The experience that I have seen is far greater wastage of time, money and resources in the community base or smaller child care operators. The main reason for ABC’s success has been about bring a consistent level of care to all centres they manage and managing that across a number of centres.

At the end of the day, people want affordable child care that is accessible. Private vs Public, the cost to government of taking over all childcare would be far higher than having a private sector. Fundamentally, the private sector is about delivering profit, typically by reducing or gaining cost efficiencies. Public sector Chifleyite view would be about delivering service regardless of the cost. The question is can we as a nation afford to fund publicly childcare to a level far greater than the 1.6 billions today or use that money elsewhere? To address social equally that make people work extra jobs to support a basic life and having to view child care as a necessity to achieve that?