Matt Grudnoff
Senior economist

The terrible stories that continue to come out about childcare have a common thread. Abuse is more likely to occur in for-profit centres.

Long ago we worked out that education and profit shouldn’t mix. There is no profit motive driving school education in Australia. Private schools in Australia are not-for-profit. They are run by school boards that are supposed to be focused on providing the best education for their students.

How does the government keep the for-profit sector out of school education? A for-profit school is ineligible for government funding. We need to do the same for childcare.

Childcare has become big business. The biggest for-profit providers are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who pay their CEOs millions of dollars a year.

We need to take profit out of childcare.

The solution is for more state and not-for-profit centres.

We should look to the model we already have for primary schools. In almost every suburb there is a local government run primary school. The same could be true of childcare centres. Where practical, these childcare centres could be built at primary schools.

Parents should expect that when they send their kids to childcare that they are safe and receiving top quality education and care. This is not consistent with the profit motive.

The government is already spending billions of dollars on childcare. Let’s use that money to give them the best start in life.

You can read more on this in my Point article here.