Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have heard a lot lately about child care. People’s concerns are understandable if they cannot find adequate child-care places for their children, but it is very easy to focus on the negative. That is certainly standard fare for the opposition—to focus on the negative and to ignore any good news stories.

And there are good news stories. At the start of this school year, a new out-of-school-hours centre opened at Lawson in the Blue Mountains in my electorate—a child-care centre called Mountains Kidz, with 20 after-school places and 15 before-school places, all attracting the Commonwealth government’s child-care benefit. Congratulations to Lucy Hughes, the energetic and committed coordinator, for the great work that she is doing there.

As well, the national figures are worth bearing in mind. Since 1996, places in child care have almost doubled from 306,000 in 1996 to 600,000 in July last year. Specifically, for out-of-school-hours care places the figures are even more impressive, almost quadrupling from 71,846 in 1996 to 269,934 by the middle of last year. Over the next four years, this government will spend $9.5 billion on child care, pretty much double what Labor spent in its last four years. Yes, there is growing demand, but let us keep it in perspective. The numbers of places are growing, and this is benefiting not only the country as a whole but people in my electorate.