Tuesday, 2 August 2022

 Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (19:18): (6463) Deputy Speaker, congratulations on today’s appointment.

My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep in the other place, and the action I seek is for her to visit the Ripon electorate, especially those parts of Ripon, such as Central Goldfields and Loddon shires, that have endured and suffered childcare deserts. I seek this action on behalf of Labor’s outstanding candidate for Ripon, Martha Haylett. Martha is a hardworking young woman, raised since her earliest years in central Victoria, who understands firsthand the difficulties experienced by other young men and women who are having their child-bearing, parenting and job participation choices severely curtailed due to a lack of child care. Martha has been out on the hustings non-stop and has spoken to many mums and dads at their doors, on the phones and at street stalls who are excited about Labor’s announcement of free kinder, beginning next year. She has also spoken to many parents who are struggling with the lack of childcare places or indeed no childcare services at all, as is the case in Loddon shire, where my dad grew up. There is not one childcare centre in that whole shire. In Maryborough locals are having to travel to Castlemaine and to other areas out of town to find available places.

State Labor’s policy of building 50 childcare centres in childcare deserts is in response to the utter failure of the now defeated Morrison-Joyce government along with their mute Victorian federal colleagues—federal MPs such as Anne Webster and Dan Tehan, who actually had responsibility for education. He could have made a difference in the central Victorian area and the west, but he chose not to. Some National and Liberal state MPs have been mere commentators and hand-wringers on the lack of child care in central and western Victoria, but at no stage have they criticised their federal colleagues and there has been no demonstrable lobbying of their federal friends. The Andrews Labor government has 18 regional MPs who have lobbied our government hard, which has brought results. The Ripon electorate deserves to hear firsthand from the minister how this great policy will help mums and dads if Martha Haylett is elected on 26 November, and I urge her to visit at the soonest possible time.