Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A couple of years ago in the early stages of my term as the elected member for Macnamara, I joined with local parents, early educators, the Australian Services Union and the local community to oppose the City of Port Phillip's plan to sell off our council-run childcare and early education services. At that time we knew that to have high-quality affordable Childcare and Early Education Services available to the people and the families in my electorate mattered, and it still matters today. That's why I was so disappointed and, to be honest, a little frustrated to hear that the City of Port Phillip have now gone back to their plan to try and sell off assets and local childcare facilities.

Back then my friend and colleague the member for Albert Park and Victorian health minister Martin Foley and I stood shoulder to shoulder with the community, and we worked with then mayor Louise Crawford and the former mayor Bernadene Voss, whom I acknowledge, to turn the decision around and oppose it. The decision was reversed, and we call on the City of Port Phillip to once again go back to the drawing board and not sell off three community run childcare services—the Avenue Children's Centre and Kindergarten; the Eildon Road Childcare and Kindergarten; and Elwood Children's Centre.

To understand these services is to understand local high-quality community run childcare and early education services. These are beautiful old buildings. They don't just provide high-quality child care and early education; they also provide a sense of community. Young families who come into the electorate send their kids there, and they get to know other families with kids of similar ages. They build lifelong friendships and a sense of community. To live in the City of Port Phillip is a magical thing, but to have that sense of community on top of that—I've heard this from countless parents and countless community members—is so valuable and so important to them. That was part of the reason why the City of Port Phillip stopped and reversed their decision last time. They heard, loud and clear, how important our not-for-profit child care and our council- and community-run child care and early education services are.

Last night the City of Port Phillip had a meeting, and I want to thank the more than 20 local parents and community members who stood up and spoke against the proposal to sell off our three fantastic community run services. It took guts to turn up to council, but it also showed how important these services are to our local community. We are specifically asking council to go back to the drawing board. I understand there are some DDA compliance issues that we need to fix. There often are in old buildings, and I think it is important to address this and make sure these buildings are safe and DDA compliant. But I also think the council should not be looking for the path of least resistance here. The council should be fighting to keep these centres, not fighting to get rid of these centres. At the moment the emphasis is on the completely wrong spot. So I stand in this place and say to each and every councillor who understands the value of local, affordable, high-quality child care and early education and who is willing to listen to the community: slow this process down and look for other options.

The final point I will make on this is that we are coming out of the coronavirus, the pandemic—hopefully! Hopefully the vaccines are able to maintain a level of community protection and we are able to all return to some level of work and normality. But that is impossible if you don't have affordable, accessible local child care and early education. For women and working families who live in the City of Port Phillip, this is not just about child care and early education. This is not just about fostering and building communities in our local area. This is also about economic policy to ensure that our local area, which has been hard hit by the pandemic, is allowed to recover and prosper once again. So I say in this place: we have fought this before, and we will fight it again. To the new mayor, who I know has a different political persuasion to me: don't do this as your first act as mayor. Go back to the drawing board and protect our locally run child care and early education centres for the community and for our whole local area.