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EXCERPTS
The fate of ABC Learning should be a lesson to government at all levels that many aspects of daily life must remain or return to the preserve of collective responsibility.
It is indicative of how blinkered we had become to the imperatives of "economic growth" and our individual need to service debt that the care and nurture of our children fell so easily into the hands of those whose primary motive was profit.
That ABC Learning was able to grow so rapidly to control 25 per cent of the sector was both unhealthy and unsustainable.
I can understand how the ideologically blind Howard Government, which eventually contributed former Children Services Minister Larry Anthony to the ABC Learning board, could embrace the concept that the needs of our young could be best served by the profit at all cost imperative of the stock exchange.
But the Rudd government's failure to echo calls for that most fundamental responsibility to be returned to the control of the community sector is worrying. Childcare should not be a business to be traded and speculated on by those looking for a good bet.
It was right to pump money in to keep ABC centres open, but what is also needed is a long term plan for the future care of our kids.
There are many successfully community care models functioning in Australia. It would make sense to direct any future government funding to assist the purchase and transfer of ABC Learning's assets to providers whose ultimate goal is the delivery of quality, early childhood development of our most precious resource in an environment that puts the child's needs before any other consideration.
Those assets should be going cheap. They are located on land zoned for the purpose of the provision of that service and, after all, ABC Learning is broke.
There is a place for the private sector in childcare. There will always be those with the capacity and desire to pay more for what they see as an exclusive or higher level of service.
But the meltdown of under regulated capitalism is an opportunity to re assess the dogma of extremes.
The care of our children is a good place to start.
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- reprinted from the Gold Coast Daily Mail