By Alex Crowe
A study of childcare in developed countries has highlighted the need for reform in Australia, where data shows families from wealthy suburbs have far better access to services than those living in disadvantaged areas.
Analysis by an international team of researchers – including Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute – showed Australia’s profit-driven system encouraged childcare providers to establish services in affluent neighbourhoods, where they can charge up to $200 a day.
Australia came fourth out of nine developed countries for childcare accessibility, after the Nordic nations, in the study’s rankings.
France – where it is compulsory for children to start school at three – had the highest childcare accessibility for children aged three to six. However, children aged up to two years had the worst access to childcare of all nations studied.
Using government data, the researchers compared Australia’s market-based approach to the Nordic universal system, where childcare is considered a right.
In Sweden and Norway, where governments provide funding directly to service providers, similarly to public schools, centres have incentive to open where there is the greatest need. There are no eligibility requirements and fees are kept low by capping what providers can charge.
In the Australian system – where the federal government pays a childcare subsidy to providers, who offer reduced fees to families – the analysis found childcare was more heavily concentrated in cities, while regional areas missed out.
As a result, 24 per cent of Australians were living in what the researchers termed childcare deserts, where there were more than three children per childcare place. Comparatively, just six per cent of Norwegians lived in childcare deserts.
The report found that in countries that had market-based childcare systems – including Australia, the UK, France and the Netherlands – eligibility policy contributed to accessibility.
“Non-universal systems often have eligibility criteria commonly related to parents’ employment status and income,” the report found. “These policies can restrict access to some families.”
The report said France offered a powerful example of how policy impacted accessibility because it operates with two very different systems.
“One is a demand-side model with disparate government intervention for children aged zero to two years, and the other is a universal preschool model with compulsory attendance for children aged three to five years … this results in very different levels of access.”
The Australian government has promised an overhaul of childcare and the introduction of a universal policy aimed at making access more equitable.
The Productivity Commission has modelled the provision of a 90 per cent rebate for all families as part of a review of the sector.
In its interim report, the commission recommended low-income families earning less than $80,000 receive a 100 per cent subsidy for up to 30 hours of childcare for kids under five.
Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly said on Thursday that universal systems overseas would help inform the government’s response to the review, which would soon be made public.
Aly said the current system was a “behemoth” of for-profit and not-for profit care, yet some families still had limited access to childcare.
“There are a lot of things that we can learn from the ways that different countries have approached it, from those who have introduced a flat-fee model to those who have introduced a fully government-funded model,” she said. “But we have to have something that’s uniquely Australian.”
In 2022, the Victorian government promised free kindergarten for three- to four-year-olds beginning in 2023. Under the scheme, the state provides 15 hours of four-year-old kinder a week and five to 15 hours of three-year-old kinder. Four-year-old kinder was meant to increase to 30 hours a week from 2026, but that has been delayed to 2036.
Victoria is also in the process of establishing 50 state-operated early learning centres, the first of which began taking 2025 enrolments this month.
Nursing student Merryl Crossley has two children at Sunshine Primary School in Melbourne’s north-west, and a third who will start at the state-owned childcare centre next door in 2025.
Crossley said being able to drop her four-year-old off for kindergarten where the older kids go to school will free up more time for study.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan (left) and Merryl Crossley at the opening of a new early learning centre in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine.
“I’m heading into my third year of university where the workload will increase and I’ll have more placements. It will just make it a bit more convenient.”
New state-run facilities in Bendigo, Fawkner and Murtoa in the state’s north-west are also taking enrolments for next year. Another 14 sites, the bulk of which are near primary schools, have been chosen for new centres scheduled to open in 2026. Childcare fees will be lower than average for the area at each centre and kinder will be free. The Allan government has promised to deliver all 50 centres by 2032.
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