Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the Prime Minister's continued interjections. He's come in here to hear me speak— well, I'll speak more, Prime Minister! I was about to sit down, but since you've come here, I better let you have the benefit of hearing more about rural and regional Australia and how your frontbench has refused to engage with rural and regional communities on critical issues affecting our community. I'd suggest to the Prime Minister that, in relation to infrastructure and transport, he has a minister who takes up to 10 months to respond to correspondence from rural and regional members for information in relation to regional highways and other infrastructure. I do encourage the Prime Minister to urge his frontbench to at least pay some respect to members who have a lived experience in our rural and regional areas to understand the very real challenges that we face in dealing with issues which are both complex and require a different approach to the Canberra one-size-fits-all one which has been the hallmark of this government.

I will conclude with a few more remarks from where I started in relation to the fundamental areas where I think there is agreement on this issue. As I said at the outset, I believe that across the chamber there is enormous goodwill towards achieving the best possible outcome for young people and giving them the best possible start through access to early childhood education and care. Where I think we are failing today is in relation to those three key areas of accessibility, affordability and choice. The accessibility question can be resolved only when we have governments and bureaucrats here in Canberra prepared to listen to the lived experience of people in country areas who will come up with different models that aren't the corporate care models. They won't involve 120 children in one centre, will have smaller centres and may involve a greater investment in small-scale infrastructure, perhaps even for family day care, to support the growth in that sector.

The final point is about choice. We have got ourselves into a position in this nation where we seem to be promoting a government sanctioned model of raising children that doesn't recognise that families are individual and want to make their own choices. That should be respected. The choice to send your child to a childcare centre if required—sometimes through necessity; sometimes by choice—is a legitimate one, as is the choice of raising your child as much as possible in your own home.

This is where the member is taking insult where no insult is intended. The member is seeking to have an argument where no insult is intended. I'm saying there are opportunities for people to choose what works for their family or what incentive is forced upon them. When we have a single parent who requires access to early childhood education, of course it should be respected by the government—just as the family looking to have more opportunity to look after their own children in their own home for longer should be respected by government. If those opposite can't support that choice, they should come out and say it.

On my side of the chamber, due to the necessity of rural and remote locations, many families are in a situation where they want to spend more time looking after their own children in their own homes and not access formalised care, because it's not available to them. All I'm asking is that those opposite take the time to understand the lived experience of a lot of families in rural and regional communities around accessibility, affordability and choice, just as those on this side of the House respect the fact that, in a suburban or inner-urban environment, a lot of people with cost-of-living pressures, which are enormous, are faced with no other choice than to have two full-time incomes. That flexibility is so important for a lot of our rural and regional families.

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