GEORGIE:
When you meet the parents of children five and under, they usually do have some difficulty in getting the care they need for the children they have on the days they need it.

This is why women in Australia, despite being so well-educated and highly skilled, are just not represented in the workforce the way men are. This is a structural barrier and my husband and I were really struck at the time by the fact that there just wasn't anything we could do individually to change it. It was clear to us that there wasn't an easy fix.

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ASHLYNNE:
From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

There’s no nice way to put it, child care is stuffed. Just ask anyone with kids.

It’s prohibitively expensive, getting the days you’re after is like winning the lottery and then even if you do get some kind of government subsidy, you have the pleasure and joy of hours of your life, on the phone to Centrelink trying to sort through the reams of paperwork.

We’re at a critical point though where the Government is promising a huge overhaul, and the Prime Minister just said he’s open to reducing the cost to just $10 per kid, per day.

Today The Parenthood’s Georgie Dent, on why the system’s so broken and the Centre for Policy Development’s Kat Oborne, on one way to fix it.

It’s Wednesday June 19.

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ASHLYNNE:
Georgie, people who have kids get used to this thing where you have to put your baby down on a waiting list for childcare service before it’s even been born. That’s what happened in my area and I live in a childcare oasis comparatively and it’s still like that. We all kind of think it’s normal and get used to it, but actually that’s not normal at all, is it?

GEORGIE:
No it's not. Look, some people are really lucky to live in an area and have care when they need it. And certainly I do know there are Australians who are in that fortunate position. I know myself that when my husband and I had our first child – we don't have family who live in Sydney – we just assumed that we could easily find a spot for her on the days that we needed and it was an actual nightmare, and it took us about four months to find a position for her, and the only place we could get was in the CBD that neither my husband or I worked in the CBD, so we had to take her into the city by bus, and then sort of make our way to our own places of work that were sort of 20 minutes outside of the CBD. And that was 13 years ago and it was $165 a day. So even with the child care subsidy, we were spending more on our day-care fees than we were paying on rent, which in a city like Sydney is pretty impressive because it is an expensive place. But really, that was part of the experience I had that, I guess, put me on a path where I was very keen to advocate for this to be different.

ASHLYNNE:
What are the major structural problems, as you see them?

GEORGIE:
So we know that for parents in Australia, they struggle with two main issues when it comes to early childhood education and care. And they are being able to access care that is suitable and then being able to afford that care. And we have got a situation, so it's estimated that 35 per cent of families in Australia live in a childcare desert, which is described as a place where there are three or more children for every available position within a 20 minute drive. And it's not surprising that the childcare deserts are more sort of congregated in rural, regional, remote areas, but it's interesting that there are actually childcare deserts in every single capital city as well. And then the other issue that a lot of families face is that the cost of care is quite prohibitive. So we do have a childcare subsidy, which means parents are entitled to some of the fee being subsidised by the federal government. But for a lot of families, they're paying out of pocket more than $100 a day and if you've got two children, you can see how quickly that adds up. And so, at The Parenthood, we often describe it as the sort of ‘cost of working crisis’, because a lot of families, you know, we polled about 1200 families with children under six in October, and 85 per cent said that they need two incomes to meet the cost of living. But a huge proportion also said that the cost of childcare is so high that they're not working as much as they would like to work. You can see how the cost of living crisis meets the cost of working crisis for families and it creates a huge amount of financial pressure.

ASHLYNNE:
So where did it all go so wrong? How did we end up in this position?

GEORGIE:
We have got a really fragmented early childhood education and care system in Australia.

And I mean, a lot of people would make the point, and they do make this point that if you had a blank piece of paper, you would not draw the system that we've got now.

Audio excerpt — Advertisement:

“Sponsored by a thoughtful municipal council, it provides a baby parking station where mothers can park their offspring while they do the weekly shopping or pay a visit to the dentist. You can leave your baby by the hour, or by the day, but not permanently.”

GEORGIE:
Once upon a time, childcare was really only something that single parents needed, single mothers in particular. And so there were sort of limited options available.

Audio excerpt — Presenter:

“One third of Australia’s five and a half million workforce are women. Sixty per cent of those are married women, which doesn’t mean they are liberated. It could mean that they work 100 hours a week in two jobs. One underpaid, and the other at home not paid at all.”

GEORGIE:
And then that definitely changed in the 80s and the early 90s when, you know, women working really changed, the workforce changed dramatically.

Audio excerpt — Presenter:

“Hello and welcome to the very first edition of Women on the Line, the national program of women’s news and current affairs.”

Audio excerpt:

“Things such as childcare is a classic example. In the end, women end up having to take on the responsibility for childcare and so in the end, women take it up as an issue as well.”

GEORGIE:
There was a radical shift in the number of women working and that has necessitated early education and care being needed more.

Audio excerpt — Bob Hawke:

“Our children's services programme will provide for the varying needs of children, and is essential to enable parents to play a fuller part in our society. We will allocate $20 million extra for child care in our first budget.”

GEORGIE:
And we have got a whole lot of, sort of, complexities in what a family can have access to when they have a baby. And we also do have a situation where you have got some preschools that are run, you've got family day-care and you've got long day-care services, you've got a for profit market, you've got a not for profit market. But it's not meeting the needs of enough children and enough families, the current system that we have.

So some work that has been done recently by the Centre for Policy Development proposes a new model, where every child is entitled to access at least three days a week of quality early learning. This would be a radically different system for children, but also for parents and families.

ASHLYNNE:
After the break, what a reimagined childcare system might look like.

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ASHLYNNE:
Kat Oborne, thanks so much for joining us today.

KAT:
Thank you so much for having me.

ASHLYNNE:
The way we do child care in this country in the future is being decided at the moment, and you've been looking at whether there is a chance to totally reimagine the system. Tell me more about that.

KAT:
I am very confident that we'll see something happen here. The Prime Minister and many of his ministers have made it really clear that this is a priority for his government and they clearly want to leave a legacy.

Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“For me the principle is very simple. Early education is vital for children’s future and childcare is an essential service for families, but as well for the economy.”

KAT:
We have already seen some movement with a commitment to wage increases for early childhood workers. And more broadly, their commitment to supporting families through changes to paid parental leave.

Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“And the mission we will set for the Productivity Commission, which will be asked to report in the first term of the Labor government, is to investigate moving to a 90 per cent subsidy for childcare for every Australian family.”

KAT:
And the reports from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Productivity Commission, should be giving them really concrete recommendations to build from.

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“A major policy reform like Medicare, superannuation and free public education. Childcare currently twice as expensive in Australia compared to other developed nations.”

KAT:
So what we're wanting to do is reposition the system to be universal, like schooling or Medicare, where all children have access and those who need greatest support really receive it. So we're recommending a number of reforms to create what we would see is a really, truly universal system. So it includes a legislated entitlement for all children to access a minimum of three days of education in care a week at a low set fee or at no cost. So a low set fee could be something like $10 a day. We also recommend shifting to what we're calling a child-centred funding model. So the current childcare subsidy would cease and our child centred funding model would be established for all children. There would be greater investment in Aboriginal community controlled sector and ensuring that services are inclusive and culturally responsive environments, that they offer services where all children and families feel welcomed and comfortable.

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“What do you make of this report out today? It’s from the Centre for Policy Development. Child care – three days of free childcare for disadvantaged families, others 30 bucks.”

Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“Well, this is an important contribution to the policy debate. We've made childcare cheaper for more than one million Australian families. And we know that early education is so important for our youngest Australians to develop their social skills and to prepare for school, and that it also helps with productivity by allowing mums and dads to be back at work if they choose to do so.”

ASHLYNNE:
So all of this sounds great, but also really expensive. Can we afford it?

KAT:
So we understand that it would cost probably around $7 billion per year once fully implemented, which is in line with what was costed in the Productivity Commission. But this doesn't take into account the long term savings and returns from our model. So we've estimated that $3 billion in additional annual tax revenue and $7 billion in annual GDP increases from parents working more hours, incentivised by free or low cost early childhood education and care. So we do need to acknowledge that whatever we do is going to require upfront investments in the future of Australians’ children and families, but the other choice is that we continue to spend $13 billion annually on a system that is failing Australian children and families.

But we also just know that the benefits, the learning and development benefits, that children get from their participation that then carries through to the rest of their lives and so it really is so critical that this is really invested in and seen as such a critical time for both children and their development, but also to support their families.

ASHLYNNE:
Finally, Georgie, we have this Productivity Commission report coming down pretty soon and we know the Labour government is planning to make some big changes in this area. Just give me a sense of how significant this moment is – could you have imagined this when you started down this lobbying path, however many years ago?

GEORGIE:
So I have been the CEO of The Parenthood for just on four years. And if four years ago, someone had said to me that we would have a Prime Minister saying that universal access to high quality early childhood education and care is a legacy that he would like to leave, I don't think I would have believed that. Like, genuinely, I don't think I would have believed that. We have had over the last couple of years, we have seen a really radical shift in the recognition not just from the federal government, but also from all of the states and territories. And that is Labor and Liberal state governments saying we're not doing the early years right. And recognising that for both the educational development of children, but also for the full economic participation of women, we need to get the early years right. And so it is a really exciting time and it is rare to be on the precipice of something where you can really genuinely say this would be a once in a generation change.

ASHLYNNE:
Georgie, thanks so much for your time and for all your work in this space.

GEORGIE:
Thank you.

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ASHLYNNE:
Also in the news today...

Victoria is set to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years old, meaning children that young will no longer be able to be arrested, charged or detained.

The new age of criminal responsibility will be 12, with Labor Premier Jacinta Allen promising to introduce stronger consequences for “serious, high-risk and repeat” youth offenders.

And,

The Reserve Bank has left interest rates on hold, revealing it now does not believe that inflation will come back down to regular levels for some time.

The board said it would not rule anything in or out, with the risk growing that the next change in interest rates could be a hike rather than a cut, according to analysts.

I’m Ashlynne McGhee, thanks for your company. We’ll see you again tomorrow morning.

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