Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Wednesday we made three major announcements in my electorate to a total of $6 million. The first was a fantastic announcement along with the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, JennyMacklin, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, Bill Shorten, for a $4.8 million new autism specific early-learning and care centre—something that we committed to in the 2007 election. I am really pleased that we have been able to go through the whole selection process and announce it last Wednesday, along with the auspices of the Burnie City Council. It will be established at the current Alexander Beetle House Children’s Centre. There will be a top floor put on the centre that currently exists and that will be to a value of $1.75 million in capital works. There will be $2.6 million for operating funding and $372,000 in capacity building for the centre.

We look to employing up to six specialist staff, including an early childhood education teacher, psychologist, a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist to work alongside five trained childcare workers. It will be a hub-and-spoke model which will allow the main centre to be in Burnie, but their services will go right throughout the region and even, indeed, into Tassie. This is a fantastic initiative, and I do thank the minister for coming personally to open the centre and for fulfilling our election commitment. I also want to thank, apart from the Burnie City Council which was fundamentally involved in bringing the complex project together, Andrew and Marisa Barry, who met the minister in 2007 and have been advocating for autism services, but particularly for early childhood, for many years. Indeed, they have spent most of their lives helping their twin daughters to overcome autism and help support them. They are really glad that this has finally come about.

Finally, two other announcements: $969,000 for the Burnie coastal pathway track, which will go from the magnificent Emu River right through to a grand place called Cooee, outside of Burnie. I do congratulate Burnie City Council. There is also $300,000 for the west coast, which is now part of Braddon—I am really looking forward to representing them both now and into the future—for bike tracks at the magnificent tourist centre of Strahan and also Tullah. This will, as part of the Jobs Fund, lead to more employment, traineeships, apprenticeships, particularly as the west coast is doing it hard. All in all, it was a fantastic day last Wednesday in the magnificent place called Braddon.