Taxpayers pay for Rudd Government bungle on ABC

10-December-2008

Taxpayers are being forced to foot an extra $34 million bill as a result of the Rudd Government’s mishandling of the ABC Learning crisis, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare Sophie Mirabella said today.

“Due to their own mismanagement and failure to act and engage other industry players, the Rudd Government had no choice but to put up the $34million to make sure that thousands of families were not left without childcare in the New Year,” Mrs Mirabella said.

“But this is just a very expensive band-aid. It does not provide certainty for many families. The Government promised they were working on a contingency plan back in September – there was obviously never any such plan. If they had been on top of this and offered a solution earlier taxpayers might not be facing a further $34 million bill to prop up ABC Centres.”

“The news that 55 ABC Centres will close and a further 241 Centres are unviable but will remain open just for a few more months, still leaves many parents facing uncertainty into the new year – it is not the news they needed heading into Christmas,” Mrs Mirabella said.

“The Minister claims that many of the 241 Centres on the unviable list might be viable under a different business model. But there is no doubt these Centres will suffer a mass exodus of families in the coming weeks – putting their viability at even further risk, and making the future of those Centres even more uncertain.”

“There are many industry stakeholders who have registered an interest in taking over Centres, but have not even been contacted yet.”

Mrs Mirabella said she was very concerned that the Government had not consulted widely with other childcare providers or released national data on vacancy rates.

“We have the odd situation where taxpayer dollars will now be used to further prop up unviable Centres when there may well be many vacancies in nearby Centres that could be utilised – not just for the short term, but for the long term.”

“As an example, there are 2 ABC Centres in North Sydney that are on the list to receive Government support to stay open until March. I have been told by a private Childcare provider within 1km of those ABC Centres that he has 25 vacancies, and another Centre just 2 kms down the road has 70 vacancies. That seems a ludicrous situation.”

“For months now I have been calling on the Rudd Government - whether it be Minister Gillard, or Parliamentary Secretary McKew - to outline the Government’s contingency plans. The Government has taken a totally “hands off” approach – and as a result, taxpayers have now had to fork out tens of millions of dollars.”

“It’s clear that Labor still has no idea when it comes to economic management – and taxpayers are once again the ones left to foot the bill.”