Australia’s biggest gold miner tops up childcare workers’ salaries to keep them out of the Super Pit

“There are more childcare places than there are child carers, so it’s not a lack of buildings and infrastructure, it’s a lack of the carer ratio that’s required in a childcare so they can’t actually meet those ratios, which then reduces the amount of spots,” he said. “So the first problem to deal with is getting more carers interested or employed into those roles so that the children can actually be looked after. “It is a real critical issue for us in order to release the worker from their domestic life to come work for us if their kids can’t get care. “It’s kind of levelling them up to sort of make being a child-carer in Kalgoorlie competitive with being a child-carer anywhere else because the rent Kalgoorlie is astronomically high. “When they’re on a lower wage base and having to pay higher costs, it just destroys it, they say, ‘If I’m going to be a childcare worker, why would I do it here?’”