Petitions from Traralgon, Victoria, 2 December 2011
(Public) FRIDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2011
KIBBLE, Mr Murray Owen, Manager, Community Centre Swifts Creek, Victoria
Funding for occasional childcare services
CHAIR: I now invite Mr Murray Kibble to the table to speak about the petition on funding for occasional childcare services. Mr Kibble, although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that the hearing today is a formal proceeding of the parliament. I remind you, as I have reminded other witnesses, that the giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. Would you like to begin by making an opening statement and then we will ask you some questions.
Mr Kibble: Our petition was about the withdrawal of the Take a Break childcare funding to our sector. It was something that we had utilised to deliver childcare services in our town and in our region and it had been in place for quite a few years. We were notified that the federal government was withdrawing its section of the funding 18 months ago and very quickly, two days after that, we received a letter saying that the state government would take over what the federal government had previously been funding.
That was just before the last election. I think the ratio was about 60 per cent to 40 per cent at that time. And, in the nature of those things, as long as the funding kept coming, we did not worry about it too much. Although I was concerned at the time I received the letter, I did not take it too much further at that stage.
Then about a year later we received notification that despite having contracts up until June 2012, and agreements, the state government would also now be pulling out of that funding. At that point in time we decided to try to get active and see if we could convince them to change their mind on this.
It is a very vital service to our community. We are a very small community and it is the only childcare operation in our township. There is no childcare operation in the next township, Ensay, about 20 minutes down the road. There is one in Omeo, which is about 25 minutes in the other direction. So, yes, we are looking at losing child care and, even though it is only a part-time service, it was the only service the area had.
CHAIR: Thank you for that opening statement. You have partially answered some of my questions. Would you like to outline for us the particular childcare issues facing families in regional and remote areas in Victoria at present? Specifically, you might like to tell us what occasional childcare services are available currently, how many children are using them and whether demand exceeds the places available.
Mr Kibble: I cannot speak for the whole of country Victoria. I can speak only for my area and what I have learnt in the process from other neighbourhood houses. To my knowledge, there are 20 similar neighbourhood houses or services in Victoria that are facing the same circumstances as we are. Indeed some have already shut down their services. They have given up any hope of a change of decision and could no longer afford it. We are community based organisations, so we always run them at a loss. They have never been profit-making organisations. We all do fundraising and cut costs immensely elsewhere just to make sure they happen, depending on the needs of our communities.
Communities like ours do not have a huge amount of full-time employment. Most of the jobs in our area are part time. If you go on the 2006 data, I think about 60 per cent of the jobs were full time and, in current conditions, it is even less than that now. Most of the people are working one part-time job or two part-time jobs. For a lot of the people in outlying areas, who are living out on farms and isolated, child care is the only chance they get to socialise their children. It is the only chance the parents, the mothers, get to give themselves a break from their child. They do not necessarily have the family unit that might have existed a generation ago where grandparents and cousins and so forth were around to pick up the slack.
It came to me in the process, once I myself had sat down and talked to the mothers and had a good look around, that I thought: this is probably the most important thing we do in our township. We do other things but, when you get right down to it, this is probably of general benefit because it enables people to work and it enables other employers to have qualified staff. In fact the lack of a full-time childcare service has been a hindrance for our employers in other industries in the past because they lose staff because people cannot commit to doing a full-time job when they do not have a full-time childcare service anywhere.
In the time I was there, when I first started the job we ran two days a week and had about eight children. By the time this decision was made we were running full days a week, we were at the capacity of our limited licence and we had a waiting list. As I said, I can only speak for our area in terms of definitive numbers and, yes, there are a lot of upset people.
CHAIR: Following the tabling of your petition, as chair I forwarded a letter in relation to your petition on 12 October to the Hon. Kate Ellis MP, who is the Minister for Employment Participation and Childcare and the Minister for the Status of Women. On Wednesday we received a reply dated 29 November from the minister. We
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are not at liberty to give you a copy of that letter until this is tabled in parliament, so you will not get that until next year. But contained within that letter is the reference to an announcement that was made on 25 October 2011 about additional occasional and in-home care places for Australian families. I am not sure whether you are aware of that.
Mr Kibble: Yes, I am.
CHAIR: According to the minister, that represents a rise in support for the Australian government funded occasional care places in Victoria of 44 per cent, and it is expected that around 250 occasional childcare places will be allocated within Victoria and all existing and prospective occasional care providers can apply for the places, including Take-a-Break services. What is your response to that?
Mr Kibble: I would say there are a lot more people going to all these places than 250 across Victoria. I have already spoken to the department concerned and they themselves do not have any details on the actual process and how they are going about it. The only information I have been given so far is that applications will be open in January and final decisions will not be made regarding funding until July next year. Without any real information on the application process—regarding what is involved—coming from the department, there is not much of an opinion I can have, apart from: it is something, but it is not going to replace what is being lost.
Mr CHESTER: Thank you, Murray, for your work on the petition and also the letters you have written to me on this particular issue. I will make a brief statement, if you do not mind, Chair. This would have to be the most frustrating issue that I have dealt with in the last three years, primarily because we are talking about such a small amount of money. The people who are caught in the middle are the mums and dads and their children, and they are being subjected to a state versus federal government blame game over a trifling amount of money, being $1.1 million for Victoria in the next financial year. It has been very frustrating that we have not been able to get a deal with either the state minister or the federal minister, as a local member. I think that over a thousand people signed the petition that you were involved with. From a Swifts Creek perspective, what impact will the removal of your service have on the community, not only in terms of keeping residents in the town but also in attracting other professionals to come and work in the health service there, the Bush Nursing Centre or at the school. What is the impact going to be if you do not have funding secured by the end of this calendar year?
Mr Kibble: I have had to go to my patrons or users and say, 'Look, with the best will in the world, I can only manage this one day a week without any assistance.' Two of them have already resigned from their jobs—they were qualified workers at the local DSE—so it is already happening. When you are dealing with people's work, their plans for the next year, their employment and when they will be available, I cannot make them promises I cannot keep, especially at this time of year.
Mr CHESTER: Just to clarify that: you have already lost staff because of your concern—
Mr Kibble: No. I lost both of my qualified childcare workers because I had to be honest with them. I could not say, 'Look, these are the decisions we've made. We're fighting them. We hope to still be able to offer you your jobs, but I can't guarantee it.' They both said, 'I'm going to go for a safer industry.' They walked away from the industry altogether and they have now left the town. As I said, a couple of the parents have walked away from their jobs and said, 'We've had to make a choice. There's nobody else to look after the children.' So, they have resigned. As I said, the knowledge that there is not even a full-time service has hindered employment opportunities, and the ability to attract young people to the area has been an ongoing issue and this just worsens it. We now live in a society where both parents expect to work. If you have a young family and only one of you can work, that one has to earn enough to sustain the whole family, and that becomes a very different equation to living in or moving into the area. If you want to extrapolate, you can to a certain extent turn it into a retirement community. If anyone came to the area and asked me—and they do come to the community centre—what properties are available and what is it like to live here, I would say, 'Make sure your kids are older than five essentially.'
Mr CHESTER: In terms of the Swifts Creek example, how much money are we talking about per year?
Mr Kibble: Did we receive in funding—$30,000. No, $12,000; $30,000 was how much it cost. We received $12,000 per year under the program. Out of that $30,000 that it cost us to run—and that was primarily wages for the staff, and equipment, and administration—it was all taken up through other areas. I am talking just the wages for qualified staff because you might be aware that with child care that has increased also in the last four years. They have brought in new regulations regarding fully qualified staff for all the children. They are also now or even next year tightening it up again, so you now have to have one fully qualified person for every four children, which means you have to pay them that amount. There are no volunteers. There is no help out here or anything like that. You have got to have one fully qualified person for every four children, so you have got to pay them.
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Mr CHESTER: Just in terms of the petition process, did you have much trouble collecting signatures?
Mr Kibble: No. I did not have to do anything. I just put it in the local businesses, and everyone just signed it straightaway. I collected them when the pages were full. It was no trouble whatsoever.
CHAIR: Mr Kibble, thanks for your time today and for the petition. Fortunately, this is not an issue we really have in Queensland. An issue that we have in common is more about regulation and requirements for childcare workers. Given the comments you have just made, how much of an issue is that in terms of running the service and to parents with regard to the regulatory requirements; and what could be done to make the regulations less onerous and reduce the costs both for families and government?
Mr Kibble: It is an interesting point. The costs are greater. As soon as you pay qualified staff, you have to pay them their correct regulated wage, so your wage bill increases. As I said before, the highest component is your wage bill. The more they restrict the amount, the more staff you have got to have. If you have got five children in for the day, you have to have two staff. You cannot have any more than four. Once you have got more than four, you have got to have another staff member. It is as simple as that. So even if you are paying at a rate and you do not fit that exactly, you calculate your rate to fit: this is how much percentage per staff member for four children. It does not work like that because, as soon as you have got more than that four number, you have to pay another full wage.
In terms of the benefit of the regulation, when you are dealing with child care, you have to deal with the most nervous first-time mothers you could ever met and extrapolate from that. They are handing over their child to other people to look after. Some of them can be fairly casual about it; for others it is the most precious thing on the planet. You need the regulation. Whether they are prepared to pay for it is another thing altogether.
Ms BURKE: Sometimes I was happy to pay for someone to take my child off me. I will leave it at that for the Hansard, but occasionally I was happy to say, 'You can have him!'
Mr Kibble: If that childcare worker had done something wrong then—
Ms BURKE: Yes, exactly right. The worst day of my life was picking up my child from child care with a bite mark on his cheek. I did not send him back for another month because I was too traumatised. So it works both ways. But I am wondering: have you also petitioned the state government about the issue?
Mr Kibble: Personally, no. I know the Neighbourhood House network has in general.
Ms BURKE: Are you a member of the Neighbourhood House network?
Mr Kibble: Yes.
Ms BURKE: Have you approached your state members about the issue?
Mr Kibble: Yes.
Ms BURKE: What is their take on it?
Mr Kibble: Pretty much the same as the federal government's take.
Ms BURKE: So it is everybody's fault and you are stuck in the middle.
Mr Kibble: Yes, essentially—'It is not our responsibility. They used to fund it. We did not agree to them stepping away from it. We are happy to do our next bit as long as they do what they used to do.' That has been—
Ms BURKE: As opposed to: it was agreed at COAG by the previous state government. We took out $90 million and gave back $210 million, but somehow it is now all our fault and the state government has no responsibility in it. You are the meat in the sandwich. That is the problem.
Mr Kibble: You asked me to compare the reactions of the two. The state government have been more informative to us. They have talked more to us about it. The letters we sent to the minister—
Ms BURKE: You have not had a response to?
Mr Kibble: Nothing. We have had no response. I first sent a letter querying it when it first happened 18 months ago and got nothing then. We got nothing at all for a good two or three months after we had started receiving communication from the state government on it.
Ms BURKE: You had the reprieve for 12 months and that is now up.
Mr Kibble: That is now up, yes.
Ms BURKE: But the state government has not fallen into the breach. So the argument is that occasional care is a state responsibility and the feds should never have been in it but, at the end of the day, who cares so long as somebody pays for the service?
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Mr Kibble: As the coordinators, we say, '18 months ago they both did it and now we are getting nothing.' And we were never told why the federal government pulled out in the first place. We were told the federal government was pulling out of the funding and a week later we got a letter from the state government saying, 'It is okay. We are taking over.'
Ms BURKE: The participants in the program, the parents, would have already been paying a co-payment as well.
Mr Kibble: Yes.
Ms BURKE: How much were they paying?
Mr Kibble: They pay $4 an hour.
Ms BURKE: But if you moved to full cost recovery from them—
Mr Kibble: It would be $12 an hour.
Ms BURKE: Well, $12 an hour is really cheap compared to a full-on childcare centre—
Mr Kibble: Yes. It is a population base of mostly part-time employment or non-employment where they are using it to study or, as you say, get a break or go shopping in Bairnsdale, which is an hour away. I have already said to them, 'We can look at doing it, but that is what it is going to cost.' Everyone said no.
Ms BURKE: Then it becomes nonviable to run because you do not have the numbers without—
Mr Kibble: As I said before, you lose the staff. I lost staff and at the moment to keep it running we actually have two individuals who drive up from Lakes Entrance each day.
Ms BURKE: That is a fair hike!
Mr Kibble: The local shire helps us with the federal costs because both the qualified workers who we trained up in my time there to be fully qualified said, 'No. I am going for a job that is going to last.' Once we tried to advertise to replace them and said, 'It is 16 hours a week and I can only guarantee you six months,' we got nothing.
Ms BURKE: You have got nothing until you know what you are getting ongoing out of this new process and DHS says to you, 'This is what you are funded for.' Do you find that there are so many levels? As you said, you are dealing with the local government in this and you are dealing with the federal government and the state government. You are dealing with everybody.
Mr Kibble: We are dealing with everyone. As Darren said before, everyone is frustrated. People from individual departments are saying, 'I don't know why they did it.' But this is it and we have to carry it out, so everyone across the board is frustrated by it. As I said, there was never actually a reason given in the first place as to why the funding was pulled. They just said, 'We're doing it—the state government is taking over.'
Ms BURKE: So the community was aware of the issue before you started petitioning?
Mr Kibble: Yes.
Ms BURKE: It was already bubbling up.
Mr Kibble: It was bubbling up. When I first saw it 18 months ago—
Ms BURKE: You knew what was coming.
Mr Kibble: I said, 'Hang on—I have a contract here until 2012. How can they do this?'
Mr CHESTER: I think the state governments, both coalition and Labor, realised they had trouble. The previous Labor government, just before the election, cobbled together a program to keep it going until the next budget. Then the current coalition government recognised they had a problem and cobbled together another six months of funding to last until the end of December this year. But the question I have—and you cannot answer it, I am sure—is: what happens on 1 January?
Mr Kibble: What happens on 1 January is we say, 'Bad luck. We've got to do what we've got to do.' I suppose if you are living in a small area you have that mentality anyway. In Queensland rural areas there is a great deal you do without all this. That is the price you pay for living in the areas. The services are taken for granted by people in more populous areas and it just becomes another one along those lines. As I say, there are a few around that have already shut down.
Ms BURKE: The ones that have shut down are metro.
Mr Kibble: Yes, they are metro.
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Ms BURKE: They are the ones that have shut down, I would say. So in this instance it is one of those things that impacts on people because it is such a niche market. It is servicing a group of individuals who, even if there is a big centre next door, cannot afford it, or there are no occasional places. You have to have a week's worth et cetera. I used to pay for a full day's child care when my child used half an hour at the beginning of the day and half an hour at the end. In between he went to the kindergarten program that I also paid for. I could do that, and I was happy to do that for the flexibility, but there are a lot of working parents even in metro Melbourne who cannot. They might be part time or studying, as you say. Even bigger communities are facing significant issues with this.
Mr Kibble: We will probably go back to people making arrangements amongst themselves—no regulation, no security—to look after their children. They will just go with the best bet—the local teenager finishing school and so forth—and take their chances that the kids will be all right.
Mr CHESTER: That is a point that has not been made very strongly in the whole debate. If it falls over on 31 December, people will resort to more occasional occasional care. That is a good point you have raised.
Mr Kibble: They will have no other choice, especially in areas like ours. There is nothing else there. We can get a better job and get more money, and there are the ones who still have to work or have to go back to study, the single mums and so forth. They will just have to take a far lower standard.
CHAIR: Have you had any contact with other regions in Victoria, outside of your community, about occasional childcare services?
Mr Kibble: Anna pointed out before this is not just a neighbourhood house issue. The neighbourhood house community sector was a big user of this funding because quite often they are in situations like this and they are far more concerned about the welfare of their community and their community members than they are about making a profit. I dealt with Angela Savage, who is the head of the ANHLC, which is a representative body for the neighbourhood house network, and a couple of other people and coordinators in my local area of East Gippsland. I also dealt a bit with Jenny Mikakos, who is a state member. She has taken up the issue at the state level.
CHAIR: What is Angela Savage's organisation, again?
Mr Kibble: The ANHLC: Australian Neighbour—
Ms BURKE: It is a network for all the neighbourhood houses.
Mr Kibble: I forget exactly what is the rest of it.
CHAIR: Mr Kibble, on behalf of the committee would like to thank you very much for your appearance today and for the evidence that you have provided to the committee. Hansard has faithfully recorded the evidence you have given. You will be given a copy of the transcript of the evidence to ensure that it confirms the evidence you have given to us. I thank you again for your advocacy on this very important issue.
Mr Kibble: I would like to thank the committee. For a long time we have been banging our heads against a wall, but the petition process has given us, if nothing else, the feeling that we were being heard. I would like to thank Darren for his assistance in presenting it.
CHAIR: I do appreciate that feedback.
