{"id":842030,"date":"2026-08-03T14:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T14:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842030\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T14:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T14:56:16","slug":"australias-childcare-crisis-how-market-driven-policies-are-fuelling-workforce-instability-and-safety-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842030\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s childcare crisis: How market-driven policies are fuelling workforce instability and safety risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nicole<\/p>\n

August 3, 2026 \u2014 7:38pm<\/p>\n

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Childcare worker Sherry used to wake up every morning unsure of how to keep the 11 children in her care safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hurts me as a teacher that you can\u2019t keep the children in your care safe,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s stressful and overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LaurenLauren Treweek with sons Gus, 1, who goes to daycare, and Xavier, 3, who goes to kinder. Joe Armao<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old, who asked not to use her surname to speak openly, said challenging behaviours, a one-to-11 ratio and little support from management made it an impossible job and inherently risky.<\/p>\n

A report from Victoria University\u2019s Mitchell Institute found the push to expand childcare had created workforce churn, provider turnover and growing risk.<\/p>\n

Since 2013, 40.7 per cent of for-profit centres have changed operators, some as many as five times, the report shows.<\/p>\n

Analysis of the workforce found the median hourly wage for educators is akin to cleaners \u2013 $34.30, compared with $62 for schoolteachers. It is below the median hourly wage of $42.40.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The most recent data from the Australian Taxation Office (2022\/2023) shows 52 per cent of jobs in the childcare sector were held for less than a year.<\/p>\n

To compound the lack of continuity, large for-profit private providers (with more than 25 centres) were more than three times as likely to have an enforcement action recorded than centres run by not-for-profit or community providers.<\/p>\n

Mitchell Institute director Professor Peter Hurley said using markets to boost childcare places while keeping prices down had come at a cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese approaches bake-in the deficiencies of low pay and high turnover and put enormous strain on the sector. They end up rewarding those providers who can produce an hour of care in the cheapest way possible while meeting the minimum standards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"LaurenLauren Treweek with her sons, Xavier, 3, and Gus, 1.Joe Armao<\/p>\n

Childcare centres receive childcare subsidy payments from the federal government ($16.9 billion in 2025-26) on behalf of families to deliver reduced-cost services. Closures and new centres are driven by the market.<\/p>\n

Hurley said the report, The price of a place: Instability, risk and the hidden cost of Australia\u2019s early childhood education and care system, showed that the market had reduced barriers for operators to easily open or close centres.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Providers] can trial the market, and if it doesn\u2019t work, they can leave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"MitchellMitchell Institute director Peter Hurley.Ruby Alexander.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat can work with something like an airline industry. When it comes to children, they\u2019re extremely vulnerable. One of the things that really struck me with these horrible cases that\u2019s been going on is just how many places they\u2019ve worked,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s prompted us to look at this. The shorter nature of the employment and educators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major changes have been introduced since the childcare sector was plunged into crisis in July last year when horrific allegations of child sex abuse surfaced across Australia.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In Melbourne, accused childcare rapist Joshua Dale Brown<\/a> is facing more than 100 charges, including sexually penetrating multiple children he was employed to care for. In Sydney, daycare worker Hamish Tait<\/a>, 35, is facing more than 320 charges over his alleged abuse of more than 150 children.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s since been a Victorian parliamentary inquiry, a shift in the Working With Children Check, tightening of market entry requirements, and the ability to suspend or cancel subsidy payments for serious breaches.<\/p>\n

The Front Project chief executive officer, Caroline Croser-Barlow, said recent measures to improve quality, such as stripping centres of the childcare subsidy for ongoing breaches, and worker-retention payments, had produced improvements. \u201cDo I think we\u2019ve done enough? Absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The worst operators were those seeking to flip centres and profit, she said.<\/p>\n

The amount of childcare places has almost doubled since 2013, from about 400,000 to about 730,000 – almost entirely by private for-profit providers who account for 74 per cent of long daycare places, the research shows.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Parenthood\u2019s Georgie Dent said early education should be funded more like schools, as core public infrastructure, not a market to be left to its own devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means funding that reflects the actual cost of delivering high-quality education and care: fair wages, stable staffing, professional development and safe facilities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mother-of-three Lauren Treweek said for parents, long daycare continued to be \u201cunbelievably and astronomically expensive\u201d amid \u201cquite honestly terrifying stories\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like every time you get a break, in terms of the rebate being changed, the private centres just end up putting their fees up, or to be honest, centres in general,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Treweek tried to get two of her children into the same childcare centre but couldn\u2019t, so now has to do three separate drop-offs: one-year-old Gus at long daycare, Xavier, 3, to kindergarten, and Sienna, 5, to school.<\/p>\n

She said the short tenure of educators was concerning, as was a lack of transparency from operators.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you build trust in educators when they\u2019re not even at the centre for a year, or the minute you drop your child off, you\u2019re hoping for this great relationship, as they have with your family, and then, you know, six to 12 months later, they\u2019re not there?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the visibility that parents are being provided with is terrible. It\u2019s shocking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Minister for Early Childhood Education Jess Walsh said the government was consulting on a national early education and care commission, which could help guide a path towards universal early childhood education and care, address undersupply and oversupply, and build a stronger system.<\/p>\n

Education ministers are due to meet to discuss its development in October.<\/p>\n

She said a 15 per cent pay rise for educators was stabilising the workforce, and states and territories were investing about half-a-billion dollars to support a package of reforms to lift safety and standards across the sector.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Hurley said it wasn\u2019t for-profit centres that were the issue, but the childcare model itself, which required more research into alternatives.<\/p>\n

Childcare worker Sherry has moved to a sessional kindergarten. \u201cIt\u2019s different. It\u2019s not-for-profit, so I feel like the service is actually putting effort into supporting children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery service will say it\u2019s children-centred, but in practice, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s profit-centred.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Virginia<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe put children at risk. We put educators at risk as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"NicoleNicole Precel<\/a> is an education reporter at The Age. She was previously an audio video producer. She is also a documentary maker. Get in touch at nicole.precel@theage.com.auConnect via X<\/a>, Facebook<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 3, 2026 \u2014 7:38pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-842030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}