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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-28 Daily Xml
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EDUCATION AND EARLY CHILDHOOD SERVICES (REGISTRATION AND STANDARDS) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (17:35): I want to make a contribution to this bill. I commend the minister for his commitment to early childhood education, but I must say that I have some serious concerns about this bill, and there are a number of things that I would ask the minister to address and clarify when he responds to the second reading or during the committee stage.

I remind the house that, prior to coming into this place, I was in the childcare business. I had six businesses in two states and employed well over 120 childcare workers, teachers, handymen and cleaners. My family has had a long involvement in early childhood and in private childcare, my mother having been a pioneer of the industry going back to the late 1950s, having opened the first private childcare centre in the state in the 1960s. She was involved in the very early foundation of childcare centre regulations in the early 1970s with successive governments. So, my contribution comes from a background of having grown up in a childcare centre to a certain point and also having been—through family and directly—involved in its day-to-day operations.

I have also been the state president of a childcare industry association, the national secretary of a childcare industry and the editor of a national childcare industry magazine, the Australian Confederation of Child Care. I have been involved in lobbying federal and state politicians of both parties on many of the issues addressed in this bill prior to coming in here. So I speak with some knowledge of the matters in this bill; therefore, I hope the minister will note the concerns I raise.

I am surprised and in some ways a little disappointed that there has not been more strident opposition to this measure from the industry itself. It is a divided industry in the sense that early childhood services are provided in some cases by state government-owned operations and even state government kindergartens that are funded wholly from within the education department budget. They are in some cases run by councils, by not-for-profit organisations, by church groups and by the private school sector. In some cases—in fact, in many cases—they are run by the private sector, largely by mum and dad type operators who, as part of a family business, offer private childcare and early childhood services to customers.

I am not sure what the current ratio is in South Australia but, some years ago, the private sector had over 50 per cent of the business. Nationally, it was a far higher percentage. So, I am particularly focused on how this measure is going to affect the private small business sector of early childhood education and private childcare centres. On reading the bill, I note that the terms 'long day care' and 'private childcare centres' do not seem to be there, particularly in the definitions stage. Maybe the minister can correct me on that if I have missed something, but I am assuming that the bill picks up the long day care centre and the private childcare centre sector in its entirety, and I am addressing it on that basis.

I think some clarity on that in the bill would be helpful because, as I mentioned, when you look to the definitions, for example, they are not completely clear. A 'school' means 'a provider of education services' and, when you turn to that sector, 'early childhood services' (and it is in clause 4) talks about in-home care, occasional care, rural and mobile care, family day care and any other service declared by the regulations. So, I am presuming that it is the regulations that are going to prescribe long day care and private child care as falling under the ambit of the act.

I want to start from basic principles. The childcare industry emerged in this state because there was a need for working mothers to access child care. There were a whole lot of reasons for that. They were in the workforce. In some cases, they did not have access to grandparents or to extended family assistance in child rearing and they needed professional help. In other cases, they were single mums and they were on their own. There were a whole host of reasons why families, women in particular, needed child care.

It was often to help them enter the workforce and remain in it, either on a part-time or a full-time basis. On other occasions, it might have been respite. On other occasions, it might have been because they were involved in voluntary work or it assisted them to simply cope with whatever difficulties they were facing, but the aim was to provide child care. Over time, things have changed. The focus of government and the focus of this bill seems to have shifted now to the main focus being early learning, teaching and educational outcomes for the children.

Now all that is fine—that is important—but let's not lose sight of the fact that there are tens of thousands of working mothers out there who need access to cheap, affordable, high quality child care as well. Let's just be realistic about what you can teach a baby aged three months and six months old (0 to 2). Let's just be realistic about the extent to which you can even educate a toddler. We have a kindergarten system for children aged four to five (pre-entry to school) but we need to be realistic about the prime object the family is seeking when they access child care.

I put to the house that it is cheap, high quality child care that they seek, not necessarily expensive unaffordable early learning outcomes, and there needs to be a balance. If there is a concern I have with this bill, it is that it may not reflect that balance. Why would I say that? Let me remind the house that it is not uncommon now for a young mother to be paying $80 a day for child care.

When I left the industry as a proprietor shortly after coming into this place, it was something like $30 a day. In that time it has risen to $80 a day. There are varying prices but, if you multiply that by five, we are talking about an awful lot of money—$400 a week. My advice is that what this measure and the regulations that come with it will do—and there has been some media coverage of this—is put that up by anything up to 20 per cent. It is $480, heading towards $500 a week, to access child care for a mother. If you have two children, that is $1,000 a week before tax. You have to pay for that after tax. How much do you need to be earning to make that exercise worthwhile?

It is true that through the childcare assistance system—an invention of federal Labor, by the way, when it sought to involve the private sector more fully in this industry in the early 1990s—many low income earning families and mothers will have that fee ameliorated to some extent by childcare assistance payments. But the people who will be hurt here are the couples who on both their incomes are means tested out of childcare assistance support.

If you have a mum and dad both earning $50,000, which is not a lot of money, their joint income is $100,000; they are not rich. They are not rich, but they will be means-tested out of this. If they do not have access to grandparents (because, for example, they are from New South Wales or Victoria and they have moved to South Australia for employment) and they do not have immediate family support and they need affordable high-quality child care, where do they go?

These sorts of measures push up the cost of child care. What is the result? I will tell the house what the result is. Many of those families just cannot afford it, so they go to backyard care. They go to a neighbour or a friend or someone they know who, over the back fence, can look after the kids for $100 a week or $40 a day instead of $80.

The kids go into backyard care where there is no child to staff ratio, where there are no safety fences, where there are no regulations that govern things ranging from food to clothing to air conditioning to safety arrangements, where no one knows who drops in during the day—the carer's boyfriend, the carer's adult children, the neighbours for a cup of tea—where there are no safety constraints or protections for the kids.

That is where the kids finish up when costs of child care become prohibitive. They are already prohibitive at $80 a day. I have read the bill and I note that it does not talk about ratios of staff to children. It used to be (and I understand it still is) for babies nought to two, one staff for five, and for children two to five, one staff for 10. I understand—and the minister might be able to clarify this—that we will now be going to a national standard which will see the ratio of staff for babies reduced either to three or four.

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill: Four.

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: Four, and there will be a new ratio for toddlers and then a new ratio for kindergarten-aged children. I believe it is going up from 10 to 11, but the overall effect will be that childcare centres have to hire more staff. They cannot get them at the moment because there is a lack of qualified staff. They will now have to hire teachers on teachers' award rates. All of this is pushing up the cost of child care and it is the regulations that will come out under this bill that we have not been given during this debate that will be the poison, as they were under the 1972 act. Those regulations, I can assure the house, will be scrutinised tightly by me and by the opposition because they will be the poison.

It is easy to get up and talk about the need to lift the quality of child care. I would argue, and many in the industry would argue, that under the national accreditation scheme and the state regulations, we already have one of the best standards of childcare centres in the world. It has been world-class for decades. It is fantastic but, in the pursuit of perfection, we risk pushing up the cost of child care for city families and for country families—because this is as much a problem in remote and regional country towns as it is here—to unaffordable and unsustainable levels, and that is the poison in this bill.

I am startled that there has not been more opposition to it, but I can understand why. The government-funded sector is not going to complain about this regulation because it is paid for by the taxpayer. In fact, we are diverting tens of millions of dollars out of high school and primary school education into early childhood services. In some other states like Queensland they rely on the federal government through child care assistance to pick up much of that expense and pay far less out of their education budgets.

We are denying high school and primary school education because of the need to fund from the education budget early childhood services, because we have taken on more of that burden from the commonwealth. I think the commonwealth is laughing all the way to the bank because we are using state government revenues to subsidise in many cases early childhood services that it would otherwise, by COAG agreement, have to more fully fund. That is a structural problem that I think we need to address.

I know the minister will argue that this is so important; all the research shows that education of children nought to eight is so important. I agree with that. I know the minister will say, 'You can never do enough to lift the standard of child care and early childhood services, and it is all crushingly important,' and I agree with that. I know the minister will also say, 'The greater the ratio, the fewer children to staff, the better things are.' Well of course that is true.

It is like the speed limit argument: you could drop the speed limit to 10 km/h and you will have far fewer crashes, but no-one would be able to get to work in the morning. You could lower the staff ratio so that there was one staff to one child; childcare could cost $2,000 a week, and no-one would use it. It is a balancing act, and I am not confident that this bill has the balance right, and that is without having seen the regulations which, as I said, are the real meat in the sandwich.

So Madam Speaker, I ask the house: do we need this? Do we need this? It is up to the proponents of change to argue their case. Unless there is a tangible benefit—before we push up the cost of child care and early childhood services to unsustainable levels, the minister must make a case and convince the house that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

The disadvantages are clear: $480 or $500 a week after tax for a single mother, or a working mum, or a young family just to access high-quality child care. If you have two kids, it is just impossible. That is what we are doing here, in the pursuit of excellence. It is already excellent. We are in the pursuit of perfection here, and all in the name, again, of harmonisation and national standards. Earlier we were debating the occupational health and safety rules all in this pursuit of some magic harmonisation, and I just wonder whether it is worth it.

Perhaps we should stick with our own regulations, and if it means accessing high-quality, affordable child care is a little cheaper for South Australian families, well wouldn't that be good? Let the other states run off and pursue some dream, and force kids into backyard care because their parents cannot afford to take them to a childcare centre. There is no point in having the childcare centres foreseen in this bill if no-one can afford to use them; it is as plain and simple as that.

The publicly funded sector of childcare is not complaining about the act. The community-based sector frequently receives government funding either from local government, from the federal government through the child care assistance scheme, or through other means. Often, their sites are partly subsidised—they might be on council land. Often, they are exempt from certain tax burdens that the private sector have to pay. They are not complaining that stridently.

Even the private school system will not complain that stridently about this, as they already have the land. They are able to transfer costs from their primary and high school operations into their child care system to subsidise the childcare centre operation. They are also cherry-picking those parents who can afford to pay these sorts of fees, because they already know that they are going to send the kids, once they have finished child care or early learning, into that private primary school, and they are geared to pay.

The people who are going to hurt are those who cannot afford private school education for their kids, but they are not eligible for the full amount of child care assistance, and that is the vast majority of families that we represent. They are the vast majority of families in marginal seats in Labor-held areas, I hasten to add. I just bring this to the attention of the government, because I can tell you that, when those fees go up as a result of these measures, those parents are going to be writing to us, and they are going to be writing to marginal seat members.

This is a very dangerous bill from the point of view of the impact it will have on working families and their ability to access affordable, high-quality care. Even worse than that, it is actually a risk to the health and safety of children. Why is that? Because, as I have explained, as parents find that they are unable to afford this perfection we are pursuing, the kids will go into backyard care; I have seen it myself.

Can I emphasise to members how important it is to have children at risk within the childcare system. I had one family where the mother was working as a prostitute, and the four children were the most beautiful little kids you have ever seen. They would come in with soiled nappies, they had not eaten, they were in a distressed condition, they had been home with mum all night and men had been coming and going from the home. My staff were in tears, they would grab these little kids, they would whisk them away and change their nappies, fix them up, feed them, and their mother would come and get them again at 5 o'clock.

The mother was in a distressed state. She did not know what to do. Those childcare workers are part of the safety network, and by pushing up these costs in the pursuit of a dream you are going to push those kids into backyard care where they will suffer. This bill is not the icing-coated cake it purports to be, and I urge members on all sides to scrutinise it most closely.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (17:56): I am pleased to follow the contribution from the member for Waite on the Education and Early Childhood Services (Registration and Standards) Bill 2011. The member has quite rightly pointed out the casualty of proceeding with legislation which may have an unintended but ultimately adverse effect if not properly scrutinised.

I speak on this bill as a consumer, having had no experience in operating childcare centres. Just as the member for Waite explained the decades of contribution that he and his mother over a period of time have made to child care, I am pleased to say that in the late 1970s I sat on an advisory board, as then a young mother, with the member for Waite's mother, Barbara, who had already pioneered childcare centres as a form of provision of service, usually for mothers entering the workforce but sometimes for respite. I was very proud to do so.

Our board was to advise the newly appointed minister for community welfare (as he was then known), the Hon. Mr Burdett, who was then of another place. As minister, he had responsibility for the licensing of childcare centres and the development and, ultimately, introduction of family day care services in South Australia. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted: debate adjourned.


At 17:58 the house adjourned until Thursday 29 September 2011 at 10:30.


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