The Federal Government's long-awaited national child-care reforms have been approved by the ACT Legislative Assembly, despite determined opposition by the Canberra Liberals.
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The ACT Legislative Assembly today passed the Education and Care Services National Law (ACT) Bill 2011, the local legislation allowing the National Quality Framework to be enforced in the capital's child-care centres.
The new laws will impose tough new standards of care on child-care centres, aimed at improving the quality of care to children in early childhood, as well as outside school hours care services.
But the Opposition opposed the Bill on the floor of the Assembly yesterday with Liberals frontbencher Vicki Dunne arguing that the new requirements would drive up fees and force operators out of business.
''It will make small child-care centres less viable than they already are, it will see a reduction in places, particularly in places in infant rooms,'' she said.
''It will see costs go up, it will see people withdrawing from the workforce, it will see more children going into informal care that is not supervised by anybody except for the parent.''
But Children's Minister Joy Burch insisted that Canberra's child-care centres could be given a soft landing, saying that a $60 million assistance package had been provided to the sector in the 2011-2012 budget.
''The new standards will ensure that every child will have greater interaction with better qualified staff to help them learn and develop,'' MsBurch said.
''The ACT Labor Government is committed to ensuring the transition to these reforms is as smooth as possible for child-care providers, which is why we have been working closely with the sector to support them through these changes.''
ACT Greens leader Meredith Hunter also threw her party's support behind the new rules: ''The changes will bring about a range of benefits including improved child-to-staff ratios and ongoing evaluation provisions for centres to demonstrate how well they are travelling compared to the benchmarks.''