The conversation about whether working is actually worth it is almost constant in the Telford household.
Kylie and Jess Telford have two sons in day care at a cost of up to $40,000 a year — and that's with a rebate of about 50 per cent from the federal government.
"If you stop working you lose your superannuation, you lose your career prospects and you obviously lose a bit of money," Ms Telford, a nurse, said.
"If you choose to work, you have to weigh in all those extra costs of day care costs, and are you just working to pay day care bills and mortgage bills?
"Sometimes it feels like that's what you're doing."
More than half of Australians think the federal government should pay a greater share of childcare costs, according to new data from Vote Compass.
While 58 per cent of people think the government should contribute more, 27 per cent said they were comfortable with the current rate and 9 per cent said the federal government should pay less.
Sentiment was strongest among Australians under 40: 71 per cent of people aged 18 to 29 thought the federal government should contribute more, as did 65 per cent of 30 to 39 year olds.
Only half of Australians aged 65 and older agreed.
Ms Telford said she thought there was a misconception among older Australians about the need for assistance for families like hers.
"Yes, they had high interest rates but they were also able to provide a mortgage repayment on one income, whereas these days we have to have two incomes to provide enough money to make ends meet and cover the costs of daily living, cover the mortgage, and you need to send your kids to day care to make those two incomes count," she said.
"We have to juggle two incomes to survive and there's not really many other options."
The majority of Labor and Green voters said the federal government should contribute more to child care — 67 per cent and 76 per cent respectively — while only 30 per cent of Coalition voters thought the same.
Almost half of Coalition voters, almost one-quarter of Labor voters and 15 per cent of Green voters thought current contributions were about right.
Early Learning and Care Council chief executive Elizabeth Death described access to child care as a "red hot issue across Australia".
"We have a commitment from the current government, who have brought forward some of their policies around additional support for second and multiple children within services, we have the Labor [Party] committing towards a 90 per cent subsidy," she said.
"We're asking for a 10 per cent increase in childcare subsidy for families across the board, regardless of what their income is. We're also asking for really important basic support for all children across Australia, so two full days of access to early learning and care, regardless of what their parents' income is, regardless of what their postcode is and regardless of what their capacity to pay is."
Ms Death said early childhood policy should be much more prominent through the election campaign.
"Early childhood education and care is actually national economic infrastructure," she said.
About the data
- Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, religion, place of residence and past vote to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample.
- The sample size for this report is 327,503 respondents.
- Find about more about the methodology in this explainer
