this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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I got the boys down in time to watch today's Four Corners on the childcare sector. I'm so happy my girlfriend found a job at a council run facility and that my boys are at a centre that seems well run
I did’t watch the show, but have noticed in recent years many large very expensive looking new child care centres popping up all over the place. There must be plenty of money to be made if so many multi-million dollar facilities are profitable. I don’t live in a growth suburb with young families. I can think of at least 5 new mega places within a few km of my house. I know the workers get paid abysmally, so who’s getting the cash?
Childcare is heavily subsidised so you're pretty much getting free money from the government if you operate one. The parent company of a lot of childcare centres are private equity firms you've never heard of so they strip everything out of them and try to run the centres with as few expenses as possible.
It's more insidious than it looks too. A lot of centres that look independent are part of a larger chain. They either give them different names or don't change their names after acquisition so they seem small. There are two childcare centres across the road from each other in Epping with different names, but are owned by the same parent company.
It's an industry that seems to attract corruption and abusers.
It was like that over 38 years ago when miss seagoon went to childcare when i was going to uni. The woman running it was putting in fake subsidy claims and pocketing the money.
It's the government subsidies, subsidies attract corruption.
My boys have ridiculously high amounts of their fees subsidised, like 96 and 98%. At that point I wonder why the childcare centre is operating as a middleman and the government isn't looking after my kids directly.