Childcare inquiry: Interim report

Introduction

This report is the ACCC’s second interim report as part of our inquiry into childcare services.

The Treasurer directed the ACCC to inquire into 4 different childcare services, each of which
are eligible for the Child Care Subsidy – centre based day care, family day care, outside
school hours care and in home care (appendix A). Preschools and informal care by friends
and family are not within the scope of this inquiry.

We published our first interim report in July 2023 which focused on prices, supply and
demand for childcare and an initial examination of the impact of the Child Care Subsidy.
This second interim report makes draft findings and recommendations regarding the
costs of providing childcare services, the nature of competition in childcare markets, the
profitability and viability of the sector, and the effectiveness of Australia’s existing price
regulation mechanisms in aiding affordability of childcare.

The ACCC welcomes submissions on the preliminary findings and recommendations by
29 October 2023. You can make a submission via the ACCC website.

This report focuses primarily on centre based day care and outside school hours care
services. We are continuing our analysis of family day care and in home care services costs
and will report our findings for these services in our final report due to the Treasurer by
31 December 2023. In our final report, we will also report on changes to prices following the
introduction of the increased Child Care Subsidy in July 2023 and provide our final findings
and recommendations. This will follow the completion of our stakeholder roundtables and
consideration of submissions from interested stakeholders.