Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Mount William Open Garden Day. Anne Abbott, the owner of Mount William Station, had opened her magnificent garden to raise money for the Willaura and District Kindergarten and it is on this topic, the future of our rural kindergartens, that I would like to talk tonight.

The Gillard government’s reform to achieve universal access to early childhood education needs to be added to a list that includes ‘the three-hour minimum work requirement’ and ‘independent youth allowance changes’—a list of policymaking so bad in its execution that it beggars belief. Sarah Millear, the secretary of the Willaura and District Kindergarten, said this about what she thinks universal access to early childhood education reform under the Gillard government will mean for the Willaura and District Kindergarten:

As it stands, it is extremely detrimental to our centre.

By 2013 we must increase the contact hours for our four year old program from ten to fifteen hours per week. This will involve opening the Kindergarten on a third day, and aside from the additional wages, will mean extra running costs, duty and cleaning rosters, and of course a further funding shortfall.

Already, the enforced increase of one contact hour per week in 2011 has increased our budget shortfall from $25,000 to around $38,000.

The further increase in 2013 will leave us with an insurmountable fundraising requirement, forcing us to seriously consider closing the centre unless extra government funding is made available.

If the Willaura Kindergarten were forced to close, there would inevitably be a drop in enrolments for the local primary school. The community playgroup and the maternal and child healthcare centre, which rely on the support of the kindergarten community, would have to look at their long-term viability as well. Three key services could be lost and the long-term future of the school put at risk.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. As reported in the Ararat Advertiser on 12 November, Lake Bolac and District Kindergarten is also:

… on a fast track to closing, thanks to a lack of Government funding which forces just a handful of parents to fund raise, in some cases, close to $40,000 a year.

This is universal access to early childhood learning, Gillard government style.

You could not fathom that they could get it so wrong for early childhood learning, but sadly you only have to look at the changes that have been made to the independent youth allowance and what that is doing to so-called universal access at the tertiary level to see that, sadly, they can.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Champion interjecting

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is true. I would invite you to come to Willaura and to meet with the community and the people involved with the kindergarten and to ask them what they think about this universal access reform for early childhood education. Your government is about to close that kindergarten and it will close other rural kindergartens across the state and no-one is doing anything about it. No-one has thought about what the implications of taking it from 10 to 15 hours are, what it will mean.

Rather than having universal access, young children in country areas are going to have no access at all. I would invite the relevant minister to go to Willaura, meet with the parent group and to hear firsthand about the difficulties they are going to have in the next couple of years. Go to Lake Bolac—a community of 150 people—and meet with them and see the difficulties they are going to have. You are asking them to fundraise $40,000 a year to keep their kindergarten going.

The Gillard government has to be stopped in its tracks; otherwise it will rip the heart out of regional and rural Australia. It is time the Independents, who represent regional and rural electorates, recognised this. They need to cross the floor and they need to bring down this government before it destroys the fabric of our rural communities.