Haines announces policies to increase childcare places in Indi

INDEPENDENT federal MP for Indi Helen Haines is proposing a plan to create hundreds of new childcare places and increase capacity in Indi by up to 10 per cent. Dr Haines last week launched two early childhood education and care policies aimed at increasing childcare availability in regional areas and ensuring the long-term sustainability of before and after school care services. “In Indi, there are three children for every childcare place,” she said. “When there aren’t enough childcare places, children miss out on all the benefits of childcare, and parents are unable to work to their full capacity. “Families in regional areas face childcare shortages at more than twice the rate of families in major cities. “I’ve been speaking with parents, carers, childcare operators and industry representatives about the changes they want to improve supply of childcare.” Dr Haines said her plan could increase the number of childcare places in Indi by up to 10 per cent – potentially creating hundreds of new childcare places. The government’s $1 billion Building Early Education Fund includes a $500 million capital grants stream for early childhood education and care providers to build new services and increase capacity of existing services. The fund will target priority and under-served markets including regional locations and the outer suburbs. Dr Haines’ Early Education Plan proposes the capital grants stream be increased from $500 million to $1 billion, bringing the total value of the Building Early Education Fund to $1.5 billion. The second policy of Dr Haines' early childhood platform follows her work last year to save five outside school hours care services from potential closure after their funding was unexpectedly cut. While she worked with the Minister for Early Childhood Education to secure lifeline funding for the services as an interim solution, Dr Haines said the threat of losing funding showed changes are needed for the Community Childcare Fund to allocate funding based on need instead of a competitive grant process. “Right now, funding isn’t based on demand – but it should be," she said. "If a childcare provider is the only one in a town or region and needs extra support, they should get it.” Dr Haines’ plan would change the Community Child Care Fund from a competitive grant footing to one based on need. Libs wants more flexibility, choice LIBERAL candidate for Indi, James Trenery, said the Coalition is committed to providing parents with more flexibility and choice in childcare. "We are focused on working with regional, rural, and remote communities to find solutions for early childhood education that work for them, rather than Labor’s current one size fits all approach, which is clearly not working," Mr Trenery said. "When previously in government, the Liberals almost doubled childcare investment to $11 billion in 2022-23 and locked in ongoing funding for preschools and kindergartens. "We made the biggest reforms to the early childhood education system in over 40 years. "More than 1.3 million children have access to the childcare subsidy from around one million families. "Under the Coalition, 280,000 more children are in early childhood education. "Our targeted extra support introduced in March 2022 made a real difference, childcare costs came down 4.6 per cent in the year to June 2022. "We saw women’s workforce participation reach record highs at 62.3 per cent (May 2022) compared to 58.7% when Labor left office." A response from Labor candidate Mitch Bridges was not received at the time of going to press.