Shane Te Pou – Why we must nationalise Early Childhood Education

Back in August 2023, when the birth rate numbers were first raising eyebrows, I wrote a column about the privatisation of early childcare. Looking back, I was fooling myself. I really thought it might land as a bit of a war cry — something that got people angry enough to demand action. Whānau, it didn’t. Three years on, I wish I could tell you it’s turned around. It hasn’t. If anything, it’s gotten worse, and the further we go the harder it is to pretend otherwise.

So what’s actually changed since I wrote that? Fees have kept climbing. Early childhood education costs rose another 2.5 percent just in the back half of last year alone, even with subsidies in the mix. Meanwhile government funding for the sector has ballooned to something like $3.1 billion, an 80 percent increase over ten years. You’d think pouring that kind of money in would ease the squeeze on parents. It hasn’t — because for-profit providers set their fees based on what they think parents can afford, not on what the funding rate actually is. When families struggle, government lifts the subsidy — and once parents have a bit more room, providers simply lift the fee again. Round and round it goes.

And here’s the stark reality, whānau. Look at who’s actually banking the money. The country’s biggest provider runs more than 250 centres — and last year it posted a tax-free operating profit of $32 million while lifting payments to its Its bosses $37 million. Tax-free, whānau. Registered as a charity, run like a business, The second-largest provider is backed by a private equity firm, and has posted multi-million-dollar profits of its own while parents watch their fees climb. Round out the top three with a corporate chain running its own network of centres nationwide.

That’s the picture. A faux charity, a private equity outfit, and a corporate operator, sitting at the top of a sector we’re pouring billions of public money into every year — while the parent dropping their tamariki off at 7:30am still can’t make the numbers add up by Friday.

Here’s what really pisses me off about all of this: it’s happening whilst our Kōhanga Reo, Kindergartens and Play Schools have to rely on work bees and sausage sizzles just to survive. Shameful.

Hop across the ditch and it’s a different story. Australia poured billions into their own system specifically to keep fees down for families, and it shows — childcare there is meaningfully more affordable than what we’ve built here.

Yep, the Aussie government introduced a mechanism tying fee increases to funding, at the same time explicitly pouring more money into childcare workers’ wages.

No wonder our mokopuna are packing up and heading to Australia in their thousands. Better pay, cheaper childcare, an easier run at a house. A world class superannuation program that no political party has mucked around with since it’s introduction.

Good luck to them, honestly. I don’t blame a single one for going.

I keep coming back to three things when I try to work out why families who stay here are opting out of having kids altogether: student loan debt, housing, and the cost of childcare. Pull any one of those out on its own and you can argue it away — every generation’s had a version of hard times. But stack all three on top of each other, the way our kids and mokopuna have to, and you start to understand why so many young people are looking at having their own kids and quietly deciding it’s not for them. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Housing’s still the big one. Buying on one income used to be normal. Now it’s a fantasy. Add a student loan that follows you out the door of university or polytechnic — teachers, nurses, physiotherapists, the lot — and doesn’t let up for years, then try finding childcare you can actually afford once you’ve somehow cleared those first two hurdles — and you can see exactly why so many are checking out of the whole idea, or simply checking out of the country.

I had a chat recently with a nurse. Mid-forties, good at her job, been in it her whole working life. She told me she didn’t manage to scrape together a house deposit until she was 46. A nurse’s wage and a student loan hanging over her the whole time meant owning a home simply wasn’t on the table for the best part of two decades.

And by the time she finally got there, she’d made her peace with not having kids. Not because she didn’t want them — she was clear about that. Because she didn’t think it would be fair on them, bringing a child into a struggle she was still climbing out of herself, rather than into a life that was already settled and stable. Here’s the other thing she told me: renting meant moving every couple of years. If she’d had kids, it would’ve meant changing schools.
That’s the bit that’s stayed with me. This isn’t a story about people who don’t want families. It’s a story about people who’ve done the maths, quietly and with real grief, and worked out it doesn’t add up — and who love the idea of their kids enough not to hand them the same struggle they’ve had.

When I was young, I really believed that if you work hard, one step at a time, you’ll get ahead in life. I know folks with a full-time job and a couple of part-time jobs on top, and no matter how hard they work they simply don’t get ahead — one step forward and five steps back.

Politicians love talking about “getting the country building again” and “easing the squeeze.” Fine words. Everyone says them. And can I just say — a populist, poorly thought-out lump sum payment simply won’t work. A one-off sugar hit is not the answer. We need structural change: housing, early childhood care, better parental leave, and — dare I say it — stronger provisions around part-time sick leave. A holistic approach is what’s needed here. But if we’re actually serious about the birth rate — and we should be, because a shrinking, ageing workforce isn’t some worry for the 2050s, it’s coming for us — then the fix has to hit student debt, housing, and childcare together. Not one at a time, and not by shovelling more public money into a sector that keeps finding ways to turn it into profit at the top instead of relief at the bottom.

Because right now, the message this country sends its young people is unmistakable: wait. And plenty of them are listening — right up until waiting quietly becomes not having kids at all, or not having them here. Ask that nurse. She’ll tell you it wasn’t a hard decision to make. It was just a sad one. And ask me in a few years how my 2026 war cry went. I’ll tell you the same thing… badly.