Australia has long taken pride in being a nation where hard work pays off. However, that promise breaks down for millions of parents, especially moms, as soon as they attempt to resume paid employment.

Any neighbourhood where more than three children under five are vying for every available daycare spot is known as a childcare desert. According to research conducted by Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute, almost one in four Australian families reside in a childcare desert, where formal, approved care is just not available.

The five graphics below depict that issue using data from the national registry of certified childcare providers and population forecasts from the 2021 Census, questioning not only where the deserts are located but also how the system that produced them is set up.

What makes a childcare desert? According to the Mitchell Institute, a childcare desert is any area where there are more than three children competing for each available spot and fewer than 33 authorised childcare spaces per 100 children under five.

Chart 1 — The scale of the system

There are more than a million authorised childcare facilities in Australia. Where they sit is the issue.

It is helpful to understand the system before looking at the gaps. Over a million spots are available across thousands of services in Australia’s authorised center-based care sector. The two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales, account for the majority of the total. However, the story is not fully revealed by raw figures. To find out how many centers are behind those numbers, click over each bar.

Source: Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority. (2025). National register of approved childcare services. ACECQA. (2019). National registers. Acecqa.gov.au. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/resources/national-registers . Centre-Based Care services only. Hover over each bar for full figures.

Chart 2 — The geographic divide

The majority of the supply is absorbed by capital cities. Communities in rural and regional areas are left to fight for what’s left.

Childcare facilities are concentrated in areas where a high population density makes them profitable. This reasoning creates a compounding issue: families in metropolitan areas have more options than those in rural areas, who may require formal care even more to compensate for seasonal job or isolation. The disparity between urban supply and regional demand is greatest in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.

Source: ACECQA (2025). Remoteness classification based on ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3 (2021) Greater Capital City Statistical Area postcode boundaries. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs/edition-3-july-2021-june-2026

Chart 3 — Inside the city

Source: ACECQA (2025). Top 400 suburbs by total approved places shown. Each point represents one suburb. Hover to explore individual suburb figures.

Chart 4 — The desert index

The desert issue cannot be disregarded when supply is compared to real demand.

Only half the story is revealed by a total place count. Demand, or the actual number of children under five living in each state, makes up the other half. By integrating ACECQA supply statistics with 2021 Census counts of children aged under five, the following chart immediately determines the desert index. According to the Mitchell Institute, a state with fewer than 33 spots per 100 children is considered to be in desert region. That barrier is indicated by the orange dotted line. The orange-colored states are below it. To view the precise number and its meaning, hover over each bar.

Source: ACECQA (2025); Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Census of Population and Housing 2021: Table G04 Age by Sex. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/guide-census-data/about-census-tools/community-profiles. Desert threshold of 33 places per 100 children based on Mitchell Institute methodology (Crabbe, 2023). Orange bars fall below the threshold.

Chart 5 — The structural problem

More children are not always reached by states with larger centers. Access and scale are two different things.

Approving larger centers in current sites is a common policy response to childcare shortages. However, the desert gap cannot be closed by center size alone. Each state’s total supply (x-axis), average center size (y-axis), and number of authorised services (bubble size) are compared in the chart below. If a state’s huge, well-resourced centers are concentrated in the same postcodes, it may nonetheless produce a desert. Proximity is necessary for access, not only a state’s capabilities.

Source: ACECQA (2025); ABS (2022). Bubble size represents the total number of approved centre-based care services in each state or territory. Hover over each bubble for full state-level figures.

The bottom line: It seems sufficient to have a million approved childcare facilities. It’s not fairly, not equally, and not where it matters. The desert issue is structural, geographical, and consequential. The location of a child’s birth in Australia still influences the parent’s ability to go back to work. It’s not a childcare issue. It is an economic problem disguised as a problem with service delivery.

Acknowledgements

All data visualisations were created using R (R Core Team, 2024). The tidyverse package suite (Wickham et al., 2019) was used for all data loading, cleaning, and transformation.

The plotly package (Sievert, 2020) was used for all interactive visualisations.

The scales package was used for number formatting. Remoteness classifications are derived from ABS ASGS Edition 3 (2021) Greater Capital City Statistical Area postcode boundaries and represent a postcode-level approximation of the official remoteness structure.

Google Gemini was used during the preparation of this assignment for general guidance and proofreading support. All analysis, interpretation, visualisation design, and final written content were completed by the author.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021, June 10). Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3, July 2021 - June 2026 | Australian Bureau of Statistics. Www.abs.gov.au. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026

Search Census data | Australian Bureau of Statistics. (n.d.). Www.abs.gov.au. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/community-profiles

ACECQA. (2019). National registers. Acecqa.gov.au. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/resources/national-registers

Mitchell Institute. (2024). Victoria University, Australia. https://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au

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