Service providers have rejected a recommendation by the Productivity Commission that parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be cut off from childcare benefits.
The Productivity Commission report recommended changes to the sector, including combining subsidies into a single payment which would be means-tested and paid directly to childcare providers.
It also recommends that eligibility for this single payment be limited to parents who can prove that their children have received their scheduled immunisations.
New South Wales is currently the only jurisdiction to introduce legislation forcing parents to prove that their children are immunised before they can enrol in childcare.
The Productivity Commission recommends that cutting off the subsidies for parents of unimmunised children be applied across the country.
Social services minister Scott Morrison has told News Corp that he is “open to everything in the report”.
“The commission makes some very important suggestions in this area” Morrison said. “There have been positive outcomes from those types of linkages. There’s nothing to suggest that what has been done in the past wouldn’t be continued.”
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said cutting off payments to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children is a “common sense measure that deserves serious consideration”.
“Kids deserve to grow up safe and healthy. I’m not comfortable with the idea of subsidising people who put kids’ health at risk. Childcare support should go to people who are doing the right thing by their child and the children they play with. I think most Australians would agree with me on this,” Shorten said.
“Families who do the right thing [in] immunising their children shouldn’t have to worry about whether their child is going to pick up a preventable illness at their childcare centre. This shouldn’t be a political issue – it’s just common sense,” he said.
But childcare groups have rejected the idea, saying it will not help convince parents to immunise their children.
Samantha Page from Early Childhood Australia said she “wasn’t convinced” that the measure will work.
“We don’t want children excluded,” Page told Guardian Australia. “It will further ostracise these kids.”
“I don’t think exclusion and punishment is going to change anything … We need to engage and persuade parents rather than force them [to vaccinate].”
She thinks the only way to convince parents to vaccinate their children is through a public health campaign.
Head of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Dr Brian Owler, agrees. The AMA has stepped back from calls to cut off subsidies for parents who do not immunise their children.
“We don’t want to punish particular children,” Owler told Guardian Australia. “We want to make sure that those people who have genuine concerns about vaccinations go to see their GP.”
“There’s a need to tackle head-on messages from anti-vax people,” he said.
Gwynn Bridge from the Australian Childcare Alliance said the decision to immunise should be made by parents and that only governments can make vaccinations compulsory.
But she acknowledged that childcare providers are “on the watch” for children who have not have their shots.
“It’s worrying when we’re having massive measles outbreaks,” she said.