The fate of ABC Learning should be a lesson to government at all levels that many aspects of daily life must remain or return to the preserve of collective responsibility.

It is indicative of how blinkered we had become to the imperatives of "economic growth" and our individual need to service debt that the care and nurture of our children fell so easily into the hands of those whose primary motive was profit.

That ABC Learning was able to grow so rapidly to control 25 per cent of the sector was both unhealthy and unsustainable.

I can understand how the ideologically blind Howard Government, which eventually contributed former Children Services Minister Larry Anthony to the ABC Learning board, could embrace the concept that the needs of our young could be best served by the profit at all cost imperative of the stock exchange.

But the Rudd government's failure to echo calls for that most fundamental responsibility to be returned to the control of the community sector is worrying. Childcare should not be a business to be traded and speculated on by those looking for a good bet.
It was right to pump money in to keep ABC centres open, but what is also needed is a long term plan for the future care of our kids.

There are many successfully community care models functioning in Australia. It would make sense to direct any future government funding to assist the purchase and transfer of ABC Learning's assets to providers whose ultimate goal is the delivery of quality, early childhood development of our most precious resource in an environment that puts the child's needs before any other consideration.

Those assets should be going cheap. They are located on land zoned for the purpose of the provision of that service and, after all, ABC Learning is broke.

There is a place for the private sector in childcare. There will always be those with the capacity and desire to pay more for what they see as an exclusive or higher level of service.

But the meltdown of under regulated capitalism is an opportunity to re assess the dogma of extremes.

The care of our children is a good place to start.

Elsewhere the unsustainable bail out of the car industry continues.

The industry's demise is a consequence of its refusal to move on from unsustainable technology and will be replicated in every sector that shows similar weakness.

The combustion engine is an inefficient, wasteful dinosaur whose continued existence has more to do with the financial marriage between the automotive sector and the oil industry than any sane or logical rationale. If our money is to be directed anywhere, surely it should be at the emerging technologies that will replace it.

Any public funds given to companies that have a history of wilfully ignoring or suppressing those technologies seems high risk and should only occur if heavily conditioned.

Coal fired electricity generation also has no sustainable future despite the government's insistence on pumping our money into the illusion of "clean, green coal".

How long will we tolerate the waste of our taxes on propping up the past for the benefit of a few at the expense of our future prosperity?

Policy alone would be enough to encourage investment in the technology that will deliver decentralized, renewable energy.

Change is coming. We simply must decide whether we are going to be a supplier or a purchaser of the technologies that deliver it.

Or will Australian governments, whatever their politics, remain at the beck and call of those who exploit environmentally destructive and ultimately unsustainable resources?

The hard lesson of these salutary times should be that our one, truly sustainable resource, is our children.

If public money is to be spent anywhere surely it should first go to their care and education to the highest level of their potential.

Do that and the future is assured.