Has there ever been a social problem where the solution is ‘more government’? To the taxpayer-funded hammers of Australia’s Marxist Propaganda Collective ABC, of course, every problem looks like a nail in want of a good bashing with the blunt instrument of government. So naturally they approach the steady stream of revelations of abuse and neglect in childcare centres, not by asking whether the whole thing is simply a bad idea, but by pushing the delusion that handing it over wholesale to the government is the magic solution.
The latest horror show served up by Aunty’s investigators details the predictable nightmare unfolding in Australia’s 23-billion-dollar outsourced parenting racket. We are treated to tales of toddlers left wallowing in soiled nappies, systemic neglect and horrific physical trauma.
[Leigh Cotter] said the centre told him his son was wearing socks indoors and had slipped and hit his head and left ankle just before pick-up.
When he took him to the hospital, the doctors discovered a spiral fracture on the other leg, running from his ankle towards his knee.
Cotter said an educator later told him his son had been screaming in another room much earlier in the day, but staff had not realised he was seriously injured.
“Six hours of walking on a broken leg – it’s child abuse,” Cotter said.
Of course it is. Now factor in the documented, stomach-churning instances of outright predation and sexual abuse uncovered across the industry. Any normal human being is forced to confront the fundamental, glaring question: is the very concept of institutionalised childcare simply a rotten idea?
What sane society rips babies and toddlers away from their mothers, practically from birth, and dumps them into the care of underpaid, high-turnover strangers? The majority of them immigrants from Third World countries, with no or almost certainly bogus ‘qualifications’.
Naturally, the commentariat will bleat that ‘families need two incomes just to survive’. This tired excuse falls apart upon the slightest scrutiny. First, millions of mothers openly lament that their entire take-home pay is instantly swallowed up by extortionate childcare fees. So why bother? Why subject yourself to the daily soul-crush of a corporate open-plan cubicle hive merely to pay complete strangers to raise your flesh and blood? Is shuffling spreadsheets for middle management truly preferable to nurturing your own infant?
Second, the myth that single-income survival is impossible is demolished by the explosive growth of single-occupant dwellings across the country. If millions of solitary individuals can manage to house and feed themselves on a single wage, a committed couple certainly can – provided they are willing to forgo a few luxuries.
Yet the ABC’s solution to this systemic disaster is not to encourage mothers to stay home, but to agitate for fully nationalised, universal state warehousing.
The Commonwealth is trying to change that. Its $1 billion Building Early Education Fund will support up to 160 new or expanded services, with a focus on not-for-profit provision in areas where child care is scarce.
This relentless push for a cradle-to-grave, state-funded collectives brings to mind the grim crèches of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania or Mao’s agrarian communes. The totalitarian mind has always despised the nuclear family, eager to sever the parental bond early so the state can mould pliable little comrades from infancy.
Instead of subsidising industrial holding pens to the tune of 16 billion dollars a year, perhaps it is time we examined our degenerate social priorities. Have we truly fallen so far that we care more about sprawling McMansions, European holidays and being obedient ‘Productive Economic Units’ than the safety and souls of our children?
No shiny brochure, corporate rebrand or bloated bureaucratic taskforce will ever replace a mother’s care.
