Joint Transcript with the Hon Julia Gillard MP
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
9AM THURSDAY
10 DECEMBER 2009
LAVERTON
JULIA GILLARD: It’s fantastic to be here with my parliamentary colleague and ministerial colleague Kate Ellis, our Minister for Early Childhood Education and Child Care, and also here with Frank Oberklaid, an expert in the area of early childhood development who’s worked with the Australian Government to deliver the Australian Early Development Index.
Now the AEDI is a comprehensive map of children’s development right around the country. In May and June this year, more than 260,000 children in their first year of school went through a developmental test. It looked at children and looked particularly at their physical health and wellbeing, their social competence, their emotional maturity, their language, cognitive and communication skills and their general knowledge.
That information from those more than 260,000 individual interactions with children has now been compiled to give us the most comprehensive information we’ve ever had about children’s development and children’s needs in this country.
The National Report has been released and the National Report does contain some statistic that should concern us. In particular, it shows that around 23 per cent of children are at risk in their development in one more of these areas. And we’ve got to remember this is against a backdrop where the worldwide research tells us that there’s nothing more important to an individual’s life chances than what happens in the early years.
Today we will be releasing community profiles. This will enable individual communities to go online and to see the childhood development issues in their local community. We think communities will be thirsty for this information and we think that they will want to work on community plans to respond.
As a Government, when we were elected we said we would place a high priority on the early years of children’s lives, on early childhood education, development and care. And we did that because we knew it would make difference for the lives of Australian children and for the rest of their lives and we did that because we inherited a legacy where under the previous Government, our nation was coming back of the OECD class for investment in the early years.
I’ll turn to Kate to give a description of the measures we’ve already put in place and then I would be very keen to take any questions.
KATE ELLIS: Thank you, Deputy Prime Minister.
And it’s my great pleasure to also be here at the Laverton Community Children’s Centre today, topping off what has been a very big week when it comes to government action in the world of early childhood education and care.
Of course, earlier this week we had the historic agreement at COAG which saw for the first time that we will have a national quality standard and a national ratings system in place to lift the quality of early childhood education and care right around this nation. With lower staff to child radios, higher staff qualifications and more information and a ratings system so that parents can make the best decisions for their families. This is very important action in this area.
And then of course yesterday we had the announcement that GoodStart, a social syndicate, is the preferred bidder for ABC1 Learning Centres, a good news story because GoodStart have committed to providing high quality, socially inclusive and accessible child care for Australian children.
And now today we have another exciting announcement, with the launch of the national Australian Early Development Index which provides a comprehensive picture of how Australian children are developing in their early years.
This data was collected between May and July this year with 98 per cent of all Australian children in their first year of school being collected, which is a tremendous result and a fantastic achievement to Frank and all of those who have worked so hard on this project.
Of course, the results which we’re seeing today will shine a spotlight on where there are particular issues and no one will be able to hide from that – not governments, not communities and not the organisations whose job it is to serve these children.
So while many governments might run from collecting this sort of data, publishing this sort of data, our Government has embraced it because we know that we need to know where we can do better.
Many of the problems that we see in our community – poor literacy, mental and physical health, unemployment, welfare dependency, criminality – all of them have their origins much earlier in life.
So with these results, if we can locate where there are issues, if we can then direct programs to ensure that we’re addressing them early in life, then we can achieve better results for Australian children and ultimately better results for the Australian community and I think that’s a tremendously exciting project and one that we’re delighted to launch today.
JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much. Have we got any questions?
JOURNALIST: In what ways are some of those children at risk?
JULIA GILLARD: They’re at risk in one or more of the areas that I’ve talked about. So it may be that they’re not at the physical development stage expected for children their age, their language skills may have fallen behind, their cognitive development may have fallen behind.
We know of course these are risk factors that will show later in life. And what I think Australian parents and the Australian community intuitively know is if you get at the back of the class early in your school life, it can be really hard to catch up later on. That’s why we want to make a difference early, the worldwide research is telling us that’s the best way of making a difference and the programs that you see at a great centre like this one in my electorate are the sorts of programs that make a difference for kids’ lives, that assist with early development, cognitive development, social development, physical development. That’s why we’ve invested in universal access to preschool; it’s why we’re investing in the early years.
But this is a comprehensive snapshot. It’s going to disturb some; it’s going to cause some to be anxious about what’s happening in their community but we want to be honest with the Australian people about what the challenges are for Australian children and early childhood development and we want to harness that goodwill from the community to make a difference in the lives of Australian children.
JOURNALIST: How many preschool children don’t get access to (inaudible)?
JULIA GILLARD: Around the country, rates vary. In Victoria, participation in kindergarten programs, in early education programs is quite high. But we do know that the children most at risk of missing out are the children from the poorer backgrounds. Around the country, we see in some states and territories quite low participation in preschool or kindergarten in the order of around 30 per cent so we obviously want to make a big difference through our universal access program and lift that percentage participation up.
JOURNALIST: So you’re putting money into that?
JULIA GILLARD: We certainly are. I’ll get Kate to explain that.
KATE ELLIS: We had our national agreement on universal access, which was one of our election commitments, to ensure that in the year before formal schooling, all Australian children had access to preschool. This is something that we have invested and, working with the states and territories, we’ve now signed agreements with each of the state and territories who are investing in difference areas. In some states where there’s a problem around accessibility, they’re putting that funding into opening more centres and in some states where there’s a problem around affordability, they’re putting that investment into lowering fees so that this is something which those from disadvantaged backgrounds are not missing out on when we know how important it is.
JOURNALIST: A report this morning that most of the funding in the Jobs Fund has gone into ALP electorates. How can you justify this?
JULIA GILLARD: I’ve seen that report and I can explain to people that round 1 of the Jobs Fund – and I should just explain the Jobs Fund is part of our economic stimulus package, it’s a part of supporting Australian jobs during the days of the global financial crisis and global recession – in the first round of the Jobs Fund, we invested $132 million in 172 projects. 57 per cent of those were in Labor held seats. The Labor Party holds 55 per cent of the seats in the Australian Parliament, so the kind of distribution you would expect. We had a probity adviser, Clayton Utz, guiding the process every step of the way and the probity adviser’s report makes it crystal clear that this was a process that was properly and objectively done with absolutely no political interference.
JOURNALIST: Are you worried that it might come under scrutiny though at a Senate estimates hearing?
JULIA GILLARD: We welcome that scrutiny. It was under scrutiny every step of the way by the probity adviser, Clayton Utz. I’m happy for Senate estimates to have a look at it; I’m happy for any Australian journalist to have a look at it. What has happened here is absolutely clear – there’s been a proper process, with a probity adviser, absolutely no political interference and the distribution to Labor seats is around what you would expect, given Labor holds 55 per cent of the seats in the Australian Parliament.
JOURNALIST: The figure this morning is 71 per cent.
JULIA GILLARD: I can’t explain figures in the newspaper. I’ll allow the journalists and editors of the newspaper to explain that. But the figures I’m giving you today are the accurate figures.
JOURNALIST: The soccer bid, the World Cup soccer bid seems to have hit a few hurdles at the moment. Are you working to try to alleviate this so the bid won’t be hijacked, as it were?
KATE ELLIS: Absolutely. Can I say that we’ve said all along that winning a World Cup for Australia is a massive task, is a big challenge but it’s one that we are committed to getting right behind our Football Federation and delivering. And I have to say that if we are successful in winning a World Cup, wining the rights to host a World Cup in Australia, it will be of benefit not just to the world game but to the sporting community more broadly and to the Australian community more broadly.
For this reason, I’ve been working with both the Football Federation, but also with all of the state and territory governments and encouraging them to make sure that they are liaising and working in partnership with all of the other codes when they’re formalising the infrastructure list which will be put forward to FIFA next year.
JOURNALIST: Do you think the AFL was (inaudible)
KATE ELLIS: I think that we will work with the AFL, we will work with the NRL, we will work with the sporting community to mare sure that when this bid is delivered, it’s delivered in partnership with them.
And I have to say, I’ve just gotten back form South African last week for the World Cup drawer and one thing that it was absolutely struck by was the investment that they had made in sporting infrastructure, in new stadia, in new roads, in new airports. For anyone to suggest that the only people that would benefit from a World Cup is the football community are being very short-sighted because the sporting community more broadly would be massive winners out of this, as I believe would the Australian community. Which is the reason why I think we’re so committed to it, and we’ve put $45 million behind it and we’re determined to do everything we can to bring the World Cup to Australia.
JOURNALIST: Are you confident the difficulties can be worked through, the bid can be ours?
KATE ELLIS: Absolutely. I’m confident we will work in partnership with all of the Australian sports that are affected to make sure we put in a cooperative bid and one that can deliver the maximum benefit to all Australian and all Australian sports.
JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much.
ENDS.