Onslow childcare deal holds key to attracting educators to remote towns

Children playing and learning in a remote Pilbara town could hold the key to ensuring far-flung communities benefit from any overhaul of the national childcare system. Discussions about making child care more accessible and affordable inevitably come back to staffing, with recruitment and retention made difficult by low wages and competition from other sectors such as aged care. There are estimates of a shortfall of thousands of educators across the country and warnings efforts to offer early education to more children will come to naught without more staff. Defying these trends, a community and business partnership in Onslow, led by the town’s chamber of commerce and industry, has made working almost 1400km north of Perth more attractive to childcare educators. The agreement offers educators a $500 weekly living allowance, two return flights to Perth each year and a $3000 retention bonus if they stay in the job for more than 12 months, on top of above-award wages. One Tree Community Services general manager Sophie Martin says the money is life-changing. “We really are constantly looking for innovative ways to support our educators to stay, to be happy with their lives in Onslow and to enrich the town and provide this really essential service for many of the workers in town,” she told The Sunday Times. “Without it, I don’t think that we could either attract or retain staff.” The cost of housing is “astronomical” — one educator was paying $900 a week for a granny flat while another was looking at a two-bedroom house for $1600 a week — and other living costs such as groceries are also very high. “On an educator wage, that’s impossible,” Ms Martin said. The Onslow Chamber of Commerce and Industry identified in 2021 that there were 95 children under the age of four in town, but only 45 childcare places, less than half of which were actually available because of staff shortages. It struck the agreement initially with Chevron, Woodside, Onslow Salt and the Shire of Ashburton to support the One Tree childcare centre in town. This was renewed in May with Chevron now the sole funder. Chevron Australia communities and partnerships manager Ciara Griffiths said the oil and gas giant believed it was important to foster thriving communities in the areas where it operated. “We recognise that access to child care, as well as finding staff to support childcare services, remains an ongoing challenge across regional and remote communities in Australia, including Onslow where we operate our Wheatstone natural gas facility,” she said. One Tree has similar agreements with mining companies across the Pilbara to support childcare services in other remote locations. Ms Martin said the deals benefited everybody. “They (mining companies) are in small towns, so they want to support the local townships but also support their workers to be able to access child care so that husbands and wives and families can move to towns in remote locations,” she said. “Child care is just such an essential service for keeping those remote towns open.” Education Minister Jason Clare and Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly are now considering recommendations from the Productivity Commission about how to move towards a universal childcare system. The commission handed over its report at the end of June, but the Government is not expected to release it until September. Its interim report recommended offering 30 hours a week of care to all children under five, with taxpayers covering the entire fee for families earning less than $80,000 – almost a third of all those with young children – at an annual cost to the Budget of $2.5 billion. It also said the Government should directly support services in areas with low supply, such as regional and remote communities. Other proposals have suggested subsidies leaving parents paying no more than $10 a day for three days of care each week. In May, an alliance of more than 50 regional community groups warned the Government its overhaul of child care could not be one-size-fits-all, with remote areas likely to need direct intervention to ensure there are adequate services.