Rudd's Child Care Policy Wrong

Mr Rudd's Childcare policy is just plain wrong. While many dual income families may find the $1.5 billion speeding spree attractive, the fact of the matter is that struggling single-income families will once again subsidize the child-minding arrangements of comparatively wealthy two-income families. Common sense would indicate this is not right.

When you analysis the figures, the stay at home mother who does the right thing and care for her own children at home, will only receive about half of the support that is given to working parents.

Have we forgotten that Australia has signed the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of the Child which sought to make the interests of the child paramount? Principle 6 of this Declaration said: “…a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from his mother.”

Now 28 years down the track, not only does the Australian Government sanction the separation of a child from his/her mother, but now pays them a handsome dividend for so doing. It is clear from the present funding of universal formal child minding that the interests of the child are no longer of `paramount consideration’.

The argument that childcare is a working cost cannot be sustained. Child-care is not a cost of being employed. Besides, doesn’t everyone have costs associated with work? We pay for transport to get to work, but we don't get anything from the government!

For any government to encourage the long term separation of a mother from her child is reprehensible.

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