rural families. They promised to expand access to child care and to build centres in key towns in my electorate, and what have we found out? These have now been delayed, not only delayed for months but delayed, sometimes, for up to a decade. We haven't got time to wait for those sorts of delays. The false promises we're seeing all the time from the state Labor government and now from the federal Labor government are doing nothing to improve the availability of child care in my electorate.

I say to the Albanese Labor government, please think about what you need to do to provide availability in child care right across this nation. Don't just think about the capital cities; think about what you need to be doing right across our country. If you're able to provide greater child care in our regions and country towns—in towns like Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Portland, Hamilton, Colac—what it would mean is that businesses could grow and develop there. Economies would get stronger in those communities, and those communities would get stronger. It would take some of the pressure off our capital cities; it would take some of the pressure off the growth in population that we see in capital cities, with crowded infrastructure, crowded access to hospitals and everything else that comes with that.

What you need to be doing is making sure you are focused on not only insuring that people are paid properly when it comes to providing childcare services—we're all in agreement about that—but making sure that there is that availability where young mums, in particular, need it. That is my request to this government—make sure you're putting the policies in place that will enable child care to grow.

The previous speaker talked about the pressure being put on our small and not-for-profit childcare providers. That is something the government also needs to look at and also needs to pay attention to. If you put pressure on those small and not-for-profit providers, what you are doing is harming the provision of child care in regional and rural Victoria, and you won't see it develop and enhance.

I'll end on this point: you also need to be able to provide emergency services quickly when needed. The Casterton childcare centre, which was hit by a severe hailstorm two weeks ago, really needs your help. You need to step in and help them at this moment as well.

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