Should we? once we could have said some things should be in government hands.
After selling so much that would no longer hold water.
In private hands to make money not serve us we already subsidize child care.
Our subsidy often go in price rises the same week they are announced.
Should we put more money into private enterprise profits?
Well in the short term we must, the doors could have closed on Monday and most of what we spend is wages.
But long term we must confront such issues, we fail to do so much we should do because we say we do not have the money but find it for bail outs too often

Careful Belly, your ideology is showing.

The reason that subsidised private enterprise is used for things like child care, is that the same thing, run by the public sector would require three times as many staff, in each center, plus a massive bureaucracy, to "manage" the thing.

Being public servants, they would have to be paid double the private sector wage rates. We could then expect something as effecient as our brilliant public hospital system.

Something as good as this is not any sort of answer. let alone a good one.

I understand this would offer another 45,000 workers who could not avoid membership of a union, hence the interest, so thanks mate, but no thanks.

I feel the Government has done the right thing.

They have bailed out the ABC Child Care Centers,
but only until the end of the year. This is to give
more time to working parents as well
as employees of the centers find alternative centers
and employment for next year.

Had the Government not helped there would have been
working parents with no where to put their children,
and unemployed child carers, for the next two months.

We can only hope that things will sort themselves out
thanks to the help provided by the Government.

childcare centers perform the same tasks as public schools, and should be run by the state for the same reasons: the children are entitled to care, and the nation benefits if everyone gets a standard of care.

pretty obvious, really.

Set up franchises from ABC learning centres and the problem will settle down and the ABC learning centers will make money.I would buy one .David.

Hasbeen,
Careful you are spouting unsupportable ideological urban Myths. :-)

Foxey,
I heard that there is a plan to dispose of the centres to multiple ownerships.
One group of parents want many to go in community hands. To me that sounds sound reasoning. Nobody has better motivation (in theory) to look after one’s children than their families. Besides which I support any sensible attempt to create a community.
The govt has said that they would never allow one operator to dominate again. Well as a devout opponent to corporations and dominance I agree. ;-)