Childcare for a nation’s needs. - Editorial, The Australian, - TopicsExpress



          

Childcare for a nation’s needs. - Editorial, The Australian, July 23rd, 2014. The Productivity Commission has again put intellectual heft into social policy, this time through its draft report on childcare and early childhood learning, which suggests a major overhaul of the system is required. It is eminently sensible to streamline the childcare subsidy to parents to a single fee paid directly to their provider, thus eliminating red tape. As well, reflecting how working parents actually rear their children, the subsidy should be flexible and extended to accredited nannies. Naturally, the commission stipulates a means test and more progressivity in the system so that low-income families are able to claim up to 90% of their “reasonable childcare fees”. On a sliding scale of re-imbursement, the well-off (families with a dual income of $300,000 or more) would see their subsidy capped at 30% of out-of-pocket expenses, an appropriate cut-off. ***(Rubbish! These people should get NO subsidy whatsoever!!!)*** The commission also endorses the National Quality Framework but wants to see some improvements and greater flexibility. During the past two decades there has been a “creeping credentialism” in childcare, pushed strongly by unions, so that workers have tertiary qualifications, even those who care only for infants. This has pushed up the cost of services but has not necessarily led to better care. The cause of “quality” has often cast aside family-based operators, whose nurturing ability and life experience has been down-graded or ignored in the rush to formalise the sector and make it quasi-professional. In most cases, a Certificate III level would cover the skills needed for working with children. The report calls for fee relief to be subject to a stricter activity test. At present, the work requirements are slack, allowing many families to get subsidised childcare while a parent does non-work activities, such as yoga or shopping. The changes recommended would see 47,000 people entering the full-time workforce. All up, that’s not a great result. In fact, because of a poorly designed policy, a 300% rise across a decade in the cost to taxpayers of the subsidy, now almost $8 billion a year, has done little to improve the workforce participation rate of women. ***(So what??!! What is it with this manic obsession with dragging women back into the workforce when their first priorities should lie with nurturing their children!!!???)*** The Abbott government asked the commission for an overhaul within the current funding envelope. To no-one’s surprise, it suggests the Coalition needs to re-direct money from its extravagant paid parental leave scheme to pay for the revamped model. There is nowhere to hide for Tony Abbott on this “leader’s call” policy, more so in light of the clumsy posturing of his ministers to own it, the parlous state of the budget and the hostility the fiscal repair measures are facing in the Senate. Mr Abbott argues that his PPL, now capped at an income of $100,000, paid for six months, so that even millionaire couples receive a taxpayer-funded handout, is a workplace entitlement, taken up overwhelmingly by women. ***(Absolute balderdash!!!)*** He should ditch his policy and use the same rhetoric to champion childcare subsidies, which progressive women and men since the Keating era have argued is to cover a legitimate cost of earning income. The narrow focus of PPL mis-interprets the needs of working parents; the availability and cost of childcare are their dominant concerns, especially with a record number of women returning to work before their child’s first birthday. Better childcare would boost female work participation, which our economy needs to prosper. ***(Again I ask, why? Has our economy now become reliant on a particular gender in order to prosper? What a load of cobblers!!!)*** Mr Abbott and Joe Hockey are looking for a way to recast their budget rhetoric. It has been mired in a false debate around fairness, a dead end the Coalition has foolishly wandered into to slug it out with Labor, the Greens and sundry populists. The commission has provided the Prime Minister and Treasurer with the rigorous policy analysis that will allow them to re-frame the selling of fiscal repair to the broader community. Mr Abbott has given some ground on PPL, reducing the income test from $150,000 to $100,000, but he must now cast off his signature policy in the name of sustainable budgeting. It would not diminish his personal prestige; in fact, the PPL indulgence actually hurts Mr Abbott’s standing with the reformist wing of the Coalition and among those who are urging swifter fiscal consolidation in the medium term; the consensus among the nation’s best economics brains.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:10:35 +0000

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