[lbo-talk] Childcare... (Important note)

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

Grant Lee quoted:
>The flamboyant Eddie Groves and his ABC Learning Centres group (which has
>a market capitalisation of $391 million) have avoided public criticism over
>substandard facilities. "I couldn't sleep at night if one my centres was
>not up to scratch," Groves says. "I've got three teams of renovators flying
>round the country out of Brisbane and their job is to keep our centres
>up to standard. We just did a centre in Melbourne, you should see it, I tell
>you, it's like the Taj Mahal."

Has childcare there been recently been deregulated/privatised?  

This focus on facilities is a cheap fix, and the one used here in the U.S. to 
'sell' centers to parents, when the true test here of a childcare center is 
does it pay decently and provide fringe benefits, which translates to a staff 
with low turnover and less tension & exhaustion.  But that's way too expensive 
when you can just slap on a new coat of paint.

Jenny Brown