By Lauren Henry

A clear line of which government is responsible for establishing childcare and appropriate funding models is essential to improving the critical service for regional Australia, according to Wimmera children’s advocate Jo Martin.

Mrs Martin, the By Five Wimmera Southern Mallee Early Years Initiative executive officer, was among a delegation representing the Regional Development Australia Grampians Committee who attended the Regional Australia Institute’s Regions Rising National Summit at Canberra last month.

She said government funding levers to help enable childcare services be a viable business option and allocating what level of government was responsible for establishing childcare services, not just funding existing services as the Federal Government does, was required to improve the industry.

Mrs Martin said there was a ‘lack of stewardship’ when it came to governmental responsibility.

“A level of government needs to have really clear lines of roles, responsibility and accountabilities for who does what, whether it’s the Commonwealth, whether it’s the state, or whether it’s the local government,” she said.

“We also need a funding model. It’s used in other systems like health, in aged care, where you actually have a floor in the funding, so a guarantee of provision, like a block funding model. 

“We need to have a guarantee of funding to operate and not only does that provide a service provider some more confidence just to establish themselves, but also more workforce job security.

“The base level funding would also help with a service guarantee so that families can have confidence that it’s going to be there in their town for the next generation, and the generation after.”

Mrs Martin said state and federal governments needed to work together in terms of a holistic approach to early education, and plan workforces and infrastructure as a collective.

She said the keynote speaker at the summit, Nationals leader David Littleproud, spoke about education being one of his party’s platforms at the next election.

“It’s a topic that is on everybody’s lips, whether it be from an economic perspective, or from a liveability,  particularly a regional liveability perspective, or from a workforce perspective, not to mention a child perspective,” she said.

“So it was on the lips of a lot of people at the conference, but also when we went to Parliament House.”

On her trip to Canberra, Mrs Martin met with an advisor from the Early Education Minister Anne Aly’s office, and Shadow Minister for Regional Education Darren Chester to discuss children, families, liveability, the economy, and gender equity.

A final report of the Productivity Commission’s ‘A path to universal early childhood education and care’ report was handed to the government in June.

“It is the right time to be talking because the Productivity Commission report response is due out in October,” she said.

“The government has identified three distinct categories – unserved, underserved and adequately served – and outside of Horsham-sized towns, it’s unserved, or it might be underserved, but it’s really an unserved market that someone, like local governments, is trying to make work.”

Mrs Martin said celebrations about the announcement last month that childcare workers would receive widespread pay increases could have been premature, and more work was needed in that space.

“We may have been a bit pre-emptive across Australia thinking it was, from what I understand, going to have more impact on the commercial providers than it will on those who’ve been on a different award,” she said.

“The devil will be in the detail as to who are the recipients, but, as a sector, anything that has wages that reflect the work that they do and the qualifications they’re required to have,  I think parity to other sectors is really important, and what we should expect for anyone.”

EDITORIAL: Time to step up

The entire September 11, 2024 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!