Putting a Price on Our Children

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here is a need for more child-care places, concedes Prime Minister John Howard - particularly in after-school care. But "these generalized calls for a complete revamp of the system - well, I think the present system works reasonably well," he tells Time. "Some people have unreasonable expectations. There are some people out there who basically think that child care shouldn't cost them anything." Howard points out that his government's 30% rebate on child-care fees - introduced in 2004 but paid for the first time only this year - offers parents up to $A4,000 per child each year. Making child-care costs tax deductible would be unfair, he adds, because it would favor those with higher incomes.

His new Family and Community Services Minister, Mal Brough, says child-care places have more than doubled - from 300,000 - since the government first came to power, and insists that families are receiving "unprecedented financial support" to access places. But statistics and parents suggest that's still not enough. A recent Australian Bureau of Statistics report says around 250,000 women who want to return to work or work longer hours can't because of a lack of child care. Having seen friends in that position, Melbourne mother Sarah Tomasetti thinks herself lucky to have just been offered a place for her son one day a week - after a 19-month wait. Though her temporary teaching jobs occupy only 26 weeks each year, she'll have to pay the center throughout the year or give up her son's place. Families constantly battle the system's shortcomings, she says, yet "there doesn't seem to be any earthly reason why it shouldn't be dealt with."

Lynne Wannan couldn't agree more. Since the government drastically cut funding for community-based child-care centers in the '90s, she has watched the sector stagnate. So she's about to launch Spike Children's Services, a not-for-profit company that will help desperate local parents' groups find the means to set up new centers. Community-based services are usually located in council-owned buildings and run with the help of parents' committees; working with local councils that have either land or empty buildings to offer, Spike would broker the loans and offer know-how. It's a simple idea that could become a national model, says Wannan, convenor of the National Association of Community Based Children's Services. Ahead of Spike's upcoming launch she's already had councils phone her asking how they can get involved. "We should have done this a long time ago," she says.

Not every day-care center has waiting lists for every age group, and in some areas a lack of planning has even produced too many places. Also a problem are duplicate applications, caused when panicked parents join several different waiting lists. To reduce confusion, some councils in Sydney share centrally compiled lists of applicants; a similar scheme will soon be tried in Victoria. But where shortages exist, they're often dire, particularly for babies and toddlers, who need more intensive - and expensive - care than older children. In the Melbourne bayside municipality of Port Phillip, 1,935 children are on the waiting list for care, says Rebecca Bartel, co-covenor of Childcare Access in Port Phillip, a voluble parents' campaign to highlight shortages in the area. The local council has offered to provide about 120 new places, far fewer than parents had hoped for, and Bartel says funding changes accompanying that offer threaten to push fees to $A73 a day. To afford to keep two children in child care at that price, she says, is beyond the means of most families.