By Jo Shulman, Moriarty Foundation CEO
First published in NT News.
On Wednesday 11 December 2024 the Prime Minister announced his next step towards Labor’s universal childcare policy: three days of subsidised childcare and a $1 billion Building Early Education Fund to expand centre availability in areas of need.
Scrapping the controversial activity test will go a long way to helping low-income households access the childcare their young people deserve. A parent’s ability to work should not impact on whether they are able to access early education for their child.
But while outer suburbs and regional Australia were called out by the Prime Minister, Minister Jason Clare and Minister Anne Aly as beneficiaries of new program, there is a critical group missing from this announcement: remote Australia.
While money is of course a key barrier to quality early childhood education, outside of metropolitan cities there are a multitude of challenges that need to be overcome.
A lack of early childhood education and care options, remoteness, transport, complex enrolment processes, institutional distrust, and a lack of cultural considerations, are just some of the hurdles they have to overcome.
Children from the most disadvantaged families, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, are the most likely to benefit from early education and care, and least likely to be able to access it.
A key reason is that funding is focused on mainstream childcare options and fails to take into consideration programs that are led by, adapted to and designed by the communities that need them the most. This needs to change.
Early childhood programs that are holistic, community-led and respond flexibly to needs on the ground are the ones that succeed in remote communities, because they are the type of programs that these communities trust.
The current framework means reforms won’t make a difference for Australia’s most vulnerable children if this is not taken into account.
In 2021, Canada introduced Universal Childcare but excluded non-traditional forms of early years education from the equation. Since then, education attendance has not increased for around one third of the country’s most disadvantaged children.
Australia cannot risk repeating this mistake.
Universal childcare must protect and include support for programs like Moriarty Foundation’s not-for-profit Indi Kindi – they cannot be left out in the cold.
Indi Kindi has been operating for 12 years in the town of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, located 13 hours from Darwin.
It’s a program that supports newborns to five-year-olds and is designed, led and delivered by the local Aboriginal community. The results have been groundbreaking.
A recent Deloitte Access Economics report found Indi Kindi has reduced the number of developmentally vulnerable children in Borroloola from 74 per cent to 42 per cent, bringing it in line with the Northern Territory average.
It operates differently to mainstream early learning services practices. It is delivered 100% free to families. There is no traditional childcare ‘centre’ – kids prepare for school on Country, learning from an all-Aboriginal team of educators, often connected to them through familial ties.
It is a community-delivered and designed, culturally driven, local Indigenous early learning program that aligns with Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework while at the same time maintaining cultural relevance and social value for Aboriginal families in Borroloola.
For Australia to achieve a truly universal early education and care system, programs like Indi Kindi, designed by communities where children have the most to gain and are most at risk, must not be left out.
If Mr Albanese wants every child to have access to quality, affordable early education then he needs to be looking at the whole picture.
