Originally published in Reportage Online July 6, 2015.
Australia’s childcare policies are “decades” behind the rest of the developed world, according to a new report released by the Labor-aligned McKell Institute.
The report is called ‘Baby Steps or Giant Strides’ and it compares the government’s new childcare policies with those of other OECD countries.
“Australia is quite a laggard in terms of expenditure on early childcare,” says Professor Deborah Brennan, the report’s lead author. “As a proportion of GDP we spend less than the average of all countries in the OECD, and we spend about half of what New Zealand spends.”
The report looks into the childcare policy reforms announced by the government in May this year. Under the new policies, parents in full-time employment will receive higher childcare subsidies, but casually employed or unemployed parents could lose their subsidies altogether, and Professor Brennan says that this will harm low income families.
“If the government tightens the connection between parental workforce participation and access to early education, then it’s the most vulnerable kids who are going to miss out,” she says. “That includes Indigenous communities, lower income families, and refugee children.”
Scott Morrison, the Minister for Social Services, says that the childcare reforms are designed to incentivise families, particularly mothers, to join the workforce. “Our objective is to help parents who want to work or work more,” he said.
“Having two parents in paid employment has become a necessity for most families because of changes that have taken place in our society and economy over many years. All mothers work hard, and many are also in paid employment.
“Changing the way we make childcare more accessible and affordable is necessary to help families adjust to these changes and set them up for the future.”
Professor Brennan says that while she applauds this goal, she thinks the government is taking the wrong approach.
“The international evidence suggests that one of the best ways of increasing maternal workforce participation is to have readily available, very low cost childcare. The most dramatic example of this has been in Quebec where they introduced $5 a day childcare and they saw a massive increase of workforce participation on the part of mothers and a corresponding reduction in welfare dependencies,” she says.
“Instead of getting out a big stick and saying ‘your children aren’t going to get access to early learning unless you get to work’ they actually made the early learning and care opportunities available to children, and parents responded by taking up those opportunities and going to work.”
Professor Eva Cox, sociologist and feminist writer at the University of Technology, Sydney, says that the government’s new childcare policies place too much emphasis on getting mothers in the workforce and not enough on increasing the accessibility of childcare.
“This is called ‘child care’. It should be about children’s needs. And to tie it into workforce participation is, quite frankly, nasty and undermines the idea that children’s services are something that is good for kids. It puts it entirely in an economic market where it shouldn’t be,” she says.
Professor Cox says that the childcare industry has become too commercialised, and that childcare providers are now “geared towards optimising profit for shareholders, rather than optimising services for children”.
She says that childcare providers are reluctant to provide services to Indigenous communities and poorer suburbs because these areas tend to be less profitable. Providers are also reluctant to provide service to children under the age of two because the expense is usually higher than parents are willing or able to pay.
“Everyone thinks that the free market is a good way to provide childcare services. But quite frankly, I think it sucks,” says Professor Cox. “If the government funds these services directly, they can compel providers to do things, like offer sufficient places for two year olds or offer in areas of high need, but if you fund them primarily via the parent you have no power to make sure that the services are where they are needed and meeting the age groups and hours that parents need.”
Professor Cox says that Australia should stick with private sector involvement, but “we should regulate it so that childcare providers are paid to meet local needs, not just the needs of their shareholders.”