Letter to the editor re Kylea Tink childcare claims

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8 November 2024

Dear editor

Thank you so much for your continued community support in publishing the Sun.

I specifically refer to your article on childcare. A number of the comments included in your article and sourced from Tink are not accurate.

She may have sourced the comments from her forum but I suggest the participants are also not totally across all the issues in the sector.

I chair boards of 2 not for profit that have childcare responsibility.

There are many issues in this industry. Current significant pay increases in other sectors such as aged care are attracting staff away. Pay increases currently proposed by Canberra of some 15% over 2 years have the sting that you must have an industry enterprise agreement in place to gain the grant. Many smaller centres are suddenly distracted and having to incur significant costs to bring in employment lawyers.

All of our centres are full. That is not the issue.

It is the regulations and government controls, mainly federally, that add costs to overheads.

I speak from some position of knowledge.

Unfortunately, Tink has been in parliament for 3 years and has done nothing to reduce the burden on childcare centres. She could have cut some of the bureaucracy and regulation in her time.

Signed, Ted Wziontek