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The [Australian] federal government hopes to turn 241 ABC Learning centres over to non-profit groups to prevent a repeat of the chaos of last November when the care of more than 100,000 children was jeopardised by the collapse of the child-care giant.
The court-appointed receivers of the centres, who have been managing them on behalf of the Government since December &emdash; will today launch a sale, with newspaper advertisements calling for expressions of interest.
Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard told The Age she had asked the receivers to look favourably on offers that would inject diversity into child care, particularly from non-profit groups.
A commitment to "leading-practice" employment approaches, including a willingness to take on the accrued entitlements of former ABC Learning employees, is another of the criteria that will be used to assess the proposals.
"Obviously absolutely top of mind and mandatory in all of this is the stable, ongoing provision of quality child care, which includes the early learning programs that the Government is committed to as a new feature of our child-care system," Ms Gillard said.
She said small for-profit child-care companies were not excluded from managing some of the centres, but the Government believed that greater diversity would make the sector more stable in the long term.
"We think the ABC Learning experience shows that if you allow a lot of market concentration … you can end up where we were in early November 2008, which is the biggest child-care company in the country teetering on the brink of creating absolute chaos in the child-care system without prompt action by government."
Ms Gillard said there had already been a high degree of interest from both for-profit and non-profit groups in taking over the 241 Government-supported centres, which were split from the main group of ABC centres after they were found to be unprofitable under the ABC Learning business model.
"Just because a child-care centre is not viewed as viable under the ABC Learning model doesn't mean that it won't be viewed as a desirable centre to run by someone else," she said.
The Commonwealth has provided $34 million to keep the centres open until March 31.
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- reprinted from The Age