More than 50 family daycare operators had government money stripped or suspended for fraud, overcharging or providing false documents late last year.

The federal government on Tuesday updated a public register designed to shame dodgy family daycare operators, adding 53 new services to the list.

Many were caught fraudulently obtaining payments to which they were not entitled, and making false documents.



The services had federal government subsidies either cancelled or suspended between October and December last year. The loss of federal money does not necessarily cause the centres to close, but makes continued operations difficult.

Half the offending operators were in Victoria. Seven of those had their federal funding cancelled after previously having it suspended in 2016-17.

Fraud has long plagued the industry. Centres have been caught inventing children, exaggerating numbers, or otherwise gaming the system to secure federal funding.

The state and federal governments began a concerted crackdown in 2014. Both Family Day Care Australia and the Australian Childcare Alliance told Guardian Australia the government’s efforts had proved effective.

The chief executive of Family Day Care Australia, Andrew Paterson, said he “unequivocally supports” the governments attempt to root out “unscrupulous operators”.

“The work that has been undertaken has been very successful in developing targeted and proportionate regulatory reform that has closed the door on fraudulent operators while minimising the impact on quality operators,” Paterson said.

He said it was only a “small minority of operators” who had sought to defraud the government, and that the vast majority “provide vital support to tens of thousands of children and families”.

The chief executive of the Australian Childcare Alliance, Paul Mondo, said the crackdown was welcome, but it had come after years of inaction from successive governments.

“When they’ve essentially made savings in forward estimates in the sector because of the problems that they’ve identified with rorting in some of those family daycare providers, it suggests the problem wasn’t a small one. It was a large one,” he said.

The education minister, Simon Birmingham, said the crackdown had saved the government $1.8bn.



“We’ve taken it from a few hundred checks a year to several thousand checks on premises a year,” Birmingham told 3AW radio in Melbourne.

“We’re now regularly suspending or banning services that are doing the wrong thing. And sadly, in many of those cases, they are services who are seeking to claim funds for kids who just either don’t exist or were never there for care in the first place.”