Hold back childcare reforms, Labor told

Several childcare operators and unions have warned the government not to roll out its $5.4bn childcare reform package until critical workforce shortages are eased.

United Workers Union early education director Helen Gibbons.

Several childcare operators and unions have warned the government not to roll out its $5.4bn childcare reform package that would make care cheaper for Australian families until critical workforce shortages are eased.

The warning comes amid calls for the reforms to be brought forwards to as early as January and as more than 1000 childcare centres across the country closed their doors on Wednesday to protest at low wages and workforce pressures caused by about 6000 vacancies.

The Australian can reveal parents turned to outsourcing platform Airtasker to post casual babysitting jobs in the wake of the strike.

Labor has faced a push to bring forward its childcare reforms from July next year, including from independents and union bodies such as the ACTU, at an estimated cost of $1bn.

But the United Workers Union and several childcare operators called for workforce issues to be solved first, sounding the alarm over the increased demand the reforms would bring.

UWU early education director Helen Gibbons said “there is no early education without early educators”.

“We have a massive shortage of early educators right now. More affordability and increased funding for parents is going to drive up need and there aren’t the early educators there to provide those places,” she said.

“It’s absolutely crucial that we fix that or we can’t deliver on the promise of more affordable and more accessible early education.

“You can’t expand early education at the moment. There is no capacity. We need to fix that as an issue before we open up to more families.”

Airtasker recorded a 31 per cent spike in demand for babysitting services, coinciding with UWU’s strike announcement in August, with chief executive Tim Fung confirming the increased demand demonstrated the ­labour shortage the childcare sector was experiencing.

“I think more recently, child minding and babysitting services definitely have been something that has experienced a labour shortage and that’s no doubt going to be exacerbated by the recent situation,” Mr Fung said.

“Airtasker as a platform which enables flexible labour is really able to help out in these ­situations.”

The average rate of babysitting tasks range from $140 to $180 a job, with the platform allowing workers to display a digital badge indicating they are qualified to work with children.

Labor’s childcare package will lift the maximum subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families for the first child in care and increase subsidy rates for every family with a child in care earning less than $530,000 in combined household income.

Director of a Goodstart childcare centre in Canberra Cassandra Duff, who has worked in early education for 16 years, said she was seeing “the worst staffing crisis we’ve ever had … I’ve capped my enrolments, I don’t have the educators to cover the amount of children we could give care to.” She signalled further strikes could be on the horizon without meaningful action.