"Whether or not a child is likely to be noticed weeping, getting injured or missing out on vital early-years stimulation, should not be determined by profit ratios; but that is inevitably what happens when big business controls childcare."

Oh my god, what a load of rubbish! You are telling me that staff at ABS Learning Centres are more likely to miss a child weeping than staff at a community-run centre? What crap! Prove it! Come on, where is your proof?

You can't can you? Because it's a completely unfounded and unsubstantiated statement.

At least with a coporate run centre you have a bit more faith that the carer actually has some qualifications, has had and passed an interview and has somebody to report to, rather than any old deadbeat who opens up a child care business in their basement.

Tell me how we let corporations look after just about every aspect of our lives but childcare is different? What about a private hospital? By your reasoning nurses at private hospitals are more likely to not notice a paitent in pain or one that is dying. What a load...

reports from america about their medical care corporations should suggest you don't want to put your kids in corporate care. but if both parents have to work, there may be no choice.

government subsidized care seems to me a better alternative, so long as parents have effective means of reporting performance. unfortunately, rich people don't want to support other people's children, and public child care will suffer every time the libs get in, just as public education has starved under the howard mob.

democracy is better, folks. you really should look into it. lincoln was right on the money when he said: government "of the people, by the people, for the people"

if it's not "by the people", it won't be "for the people." politicians are no more public spirited than corporate officers.

Corporations do change individual behaviour whether it's in childcare, health or any other field. Where would you trust them? With protecting the environment? With education? - take a look at how corporate interests are destroying science programs and replacing them with entrepeneurial technocracy. With resource extraction? With food? They will engineer, process, dowse with chemicals any food for any person at any time if it increases profits. And people who work for corporations internalise both the values and the rhetoric of corporations, believing that they perform a valuable public function. And government have increasingly abrogated their responsibility to allow us to be governed by an efficiently amoral, destructive and ultimately value free corporate system. Even the middle ages were saner.

This article is the usual sort of anecdotal characterization of the system of free-enterprise being depicted by some money grabbing rent collector. The only things missing is giving the caricature a huge hooked nose, ringlets and a black hat.

There is no objective criticism, just pandering to the emotions of parents.

My first observation is

Any business owner who expects his business and investment to thrive and grow will, as a strategic objective and key performance indicator, ensure the needs of children in his care are given primary consideration.

I am not sure of the operations of ABC Learning but it would not surprise me that their operating standards lacked a sufficiently rigorous financial planning process which would have allowed them to operate more successfully but that is not uncommon. The only difference with a government system would be the immediate cash shortfall which is probably behind ABC LEarnings problems would have been stuck to the tax payer and as a tax payer, I like that ‘solution’ even less.

My second observation is

Government departments are less flexible than private operators because of their duty to account to tax payers and are equally likely to fall foul of budget constraints which will undermine the monetary equation on which any service is run.

Government is as the author points out, there to regulate.

A regulator who is also a service provider is caught holding a conflict of interest, as we have seen in the past with government companies, who invariably structure a monopoly for themselves, then go on to rape the consumer.

Anyone who thinks government running everything is a solution to anything must go and ask some of our eastern European immigrants how wonderful their life was under Ceausescu and Hocker, before we embark on that path.

Summary, governments regulate, private enterprises operate and are accountable to the government regulators who can act against irregularities.

That works, no one is there to regulate the government except the electorate who get a say once every few years, then who acts against government irregularities?

Col, that model of government regulating and business protecting the resources and assets that give it its profits is the model the economic rationalists give us - but not the reality. Regulators regulate less and less, particularly in protecting the commons, which have now been sold to corporate interests. Environmental laws are a classic case of laws under siege from both government and business because they impede the free market and the capacity of those businesses to regulate themselves. The problem is that businesses has successfully demanded the dismantling of laws that protect the common but corporations don't behave according to any moral standard. For instance, with childcare, if there is a surplus of children to attend childcare, there is little reason to protect them and every justification to exploit them. If you can produce for less in a country that has no work or environmental laws, this is considered good business not colonisation or exploitation. Government shouldn't simply be about regulating but giving shape in institutions, laws, and behaviour to the standards, needs of the community of people that it ostensibly serves. It utterly fails to do this.

I think David Ritter has been watching to many fantastical movies where it is cool to blame some nameless nefarious business exec for the ills of the world and only a "good" government bureaucracy can fix everything.

Governments can not fix much of anything; witness the NSW hospital disasters, the inability of NSW to figure out how to fix the commuter infrastructure just to name 2.

What government can do well is regulate and verify because they have no skin in delivering a service. Putting government in a roll where it must deliver a service will always result in very poor service delivery because nobody is willing to take a risk or go the extra mile for customer satisfaction - there is no need to as they have a monopoly. But, give the government an opportunity to regulate and then publicly point out to the whole world how they have caught out some organization not meeting their obligations than all politicians are happy because they are seen as doing their job.