Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this discussion today. The responsibilities of the Department of Education and Training are very important to me and also to members of my electorate. I welcome to the chamber today Claire, Loretta, Mim and Anika; it is lovely to have you here. I want to raise the matter of transition arrangements for Budget Based Funded services, including mobile services, under the Jobs for Families Child Care Package, which is a responsibility of the minister for education. Providing secure access to child care is one of the single most powerful things the government can do for regional productivity.

The assistant minister for education is aware of the concerns raised in my electorate and throughout regional Australia around the sustainability of mobile childcare services as a result of the transition to funding under the Community Child Care Fund, CCCF. While the government says it wants to transition these 42 services across Australia, sadly, for many services, there is nowhere to transition. Often these services are the only child care available, particularly in remote Aboriginal communities. Some services have already indicated that without certainty of funding they will not be able to continue. Some have already closed, and their loss is significant. The education department has released its draft Community Child Care Fund program guidelines, and it has undertaken briefings with childcare providers via information sessions around Australia, including one last week in my community of Wodonga.

Assistant Minister, I have some questions in relation to the guidelines for the restricted non-competitive part of the CCCF program that will apply to Budget Based Funded services—it is a specific part of this service. It is not stated in the guidelines how much notice services will receive on whether or not they have been successful. How many months in advance of the transition date in July 2018 will services be advised? There is concern that the assessment criteria asks applicants to describe how their proposal will support the service over time to 'achieve greater viability and/or sustainability under the new child care system'. Providers of mobile services in rural and remote areas argue that these services are never going to be able to grow their businesses in the long term, simply because the number of children requiring care will fluctuate. They are not designed to grow. Service providers are concerned that they cannot guarantee that they will meet this criteria. Of course they cannot. Can the department assure providers that the assessment criteria to improve over time to achieve greater viability and/or sustainability will not be restricted to how the proposal represents value for money and whether, alternatively, it will result in achieving greater sustainability or viability over estimated time frames? Clearly, if you are not designing a service to grow but you are designing a service to meet a need, you want it to do that and you want to measure that.

Given many BBFs operate from buildings owned by councils or other third parties, will the department be taking a flexible approach to the requirement within the draft guidelines that indicate, where grants are to be used for capital improvements or a capital contribution, that in-kind contribution and designated-use periods may apply? The guidelines state that there will be no appeal mechanism for decisions to approve or not to approve a grant under the CCCF—is this correct? We hope it is not. Appealing decisions is a really important part of provision of service. Will oversight by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal or some such other body apply to these decisions by the minister or his or her delegate?

The guidelines say:

The Assessment Team may apply an equitable funding formula to determine the amount services may require during their transition to the new child care scheme.

Could this funding formula be applied to assist providers with applications to the CCCF and planning? In leaving these questions with the minister and also department staff, I want to stress how important mobile child care is to my community and to those in rural and regional Australia. Sadly, we find we are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, and we need all the assistance we can possibly get from the department and from these guidelines to help us provide an essential service to all the industries in regional Australia. We want this program to work, but at the moment there are so many problems with the system that we are very worried about its ability to continue to deliver child care.

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