Educator Lyndal Mayer says she is fed up with Australia's major political parties "constantly missing the mark" when it comes to the country's childcare crisis.
Ms Mayer, who is chief executive of Queensland Lutheran Early Childhood Services, said she had watched the critically understaffed and "misappropriated" funded industry deteriorate over the years.
A report by the Victoria University's Mitchell Institute in March revealed the dire state of childcare availability in Australia.
The authors stated that more than nine million Australians were living in areas considered "childcare deserts", a term used for communities where there were more than three children per one childcare place.
"I know from the waiting list we've got and the waiting list of other services, there's not enough space in our childcare system to accommodate our kids," Ms Mayer said.
The study, titled Deserts and Oases: How accessible is childcare in Australia, found about 568,700 children aged 0 to 4 years, or 36.5 per cent of children in the age group, lived in neighbourhoods classified as "childcare deserts".
Most of them were in regional and rural areas.
Mitchell Institute education policy fellow Hannah Matthews said it was the first time that type of data had been mapped.
"The results are quite concerning," Ms Matthews said.
"The size of a child's brain reaches 90 per cent of an adult's by the age of five.
She said there were higher rates of children starting school in a developmentally vulnerable category in the childcare deserts.
"They're not ready to learn," she said.
'Stop throwing money at families'
Liberal and Labor policies currently centre around increasing childcare subsidies for families to make the service more affordable.
Ms Mayer said that money would be better invested in professionalising the childcare industry to attract more staff.
She said throwing money at families was not the sole answer.
"What is the point of making the service affordable, when there are no places actually available?
"They need to increase the salaries of childcare workers so that they are earning in line with what school teachers earn.
She said that would attract quality educators to the sector.
"We don't want babysitters," she said.
She said centres could drop their fees if the money invested in covering subsidies was redirected to cover their operational cost.
"If we could rely on funds other than fees to cover our costs, we could easily drop the prices to make childcare more affordable for parents," she said.
Parents desperate in the bush
Mt Isa mum Jayde Alley gave birth to her son Marcus in the north-west Queensland city a year ago.
She said trying to find a childcare place for Marcus put a stressful toll on her pregnancy and during her 12-week maternity leave.
"I was able to get him in two days a week, but other mums haven't been so lucky."
She said the childcare subsidy was helpful but there needed to be more investment in attracting staff and building more facilities in regional and rural communities.
The remote community of Julia Creek, 300km from Mount Isa, could face an exodus of young families should the town's sole childcare centre fail to recruit more staff.
"It's frustrating because it just goes to show that the major parties do not see what goes on in rural settings," Ms Alley said.
"They talk about encouraging people to move rurally to help ease overpopulation in the cities, yet they don't actually have an understanding of what we need out here."
Ms Mayer said she was doubtful of any change to the current situation.
"There is no point targeting kids when they reach older school years, you've missed the opportunity.
"You need to provide quality education in the first 1,000 days and that means putting quality educators in front of our young kids."
