You and your day

A long-running educator hands in her notice because she can no longer afford to live within commuting distance of the centre. A parent complains, again, about the fees. A new family arrives whose first language is not English and the centre is the first formal institution they have engaged with in Australia. A child with newly identified additional needs requires more support than the staffing ratio allows. A casual educator, a young woman who has been at the centre for three weeks, mentions that something happened with a parent at pickup that made her uncomfortable. None of this arrives labelled as politics, but each item is the surface of political pressure reaching the centre.

The Italian feminist Mariarosa Dalla Costa argued in the early 1970s that the work of caring for small children was a political question disguised as a private one. The work made every other industry possible, but it was treated as if it just happened on its own. Childcare in Australia is one of the places where her argument lands hardest. The nappy changes, the meal preparation, the cleaning of toys are essential to every other workplace functioning, and yet the people who do that work have been kept on wages that have not kept up with the cost of living for decades 

Reading the politics is essential to running a centre, to working in one, and to deciding whether the conditions of the work are tolerable.

Your community and clients

Childcare sits inside community in a way that few other industries do. A centre is a place where families meet each other across class, race, and language. It is also a place where the gaps between families become visible: which families can afford which kinds of care, which families are eligible for which subsidies, which families are politically connected enough to be heard when something goes wrong.

Different communities have different politics around childcare. A wealthy professional community has different expectations than a working-class one. A multicultural community has different needs than a monolingual one. A First Nations family using a community-controlled service is in a different political relationship to the system than a non-Indigenous family using a private one. Queer-parented families navigate different conditions again. Each of these communities has politics that reach the centre directly.

When an educator hands in her notice because she cannot afford housing, the politics of cost of living, of women's wages, and of housing affordability are at the door of the centre. When a parent struggles with fees, the politics of subsidies, of taxation, and of family policy are at the door. The centre is always already political.

Your Council and neighbourhood

Local Councils shape childcare through planning, through community service funding in some areas, and through the local environment that families and educators move through. Council decisions about parks, libraries, public transport, and neighbourhood safety all shape what childcare can be. Council politics on housing affordability shapes whether educators can live near the centres they work at 

A Council that prioritises early childhood is in a different political position than one that does not. The way Councils decide is also political. Educators, who tend to be young women on shift work, are often poorly represented in Council politics. Multicultural and migrant families are often poorly represented too. Reading whose voice is being amplified locally, and whose is being filtered out, is part of reading childcare politics.

Your state

State politics shapes childcare significantly even though the federal government dominates funding. State systems decide on educator regulation, on quality standards, on family violence and child protection frameworks, on disability inclusion in early learning, and on the politics of recognising First Nations families and educators. State politics also shapes the relationship between childcare, kindergarten, and the early years of school, which varies considerably across the country.

Anti-discrimination law sits at state level, and shapes what protection LGBTQ+ educators and families can expect. State multicultural affairs policy shapes how migrant families are received. State disability policy shapes how children with additional needs are supported in early learning settings. Reading state politics for childcare means watching education, multicultural affairs, family violence, anti-discrimination, and worker safety politics, not just childcare-specific announcements.

The nation 

The national politics of childcare in Australia is one of the most active in the country. Subsidy reform, ratio reform, qualification politics, and the long-running debate about whether childcare should be universal and free are all national questions. The political pressure on childcare has been intensifying for two decades, and the political settlement is still moving.

The national workforce conversation in childcare is also a migration conversation, a race conversation, and a class conversation, whether it is named that way or not. The childcare workforce in Australia is overwhelmingly women, disproportionately migrants, and often paid wages that have not kept up with cost of living. Inside that workforce, the experiences are not interchangeable. A migrant educator on a temporary visa, a young Australian-born educator with a casual contract, a First Nations educator at a community-controlled service, and a senior teacher with a permanent role all sit inside the same political settlement under very different conditions.

The region

Childcare across the Asia-Pacific is shaped by very different political settlements. Aotearoa New Zealand has been politically more active than Australia in some respects, particularly in early childhood education for Maori children and the integration of language and culture into early learning. Pacific Island childcare politics is shaped by community structures very different from the Australian institutional model.

Migration flows are central to childcare across the region. Australia recruits early childhood educators from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Fiji, and elsewhere. The political conditions of those countries shape who arrives. The political conditions of Australia, including visa politics and worker protections, shape what those workers experience when they get here.

Regional politics also shapes how childcare is understood. The Australian model, with formal centres, qualifications, and ratios, is not the global default. Many countries depend on extended family networks, on community-led care, on faith-based care, and on combinations of formal and informal arrangements. Migrant families bringing different expectations into Australian centres are part of a political conversation about what childcare is for.

The world 

Globally, the politics of childcare has been intensifying everywhere wealthy economies face declining birth rates, rising care costs, and increasing political pressure on women's economic participation. The question of whether childcare should be universal, free, or heavily subsidised is being answered differently in different countries, and the answers are reshaping each country's labour market and family politics.

The childcare workforce globally is overwhelmingly women, disproportionately migrants, and often racialised. The same political settlement that has produced this workforce in Australia has produced it in most wealthy countries. The political backlash against migration in many of those countries is now reaching childcare systems that depend on the workers it targets. Australian childcare is exposed to similar political risk.