Regional Australia needs health workers and teachers – but it has to have childcare first

‘Rural childcare suffers from lack of attention partly because the demand is simply not as high as in metropolitan centres.’ Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

One of my enduring memories as a mother with a 12-month-old infant was covering the 1998 constitutional convention at Old Parliament House in Canberra.

Back then, carrying on a working life meant making the 90-minute commute in the dark twice a day, while hoping not to meet a kangaroo on a similar path.