Hergerr"I disagree. The quality of earnings from child care is...

Hergerr

"I disagree. The quality of earnings from child care is among the best anywhere you can find in a business. In Australia in particular, with the generous child care benefits here."

Do you have any knowledge of the operating and regulatory environment in which childcare centres operate? And the resultant cost structures relative to the payment capacity of their customers - the majority of whom are average families on average wages.

There are requirements such as maximum child to staff ratios (in NSW its 3:1 for 2yo and under, and 4:1 for over 2yo), meal requirements, requirements in relation to toys and furniture (the biggest expenditure for a child care centre after staff and the useful life is pretty short given they are in the hands of under 6yo day in day out), safety requirements and state governments that want to turn child care centres into early learning centres. Add in rent which is usually not going to be low, given a childcare centre needs to be close to population or business centres and you have the ingredients for a high cost structure.

Take into account the average wage of childcare staff, shortage of staff in the industry, high turnover, cost of recruiting and you're talking about staff costs alone costing from $30-50 per child per day.

Even with federal government subsidies and the tax rebate out of pocket costs are huge relative to the average income.

And as far as the comments by others about demand for childcare being guaranteed - who do you think are the biggest users of child care - mothers working part-time/casually and families with at least one person working in banking and finance and other white collar jobs - guess who will probably be the first to lose their jobs when the economic crunch comes?