Ms ROXON (9:45 PM) —I would also like to speak on the appropriation bills tonight, particularly in my area of shadow ministerial responsibility, the area of children and youth. I would particularly like to spend a little bit of time going through some of the detail in the administration of the child-care programs that are administered by the Commonwealth, because, since I have been in this position, it seems that there has been debacle after debacle—which is the politest way to put it—in the administration of child-care money.

Although these issues are having a very serious impact on the individual child-care services that are being required to repay such large amounts of money, it seems that the minister is refusing to accept that there is an issue in this area. There are actually two different and distinct debt problems in the child-care area. It seems that Minister Anthony thinks that, if he keeps finessing around between the different ones, he can deny on one and fob it off to something else. But the bottom line for child-care services throughout the country is that many of them are being hit with notices that advise of significant overpayments that have been made by the department, which they are required to repay. I am not trying to argue that child-care services, if they have received more money than they were entitled to, should not repay it. What I am concerned about is the overwhelming and excessive delay in the Department of Family and Community Services in the notification of these debts, and the way that it is being handled and the consequences that that has for so many of our child-care services.

I would like to start with the oldest debt and biggest problem that is currently being experienced. This is in the reclaiming of money that was overpaid to child-care services from the old child-care assistance scheme, which expired in June 2000. That was over 18 months ago, and the first services—Victoria being the first place where this process is now being undertaken—only received their notices after the election, for a debt that had been owing since June 2000. We know that there is normally an acquittal process which is done quarterly. Even if that quarterly process had maybe stretched out to six months—we know that a new system was being introduced and there were lots of problems with that, but I will come to those later—this is more than 18 months later and rather conveniently, it seems to me, was left until after the election.

We have had it confirmed by the department, in Senate estimates, that the amount of money across the country is in the order of `tens of millions of dollars'. So this is not chickenfeed. We are talking about a lot of money having to be paid back from a child-care sector which is largely community based or run by small businesses. There are some bigger businesses in child care, but largely it is the community sector and small businesses. Often, the community-sector and council providers are run by volunteer parent committees and, whilst they use their best endeavours to be able to administer complex payment arrangements, being notified of the debt 18 months after the event is really not an acceptable way to deal with this problem.

I think the government has exacerbated the problem by not notifying services earlier and not allowing them sufficient lead time to be able to repay the money. It seems to me that once you have left it 18 months, or nearly two years, the government will get a little bit jumpy if that money is not repaid. What could have happened instead, and would have been a much better process for those child-care services, would have been for them to have been notified early on how much they had been overpaid and to have been given a longer period of time to be able to pay it back.

The minister's response to date on this has been, `Everybody knew that they had money that had been overpaid.' He is not talking to very many child-care services if that is what he still persists in believing. Certainly, child-care services were aware through newsletters that were sent to all services—but not personally addressed or anything like that—that there was an issue for some services in that they had been overpaid. We have copies of plenty of newsletters that say, `Service providers should be reminded that if they have been overpaid they will be required to pay this money back,' but nothing to say, `Dear service provider X, you have been overpaid this amount of money and you will be required to repay it.'

So for month after month, when the child-care services kept putting in their quarterly acquittals, and sometimes monthly acquittals, they were entitled, I think, to assume that their money had been properly accounted for. Then more than 18 months later they get hit with this notice. I think that is really very unfair. In Victoria, more than $1 million has already been repaid by these services—many of them did set aside the money or have been able to juggle quickly, as they were required to, the payment of their current child-care benefits so that they can pay it back. But it is putting them under enormous strain, and I do not think it is a good way to administer what is a very large Commonwealth program.

We have also been told that these debt notices are now about to start hitting in Queensland, so all the child-care services in Queensland are currently waiting to find out whether or not they are going to also be asked to repay large amounts of money. Many of them do not know whether they are going to have to pay the debt, or whether they even have the debt. After that we know that, in the coming weeks, New South Wales and then the other states will also be asked to repay their money. So this is something that is of great concern. We have got a lot of child-care services that are really anxious about what services they can commit to for the future if they do not know whether they have got to repay some money, whether it may lead to fee increases or whether it may even affect the viability of some child-care services.

So this is an issue that the government cannot pretend is not here. The minister does have to deal with it, and child-care services across the country need to be encouraged to speak out about it. I have found a great amount of reticence amongst the individual service providers because they feel worried that it might be a reflection on their own administration—whereas, in fact, they are one of thousands who are in this situation and have been put in this situation by the government's poor management of this program.

On top of that we have the current child-care benefit debt fiasco. Although the scale of the debts in the child-care area are not as large as in the family tax benefit area, there still are significant numbers of families seriously affected by this. We know that there are over 6,000 families who have had debts of over $1,000, so their debts have not been set aside by the government's waiver. The government did not have the decency to tell these families at the time that their debt arose or when they first knew of it but waited until after the election—in most cases, waited until late January or February—to start sending out these notices.

Again, this is not fair—not just because of the obvious political approach that has been taken by the government but also because many of these families are still receiving child-care benefits. If they are not aware that they have accrued a debt from last year, they may not be aware that they are accruing that same debt again this year. This year there will not be any $1,000 waiver. The government have made it clear that that was just a one-off `bribe', if you like—they have done nothing to fix the system since. I am very concerned about the large numbers of families that are going to be affected by that. So that is a very real issue.

The larger issue, though, in relation to the child-care benefit and its administration for individual services is that large debts are accruing because of the advance payment and reconciliation process that the government is going through. We have been advised that, at January 2002, there were over 180 child-care services across Australia that had a child-care benefit debt of more than $40,000—and $40,000 is the smallest of these debts. We do not know how high they go. This is a part of the advance payment and then reconciliation process. We understand that it means that there will be some payments that are larger than services will be entitled to, depending on usage and all those sorts of issues.

However, in a system which allows 180 services across the country to have more than $40,000 of debt, even when this process has been in place for 18 months, that is a lot of money. I can tell you that it is a lot of lamingtons to sell if you have to make up that money at a child-care centre. It is a serious problem which is threatening the viability of some services. Again, the government says, `It's all just normal,' but it is not a normal amount of money for community run child-care services to have to keep accounting for. Centres have to go through an incredibly complicated and difficult process in estimating usage and then accounting for each individual child. We accept that there are no easy answers, but we are concerned that, 18 months on, this large government program is still not running properly and that those debts are still causing problems for families.

Again, the only response that I can get from the government on this issue is: `We're spending more money on child care, we are paying more money through child-care benefit, and that has made child care affordable for families.' They are not answers to such a monumental stuff-up—if you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, can allow that as parliamentary language, but it describes the child-care administration that is currently in place and which is causing so much trouble for so many services.

Ms Julie Bishop —Perhaps that's a legal term.

Ms ROXON —Yes, I think that is right. `Monumental stuff-up' is definitely a legal term—we can describe it as a stuff-up in child care! It also concerns me that the government seems to be very proud of the amount that it puts into the child-care benefit and the way that it runs the system. That seems to be in the face of all evidence to the contrary on the administration side and in terms of other problems with child-care services. We have waiting list crises in so many suburbs and towns across the country at the moment that we do not know where to start. I visited the electorate of the member for Bass several weeks ago and went to a child-care centre in Launceston that had 83 or 84 places and 100 extra children on the waiting list. They could close and reopen tomorrow with all the spots refilled immediately. That was just one service in Launceston. We are told that the story is the same not just across northern Tasmania but in many seats—and probably in your seat as well, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams.

The member for Ballarat spoke today about the issues that she raised even in her first speech. Child-care services in Ballarat are at crisis point. In my own electorate of Gellibrand we have 300 people on waiting lists in one local government area. That is a lot of people who are unable to get into these services. It is not sufficient for the government to say, `We're putting more money into the child-care benefit; therefore everything is okay.' It is not okay. There are still large numbers of families who cannot get care for their children when they need it, and this is something that the government needs to pay attention to.

We on this side of the House are very concerned that there are a lot of rural and urban areas, particularly those that are not the most affluent of metropolitan suburbs, where private child-care providers are not setting up. The government's statement that market forces will take care of these issues is not right. There are still many areas where private providers will not set up because their profit margins will not be sufficient to make it worth while, and there is no assistance for a community or council provider to set up because the government has taken away the incentives and does not believe that it should play a role in dictating where spots are. For a family who lives in one of those areas, that is not very helpful, because there are limited choices.

I met with some parents last week who said that they had been offered several part-time jobs which they had to decline because they could not get child-care services to match the hours that they were offered. Three mothers said, `We eventually were able to accept work when we found out which days we could get child care, and then we went back to the employers and said, “I know you really want us to work Wednesday and Thursday but, as we can only get child care on Monday and Tuesday, can we do that?”' They were lucky enough to have employers who could be so flexible. The system is not working for people. The government needs to start to deal with the matter because it is only going to get worse.

There are many people on our side of the House who have growing concerns that families are not getting the support they need. Opportunities are being lost when people need to return to work for their family income and they cannot do that. The government cannot keep on avoiding these issues. A concerning thing about it also is that the government has mucked up the administration of child-care benefit and has ignored some of the other problems, which means that in holding the government to account, we are not spending as much time on the more positive and creative areas and talking about issues that could really help families in the future. It is an area in which, around the world, some fantastic initiatives are being introduced. Some of our state governments have started to pick up and run with some early parenting and early intervention programs that can make a significant difference to the future of children's lives and of their families' lives.

The government is really not picking up on these initiatives. For example, I was very pleased to read in the paper several weeks ago an apparent announcement by the minister that the government was going to provide some project money for child-care services in high schools in areas where there are a lot of teenage mothers. This would make sure that young mothers were able to complete their education and therefore would not be part of a downward spiral that often meant they never finished their education and found it very difficult to get back into the employment market when they needed to. It was disappointing that, despite the reports that were in the paper, the government is funding one project at one high school in Western Australia. It even had the cheek to use an example of a school in Sydney and a school in Queensland who, through their own good work, have been running peer support group programs and other things, have received no funding from the government and have been told that they cannot receive funding from the government. I think that was really cheeky.

The opposition have been trying to pursue that. I have spoken directly to the minister today about Mabel Park High School, in the member for Rankin's seat in Brisbane, which runs a program for young parents and is very anxious to be a part of this pilot. It seems to me that the government should not able to announce with great fanfare an initiative which might be a good one and then provide funding in only one spot. The government cannot even tell us when this pilot project will be reviewed and, therefore, when people might be able to apply in the future. If the government were serious, it would run this pilot in a few more areas. There are already some schools that have identified themselves as having a demand, and they have put their heads together to come up with some creative solutions to assist these young parents. They deserve support from the government for what they are trying to do for these young people.

Having the responsibility for children and youth provides a great opportunity because we need to talk more about transitions through different phases of people's lives. We need to start talking more about the impact of the experiences that children have when they are young and when they move on to school, as well as later in life—even in high school—when seeking future employment and educational opportunities. There is a great amount of work to be done in that area.

Given the time, I will not speak any further on these issues. The important point I want to make, in speaking on the appropriations, is that the federal government cannot afford to have a hands-off view about child care. It cannot say that all of these administration problems are not of its own making. It cannot say that these problems do not have a massive impact on the child-care services across the different states. The government must deal with the growing problems in many of the sectors, which include debts; growing waiting lists; concerns about family day care, and in particular the way accreditation systems will work; and the way spots are allocated for family day care. They include different issues for outside-school-hours care, which often gets left behind. Older children who are also in need of support and assistance and who do receive child-care benefit are always grouped in with the child care for the nought to fives, when a number of the issues are quite different. Availability is a growing problem in many states, in particular New South Wales.

Those are the things that we will be looking out for when the government announces its budget initiatives in this area. It is not just a case of looking for more money where it is needed, but of looking for the government to play an active role in resolving some of these problems in the sector.