Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Lundy’s notice of motion, and I congratulate her for bringing this issue on. There is a great deal of debate in the community—emotional debate, of course, because this issue is an emotional one—about how we care for our children. Unfortunately, I do not think that the government’s recent announcement on child care went a long way or very far towards addressing the issues that face our child-care sector and the parents of this country.

The debate revolves around a number of issues: access, affordability and, very critically, quality. I would like to quote Emma Rush from the Australia Institute, who very recently—in April—released a paper on child-care quality in Australia. She starts by saying:

An excellent child care system is important to enable parents to balance work and family life, to encourage the workforce participation of parents, and to foster the development of Australian children. Recent public debate about the child care system in Australia has focused primarily on the availability and affordability of child care. This paper considers an aspect of child care that has received much less attention, that of the quality of the care provided.

I will address the issue of quality shortly, but the first point I would like to make is that I do not think the child-care system in Australia, as it presently stands, enables parents to balance work and family life. In fact, it makes it extremely difficult. It is not encouraging workforce participation of parents, and we have seen a great deal of analysis over the last two days, particularly from women, saying how hard it is to get back into the workforce under the current circumstances and, in particular, child-care arrangements.

I am deeply concerned that the current child-care system in Australia does not foster the development of Australian children. I believe we should be putting that at the centre of our child-care system. I found the announcement about lifting the cap on the provision of family day care centres and before and after school care deeply concerning. I do not think it goes any way to addressing the entrenched issues we have in our current child-care system. I think it is a short-term solution from a government that does not appear to appreciate some of the deep-seated issues that are involved in this issue. The allocation of child-care places is not just a question of supply and demand in broad economic terms—it requires identification of the needs of children and their families in the towns and suburbs of Australia.

The government’s simple approach seems to be that the market will take care of the allocation of child-care places. Quite simply, that is wrong. There needs to be a comprehensive needs analysis of the sector to determine where resources need to be allocated and for which particular services—because you need a combination of services—and what the long-term needs of the industry are, including training. This is particularly so in rural and regional areas. Just recently in a committee hearing I had the opportunity to ask some questions about assessing demand in, in particular, rural and regional areas, and it became quite obvious that they do not have an idea of demand in rural and regional areas. Again, it seems to take the approach ‘let the market provide’.

We need a clearly targeted strategy that aims to deliver appropriate child care in the places where it is needed and address the current and future demand for properly trained and accredited child-care staff. This government had an opportunity in this budget to set the direction of the child-care sector for future generations. I contend that if the Treasurer had put as much attention and understanding into child care as he put time and energy into dealing with the financial sector and superannuation for baby boomers, we would have a much better start to the child-care system in this country right now. We do in this country have the capacity and financial means to build what I believe we could have, and that is a world-class child-care system—not one that simply makes places available by cutting corners and dropping standards. A quality child-care system is important not only to prepare the next generation of Australians but also, as I said, to enable parents to balance work and family life and to encourage their participation in the workforce.

A number of worrying trends have been debated in the community, and I would like to touch on one of them—the privatisation of day care and child care. The danger is that if the funding is not targeted to clearly address areas of high demand for child care then we will see a wave of big, private child-care centres setting up in what could be described as the ‘nappy belt’ in response to the price of real estate rather that in response to the demand for services from parents wanting to return to the work force. This has been extensively covered in the media.

From the point of view of maximizing returns to shareholders, the most attractive proposition is to set up mega day care centres where the real estate is cheap, to cut corners on the quality of the facilities and play equipment provided, to push staff-to-children ratios as far as you legally can and to save your overhead costs by requiring staff to do all of the other admin, cleaning and maintenance activities at the same time. Clearly, there is a need for child-care places in regional centres, but setting up in these areas is unlikely to be financially attractive to the big private providers. As I said, the nappy belt is more financially attractive.

I want to make it clear that the Greens are not opposed outright to private enterprise, despite what many people say, nor are we arguing that there is no place for private providers in the child-care system. However, given the crucial nature of our children’s formative years, I do not believe that it is appropriate that private child care should be at the centre of our child-care system. It should help to supplement it. I for one am a strong supporter of community day care and community child care.

I am concerned that a system that puts the interests of shareholders above the interests of children is dangerous and damaging and needs to be carefully monitored and regulated. We already have clear evidence that the increasing privatisation of day care services is driving down the quality of services and the amount of one-on-one care and attention children receive, and increasing the likelihood that they will come to harm through inattention or neglect. We must at all costs avoid a factory farm mentality and must not cut corners or standards to meet demand. It is my firm belief that quality day care needs to be the heart and defining characteristic of our system. We need to ensure that we are investing in the future of our nation through our children and not short-changing or trading off that future for a few short-term gains and profits.

This issue was raised in an Australia Institute report which did a clear analysis of the current day care system. It looked at the three distinct types of day care provided: the community based centres—including all centres which are not for profit—the independent private centres and the corporate chains. As I said, the study by Emma Rush of the Australia Institute, which is called Child care quality in Australia, found:

... for all the aspects of quality care investigated, results show that community-based long day care centres offer the highest quality care. Independent private centres offer a quality of care that is usually similar to the high quality offered by community-based centres. Corporate chains offer the lowest quality of care on all aspects of quality surveyed, and in some cases it is markedly lower than that provided by community-based long day care centres.

It went on to say:

The ability to develop relationships with children, and thus secure attachments, is perhaps the most important indicator of quality of care. On this criterion, community-based and independent private centres scored markedly better than corporate centres, with around half of child care staff from the former two types saying they always have time to develop individual relationships compared to only a quarter at corporate centres.

Community based child-care centres provide the highest standards of care and the best linkages between the child, the family and the community. It is my personal strong belief that the way forward is to put community based child care at the heart of our child-care system. It should be the baseline and the standard to which all others seek to conform. We should actively encourage small private centres with a culture of caring to set up, but we must ensure that all child-care centres, whether they are community or private, are strongly regulated and assessed to ensure that standards are maintained and increased. We need to keep a very close eye on what I would call the large-scale industrial child-care providers, and action needs to be taken to clearly enforce standards and ensure quality of care.

Now I would like to turn to the issue of affordability. Quite clearly, the evidence shows that time and again parents are saying that they cannot afford child care. Then there are the gradients of what you can afford as they relate to quality. I believe all parents should have access to quality day care and child care. I do not believe that the current system of rebates is helping all the people in the community who need help.

The Australian Council of Social Service released a survey earlier in the year—in March in fact—along with their plan of how to address child care in Australia. Their plan was for a fairer and more affordable system. They made a number of important recommendations which need to be considered. They had a 10-point plan, but their most urgent specific recommendation was that they felt very strongly that a schedule of government recommended fees for services needed to be produced so that parents could compare the cost and quality of different service providers. ACOSS also felt very strongly that a 30 per cent child-care benefit guarantee should be created so all families would be paid at least 30 per cent of the government recommended fee for services. Many families would be entitled to much higher levels of support to meet child-care costs, with up to 85 per cent being paid to parents on the lowest incomes. They also believed that the government should establish a national demand model and a national planning system to identify demand and match services to local area needs. These are the sorts of recommendations that the government needs to go back and have a look at to try and get child care right in this country.

The plain and simple fact is that a large number of Australians do not have access to affordable quality day care or child-care centres. It is something that needs to be urgently addressed. We will not be able to address it urgently unless we deal with the issue of making sure that we have people who are trained and accredited to work in the industry. The industry is facing a crisis in workforce availability. How is the sector going to find the staff to support the new child-care positions that may or may not be created? Where is the plan and funding for vocational training and development in this sector? It will take at least two years for the industry to train enough new child-care workers to meet demand for child care, particularly if we want workers of high quality. It may take even more time to train directors of child-care centres—and this is assuming that there is a concentrated effort to create training places. We need people who we are confident in and who have the qualities and necessary skills to look after the children we are putting in child care.

The people who work in the child-care sector are among the lowest paid in this country. I have to make the comment here that the new industrial laws are highly likely to drive those salaries even lower. There is also a clear difference between the salaries of those working in the private sector and the salaries of those working in the community sector, and that was brought out in the Australia Institute report. There is a clear disincentive for people to enter this field just at the time when we need them most. There is an absence of fair pay, quality working conditions and long-term career options, and that means that people are simply not going to choose to work in the child-care industry. Without these people to look after our children, the sector will not be able to continue.

It is essential that we address the issues of access, affordability and quality. Those are the things that we think should be at the heart of any quality child-care system in this country. It is still difficult for women in particular to re-enter the workforce because there is no access to affordable quality child care, particularly in regional areas. We do not believe that the for-profit sector at the heart of our child-care system is the answer. Quality community care should be at the heart of our child-care system. We need to change the structures so that we have an affordable child-care system with centres in locations where they are needed and not where private industry thinks that that they are needed.

We need to reassess the 30 per cent rebate so that the child-care benefits are more immediately accessible by parents, particularly those on low incomes who cannot afford to shell out money hoping that they are going to get money back in the future. I strongly recommend that the government reads the ACOSS 10-point plan and I strongly recommend that they read the Australia Institute report on quality child care to ensure that we have a child-care system in this country that we can be truly proud of.