Preschool Hours

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister inform the house what the government is doing to ensure South Australian children will continue to receive 15 hours a week of preschool in 2016?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:42): I thank the member for his question. I enjoyed very much visiting a children's centre recently in his electorate at Aldinga Beach. It was extremely enjoyable to spend an afternoon with all of those children and the parents and also the other providers who were there to help assist families to have the best outcomes possible, in wellbeing as well as in education. It was a really good experience.

Saying that leads on to the more general point that the early years, as we have all come to realise, are absolutely essential to the ongoing wellbeing and education of children. If we do not get the early years right it becomes so much more difficult, and progressively more difficult, to lift standards later on. One of the ways in which we have done that in South Australia—we have always had a very strong commitment to preschool, with government-funded preschool—is that we were able to enter into a national partnership agreement with the previous federal government to guarantee 15 hours. Other states were also part of that agreement. It meant that 15 hours a week was guaranteed to be provided to all preschoolers, an absolutely exceptional outcome.

The current federal government has, as members would be aware, agreed to a one-year continuation of that under somewhat difficult arrangements to get that tied down. So for this school year we have the 15 hours. They held off making a decision about what to do for ongoing years on the basis that they would have a Productivity Commission review. That review has been completed and the results were very strongly in favour of maintaining the 15 hours.

I was interested to read that, as part of the submission to the Productivity Commission, PricewaterhouseCoopers attempted to quantify the gross state product addition to our economy through investing in high-quality preschool education and engaging disadvantaged children in particular, and they estimate that that contributes $2 billion to our gross state economy. So, it is not just about the wellbeing of children, although everything stems from that: the state of our economy depends very much on the quality of our education, and that starts back in preschool, which brings me back to the 15 hours.

Having received this Productivity Commission report and being delighted to see their commitment to the 15 hours across South Australia, we had a ministerial council meeting and discussed the very urgent need seen by all states for a decision to be made by the federal government. Not only do we need the commitment but we need a commitment early because families need to know what's going to happen, centres need to know what their staffing requirements are going to be. However, tragically, we were unable to secure a commitment at this stage from the federal government. I hold out hope. I am always an optimist, and I hold out hope that they will indeed see the great sense in funding this, but at this stage we are still awaiting their decision.