Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak about a policy that was released yesterday by Labor’s spokesperson on families and community services, the member for Jagajaga. She announced plans to help local governments develop a single waiting list for childcare places in each local government area. I want to raise this policy issue in the adjournment debate because it has a particular resonance in my electorate of Gellibrand. Maribyrnong City Council already runs a waiting list of the eight council affiliated childcare centres. Although this might seem staggering, there are 700 children waiting for long day care places on this list. There are a further four childcare centres in the municipality. Two are private providers and two are based at the Victoria University campuses. They all presumably run their own waiting lists, making the figures even higher.

The figure of 700 is staggering, and Maribyrnong council only covers half of my electorate, so it is really quite a worrying situation for many parents in my electorate. The other half of my electorate is covered by Hobsons Bay City Council, who keep a single waiting list for the two council run long day care centres and their family day care providers. At the moment there are 261 children on that list. However, there are five more community providers and six private operators in Hobsons Bay in addition to that, so the reality is that there are many more children on waiting lists in the municipality. It is not very hard to imagine that we could easily get to 1,000 on waiting lists in my electorate. We do not have the exact figures, but there are hundreds and hundreds of parents in very difficult circumstances, not knowing how they can ensure that their children are getting the care that they need.

Hobsons Bay Council would like to set up their own central waiting list to make life easier for parents. That is actually the proposal that the member for Jagajaga announced on Monday. But they are waiting on some money becoming available for them to help establish this project, and it seems likely that under the Howard government they will be waiting a long time. A number of local governments have taken action to consolidate their waiting lists in an effort to try to help parents save time. That is of course a sensible solution, a solution that Labor sees would help many families. But it is something that the government refuses to do. Childcare centres themselves, of course, are also quite supportive of this idea. They do not have the time to ring every parent on the waiting list—sometimes up to 300 of them—to see if they have found appropriate care in the meantime, and parents do not want to have to ring around four or five centres every week to see if something has come up. Labor’s plan aims to take the burden off centres and off parents and to give us a more accurate picture of what services are needed.

The Howard government, though, has its head in the sand and is telling us that there are places out there. But we know that there are not enough to meet the need. When we are talking about these sorts of figures, even if the figures for Maribyrnong and Hobsons Bay were only half the number, we still have hundreds and hundreds of families who are affected by this problem. We do need local solutions, and I have to say that Maribyrnong council, who run the central list for their eight services, admit that their system is not perfect. They do indeed have some vacancies, but they are not the vacancies that parents need. I know, Mr Speaker, that you would appreciate from your electorate that it is not much good finding a vacancy on Tuesday if you work on Wednesday, and it is not much good finding a vacancy for a four-year-old if your child is only two. Those are the sorts of problems that the government just does not want to address.

The council are trying to develop a new system that will give a more accurate picture of childcare demand, and they have expressed a desire to work with all childcare providers in the municipality, both community and private, to make life easier for parents. It is exactly this sort of model that Labor is interested in pursuing across the country, and the member for Jagajaga has already given some preliminary advice to Maribyrnong council, or certainly to us, that she would like to meet with them to gain some additional knowledge from their experience and see what would assist them. This is an area of Commonwealth government responsibility, but my council in my electorate, Maribyrnong council, has been forced to go it alone because the government do not want to give councils a better picture of childcare demand. They just seem to not want to hear the bad news—that there is a childcare shortage and that they have failed families who need and want to go back to work.

We need a comprehensive approach like that which Labor has been announcing and unfolding in the past few weeks. I do not have time today to talk about our plan for an extra 1,500 university places in early childhood education and our plan to make sure that every four-year-old around the country can access up to 15 hours a week of early childhood education, but they are part of a comprehensive package that is not only going to give our kids the best start in life but also aiming to make sure that parents and childcare centres get the assistance they need to be able to deal with the very high and sometimes unpredictable demand. Those are the sorts of solutions that will help us locally. I know that the councils in my areas will welcome them and I urge the government— (Time expired)