Stephen Mayne

And some sectors are just not moving.

Like I've retired from Manningham Council these days, but we owned 25 kinders, Alan.

Only one of them was co-located on a school site, which is where all kinders should be.

And we were running all of them with just sessional kinder.

So there was no long day childcare.

And then all these brand new childcare centres get built all over the municipality, offering childcare and a kindergarten program.

So the numbers attending our service, the 25 kinders, was falling because they were also single-room kinders.

They were tucked away in side streets.

So I almost reckon the councils should just get out of kindergartens altogether and sell the lot to the private sector and tell them to fill the rooms.

You can't offer three hours a day in 2026 because how many parents need that long day?

And that's why they're going to all the brand new childcare centres.

And I remember one guy explained to me who was in the sector how it was working.

Because your typical childcare manager is on a salary of $125,000 a year.

But your typical childcare centre...

earns a profit of 250 000 so all these landlords you know charter hall all these people they just go out there let's keep building child care centers and they can they can always find people to sign a 20-year lease with a four percent escalator because you've got all these child care center managers who sit there and say well i'm earning 125 working for the man you know working for jail or someone i'll sign this lease and i'll make 250 000 a year so there's very low barriers to entry

to get into the childcare management space.

I mean, Peter Dutton made his first few millions running, owning, managing childcare centres.

And so that's partly why there's been an explosion of childcare centres being built, because there's an endless line of people prepared to sign leases and manage them, because they typically do make $250,000 a year, a combination of parents paying up and rising government funding.

Yes.

I actually know the Camp Australia origin story.