The people who use it should pay; and mothers should get back to raising their own children until school age. Professional child care is just Soviet-style brainwashing of innocents.

“Society obviously values children…”? It's not obvious. Our ‘society’ allowed 100,000 of them to be murdered in the womb last year by abortionists and their mothers. Some of these babies took 5 hours to die in a tray after they were aborted.

Don't give me bullsh.t about children being valued.

If they were really valued, by their parents at least, they would not be handed over to strangers when they need their mothers until at least 5 years of age. The strangers these days are political activists and the most dangerous people to be dealing with vulnerable, impressionable kids, with no defence against the same sort of activists when they get to ‘big school’.

Child care epitomises the socialist Total State: relieve the masses of the family responsibilities ((the family is the the main threat to the Total State) with tax money, and the fools jump at the opportunity to be ‘helped’ by Big Brother. Actually, it's more Big Sister these days, with more and more women, having no kids or getting rid of them, popping up as ‘CEOS’ of just about everything. All they need is the right ideology.

Having children is the ultimate form of selfishness.
It is very much a personal lifestyle choice and, like all such lifestyle choices, costs should be borne by those indulging in it.

Having children is the ultimate form of selfishness.
ateday,
That's a rather perplexing view when it is the only way Nature has offered for any life, not just humans to exist.
Not having children is the ultimate form selfishness ! However, for humans such as the Woke it would be the most selfless gesture for the rest of us not to have children !

I used to have similar views to Leyonhjelm, but my position has shifted somewhat given the evidence of the benefits of high-quality early childhood education.

Leyonhjelm says the Productivity Commission found that “the only children who benefit from ECEC are from dysfunctional households, such as those where substance abuse is an issue.” This is incorrect. The PC did indeed find that, for very young children (up to 2 or 3 years old), there is mixed evidence of the benefit s of ECEC except for children “where the home environment offers very poor development opportunities or places the child at risk”. But for slightly older children, especially in the year before starting school, the benefits are unequivocal and apply across the board - “the benefits of quality early learning for children in the year prior to starting school are largely undisputed, with evidence of immediate socialisation benefits for children, increased likelihood of a successful transition into formal schooling and improved performance in standardised test results in the early years of primary school as a result of participation in preschool programs.”

The PC also highlighted the importance of the quality of ECEC services. While the credentialism condemned by Leyonhjelm may not in fact produce high-quality services, the benefits of high-quality services are clear. ECEC is not simply about paid babysitters keeping children “safe, happy and entertained”.

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/childcare/report/childcare-overview.pdf

Having children is a choice, and I agree that parents should take prime responsibility for giving their progeny the best options in life. But children are also people in their own right, who deserve a reasonable start in life even if their parents are stupid, dysfunctional or poor. And it is in the interests of today’s taxpayers that tomorrow’s taxpayers are productive, educated and socially well-adjusted. If we support their childcare now, hopefully they’ll support our aged care in future.

So by all means encourage parents to take responsibility for their offspring. But there is a strong case for social support for ECEC, especially if we target subsidies at the kids who will benefit from it most and the services that deliver the best outcomes.

Yea, pay to institutionalise children and make them used to incarceration from an earlier age, this way it will also be easier to conscript them when they turn 18, then later also make them more subservient and productive soldiers of the tax-paying work-force. Yes, toughen them up by having them bullied earlier in life, expose them to life's true and cruel social realities, do teach them them that crying won't help because Mommy and Daddy are not there to save them, that instead they better pray to Big Brother.

I ask, why is the taxpayer subsidising people in old age with pensions, health care, aged care, etc costing taxpayers billions, when there is no prospect of these old folks ever becoming productive members of society. People 20 years or more receiving Aged Welfare, many the result of a wasteful or non productive "working life", where they gambled and drank, wasted the money they may have earned! On the other hand CHILDREN and the investment by the taxpayer in their care will reap future billions for the economy!

What is better, plant the seed and water it, watch it grow into a healthy tree, then enjoy the fruits, or waste water on a shrivelled up old dead stump?