Early childhood education services in NT

SHADOW MINITSER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT, AMANDA RISHWORTH MP: Yesterday I went with Luke Gosling to visit the Nightcliff Early Learning Centre to talk with educators and parents about the new changes that are coming in with early education. Unfortunately under this Liberal Government we have seen families on average paying $2,000 a year more for child care fees that is a significant impact on families. What we know from the changes the government is bring in is one-in-five families in the NT are actually going to be worse off and will see less support for child care fees. This is going to have a real impact on many many families. In addition, yesterday we heard that a number of rural and regional playgroups and early education services have no certainty of funding into the future, past 1 July. This is of real concern to families in remote and regional areas of the Northern Territory that don’t know whether services will continue. Today, we are holding a veterans, defence personnel and families forum to hear directly from veterans, their families as well as defence personnel about how we can better support them. Better support them while they are serving, better support them during their time of transition and better support them as veterans having served our country. It is important we have this conversation with veterans directly, with defence personnel directly but also their families. Families play such a critical role in supporting our defence personnel and our families, it is important we listen to them as well.

 

JOURNALIST: You no doubt have heard of the tragedy in Tennant Creek yesterday, there has been a lot of talk about the wrap around services that the government is providing to help ensure things like that don’t happen, they obviously aren’t doing a good enough job at the moment. Are there areas where you think the Commonwealth could step up and provide better services to Northern Territory families to ensure that we don’t see the rape of a two year old girl in a regional area?

RISHWORTH: First, I would say that any sexual assault against a child is just horrific and evil. We need to be working together, the Commonwealth needs to work with the Northern Territory government as well as our First Nations people to look at community safety, look at how we can improve community safety and importantly look at how we can deal with the contributing factors around community safety. What we do know when it comes to children is; supporting children in the early years is critically important to ensuring they can live happy, healthy lives. Anything that can invest in early childhood services is critically important and ensuring the stability and longevity of services that do support our indigenous communities, our First Nations communities our First Nations children is critically important and also any services that support those in rural and remote communities, we know those families can often feel isolated so it is critically important to provide early childhood services.

 

JOURNALIST: Obviously there was some improvement in the Closing the Gap report but we are still a very long way off where we should be. Is the government putting enough money into services that support indigenous families or are we not just using the money wisely?

RISHWORTH: I think we can always be looking at how we deliver the best services. I do know that there have been some services that have received funding cuts and that is always very concerning. We need to – I think importantly- listen to First Nations people about what it is will work on the ground. Without the buy in from our aboriginal families, from our Torres Strait Islander families we won’t necessarily deal with contributing factors and make sure these communities are safe. We need to work, whether it is at the Commonwealth level of government, the NT level of government with First Nations people and that is critically important. Services have to be funded properly, there has to be certainty around funding services, often we see services which have just gotten off the ground that have been operating for a number of years and they may then have their funding cut- that has certainly been the case from a Commonwealth level- we need to make sure that those services are actually funded properly into the future.

 

JOURNALIST: Are you aware of any services that have been cut in remote parts of the NT, like Tennant Creek?

RISHWORTH: As I mentioned across rural and regional Northern Territory there are early childhood services that are facing an uncertain future- I am deeply concerned by that, they face an uncertain future past 1 July- many of those services do support Indigenous children, I would like to see certainty around those services and I might see if Luke would like to add to that.

 

MEMBER FOR SOLOMON, LUKE GOSLING MP: We have obviously seen some horrific events; it is not an isolated event. We have got some serious systemic issues and it is not helping that the federal government has cut half a billion dollars out of the indigenous affairs area, it hasn’t helped at all. What we need is the federal government to work more closely with the Northern Territory government to improve services on the ground and those early childhood services- early childhood education services, those wrap around services- are so important and that is where we need those organisations to receive certainty about their funding so that they can keep their workforce that supports those children.

JOURNALIST: In terms of the child in question, there were multiple notifications to child services in the Northern Territory and nothing was ever acted upon. I guess there is a very cautious approach to taking children off families but perhaps in this case should there have been some sort of intervention from authorities earlier given they had been contacted about this child?

RISHWORTH: I can’t comment on this specific case, I don’t know all the details- I am not privy to that. What I do know is prevention is the key. We need to be working in these communities in a true partnership to work out how we best support children. In terms of this specific case, I am just not able to comment around this circumstance. Prevention and tackling some of the contributing factors such as alcohol and drug abuse to the antisocial behaviour we do see that is associated is critically important but we do need to listen to our First Peoples communities as well.

 

JOURNALIST: Should the Commonwealth be contributing more money to housing and things like that? A lot of the problems- it has been said -comes from poverty and disadvantaged areas.

RISHWORTH: There is no doubt that we need to be contributing resources to ensure that the right services are in place, whether that is housing; a house is so critically important to a stable life. There is no doubt that ensuring there are the wrap around services- as Luke said- there is the early education services, there is support for families which is critically important. As I said, it is really important that resources are there but really important that we work in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to ensure that we do actually deliver the services that meets their needs.