Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to address the damage being done to occasional child care in Victoria and, in particular, I want to look at the decision of the federal government in the 2010 budget to scrap $12.6 million in funding for occasional care. I refer in particular to a program known as the Take a Break program. In my home state the shortfall was temporarily picked up by the Victorian government, but that funding ends in December this year. That was not the Victorian government's responsibility, but they did it. Occasional care is provided by community houses. It is used by mums and dads whilst they go to part-time jobs, attend medical appointments and job interviews, volunteer or shop. They may take a rare, brief moment to visit friends or relatives in distress.

I can look around my electorate and see the value of this occasional care program. In Dromana, more than 60 children receive occasional care. In Crib Point, the decision will affect more than 30 families. Crib Point is a town comprised of people who are very proud of what they have achieved, but many of them have not had the advantages in life given to some. They work hard and they need the support that they have worked to build for their community. To have the underpinnings of that taken away will really strike at the Crib Point community.

Many other families use occasional care in Mount Martha, Balnarring, Sorrento and Rye. Each of those families will be affected by the likely loss of a program which has strong community support, which deals largely with disadvantaged families, which plays an important and constructive role and which, until recently, has had bipartisan support at federal level and at state level. For many of these families, all-day care is neither appropriate nor affordable, and they will be left with no alternative option. That means that, for families that are on the margin, the ability to have a part-time job, to attend medical appointments, to volunteer or maybe to do necessary shopping for themselves or for their elderly, distressed or infirm relatives will simply not be there. This cutback has shocked and disappointed many local families. I have met with families from Crib Point and have talked with many from around the Mornington Peninsula and Western Port.

Quite significantly, the federal government is attempting to lay the blame on the Victorian government, but the funding of child care is a federal government issue. Let me repeat: the funding of child care is clearly, expressly and specifically a federal government issue. Previously, the state government generously—and this refers to state governments of both hues—worked cooperatively with the federal government to fund occasional care. The federal government would foot 55 per cent of the bill, and it was a generous action on behalf of successive state governments to meet the 45 per cent of the bill which was not ordinarily theirs. The Victorian government has committed to continuing its 45 per cent funding share, but only of course if the federal government reinstates its own funding. This is a 100 per cent federal responsibility. It has generously been shared, with the state picking up the 45 per cent, and now the federal government wants to make it a 100 per cent state responsibility. This is unfair, unreasonable, inappropriate and destructive.

Against that background, the federal coalition has committed to restoring the $12.5 million ripped from the occasional care program by federal Labor. It is not a program that needed to be cut. It was working and it was effective. It was not like a pink batts, a green loans, a cash for clunkers or a citizens assembly program. It was an effective, operating program which had bipartisan support at a federal and state level—which, for inexplicable reasons, has been cut. I call on the federal Labor government to do the right thing and to match our commitment to reinstating the $12.5 million of federal funding for the Take a Break program. (Time expired)