The ACCC found families were spending as much as16 per cent of their net household income on centre-based day care full-time, and called on government to consider changes to key policies such as the Child Care Subsidy.
Australian families spent as much as one-sixth of their income on childcare last year, with costs far higher than in most other OECD countries.
The competition watchdog said this made childcare “less affordable for households than in most other OECD countries”, where the average was 9 per cent, putting Australia 26th out of 32 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development., which came into effect in July and gave hundreds of thousands of families expanded access to subsidies.
Among its draft recommendations, the ACCC proposed the activity test that determines the number of hours of subsidised childcare a family is entitled to should be removed or substantially reconfigured as “it may be acting as a barrier to more vulnerable children accessing care and creating a barrier to workforce entry or return for some groups”.
The ACCC also found that the cost for large providers providing centre-based daycare increased by 27 per cent between 2018 and 2022, outstripping inflation, with staff wages the biggest expense for providers.Not-for-profit centre-based daycare providers were far more likely to pay their staff above award wages than for-profit providers . Staff at not-for-profit providers were also more likely to be employed full-time.
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Competition watchdog finds childcare less affordable than most OECD countriesThe ACCC found families were spending as much as16 per cent of their net household income on centre-based day care full-time, and called on government to consider changes to key policies such as the Child Care Subsidy.
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Competition watchdog finds childcare less affordable than most OECD countriesThe ACCC found families were spending as much as16 per cent of their net household income on centre-based day care full-time, and called on government to consider changes to key policies such as the Child Care Subsidy.
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