They've been called "childcare deserts" the vast stretches of Australia where three or more children compete for a single childcare space. Now, new research is sounding the alarm for the nearly six million Australians who live in those blackspots, amid warnings too many children are getting left behind.
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00:00Parks, playgrounds and a flood of other young families lured Bianca to this booming new
00:07suburb in Melbourne's outer east.
00:09Lots and lots of kids in our street alone, there's about 5 babies that were born in the
00:13last 12 months.
00:14Let's have a little look, what's on the computer?
00:17Only after weeks of searching did the teaching assistant realise it was missing one thing,
00:22enough childcare spaces to go around.
00:24So we were pretty much told up front we wouldn't find a place this year.
00:28Nationwide there are roughly two young children per childcare place, but new analysis shows
00:34the supply is far from evenly spread.
00:37And looking at this area where Bianca lives, what does it tell us about childcare access
00:42in her part of Melbourne?
00:43So what this shows is that each one of these shapes here, there is about 500 people living
00:47in them and these areas in brown will have lower levels of childcare accessibility compared
00:52to neighbouring regions that are in blue.
00:54The research reveals disparities across the state.
00:57Tasmania and Western Australia have the greatest shortages with nearly three young children
01:02for every childcare place.
01:05But the city-country divide is even starker.
01:07Take parts of Herberton in regional Queensland where about 50 children compete for a spot.
01:13In the metropolitan areas there's more staff, there's more families in need of childcare
01:18and it means that there's just more provision in those particular areas.
01:22While childcare access overall has improved in recent years, these geographical divides
01:27have deepened.
01:28The federal government hopes subsidies and a wage increase will ease the shortage.
01:33For families like Bianca's, it's having a big impact on parent and child alike.
01:37I was going to go back to work in term four and I've made a call that we're just going
01:41to go back to work next year instead.
01:42Some of the problems with children missing out on early learning are that they are not
01:47as well prepared as other people in their class when they go to school.
01:55In the critical first thousand days of a child's life.