Mr HENDERSON - 2001-05-29
My question goes to some fraud that he was talking about. Your government promised to create an additional 1150 new child care places over the five-year period 1996-2001. The current THS Annual Report shows you only created 701 places by the end of 2000 - 40% short of your promise. Your government has also reduced the space allocated to each child in these child-care centres.
Minister, isn’t it the case that the majority of the additional spaces have been achieved by your mean and tricky approach of cramming more children into existing centres rather than building new ones? Will you deliver on your promise to create 1150 new child care places by 30 June this year? If not, isn’t this yet another example of the CLP government’s fairytale approach to Territorians where the promises and the reality are two different things?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, in the preface to the question the shadow health spokesman talked about a mere 700 new places. I think this is pretty good. I know that five years ago we set a target and the target was over a thousand places. If you had been close to this industry over five years you would have seen there have been massive upheavals, particularly given that some of the established centres have closed. So, the figure he is using nets out some of the established places that have actually chosen to close.
In the Northern Territory we still have the best government subsidy to the child care industry in Australia. We provide the subsidy to publics and to privates. We have also taken on probably the hardest job of any jurisdiction over the last several years in trying to get formal child care into Aboriginal communities. This is something the requires a lead time. It is not common that you go to an Aboriginal community and you find that there are Aboriginal people out there who are qualified in child care. But it has been my happy duty to visit Yirrkala, to visit Galiwinku, and to open child-care centres in those areas. The federal minister opened a child care centre at Tiwi Islands.
We have had to build them, to train the staff, to talk to the people and consult greatly about location. There has been articulation of child care into other programs, particularly nutrition programs and education programs. The opposition can mouth rhetoric about the linkages between education and health, but the good work that we have done with some of the intervention services in Palmerston, the services that we have put in out bush and in Jingili, these are not things where you can wave a magic wand and say, ‘Well, we’ll pull the drawer out; here’s a child care centre, yes we’ll drop one of those in’.
We don’t do it like that. We realise that infrastructure is but a very small part. The most important part is the activities that occur in the child-care centres. They are the activities to do with making sure you have qualified people, and making sure that your levels of service are what the government want. You have to make sure that some of the articulation that you want, particularly with education, is embedded.
I take the opportunity to again applaud the member for Jingili who has put an enormous amount of work into trying to get the Jingili Child Care Centre embedded into the school campus where it will be adjacent to the pre-school. That is a win, win, win for all concerned. I encourage those opposite to look at that.
This mouthing of, ‘Here’s your target and you’re a bit below it so therefore you’ve mucked up,’ is a bit trivial because if you look to what we have done, we have looked at an industry that has had to dramatically reshape itself - and it has. We have had to look at an industry that has had some exits, unfortunately, because they have not been able to reconfigure their child care industry to their catchment and to their finances. We have helped several child care centres including, might I add, many in the electorates of those opposite and it should be noted ...
Mr Stirling: 12.8% economic growth.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I don’t know about the opposition members but I would like to hear what the minister is saying.
Mr DUNHAM: We have had to help many child care centres to get through some difficult times, including many of those in the electorates of those opposite. I have yet to hear from the opposition on these issues. I would have liked to have heard from the member for Arafura on Jabiru. This is a child care centre that has had some very difficult times. They have had to look to involving other partners, and they have - the mining company, the major employer there, and the council. But they haven’t been able to count on the involvement of their local member and that is a very unfortunate phenomenon that happens with these people. They might sit and go through some of the books and, yes, we didn’t make the 1100, and that’s why it was called a target. But we certainly do not have any sense of shame about the effort that we have put in. I am quite proud to be able to go to the next election with our efforts in child care. I’m quite proud to be able to put down in a manifesto of where this government will take this very important service in the next five years.
Minister, isn’t it the case that the majority of the additional spaces have been achieved by your mean and tricky approach of cramming more children into existing centres rather than building new ones? Will you deliver on your promise to create 1150 new child care places by 30 June this year? If not, isn’t this yet another example of the CLP government’s fairytale approach to Territorians where the promises and the reality are two different things?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, in the preface to the question the shadow health spokesman talked about a mere 700 new places. I think this is pretty good. I know that five years ago we set a target and the target was over a thousand places. If you had been close to this industry over five years you would have seen there have been massive upheavals, particularly given that some of the established centres have closed. So, the figure he is using nets out some of the established places that have actually chosen to close.
In the Northern Territory we still have the best government subsidy to the child care industry in Australia. We provide the subsidy to publics and to privates. We have also taken on probably the hardest job of any jurisdiction over the last several years in trying to get formal child care into Aboriginal communities. This is something the requires a lead time. It is not common that you go to an Aboriginal community and you find that there are Aboriginal people out there who are qualified in child care. But it has been my happy duty to visit Yirrkala, to visit Galiwinku, and to open child-care centres in those areas. The federal minister opened a child care centre at Tiwi Islands.
We have had to build them, to train the staff, to talk to the people and consult greatly about location. There has been articulation of child care into other programs, particularly nutrition programs and education programs. The opposition can mouth rhetoric about the linkages between education and health, but the good work that we have done with some of the intervention services in Palmerston, the services that we have put in out bush and in Jingili, these are not things where you can wave a magic wand and say, ‘Well, we’ll pull the drawer out; here’s a child care centre, yes we’ll drop one of those in’.
We don’t do it like that. We realise that infrastructure is but a very small part. The most important part is the activities that occur in the child-care centres. They are the activities to do with making sure you have qualified people, and making sure that your levels of service are what the government want. You have to make sure that some of the articulation that you want, particularly with education, is embedded.
I take the opportunity to again applaud the member for Jingili who has put an enormous amount of work into trying to get the Jingili Child Care Centre embedded into the school campus where it will be adjacent to the pre-school. That is a win, win, win for all concerned. I encourage those opposite to look at that.
This mouthing of, ‘Here’s your target and you’re a bit below it so therefore you’ve mucked up,’ is a bit trivial because if you look to what we have done, we have looked at an industry that has had to dramatically reshape itself - and it has. We have had to look at an industry that has had some exits, unfortunately, because they have not been able to reconfigure their child care industry to their catchment and to their finances. We have helped several child care centres including, might I add, many in the electorates of those opposite and it should be noted ...
Mr Stirling: 12.8% economic growth.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I don’t know about the opposition members but I would like to hear what the minister is saying.
Mr DUNHAM: We have had to help many child care centres to get through some difficult times, including many of those in the electorates of those opposite. I have yet to hear from the opposition on these issues. I would have liked to have heard from the member for Arafura on Jabiru. This is a child care centre that has had some very difficult times. They have had to look to involving other partners, and they have - the mining company, the major employer there, and the council. But they haven’t been able to count on the involvement of their local member and that is a very unfortunate phenomenon that happens with these people. They might sit and go through some of the books and, yes, we didn’t make the 1100, and that’s why it was called a target. But we certainly do not have any sense of shame about the effort that we have put in. I am quite proud to be able to go to the next election with our efforts in child care. I’m quite proud to be able to put down in a manifesto of where this government will take this very important service in the next five years.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016