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Mr ADRIAN PICCOLI (Murrumbidgee) [5.40 p.m.]: I support the many preschools in the Murrumbidgee electorate and congratulate them on their great contribution to our community. These days there is a great emphasis on the need for parents to work. Therefore, there must be opportunities for parents to have their children cared for while they work. The demands of modern life often mean that both parents work and additional pressure is put on them to find the resources to send a child to a child care centre or preschool. New South Wales and the whole of Australia have experienced a proliferation of child care centres, but I refer specifically to community based preschools.
As a child in Griffith I attended the Dorothy Wade and Police and Community Youth Club preschools, and gained a lot from those preschool days. Many of our children these days also benefit from attending preschools. One cannot speak about preschools without congratulating those who work in them and the volunteers who help run them. Griffith has a few preschools, Leeton has a couple and Finley has a very lovely preschool, but it always has difficulty surviving, struggling with trying to keep its fees as low as possible. Great volunteers and teachers support the kids and the parents who send them to that preschool. Coleambally has a terrific preschool, which not long ago received some Commonwealth funding to upgrade its facilities. That upgrade has now been completed. That is a great asset for the community and parents of Coleambally and the children who attend it now and will attend it in future.
I endorse the preschool policy announced several weeks ago by the Leader of the Opposition. It commits to additional funding of about $300 million for preschools throughout New South Wales, to bring many of them up to the standards that we expect of our preschools. I am sure every member of this Parliament—whether members of the Labor Party, The Nationals or the Liberals—has been lobbied by their local preschools about the freeze on funding that has been in place since 1988. Those schools are dealing with financial pressures, increases in salaries, additional compliance costs, occupational health and safety compliance costs and the cost of providing facilities of the modern standard that we expect of any facility that looks after children.
I am aware how pleased the preschools in my electorate are to have the commitment by the Leader of the Opposition of the Coalition's support for preschools. I would welcome a similar commitment from the New South Wales Labor Government. Preschools should have bipartisan support. If the Government gave a similar or even better commitment, those who work in, support and rely on preschools would be comfortable in the knowledge that, no matter who wins the next election, preschools will be better off. We must support preschools, give them the financial support they need to keep operating and ensure their fees are affordable. Ultimately, we want an increase in the number of preschools and the number of preschool children they can look after. That will happen only with additional funding and other support from government, irrespective of who wins next year's election. At the end of the day, we want our preschools to remain viable so that they may continue to provide their valuable services to parents and children.