Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 24:46 to 27:03
Questions regarding the merit and value for money of grants provided under the BEEF program for childcare centers in various regions.
Topics: Grants administration, Education
Speakers: Senator Matt O'Sullivan, Mr. Tony Cook, Unknown Speaker
>> Yep.
>> Um so I want to ask about grant
>> let's give it a go and if we need to the beef people are actually
>> come back later. Yeah. I just wanted to check if it needed to be asked here because I wouldn't want to get to the end of the day and realize I should have asked it here. So >> um the So this is the building education early education fund the >> Melena Children's Center grant. This was a $4 million closed non-competitive grant which draws on the building education early education fund commonly known as BEAF. It was promised by uh Miss Urkart uh as part of her 2025 election campaign has now been delivered by the department. Is this just pork barreling?
>> Uh my answer to that would be no. But again, Senator, I will need my beef people, which sounded weird, didn't it? I'll need my beef staff to come in the early childhood.
>> Well, they're on notice. I'll I'll I'll deal with that again later today. the
>> but you said it was election commitment. Is that right, Senator?
>> It was it wasn't an election commitment, but I'm I'm interested to understand the merit or or value for money uh that this particular project has. There are uh beef as it designed is is there primarily for childcare deserts. Yet we're seeing many go into >> areas where there is an over supply of child care services already. Yeah. >> So trying to understand the the merit and the value for money and the assessment that the department overlays over it notwithstanding there were election commitments but still there must be some sort of assessment because it's a it's a grant program not just a
>> senator there will be and and my um my beef team will be able to give much
>> it's a question to later today and we can give the detail that I'll skip these and come come back on that later then Um they they've got a tip on where I'm