Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week the front page of our region's great local newspaper the Advocate read, 'Childcare crush: Tasmania's north-west has become a childcare desert'. A couple of weeks prior to that article appearing, I had the pleasure of hosting the shadow minister for early childhood education. We had a fabulous day visiting Warawyn Early Learning Centre in Wynyard and Footprints Educational Complex in Burnie.

Our childcare administrators and educators in fact do an amazing job. They nurture our little ones when we can't. But our childcare centres are experiencing significant challenges. Centres are being hit hard by the rising cost of everything. They're struggling to find and retain staff. They're bursting at the seams and have no availability. That has left hundreds of kids across the north-west, the west coast and King Island wanting and waiting for care. In turn, parents are frustrated and unable to return to work. And, to complete this vicious cycle, families are struggling to pay the bills because they're not working as much as they need to be.

The responsibility for this mess sits squarely at the feet of the Albanese government, and they need to fix it. Their cheaper child care promise is in tatters. Reducing the cost of child care means nothing if you live in a child care desert—when you live in the bush.