Early education and childcare is as important to Australia’s economic future as the introduction of public schooling and Medicare, one of the nation’s leading businesswomen has declared as pressure mounts on the federal government to sharply reduce the cost for families.
It found a fully subsidised system for low-income families would lift the total hours worked across the economy by the equivalent of 207,000 full-time workers, but axing work and study requirements for existing subsidies and covering the hourly cap for them would cost the budget $2.5 billion a year. Mostyn said reform of childcare and early education promised the same sort of huge economic changes as public schooling – which most economists cite as one of the most important developments in global productivity – and universal healthcare.“We have to see this model in terms of public schooling and Medicare and superannuation as that important to the economy,” she said.