25 August 2014 - Canberra Public Hearing Transcript - Childcare and Early Childhood Learning

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PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION

INQUIRY INTO CHILDCARE AND

EARLY CHILDHOOD LEARNING

DR W CRAIK AM, Presiding Commissioner

MR J COPPEL, Commissioner

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION, CANBERRA

ON MONDAY, 25 AUGUST 2014, AT 9.27 AM

Childcare/Early Learning 25/08/14

INDEX

Page

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR AUSTRALIAN WOMEN:

MARIE COLEMAN

MARIAN BAIRD 1-12

AGJ BUSINESSES PTY LTD:

AMANDA JOHNSTONE

JOSEPHINE JOHNSTONE 12-25

THE PARENTHOOD:

FIONA SUGDEN 25-35

TOTAL CHILDCARE SOLUTIONS AUSTRALIA:

FIONA O’DONNELL 32-42

AUSTRALIAN NANNY ASSOCIATION:

DANIELLE ROBERTSON

ANNEMARIE SANSOM 42-52

ARACY:

STACEY FOX

CHARLENE SMITH 52-58

UNITINGCARE AUSTRALIA:

IAN HOLLAND 58-67

CULBURRA BEACH PRE SCHOOL:

ANDREW HEFFERNAN 68-81

YWCA OF CANBERRA:

TANIA LADYZHYNSKY

LOUISE BILLMAN

BERNADETTE CARBIN

JACKIE GREEN 81-92

ISOLATED CHILDREN’S PARENTS’ ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA:

JUDY NEWTON 93-97

FRANCES PRESS 97-102

PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT CO-ORDINATOR ALLIANCE:

ANDREW HUME

JENNY NICHOLLS 102-108

Childcare/Early Learning 25/08/14

DR CRAIK: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the public hearings for the childcare and early childhood learning. My name is Wendy Craik and I’m the Presiding Commissioner on this Inquiry. My fellow Commissioner on this Inquiry is Jonathan Coppel.

The purpose of this round of hearings is to facilitate public scrutiny of the Commission’s work, to get some comments and feedback, particularly to get people on the record, which we may draw on in the final report. We have already held hearings in Perth, Port Macquarie, Sydney and Melbourne, and these two days are the last two days of hearings.

We expect to have a final report to government in October this year and, following our delivery of the report, the government has up to 25parliamentary sitting days to publicly release it.

We like to conduct these hearings in a reasonably informal manner but I remind participants there’s a full transcript is being taken. We don’t take comments from the floor but, at the end of the day’s proceedings, there will be opportunities for people who wish to do so to make a brief statement and, obviously, people are able to submit further advice to us, if they choose to do so, as a result of things they hear said today.

Participants are not required to take an oath but should, of course, be truthful in their remarks and participants are welcome to comment on issues raised by other submissions as well as their own. The transcript will be made available and published on the Commission’s website, along with submissions to the Inquiry. If there are any other media representatives, who haven’t spoken to staff, could they please see our staff.

(Housekeeping matters)

We’ve got quite a busy day today, so we’d ask you to keep to the times that we have. If you can keep your opening presentations brief, that’s helpful to us because this is a really useful opportunity for us to actually ask you questions. Our first presentation is from Marie Coleman and Marion Baird. If you’d like to come up to the front and, when you’re comfortable, if you’d like to state your names, positions and organisations for the record and, if you’d like to make a brief opening statement, we’d be happy to hear from you. Thank you.

MS COLEMAN: Thank you, Commissioner. My name is Marie Von Coleman. I chair the Social Policy Committee for the National Foundation for Australian Women.

PROFESSOR BAIRD: My name is Marian Baird, and I’m a member of the Social Policy Committee of the National Foundation for Australian Women. I’m also Professor of Employment Relations and Gender at the University of Sydney Business School.

MS COLEMAN: Thank you, very much. Can I begin by saying that I think we should put on record that this has been, in our view, a most important and valuable exercise. This is a complex field, which has become ever more complex since I was responsible for it in the Fraser Government, and the situation has never been completely simple. The changes in funding arrangements have tended to lead to a situation where it hasn’t been necessary for central departments to really understand the full workings of individual services because the funding has been based on placing cash in the hands of service users. I think one of the consequences of that is that it’s been very difficult for some of the parliamentary inquiries which have looked at childcare, for example, to get a firm handle on the actual structure of the sector and get a real understanding of what the actual costs of service delivery are and, indeed, of the variety of services within the sector.

We, of course, are an organisation which is concerned with policy; we are not service delivery. I’d emphasise, therefore, that the comments we make about service delivery are very much based on advice to us from people who are in actual practice. We’ve been looking for some time at issues to do with enhancing women’s labour-force participation, and that, of course, is Marian’s area of speciality. We’ve been very interested, for example, in other things which influence women’s workforce participation, including a family-friendly workforce, workplaces, the availability of paid parental leave, and, of course, the dreaded effective marginal tax rate as a major disincentive. I think it’s important for us to recognise that changes to the structure and funding of childcare will not solve all of those other problems but they will be a helpful contribution.

In broad terms, we think the direction of the Commission’s approach towards designing an hourly subsidy rate, based on a reasonable standard of childcare, is the way to go, and, as I’m sure everybody else has told you, that is where the fine detail is going to be very complex. Clearly, one of the issues around this is the proposed activity test.

One of the conversations we’ve had so far has been with Goodstart, whom I’m sure have made submissions to you, and I have noted with interest that that organisation, which is probably the largest single provider of childcare in the country, is very concerned that a significant number of their families, in the tens of thousands, quite possibly - possibly up as far as 10,000 - maybe disadvantaged by the subsidies which you are providing. When we look at that, I think the picture there is the extent to which Goodstart and other agencies are providing services for children who come from particularly vulnerable situations, where, quite obviously, parents may not meet an activity test. I am aware that special services have been funded in the past for children from families who are regarded at risk by child welfare agencies and I’m advised that some state child welfare agencies make it a proviso of a child remaining in a home where there are difficulties, that the child attends a day-care service.

I think we would have to be extremely sensitive in devising any new subsidy system, to make sure that those vulnerable children were not inadvertently excluded from care settings, even though their parents may fail to meet the activity test. That may well have implications for an increased level of intensity of service in some of those services, where, because of the special needs of the children, they may need much more intensive programs and specialist input than some of the more regular families, if I can put it in those terms.

We were very interested to see your observations about the extent to which you felt that improvements in affordability would indeed lead to enhanced workforce participation, and I’d like to come back to that in another moment but I think that emphasises again that so much of this must be about the welfare of the children, and this reinforces my comments about looking at the vulnerable children side of the equation.

There are a number of other issues that we’d be happy to answer questions on but I think, in broad, I’d also like to say that I really feel for your inability - I think that’s what it is - to get a thorough handle on what his happening in out-of-school hours with school vacation care. I have no data to base this comment on but I would suspect that improving the vacation care and out-of-school-hours care sector would probably have a bigger impact on workforce participation than massive changes would within the under fives. Going on everyday experience, it’s when children are at school that a great deal of women feel that this is the time when it might be easier to go to work, and a failure to actually restructure out-of-school-hours care appropriately, I think, is going to be a problem.

That leads me to the general feeling that it’s very likely that I think you may not have the time, in the timeframe that you’ve been given, to explore this area as thoroughly as it needs, but we do hope that it would be possible for some further investigations to occur because it’s a very little understood or appreciated sector. It’s very likely that the current National Quality Framework isn’t as appropriate for this age group as might have been the case.

PROFESSOR BAIRD: I think the main thing I can do here is endorse what Marie has said and probably just come back to the issue of workforce participation. Clearly, under the objectives of the review, you’re charged with looking at childcare, the provision of childcare, early childhood care and learning, as well as assisting with the increasing participation of parents. I really would like to note that, really, when we’re talking about that, we’re probably targeting those sorts of policies and that research to increasing the participation of mothers with preschool and young children.

The two aspects that Marie has raised there are crucial. The first that I would like to return to is the out-of-hours-school care issue. We know, and you’ve already reported that, that women’s participation in the workforce does increase as their youngest child is older and that Australia still tends to fall lower than OECD averages on that, up to a certain point, and then we are at the average. I think that is an important point, that we do need to consider the types of care that are most appropriate for both the age of the child and where the mother is at in the overall life cycle, the career cycle, and meeting those what sometimes are fairly difficult objectives to meet at the same time - that is, childcare and workforce participation - is critical. I think out-of-hours school care is essential.

The second one there is flexibility at work. You do alert to that in your draft report and I think that’s important, and it may be worth drawing out even further that the issue is not just when children are young and mothers are needing - or parents but most of the care is done by mothers at that age - flexible work arrangements. It’s also the issue of when they return to work we need to encourage workplaces and employers to not penalise mothers for the time that they’ve spent out of work caring for children. To complement the childcare system and the parental leave system that we currently have, we do need more attention to the availability of good quality career paths for women who have been on a caring track for some time. I think trying to draw all those policies together will actually enhance women’s workforce participation but one policy alone doesn’t do that.

DR CRAIK: Thanks very much for that, Marie and Marian, you’ve given us something to think about. Just if we could start, perhaps, with the activity test issue that you raised: is that for children who are like formally at risk, or is that DTC or someone has said ---

MSCOLEMAN: We have been advised that some states are requiring this. So that’s a formal decision, which is probably taken in association with recommendations to the Children’s Court. But it would be state welfare authorities that would be in a position to give you more detail about that than I can. But certainly we understand from various providers that we heard from that there are other children who they feel are vulnerable who may not necessarily accompany them over to the state welfare agencies.

DR CRAIK: We’ve certainly heard that and Goodstart certainly has raised a number of 10,000 families. I guess the question then becomes: what would be the criteria? Do you have any suggestions about criteria other than kind of universal access for people who – which is the current arrangement – don’t meet an activity test even though we have the dual objective of trying to increase workforce participation?

MSCOLEMAN: If we’re talking about universal services, then the cost goes through the roof; and we recognise that’s a problem. However, I’m very conscious – while I’m not an expert in early childhood development – that many of the past studies on the impact of early interventions have been based in vulnerable communities. So it’s a fair bet that the good outcomes from intensive early intervention can legitimately be seen to come from children who start with some sort of deficit. Now, whether that is children with developmental delay or other problems, or whether it’s children who are socially at risk, or whether it’s children whose parents are in a very vulnerable situation at a particular time, I think any definition would have to manage and encompass all of those.