Childcare privatisation a failed, disastrous experiment

The Age

4 days ago

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CHILDCARE
How many more examples of alleged abuse or exploitation must be endured before the penny drops that the neoliberal mantra of privatisation/corporatisation of essential services in the past few decades has been a disastrously failed experiment of incalculable cost? Instead of looking towards a more socially just and functional Scandinavian example, Australia followed the American pied piper to this dysfunctional 'law of the jungle' mentality, benefiting a privileged few – some undeservedly and/or obscenely disproportionately – at the expense of the vast majority, creating unnecessary and extreme inequality.
Quality of life has been trampled by essentially unregulated exploitation allowed across our lifespan, from childcare to aged care and in between. Multiple commission reports gather dust while access to shelter, food, education, healthcare, family and societal cohesion, and our environment suffer at the altar of profit. The hole is deepening; is it not past time to stop digging?
Joe Di Stefano, Geelong
A passive public, a passive government
The reason abuse and neglect is a real risk for Australians outsourcing any type of care to privatised industries is always a lack of necessary government legislation on the details of business operation. The best public response is to zoom in on each area of missing government legislation and to act as one village raising its children together because what happens to one might happen to all, and insist upon necessary legislation as a condition of public custom.
The passivity of Australians towards the aged care system the royal commission identified as totally unacceptable should be an example to not be similarly passive about childcare. A passive public allows a government to remain passive. Criminal liability for harm and neglect was removed from the 2024 aged care bill, when providers suggested that they would walk away from the industry if the government legislated it. For children at least, Australians need to identify that perhaps the walking away of current business providers might be the only way to force the government to fulfil its regulatory responsibility for a care sector.
Ruth Farr, Blackburn South
Children and aged need protections
During the pandemic, we realised how compromised aged care was, resulting in unnecessary deaths due to the industry business model. Now the childcare sector has been exposed for alleged heinous acts. Some services should be government managed and not operated for profit. Australia's development of its youngest and its aged both deserve the best possible service.
Patrick Alilovic, Pascoe Vale South
Many royal commissions not acted upon
Your correspondent (Letters, 3/7) points out governments' failure to address systemic issues highlighted in royal commissions in aged care, disability services and child sexual abuse. Although royal commissions are the highest form of inquiry, there is no obligation for governments to accept a royal commission's recommendations. After 140 or so royal commissions in Australia, there are countless recommendations sitting in bottom drawers gathering dust.
Sarah Russell, Mount Martha
Men must be banned
Many methods have been suggested in your pages in recent days as ways to minimise the risk of sexual abuse of children in childcare centres. Only one however, has the best chance of almost totally eliminating this hideous problem: Men should be banned from working in this childcare centre.
Yes, this would be discriminatory – but surely the minimisation of harm to young children is more important than permitting the relatively few men who desire to, the right to work in this area. Working with children checks only measure whether or not criminal behaviour has been noticed; oversights can be faulty, and regulations can be got around. Nearly all sexual abuse of young children is carried out by men, and this would be the most simple and effective means of minimising the awful harm that often results from this monstrous kind of abuse.
Freya Headlam, Glen Waverley,
More likely offenders
I write as a former Victoria Police detective who worked on child abuses. There is a compelling argument for banning male workers from childcare centres. On international data, the probability of a male assaulting a child is low but significant, whereas for a female it's effectively zero. (UK and Canadian studies from 2005 to 2017 have found that female child-sex offenders account for 4 per cent to 20 per cent of all offending (96 per cent or 80 per cent respectively for male). Banning male workers would be unfair and discriminatory, and challenge prevailing ideas of sex and gender. It would also rob children of the value of male role models. Ultimately however, it may prevent the devastating consequences of child sexual assault.
Gregory M. Donoghue, Woodbridge, Tas
Ban no answer
Louise Edmonds' call to ban all men from working in early childhood education is as unsurprising as it is misguided (″⁣ With more allegations of sexual abuse at childcare centres, is banning men the answer? ″⁣, 3/7. The actions of an utter minority of men is not reflective of the sex as a whole, with cases of school principal Malka Leifer, a woman found guilty of abusing her child in Perth on Wednesday, and many other less high-profile cases demonstrating that predation is not sex-exclusive. A ban will indeed 'stain all the good men' by irrevocably associating any man working in early childhood with abuse.
Edmonds' call echoes those encountered by nearly all male nurses and carers at some point in their training and careers. The view that only women should work in caring spaces and the willingness to write off 8per cent of the workforce (12per cent in nursing) is regressive, and is a knee-jerk response that doesn't address systemic issues that early childhood workers have been crying out against for years. We should lift up those who are working with us to create our children's futures, not beat them down.
Wil Wallace, Wangaratta