Australian Education Minister Dan Tehan gives working parents in rural and regional areas unrealistic advice

"Nearly 300,000 children in regional and remote areas receive formal childcare. However, unlike capital cities where a glut of childcare centres is reported, access to childcare continues to be a problem in regional areas.” [Centre for Independent Studies, 23 September 2018]

City centrism is alive and well in the Morrison Government.

Photograph: ABC

Here is the Minister for Education and Liberal MP for Wannon Dan Tehan  (pictured left) blithely assuming that every town across Australia not only has a chilcare centre it has more than one.

In Dan's world parents in rural and regional areas are apparently able to shop around for competitively priced childcare.

[cue cynical laughter]

The Daily Examiner, 22 July 2019, p.5:

Greedy childcare centres have gobbled up almost half the money parents were meant to save from new subsidies by raising their fees.

A subsidy system which began on July 2 last year was meant to save the average family $1300 in childcare fees a year.

But new data shows that in the year leading up to the subsidy’s introduction, the average parent with a child in care 48 weeks of the year is paying $622 more than they were 12 months ago.

Of this $276.50 of that came from cost increases between July and September 2018, after the subsidy was introduced.

Labor’s childcare spokes-woman Amanda Rishworth said the government should be “naming and shaming” centres who lifted fees to take advantage of the subsidies.

But Education Minister Dan Tehan said out-of-pocket costs for child care had still fallen almost 9 per cent, and urged those getting a raw deal to “vote with their feet and find a new service”.

Education Department data recording costs in September 2018, the first released since the subsidies came into place, revealed the increased costs.

It showed the average family, which pays for 28.8 hours a week, had fees increase by $13 a week between September 2017 and September 2018, including $5.80 a week increase in the quarter the subsidies were introduced….