Dear Editor - Bendigo Rally for Occasional Childcare

Dear Editor,

Peter Ryan will be the focus of a demonstration tomorrow in Bendigo to call on the Nationals to keep their promise to protect country services.

The call is part of an ongoing campaign seeking the restoration of state and federal funding for Take a Break services and comes as Occasional Childcare Centres begin closing their services.

I am a mother of two young children, living in rural Victoria, without other options for child care. These services are important for country families and the State government needs to put its share of the funding back into the services now, not if the Federal government do.

Centres were jointly funded by the State and Federal governments but when the federal government withdrew its share of the funding, the Baillieu state government cut the program completely in the May budget.

Peter Ryan’s Federal colleagues see the importance of supporting these services, with the Federal Nationals member for Gippsland apparently having written to the State Coalition Minister, Wendy Lovell urging her to reconsider her decision to withdraw funding for the program.

We are asking Peter Ryan to take a leaf out of Mr Chester’s book.  It is time for him to use his position to fix this problem. Even his Federal colleague can see that this is the right thing to do.

With these services playing such an important role for country families and their town’s local economies, it makes no sense to destroy these services.

Many families fought long and hard to get these services years ago and it would be a betrayal of their work and for current and future families to just do nothing.

We can’t understand why the State government are refusing to put in their share of the funding, even just the state’s share of funding would ease the burden on the community and volunteer run centres.

We just want them to do what every government has done for the last 25 years – fund this low cost program that means so much to the families of the 9,000 children who use these services.

DEMONSTRATION DETAILS:

When: Tuesday October 18, 9.15 am

Location: The Capital, Bendigo’s Performing Arts Centre, 50 View Street, Bendigo