Give parents a choice
Removing financial obstacles to parenting
The public is being made to think about the hand that rocks the cradle. Horrific is not too strong a word to describe the recent revelations of abuse in child care centres allegedly committed by Joshua Dale Brown. If you haven’t already read the details I’ll spare you. Let’s just say that 1200 families have been told their children should be tested for sexually transmitted infections. The crimes have sent shock waves through the Australian community where in 2023 nearly half of one-year olds and 90 per cent of four-year olds attend some sort of Early Childhood Education Centre (ECEC).
Industry and government are scurrying to respond. Some centres are already rolling out more CCTV cameras and even body worn cameras have been suggested. The government is looking at more rigorous screening for childcare workers and higher minimum staffing requirements. Better information sharing between states has also been suggested as a way of ensuring offenders don’t jump from state to state. Apparently Brown was up to date with his Working with Children Checks.
All this must be cold comfort for parents who must use these centres. As The Australian reported “there has been a long history of childcare scandals in Australia” citing the case of Ashley Paul Griffith who only last September pled guilty to 307 child sex offences including 28 counts of rape. He was charged with more than 1600 offences.1
Katrina Lines CEO of Act for Kids provides some insight into the difficulties of managing child-abuse risks in daycare centres:
We know children zero to four are the most frequently abused. We need to protect babies and little ones who can’t speak up. The people who prey on kids are good at grooming the adults who look after kids. Workers need to be trained specifically in how to identify concerns about abuse, and worrying behaviour by other team members. It is the person’s goal to have unfettered time with vulnerable kids, so they need the adults to be disarmed because they don’t want people to be suspicious of their behaviour.2
There are currently 20,000 unfilled positions in childcare centres. One in seven centres is permitted to operate below the required number of staff through ‘regulatory waivers.’ The industry is known for its low pay, low entry-level requirements, use of employment agencies to fill gaps and staff ‘churn.’ The ideal safety setting for childcare centres is called “four eyes” which means that at any time there are two workers present to watch the kids and each other. But four-eyes is difficult to implement and more expensive.
Unsurprisingly most parents put their kids in care because of work commitments due largely to the “economic and social reality” that “it is far more difficult for families to survive on one income than it once was.3” Survey data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that more than three quarters of children attend formal childcare (76.6%) for work related reasons, compared to 14.6% who attend because it is beneficial for the child and 7.2% due to other personal reasons.4
Given the vulnerability of children up to the age of four isn’t the humane solution to offer parents the choice to take care of their own babies by removing the financial obstacles? Currently, paid parental leave in Australia runs out at 24 weeks forcing mothers back to work before babies have even been weaned. Could we afford it?
Daycare costs the taxpayer quite a lot as it is, $18.5 billion. Families with a combined income of $80,000 have 90 per cent of their childcare fees subsidised, costing the federal government $39,000 a year for parents paying $180 a day for full-time care.5 Offering those payments directly to mothers to look after their own children would be a good start.
However, paying a living wage to one parent per family until children are four years old would probably cost more than what is now spent on childcare.
This is a good moment for a short discussion on the difference between real wealth and money. Real wealth is the sum of material goods and services along with the skills, knowledge and plant which keeps them coming. Money is the bank manufactured claims against it, a sort of generalised ticket system. The industrial process which creates our real wealth is separate from that which creates money. For various reasons there is a shortfall between the retail prices on real wealth and the money required to make it available.
On the real wealth side is there anyone anywhere who thinks Australia does not have the physical wherewithal, food, housing, clothing etc. to maintain our mothers and their babies? Presumably they are not running around starving and naked at the minute and Australian mothers, in the main, aren’t growing food, sewing clothes or building houses. The problem is on the money side. Why can’t we provide mothers with sufficient money to buy what they need to live so if they don’t want to send their babies to a place where child molesters can get at them they don’t have to.
But I don’t want the debt-ridden taxpayer on the hook for this. I don’t want more money forcibly extracted from me to maintain somebody else’s kids. I have my own bills and kids. The bottom line is that you can’t take what is already insufficient and hope that spreading it more thinly will satisfy the need. Re-routing money through government merely reduces its purchasing power while at the same time stregthening the grip of concentrated political control. Two trends we’re eager to reverse.
The process which creates money as debt has been dealt with at length in this blog. The government could issue credit without corresponding debt and without the interest charges that come with the normal process of government financing. Section 51 of the Australian Constitution reads:
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:-
(xii.) Currency, coinage, and legal tender:
(xiii.) Banking, other than State banking; also State banking extending beyond the limits of the State concerned, the incorporation of banks, and the issue of paper money.6
The only essential condition which must precede the creation of credit is a sufficiency of real wealth for sale. This is only saying that what is physically possible, in this case the keeping of our mothers and their babies, should be financially possible. Failure to make the figures fit the facts is at the root of this problem, and so many others.
The terrifying thing for parents sending their kids to childcare is that we know we’re not catching all these people. As far as I can gather at least some of them are getting caught because of their online behaviour, especially their penchant for filming what they’re up to and posting it online. That’s partly why they’ve banned the use of personal devices in ECECs. One would think there are more abusers, perhaps many more, who don’t take those risks. We are in an era that has brought us Epstein, ubiquitous porn, gender and sexual weirdness of unimaginable stripes and general social and mental derangement. Parents have thier backs against the wall and they know the government and regulators can’t make any guarantees.
The choice will not be offered because the ruling clique, public and private, prefer commerical care despite the casualties. Parenting is not counted as ‘productivity’, it does nothing for GDP or the tax take. Furthermore it is well understood that the earlier programming starts the tighter its grip. The electronic Panopticon from cradle to grave is now a reality. A fully surveilled environment complete with ‘suspicious’ adults is bound to have strange psychological outcomes conducive to future compliance. And who in the light of these horrors will argue for the privacy of children in ‘care’ centres? The other thing to consider is where is all the data to be stored and how long before its given the AI treatment by the likes of Palantir & c.?
Mothers and babies, these are fundamental things. If we will not defend the rights of mothers and babies to be together then we are finished, as it should be. I’ll leave off with G.K. Chesterton.
I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.
Jack the Insider. 4.7.25. Joshua Dale Brown Allegations are Nighmarish for Parents: what society needs to do now. The Australian. Available from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/joshua-dale-brown-allegations-are-nightmarish-for-parents-what-society-needs-to-do-now/news-story/dfa297064ec5176b96b293ebeba03c06
Bita, N. 6.7.25. Childcare abuse case highlights how systemic failures imperil our kids. The Australian. Available from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/childcare-abuse-case-highlights-how-systemic-failures-imperil-our-kids/news-story/619707de05230d4642ad90d69607107f
Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood in Lyons K. 2025. Abuse allegations have prompted distress and outrage - but will Australia’s childcare system be fixed? The Guardian Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/05/australia-childcare-system-abuse-allegations-distress-outrage-ntwnfb
Joseph, E. Mueller, F. 2019. What do parents want? Australian Childcare preferences and attitubes. Centre for Independent Studies. Available from: https://www.cis.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/pp22.pdf
Bita, N. 3.7.25. Childcare safety scandals put spotlight on quality. Available from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/childcare-safety-scandals-put-spotlight-on-quality/news-story/af4fc9f5fdca4ee434055887b0c8a1e0
The Australian Constitution, Section 51. Available from: https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s51.html