Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A new-age girl, maybe. I rise to speak in relation to this proposition that we finally—can I say with some sense of pride—see an approval going through both houses of parliament to provide a childcare facility in this building. Ten years ago this week, in fact, I stood in this chamber for the first time and gave my first speech. I had my family with me and little Kate was two years and three months old. I was still breastfeeding at the time. I had this to say:

I put on the record that it is unfortunate that there are no child-care facilities in this building for a politician like me. It may well be one of the reasons limiting the capacity of women to enter this arena.

From the moment I put those words down in Hansard, I decided that I would spend my time in this place developing a campaign and pushing for some recognition that a childcare centre would benefit not just politicians—in fact, not politicians at all—but the many thousands of families, women and men, who work in this place. I came to realise their life would be much easier if in fact there was a childcare centre within the building. So I embarked on a quest to see if I could realise that ambition.

My research of the history books tells me that in an article in a newspaper some 25 years ago this was said:

After months of apparent inaction, the new Parliament House may get a creche.

Senator Pat Giles, a fantastic Labor senator from Western Australia, was quoted as saying:

“We have been frustrated about the whole thing”—

Can I say, Senator Giles, tell me about it—

the head of the caucus committee on the status of women said yesterday. A commitment had been given in 1983 that there would be provision made for childcare in the new building.

Jumping to 1986, Senator Powell asked of the minister representing the then Prime Minister here in the Senate whether they could inform the Senate if the original plans for the new Parliament House, which did not provide for child-minding facilities, had been changed to make such provision. Of course, a couple of days later this was the answer:

The Joint Standing Committee, through a special sub-committee, considered the question of a childcare facility within the precincts of the New Parliament House. I am advised the JSC has decided that no childcare facility will be provided within the precincts.

So I am not the only one who has been on a quest to ensure that we have some family-friendly provisions within this building; it emanated many years before I entered this chamber. In 1988, a Parliamentary Zone survey was conducted by the Parliament House childcare committee. It surveyed workers in Parliament House, the National Library and the National Gallery and found that 83 places could be taken up if available. Funding of $0.7 million was included in the National Capital Development Commission’s 1988-89 capital works program.

We then go to 1989, when the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House recommended approval of a centre, but four senators at that time presented a minority report. In December 1989, the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House recommended the establishment of a community based childcare facility adjacent to the provisional Parliament House, and that year a community based childcare centre catering for 40 places was due to open next to the Forrest Primary School. Since my day, of course, the recommendation has been made to many people who have worked in this House that they use that Forrest childcare centre, but that did not quite go to the nub of what people were actually looking for.

Moving on to childcare issues in Canberra in 1992, the CSIRO were in the process of completing a childcare centre at Black Mountain and the ATO became the first public sector organisation to reach an industrial agreement regarding the provision of childcare for staff. Going on, we see that even the new Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade building has a childcare centre, which is dedicated to staff that specifically work there.

In 2000, I started to convene informal meetings of people in this House who might be interested in pursuing the issue of childcare facilities at Parliament House. Certainly, these meetings had no structure and had no legal standing within this parliament; nonetheless, we got together. At that time, Senator Woodley of the Democrats was still in this place and was very supportive of this move. I place on record my appreciation of the work of Consie Larmour from Senator Kate Lundy’s office and Meg Martin, who with a number of us—including, of course, Senator Lundy—have vigorously pursued the quest to have a childcare centre in this place. Mike Bolton from the Joint House Department joined us at that time, and we finally managed to convince the Joint House Department to hire a consultant, Prue Warrilow, from Families At Work. However, again we had another survey. It seems that the path this childcare centre has taken in Parliament House has been step by step and survey by survey. If my memory serves me right, that survey showed that at that time this place could support a childcare centre for at least 95 places.

We did make some gains, though. In 1994, the former Spouses Lounge on the House of Representatives side of the building was converted to a child-friendly family lounge. That was not really the same as a childcare centre; you could send your children there and they could be occupied throughout the day—unsupervised, though, unless you were there with them. It was suitable for children of various ages, but it did not quite hit the mark in terms of what was needed in this place.

Nevertheless, we pursued and continued. My informal reference group met from time to time, with invitations being extended to people like Joe Hockey, who, I have to place on record, was a great supporter of this campaign, and Jackie Kelly, who, as we know, also jumped on board and started to push for this campaign. We have been down to the DFAT childcare facility and we have looked at the one at Forrest. With Maggie Barnes from the Joint House Department, I have walked this building looking at potential spaces where a childcare centre could be built. We have talked about having a childcare centre in one section of the ministerial car park and we have talked about locating a childcare centre out near the tennis courts on the House of Representatives side.

However, finally, a couple of years ago, we got down to the serious business of really looking at what sort of space was available inside this House and what we would need in square metres per child, because any childcare centre established here needs to comply with the ACT regulations and guidelines. We did home in on a few places—the old staff bar and the back of the staff canteen. Of course, you will know now that we finally decided on renovating the old staff bar. We know that it will take children only of up to 18 months and that it will have only 22 places. We would like to see the provision for at least a 75-place centre in this building, but that is never going to happen, because we literally do not have the space. Back when the building was designed—and I can only imagine there were very, very few women in parliament at that time—there was very little prospect of ever thinking that there would be women in this parliament who would one day need a childcare centre. It was not on the radar and it was not on the agenda—or, if it was, it was completely dismissed out of hand.

But we move on. We have had debates about whether or not this parliament and this workplace should be paying for such a facility. We have had a debate, believe it or not, about whether the clocks that ring in this House would actually wake the babies who were asleep—ably discredited, of course, by the number of members who have had young babies in this place and who have said, ‘Well, it never seemed to wake my little tacker up when the bells went, despite the fact that they were sleeping in my office.’

I sometimes felt at joint house committee meetings that I was taking two steps forward and 32 steps back. But I do want, very sincerely, to place on record my colleagues from across the parties—and also from the national press gallery. There were certainly times when people like Catherine McGrath and Steve Bloom came to me and urged me to keep going. Of course those people, like Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, have had children, and those children have moved well past their need for child care. That is certainly the case in Catherine McGrath’s instance. In my instance, that is the case. Kate is now 12 and enjoying a day at Questacon today. Nevertheless, I always knew that this was going to be a long, hard struggle, but it was something that we could put in place for people in the future.

I have a vivid memory of gathering people together, when the campaign became increasingly frustrating, and urging them to bring their babies and partners into this house. There were many delightful photos taken of young babies crawling up and down Senate committee tables, to press the point that putting your young child on a committee table was not acceptable in this day and age and that really staff in this place were looking for the recognition that, to balance their life, family and work commitments in this house, they needed a childcare facility.

I am specifically talking here about people in Hansard, people in the Parliamentary Library—and I must pay tribute to Glenda James for the research work and the work that she did in our campaign to get this established—and the many staff who work in the committees and particularly in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. So do not be under any illusion here that this is a childcare centre for politicians; it is clearly not. In fact, of the 20 or 22 places, I think, in the coming year, I will be surprised if four or five politicians take one up. Hopefully, Catherine King might be lucky enough to be able to put her new baby in there next year to make her life a little bit easier. But this was always about providing a childcare centre for the staff who work here: security staff, Hansard, DPS staff, committee staff—everybody except us, essentially. It was not about us as politicians; it was about finally recognising that this Parliament House, in this country, needs to be at the leading edge as a workplace that recognises the needs of families in this place, the needs of working mums and working dads, in having on hand their child at their workplace.

It was also about acknowledging the very crucial role that breastfeeding plays in the early weeks and months of a child’s developing life. Not everyone can stay at home with a young baby, and not everyone wants to stay at home with a young baby, but we should be a country that encourages women to breastfeed. When we have a childcare centre in this place and women choose to come back to work when their child is six months, nine months or 12 months old and they are still breastfeeding, they will be able to go down to that centre and continue to feed their child in that way. This should be the pre-eminent place in our nation that encourages breastfeeding and encourages a work-life balance and now, finally, it recognises the role of having child care in the workplace.

I am incredibly proud today to be able to stand up and speak to this approval motion. But I also want, as I said, to place on record the large number of people who have been on my email distribution list and who have been at the end of my phone calls—and I apologise to the people in the Joint House Department who occasionally had to deal with, perhaps, my wrath as I continually put this on the agenda. Senator Jacinta Collins, for example, was one of those people who were part of that campaign. She has actually gone from the Senate and come back again. Finally, though, we will now have a childcare centre.