"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.

Businesses operate to make money.

Money comes from satisfied customers.

In the long term, the only way to satisfy customers is to provide an efficient and caring service.

No doubt some companies will try to rip people off and take shortcuts -- as ABC seems to have done financially, at least. No complaints have been raised about their care, as far as I know.

And as Ross Gittins points out with reference to this area, government subsidies ALWAYS distort markets and prevent them from operating as effectively as they could. But I'd much rather choose to pay for an efficient private service than be forced to pay much more in taxes for a bureaucratic Tower of Babel.

Next “Regulators regulate less and less, particularly in protecting the commons, which have now been sold to corporate interests”

That is the fault of the government, not the model which promotes a clear separation between regulators and operators.

I believe such situations occur when the people who staff regulatory roles are too close to the businesses they are supposed to be regulating and swap positions between both to advance their career progression.

I believe if you allow government to behave as owner operators, their role as regulator will be diminished even further than you are saying it has done now and the consumer will be even worse off.

I cite Telstra and the duopoly which existed between Qantas and Ansett when Qantas was government owned as examples.

Jon J I agree totally with your post.

We have had privately run nursing homes for the frail elderly for well over 30 years now. Some are well run, but there are many horror stories about badly run homes where patients lie in their own urine for hours on end, or the budget is 70 cents per meal per patient.
The nursing home building is owned by one organisation and you pay $100,000 to the owners of the building, the patient pays 90% of the aged pension as board to the operators of the building. Often the management of the day to day operations is let out to management company who releases a small amount of money to the nursing staff to run the joint.

ABC Learning Centres have applied this model of operation to child care.

I don't think it's appropriate to make money out caring for the most vulnerable in our society and some of the organisations involved in aged care are not pleasant people, nor is ABC.

Australia's mish mash of child care is now a very expensive system, which costs the federal government almost as much as their schools subsidy, 80%. These funds flow to Temansek ie the Singapore government. Additionally the rebate system means that parents have to wait 18 months to get their tax rebate.

While we are about it - the tax rebate on private health insurance is another expensive way the government props up private enterprise and society would be better off with a more equitable arrangement.

The rise of corporate childcare has been a backward step for Australia, for the reasons the author states, and because parents have less involvement than in a community run centre.

The people who have written in comments seem to be looking at this as a stereotypical private/public ideological argument (waste of time reading it). They seem to be unaware of the fact that most child care centres have historically been community run centres, with funding from government, and that has resulted in community committees, transparency and care for the whole child in the family.

When they are grown up enough to have children, your commentators might wish there were more community child care centres.

Billie “I don't think it's appropriate to make money out caring for the most vulnerable in our society and some of the organisations involved in aged care are not pleasant people, nor is ABC.”

Then you can offer your services for free.

Beyond that, people are able and capable of availing themselves of the child care or geriatric care of their choice and capacity.

Neither service is something which is necessarily better dispensed by a government charged with the responsibilities of a regulatory authority.

And I would note from your comment “there are many horror stories about badly run homes where patients lie in their own urine for hours on end, or the budget is 70 cents per meal per patient.”

If that is the case, the ability of said regulatory authority to discharge those duties does not stand up to much scrutiny if, as you say patients lie in their own urine, whilst the government inspectors would seem to turn a blind eye.

All that you say suggests, if their derelict discharge of their regulatory responsibility is an example, they will be even worse at actually running a facility.

Barbie “because parents have less involvement than in a community run centre.”

Having the authority to stop payments and move to another private centre is all the influence and all the involvement needed, when compared to being shafted by a government operated monopoly.

“When they are grown up enough to have children, your commentators might wish there were more community child care centres.”

The next round of child-care attendees who follow my line will be my grandchildren.

Do not presume the age of a poster simply because you are driven to negate their argument or based on your own ignorance. It merely confirms what might otherwise have been be debatable, that you are a fool

Col, I was going to make a reply to some of the foolish things said in this discussion, but I'm glad I didn't as you said it all very well. Good job.

Col when your relative needs a place in a geriatric facility you are not presented with choices. The aged assessment team has assessed the person as being in need of accommodation and you take the next available place, irrespective of whether its church or state run and regardless of your preferences. If your relative is not unappealing you may be able to move them somewhere better if space becomes available but generally not. Many people in these institutions don't have advocates.

My comments on ABC Learning are based on listening to women looking for child care arrangements or working in child care. Where ABC has purpose built a facility the customers may be satisfied but where they have taken over an existing facility the experience is viewed negatively by parents who notice that things are worse like the number of toys is reduced. ABC have distinguished themselves in Victorian law by blaming the individual staff at their Werribee centre for the escaping child. ABC run a very tightly costed and managed operation. Workers prefer not to work for ABC Learning.

The parent can of course choose to place their child in community based child care if a centre exists and has space. There are not enough facilities for families to have real choice which is why ABC Learning should be such a good business model.

Billie, if people aren't happy with ABC's service, a competitor will notice and come and provide a better service, be it another corporate-run center or a community centre. That is the way market economies operate - childcare centres are not unique in any other way I'm afraid.

Roads, hospitals, schools, aged-care, trains, buses, airports, physiotherapy, telecommunications..you name it and it is provided by corporate entities. I fail to see how childcare is any different.

If you feel their service is bad, their staff are unhappy and their customers don't want to go there, then I suggest you set yourself up as a competitor and offer a service that addresses all of your complaints. That is the way the world works.

Countryboy,

the model you speak of is exactly what my wife & I did. Yeh, radical as this sounds, we looked (and continue to look) after our children with a full time parent at home!

I just can't understand how the previous generations managed with government funding of Childcare and...hang on, have I got this stick the right way around?

Childcare is a responsibility not a sub-letting arrangement. Trim the cloth...

Delivering child care is not a simple exercise. The economics & logistics for providing child care services have not been fully explored. The model provided by ABC Learning has gone some way towards providing a practical service delivery solution. In the process a structure now exists that enables governments to develop suitable regulations, guidelines and training requirements.

I don’t see the “McDonaldising” of child care as a problem. There will always be different child care alternatives that are more suitable to different parent’s situation/beliefs. But, I believe, the advert of companies such as ABC Learning has raised the standard of child care across the board and quicken the demise of sub-standard operations.

Government is just not equipped to easily undertake such a role. As the author of this article himself eludes, (In the absence of a stringent regulatory environment ……) if the government is incapable of providing an adequate framework to govern the industry, then it is hopelessly ill-equipped to be trusted in providing the service. There is not a one size fits all solution. The nature of child care requirements will change along with the workplace, the family and society needs. By enlarge parents along with there extended families, social networks, communities, workplaces and then the private sector will be best placed in providing the actual service. Governments provide the regulatory framework and will still have a critical influence by means of funding policies.