Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I was at Elwood neighbourhood house to hear from local mothers that in both Port Melbourne and Elwood the Victorian government had cut the part-time childcare program Take a Break, which was helping women get back into the workforce. Some 50 families in Port Melbourne are affected by this sudden cut to the program—40 are on the waiting list—and in Elwood some 10 to 15 families are similarly affected. I asked the Victorian Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, Ms Lovell, to immediately reinstate the $1.7 million funding cut in the Victorian budget. She should sit down with community and other levels of government to reinstate the critical Take a Break childcare program, which so many women and families rely on to serve their childcare needs, to engage with the community and for education and jobs. The Baillieu government has shown itself again to be heartless, cruel and unthinking in slashing community programs such as this vitally needed service for mothers and families in Port Melbourne and Elwood.