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Examines the shift in Australia from a non-profit childcare sector to one that is heavily marketised. It considers the impact of this shift on the broader social purposes of childcare and the tensions between official claims of social investment versus the reality of system that is driven by private investment and profit. It looks at the nature of early care and educational provision, the level of expenditure and trends in maternal labour force participation. The chapter goes on to examine the shift from community based childcare provision to the development of stock market listed childcare providers, tracing the growth of ABC Learning. Finally it examines the efforts of Labor Governments to implement a human capital framework for ECEC through the regulation of quality standards.
The absence of a national system of paid maternity or parental leave in Australia caused puzzlement, particularly because this country, regarded as a ‘social laboratory’ and known for its progressive social and industrial legislation, does not provide entitlement to working parents. Even if a minimalist scheme of paid leave is introduced in the next year or two, the lack of such leave to date requires elucidation, specifically because ‘work-life balance’ and ‘family policy’ have been prominent political issues in the past two decades. This chapter begins by providing an outline of the distinctive features of the Australian approach to social protection and industrial relations. The second section discusses the country’s support for families with children and specifies some of the mechanisms the country has adopted to meet its international obligations under the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the ILO Convention on Workers with Family Responsibilities. The section also illustrates the current patterns of access to parental and maternity leave and other forms of family income support. The chapter also considers the politics of paid maternity leave by examining the ways in which political parties, trade unions, women’s groups, and employer groups have framed and formed the issue of financial support for new mothers. The chapter ends by assessing the prospects for paid parental leave in Australia.
This chapter examines the extent to which disadvantaged children are able to access high quality early childhood education and care in Australia. It describes current national initiatives include an aspiration to provide all children with high quality preschool, staffed by trained teachers, in the year before school entry, and efforts to improve quality through an early years learning framework. However, the chapter also points to considerable remaining local and state variation, and to concerns about whether children from lower income families will be priced out by quality improvements. The preschool offer is not free, although it is intended that cost should not be a barrier to entry. Enrolment is not universal and children from low income families are less likely to attend than their higher income peers. A further complicating factor in the Australian context is the large role that has been played by the private sector, including for-profit providers.
