Held last Saturday at the town’s Community and Arts Centre, the event was organised by not-for-profit lobby group “The Parenthood”, which represents the interests of more than 80,000 parents and carers.

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However, very few representatives of this demographic attended.

Organisers told News Of The Area they had hoped for a better turnout.

The 35 people at the forum included candidates Greg Vigors (Labor), Caz Heise (Independent), Wendy Firefly (Greens) and Chris Walsh (One Nation), as well as Nambucca Valley councillors David Jones, Susan Jenvey and Ljubov Simson.

Pat Conaghan of the Nationals said he could not attend due to a prior commitment to present medals to outstanding RFS members at a ceremony in Kempsey on Saturday.

“I have held forums and consulted individually with providers and parents over the last six years in my role as Federal Member for Cowper,” he told News Of The Area.

“I have made a number of speeches in parliament on the issue to highlight our region specifically and continue to fight for appropriate reforms to be made.”

Family First candidate Peter Jackel also sent his apologies.

Five pre-prepared questions were directed at candidates, allowing each of them a minute to deliver their response.

Speakers acknowledged that the problems facing working parents in the area included a shortage of available carers, long waits for early childhood places, no spaces in nearby facilities and few options for shift workers.

Other problems were a lack of appropriate staff training and the cost of childcare.

Most agreed that problems with finding staff were linked to poor pay, low respect, and the shortage of facilities; and they committed to working hard for the sector if elected.

Candidate for Labor Greg Vigors pointed to several commitments the Albanese Government has made, including three days of paid childcare and a grant to providers who offer a 15 percent increase to childcare wages over the next two years.

He also spoke of Labor’s December announcement of a $1b fund to “work with councils to build big [childcare] centres around schools in regional areas.

Caz Heise, the Independent candidate chosen by the Voices4Cowper, said the commitments from Labor were encouraging but noted that “nothing had been done” to improve the situation in the past four years.

She said the region had been overlooked in a variety of areas due to it being viewed as a “safe seat” for the National Party, and committed to listening to the wishes of the people in a way that she believed the larger parties could not.

One Nation’s Chris Walsh said his was a party for “the people” and advocated for better support of parents in general.

He also said that more should be done to encourage in-home care, such as that provided by grandparents and stay-at-home parents.

Greens candidate Wendy Firefly reiterated her commitment to First Nations peoples.

“This land has been stolen, and we wouldn’t be facing these problems if it had not been,” she began.

She advocated for childcare to be free and accused sitting member Pat Conaghan of “letting us down”.

“One in three corporations don’t pay tax,” she said. “If we had that revenue, we could solve this problem and we could have free education, free healthcare and people could get the wages they deserve.”

One attendee, Sue Parker of Midcoast Family Day Care, expressed her frustration after the forum.

“It wasn’t really what I thought it would be,” she told NOTA.

“I thought we would get a chance to ask questions and come up with solutions but it was really just about the candidates.”

Ms Parker also thought some of the prepared questions were unrelated to the issues of the industry.

By Ned COWIE