Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

ADJOURNMENT
1590 COUNCIL Tuesday, 31 May 2011
maternal and child health services, early intervention
and support services, supported playgroups, parent
groups and family services. Last year Labor went to the
election promising a further $20 million to continue to
expand the network of children’s centres around
Victoria.
I am concerned that not only was there nothing in the
coalition’s election commitments around this issue but
the coalition has allocated no specific funding for
children’s centres in this year’s budget. In the Public
Accounts and Estimates Committee budget estimates
hearings Ms Lovell, the Minister for Children and Early
Childhood Development, seemed to suggest that
children’s centres could be funded from the $15 million
children’s facilities capital program, an amount that is
somehow meant to fund the expansion of kindergartens
across Victoria to address the baby boom and also to
prepare kinders for the expansion to 15 hours by 2013.
Many councils around Victoria that I have spoken to
are seeking clarification about this issue, given that they
had intended to build new children’s centres. I would
welcome some clarification about whether that
$15 million program will be available for new
children’s centres.
In this instance I draw the minister’s attention to what
this issue means for the City of Whittlesea, which
represents one of Melbourne’s most rapidly growing
communities. I am particularly concerned that the
council’s proposal to build a new children’s centre as
part of the Lyndarum community activity centre may
now not be able to go ahead due to this lack of
dedicated funding. I call on the minister to urgently
commit funding to the proposed children’s centre at the
Lyndarum community activity centre to ensure that
families in Epping have the convenience of accessing
children’s services in the one location in their local
community.
Carbon price: introduction
Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern Metropolitan) — My
adjournment matter is for the Minister for
Manufacturing, Exports and Trade. From my many
visits to businesses in Northern Metropolitan Region, I
have been concerned about how they are travelling, and
I have been hearing a recurring theme from them: they
say the same things time and again. The recurring
message from these manufacturers is that they are
worried about the high Australian dollar and about
global competition in the marketplace, which is natural
enough, but more importantly they are worried about
the uncertainty of the Prime Minister’s carbon tax —
this great big new tax.
Interestingly enough those opposite have been
absolutely silent on this. Have they picked up the phone
and called the Prime Minister to ask, ‘How much will it
be? Will it be $10 or $40?’. The Greens are saying it
might be $100. Those opposite have been absolutely
silent on the carbon tax, and manufacturers in the north
are getting extremely worried about it.
I call on the minister, who has visited my region many
times, to come with me to hear firsthand these
manufacturers’ concerns about the Australian dollar
and about the uncertainty around this carbon tax, which
those opposite have been completely silent on. They
have not rung Canberra to demand the withdrawal of
the tax for the sake of Victorian jobs. Once again they
are in denial, they are asleep at the wheel and they have
forgotten real, working Victorians. I call on the minister
to come with me to visit these employers.
The PRESIDENT — Order! I indicate that I have
some concerns about this matter, because all the issues
that were covered by the member are federal issues.
Whilst there is a little more leeway in the adjournment
debate under the standing orders of the current
Parliament than there was in the past, it is still
important that adjournment matters be relevant to state
administration. I will allow the matter to stand on the
basis that the member’s action is that the minister visit
his electorate, but I do not want to hear further
adjournment matters of that sort of structure. From my
point of view there was a lot of discussion about the
federal government’s position that was tenuously
connected to an invitation to the minister to visit some
factories. That is not in the spirit of the standing orders
for the adjournment debate.
Health: cigarette packaging
Mr JENNINGS (South Eastern Metropolitan) —
On World No Tobacco Day it was good to hear that the
federal Liberal Party has flipped its position in support
of the federal government’s legislative plan to bring in
plain packaging for cigarettes in Australia. This follows
earlier federal initiatives to place graphic health
warnings on packaging.
In Victoria over the past decade the previous Labor
government progressively regulated cigarette sales and
limited the environments in which smoking could occur
in order to protect public health. Among those
initiatives were the increase in penalties for selling
cigarettes to minors in 2000 and the introduction of
smoke-free dining and shopping centre laws, which
came into effect in 2001. In 2002 the government
introduced further smoking restrictions in licensed