ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Diamantina-based private equity firm has admitted that they’d be willing to help fix the broken and unfair childcare system is there was a pathway to extreme profitability down the track.
In 2005, the Betoota City Council sold off their 10 Betoota Nursery Care (BNC) long daycare facilities to private equity firm Mann Capital. It ended over a century of publicly-owned childcare facilities in the inner suburbs of our once vibrant and thriving desert community.
As the city began to grow, Mann Gunt poured investment into building the new Super Clever Kid Beginnings (SCKB) facilities that sprung up across Betoota. From the French Quarter to Betoota Heights, each new facility required staffing and management. Mann Gunt hired a third party to run and staff each centre, who in turn used a handful of labor hire companies to fill each role.
Due to stringent carer-to-child ratios set out by the fine state of Queensland, these centres are forced to find staff from wherever they can. That puts pressure on these labour hire firms to take just about anyone with half a bit of paper and a positive attitude.
While the centres are staffed and managed by the lowest bidder, SCKB charge a premium for their services. Some parents are paying upwards of $800 a fortnight, after the subsidy.
This alone creates an environment where Mann’s Leonard Risty admits profitability enters the extreme.
“Look, I’m sure you and your readers understand how private equity works, right?” he said.
“We take businesses that are unprofitable or weighed down with a lot of rot, we gut them, and then we ramp up revenue and profit, then punt them. It’s just how money is made, you know. That’s just the reality of the system that we are presented with, as investors,”
“You voted for this. You voted for repeated privatisation of essentially every service in Queensland and the Commonwealth. How do you think Queensland is going to pay for the Olympic Games? By privatising your hospital and education sectors,”
“So while it’s a shame that the daycare system is so unbelievably cooked, we didn’t make it. We just thrive in it.”
The Advocate reached out to SCKB for comment but have yet to receive a reply.
More to come.
