TRANSCRIPT
Mother-of-three Sue Badreddine knows firsthand the challenges of navigating the early years childcare system in Australia.
She did the calculations and decided that returning to work wasn't an option.
"People want to work because these days its very hard, everyone I think is practising financial hardship. So I think everyone wants to go to work so they can pay their rent, their bills. But if they're going to work, and to help themselves and support themselves - they are going to pay more than half their wages to childcare. I think they prefer to stay home and look after the kids."
Australia has some of the highest childcare fees in the world, ranked 26th out of 32 countries in the OECD on the affordability of childcare.
The dream of free or universal childcare for Australian children aged five years and under has long been talked about.
Various inquiries are considering how to make it a reality - from the Productivity Commission to the competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or ACCC.
A report by think tank, the Centre for Policy Development has weighed into the debate, charting a path towards adopting a universal childcare system in ten years.
It suggests that three days of free childcare a week should be made available for lower-income families with a combined income of $80,000 or less.
Parents earning more would be asked to pay $30 for three days of care.
The estimated cost to the government would be $7 billion a year.
Andrew Hudson, the Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Development, says early childhood education should be seen as an essential service like Medicare - or public education.
He says moving to a universal model would deliver large economic and social gains.
"Our estimates is that it would about another $7 billion to implement our universal early childhood education system. But that will be more than offset with billions of dollars of extra tax revenue from parents, particularly women that are able to enter the workforce. Billions of dollars of boost to GDP; and real enormous billions of savings in the health system, in the criminal justice system; and elsewhere. Because this universal early childhood education system will really enable kids to thrive."
Affordability remains a key issue, with a report in January by the ACCC finding the federal government's reformed Child Care Subsidy [[from July 2023]] was providing little assistance to families due to the higher increases in fees charged by service providers.
Mr Hudson says navigating the system is difficult for parents - and the cost is locking out lower-income families.
"And so we've got to get the costs down. Australia has one of the most expensive early childhood systems in the world. There's been a lot of momentum, a lot of increased government investment, both state and federal and recent years - which has been great news. There's real momentum now to finish off this work. We can't just afford to each year to top up the childcare subsidy. We need to be more ambitious in terms of redesigning the system. And we have this once in a lifetime opportunity right now to ensure that early childhood education is affordable and accessible for every family in Australia."
The think tank wants the childcare subsidy to be abolished and replaced with a child-centred model where early years education centres are funded directly.
The report has also been welcomed by the prime minister as an important contribution to the debate.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says his Labor party went to the last federal election with the ambition of delivering universal childcare.
"I note the report today. That is a positive contribution to the policy debate. We will await the Productivity Commission report, but I have said on repeated occasions that I think that universal childcare provision - as it is in a range of other countries - is something that is a valued national asset. Early education is good for children, it's good for families, but it's also good for our economy."
David Alexander is the chief of policy and advocacy at employer group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He says businesses recognise the importance of government-subsidised childcare to support the workforce.
"We do think that the provision of childcare - government support for the provision of childcare - can be a very good thing for employers and families looking to have their childcare needs met. So it can free up families, parents for doing work when it's available; and do that in a mutually agreeable way."
For children six years and older, school education is compulsory and universally available through public education.
Not so for the early childhood years, where the private sector provides more than 70 per cent of centre-based long day care.
The January report into childcare by the ACCC found that a one size fits all policy approach is not meeting all needs - particularly for lower income families, those in remote locations, children with disability or complex needs; and culturally and linguistically diverse families.
Instead the regulator recommends an appropriate mix of government subsidy and regulation based on the needs of the local community and local area market characteristics.
The report found the group least likely to be enrolled in childcare were Indigenous children.
Gunditjmara/Gunnai woman Lisa Thorpe is among more than 200 delegates attending the inaugural Victorian Aboriginal Early Years Learning Summit [[12-13 June]].
The Chief Executive of the Bubup Wilam Aboriginal Child and Family Centre says mainstream models don't work Indigenous children, adding that it is important that Indigenous community controlled organisations are funded to provide culturally appropriate services.
"We need more than just a Commonwealth program that actually operates the same way as mainstream. It doesn't work. The only reason why Bubup is still surviving is because I've developed a whole lot of other programs around it that supports the long daycare kindergarten program. If that was a standalone program, we wouldn't have enough children in there to sustain the high quality education and teaching that we do; and the stability of the workforce and stability of numbers. If you are putting them all together in one space (the mainstream model) and we don't have the ability to actually be intense and teach our children what we need to be teaching them, it can be chaos. It can be hard on the teaching staff. It can be also very hard on the children."
Last month [[7 May]], the federal government released its 10-year roadmap for children aged zero to five, the Early Years Strategy.
The goal is to end the lack of co-ordination between the federal, state and local governments on the early years.
The first of three Action Plans - outlining concrete steps and funding - will be released later this year.
Ms Thorpe says it is important that the perspectives of Indigenous educators are incorporated to ensure progress in the Closing the Gap outcomes.
"Instead of just actually - the government's just only ever funding as in child protection as in justice - as in everything as a negative, a deficit. If you'd actually think about funding programs and processes in the upstream, as in early childhood development is prevention. We teach our children to be strong. We teach our children their connectedness. We teach our children new identity; and they can learn about who they're as an Aboriginal person - and they can also learn to actually how they fare in the mainstream world. If we don't get language and culture into our early childhood... We need to have opportunities to teach our language to our children and share with our families. It's so vitally important. If we're going to close any gap."
The Productivity's Commission final inquiry report - on early childhood education and care - is to due to be completed by the end of this month [[30 June 2024]].
