House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-14 Daily Xml

Contents

Naracoorte Out-of-School-Hours Care

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (15:14): My question is to the education minister. When will Naracoorte get a new provider for out-of-school-hours care? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Happy Haven, which has been providing an OSHC service in Naracoorte, closed its operations in the last week of term 3. This left many families with no vacation care, and now with a new term starting there is no after-school care available, leaving working families in limbo.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills, Minister for Police) (15:14): I thank the member for MacKillop for this very important question. I am aware of the issue, as you would expect me to be as the Minister for Education. Could I just say from the outset that I understand how difficult this is for parents. I say that not just as the Minister for Education but as someone who relies very heavily on out-of-school-hours care myself. My wife and I use it for our daughters about three times a week. I am sure it is the case for a lot of people in this chamber as well.

We are aware, as I said, what has happened there. Happy Haven have made a decision, due to workplace shortages, to pull out of offering the OSHC service in Naracoorte. We approached the school there to see if they might be interested in stepping in, which would have been the perfect result. Unfortunately, because of the same reasons that Happy Haven pulled out, which was just not being able to find staff, the school declined on that invitation as well.

But we haven't stopped there, and we are looking at all opportunities. I can tell the chamber and the member that we have a promising lead now. It is by no means a sure thing, but we have a provider that we think is interested in doing it. I am very happy to provide ongoing updates to the member for MacKillop about how that goes, because I know that he would like to provide updates to his community and those families who were using the Happy Haven service at Naracoorte that we are working on trying to find an alternative.

Of course I can say as well, as the minister for training and skills, I know there is obviously an impact here on the workforce for the local area as well, because those parents who are using out-of-school-hours care so that they can continue working or increase their hours of work are probably in these cases now having to step back from that in order to pick up the kids and look after them after school, so I fully understand the impact.

I appreciate the advocacy of the member for MacKillop on this important issue. I can safely say that we are throwing everything we've got at trying to find this, because it is a problem that I suspect we will face elsewhere as well. Workforce shortages in regional parts of Australia and particularly South Australia are something that are not going to go away in the short term, but I think we have shown a genuine willingness to be innovative and do some things that we haven't actually done before as a government to try to fix these kinds of problems, including in Kingston in the member's seat. I am confident we can find a solution here, and I am very happy to keep him and this place up to date as we do that.