Labor commits to outlawing incentive and inducements

Labor has announced a promise to outlaw the use of incentives and inducements by early education and care centre operators to attract enrolments.

The Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Development Amanda Rishworth has released a statement detailing her position on the use of incentives by providers as a means of generating enrolments.

“A Shorten Labor Government will ban childcare and early education providers from offering inducements to boost their enrolment numbers, protecting parents from being lured into childcare arrangements which may not suit their needs,” she said.

The announcement has been made in the wake of a report in Saturday’s Courier Mail that detailed a number of cases where centres had been offering incentives to families to commit to an enrollment.

Ms Rishworth said “Some examples of the inducements being offered include holiday packages in resorts, cash refunds, and free iPads,” and that “Labor does not believe this is an appropriate use of tax payer funds”.

In addition to a ban on inducements offering any goods, services or activity that is unrelated to the delivery of early childhood services, Labor will also move to set up a ‘whistleblowing’ channel whereby families and educators will be able to confidentially report suspected inappropriate behaviour.