Women's budget statement

The deregulatory journey

Inflation must be beaten

More super-centenarians

Action on housing

Snapshot of citizenship

Lest We Forget

Shared priorities at 2020

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School teachers have done a particularly first rate job in getting their students to think about how we make Australia an even better place. After the completion of these School Summits, last weekend Parliament House hosted a national Youth 2020 Summit.

One hundred young Australian leaders came together to put forward thoughtful and substantive proposals on matters including education, preventative health, mental health, climate change and Australia’s place in the world.

The Youth Summit came up with ten key proposals and 30 additional ideas, and my Department is now reviewing them in more detail. Participants in all these events would confirm that we have no predetermined agenda and no predetermined outcomes.

To help focus the discussions this weekend, I will be asking each of the working group co-chairs to nominate at least one ‘big idea’ in their area for the future. Second, I will also ask them to submit at least three concrete policy ideas, at least one of which must involve no cost or negligible costs. And third, I will be asking them to identify at least three specific goals for which we should aim by 2020.

The Government will sift through the submissions and recommendations from the Summit and provide a response to its outcomes by the end of this year.
I will also be taking a proposal along to the Summit for discussion.

My proposal for Australia in the year 2020 is to create universal, high quality, affordable Parent and Child Centres for all 0-5 year old Australian children. I believe such centres could offer real, practical assistance to working families under financial pressures struggling with the practical challenges of raising very young children.

These Parent and Child Centres will bring together maternal and child health, long day care and preschool into one stop shops for parents with young kids. The goal of this ambitious proposal would be to offer all parents with 0-5 year olds access to a one stop early childhood centre that provides:

• maternal and child health services such as baby health checks, baby weighing, feeding advice and vaccinations;
• long day care including play-based activities for children whose parents are at work or studying;
• preschool and early learning including age-appropriate play-based learning provided by a four year qualified teacher; and
• playgroups and parental support and advice to ensure parents have a place to meet their peers and get access to advice while their children play.

This model would require partnerships between Federal State and local governments as well as existing private and community service providers. The aim would be to provide most of these services at low cost to parents - however some services on offer (such as long day care services) would continue to be fee-based but with the cost still subsidised by the Government.

Access to these Parent and Child Centres would be universal, but not compulsory, and the quality of service provided would be underpinned by strengthened national quality standards. Some or all of the services offered in these centres could be supplied by the private sector and would be subject to competition between providers, helping to drive quality up and prices down.

A single service centre model for all 0-5 year olds would offer great benefits to kids, great benefits to parents, and great benefits to the whole community. It would improve the quality of health and education and care services for 0-5s, with:

• Better quality care that is underpinned by strengthened national quality standards;
• The introduction of more four year trained early childhood education professionals for all young children regardless of age; and
• Provision of education, health and other supports for children to make sure they are developing both physically and intellectually.

These Centres could improve the level of support for parents:

• Providing convenient health, education and care services for working parents;
• Providing age-appropriate services for parents with several kids under 5; and
• Providing opportunities for non-working parents to meet, to develop peer supports and to access advice while their children play.

These Centres could also improve outcomes for the whole community:

• Making better use of early childhood resources, reducing duplication, which means more money for frontline services;
• Freeing up capacity to strengthen national quality standards; and
• Providing additional support to disadvantaged families to improve the life chances of their children.

A little over a century ago, few would have dreamt that today we would have universal and affordable schooling for our children.

We have already set ourselves the goal of introducing universal preschool services for all four year olds by 2013. We should aim to take the next step and create universal Parent and Child Centres for all children aged 0-5 by 2020. Early childhood reform lies at the intersection of our aspirations for this nation:

• lifting long term productivity and participation through greater investment in education, particularly the early years;
• a commitment to reducing the cost of living pressures on working families; and
• a serious effort to reducing the opportunity gap that holds back children from disadvantaged families and communities across the nation.

This proposal builds on the extensive research which has already been done on the critical impact of a child’s early nurturing, care and engagement with learning, on every aspect of their later life.

The proposal has been put forward to be debated on its merits. And I look forward to the inputs of my fellow Summit participants on this and other proposals this coming weekend.

NOTE: This is an edited excerpt of a speech to the Sydney Institute. For the full speech, visit: http://www.alp.org.au/media/0408/mspm170.php