Moyhu Kinder fund raising fun

Upper Edi residents, Pat & Robert Cook, enjoyed dinner at Parliament House last week as guests of Nationals Member for Benalla, Bill Sykes, who donated the dinner at a fund raising evening for Moyhu Kindergarten a few weeks ago.

The Cooks dined with 70 other guests of The Nationals and then had a ‘misguided tour’ of Parliament House including observing Question Time.

Dr Sykes said, “The fund raising night was a great success, raising over $8,000 due to the hard work of Anita Cook and fellow kindergarten student parents and the outstanding generosity of numerous local businesses and people.

“However, it is fundamentally wrong that parents have to raise this sort of money to meet basic kindergarten operating costs.

“I have approached the Minister for Community Services, Sherryl Garbutt, on several occasions on behalf of Moyhu & Whitfield Kindergartens and, along with my Nationals Parliamentary colleagues, repeatedly raise in Parliament the issue of inadequate funding for small country kindergartens. Most recently, The Nationals Peter Hall generated a two hour debate on Victorian kindergartens on 14 June 2006.

“The long term solution is to increase State funding for small kindergartens and transfer responsibility for kindergartens to the Department of Education (from the Department of Human Services) thereby reducing the administrative workload for parents of kindergarten students.

“This common sense solution has been National Party policy for several years and last month a petition bearing 34,000 signatures was presented to the Victorian Parliament calling for these changes.”

Dr Sykes concluded, “It is time the Bracks Government listened to those closely associated with kindergarten management and adopted this common sense solution.