Nicole Llewellyn, owner of the Kool Kidz childcare centre at Mill Park in Melbourne's north-east, has a large proportion of nurses, police, aged care and food manufacturing workers who drop their children at the 130-place centre, and will continue to do so in the city's hard lockdown.

She says the federal government's new $33 million childcare package for Victoria is ''absolutely very sensible'' and will enable families who aren't essential workers to keep their places at centres through the extra 30 days of ''allowable absences'' where they don't have to pay, but won't lose their spot.