The Guardian 14 June, 2006
Childcare crisis deepens
Peter Mac
Australian parents are facing a growing crisis in gaining access to childcare, and the problem is not being addressed by the Howard Government or many of the state governments.
Last year a national investigation into childcare found that many parents are experiencing severe problems with regard to access. Parents at greatest disadvantage are those who live in capital cities, have two or more children, or have children under two years old. In contrast, in some newly developing areas, the sacred "market forces" have provided an excess of day care centres, some of which have been forced to close.
Evidence of the lack of childcare places is emerging clearly in Victoria and NSW, and is doubtlessly evident in the other states.
A local government study in the Melbourne inner-city area of Port Phillip found that some 1935 children were waiting for a place in a long day care centre. With only 999 places available, it is not surprising that a waiting time of two years is quite common.
Three local day care centres have closed and 35 day care places will be lost in this area in July in order to satisfy new government requirements. Local authorities say that a minimum of 105 new places is required to compensate for these losses.
Both State and Federal Governments are reluctant to fund extra centres, and are not even trying to identify the extent of the rising demand for childcare services or where these services are required. As one child care organiser commented recently: "they simply don’t want to know".
Prohibitive fees
Moreover, lower-paid workers are unable to afford the costs of day care. In the City of Port Phillip, within the last year fees have risen from $45 to $73 per day. A year’s full time care costs $18,000. Even with a rebate from government this is prohibitively expensive for most parents.
A study carried out for the NSW Teachers Federation by Professor Tony Vinson has echoed the findings of the Port Phillip study. The Vinson report found that NSW needs to double its spending just to reach a level equivalent to that spent by other States and Territories. The NSW Government fully funds 100 preschools, but only partially funds 800 community preschools. It would need more than double the current level of funding to provide an adequate level of service.
Huge shortages
The report found that in 20 areas in NSW there were no before and after school care attached to public schools. Professor Vinson commented that "In NSW, 10 to 15 percent of kids miss out on this opportunity." The six most populous of these areas had a combined population of nearly 105,000 people.
Nor has the Howard Government offered assistance, as illustrated in the recent Federal Budget. Rebecca Bartlett, Child Care Access Convenor for the City of Port Phillip, commented that the Government has provided "No new long-day care places, no help with rocketing fees, no policy to ensure quality of care, no removal of fringe benefits tax for employer-sponsored child care, no review of wages for family day care workers and no collection of vital national data to pinpoint where problems of under- and over-supply exist".
The Howard Government, as can be expected, favours the involvement of commercial child care, as opposed to centres operated by state or local government. However, commercial child care centres are achieving a dubious reputation for the quality of their operations.
Profit-driven private sector
The largest childcare business, the supremely profit-driven ABC Learning Centres, has again landed itself in trouble over its ethical practices. The company, which is moving some of its operations into the United States, has recently sold seven of its centres in Queensland, one in NSW and one in South Australia.
In doing so, it apparently notified parents that the centres were closing down, and offered parents places in their other centres, rather than advising them that the existing centres were to continue in operation under different ownership. The new owners of these centres are taking legal action against ABC.
Meanwhile, instead of providing funding for extra childcare places, the Federal Government has decided to invest millions of dollars in a new ID card system to record the attendance of children at childcare centres!
The government claims this will enable them to prevent child-care providers making false claims, and will facilitate faster payment of the 30 percent childcare expense rebate to parents. The reality is, however, that parents and other carers will be severely inconvenienced by the enforced use of the cards, and that penalties may be imposed on parents if the cards are left behind or lost.
And finally, Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop has called for the 30 percent childcare tax break to be extended to parents who employ nannies, rather than using childcare centres. Sydney University tax expert Professor Patricia Apps has warned that this raises the possibility of the "nanny" system becoming predominant. This is the case in the US, where workers on ordinary incomes can only afford to employ unskilled nannies. Professor Apps has described the US situation as "a disaster" and "an absolute disgrace".
The evidence clearly indicates that the best way for parents to achieve good quality care for their children in their early years, a crucial period for intellectual development, is to replace the present Federal Government, and many of its state equivalents, with others whose heart is really in the job.