Current and former Liberals are quietly behind two 'grassroots' childcare campaigns

A network of current and former Liberals is quietly behind two childcare groups who call themselves ordinary parents campaigning for the cost of au pairs, nannies and other in-home care to be subsidised by the federal government.

Since forming less than a year ago, advocacy groups Childcare Choice and For Parents have been interviewed dozens of times across breakfast television, in newspapers, on podcasts and on radio.

The co-founders say they are mothers who have grown "frustrated" with the childcare system.

"Prime minister, if you really want to support women to go back to work after becoming mums, your policy needs to be designed around our sometimes crumb-filled dining tables, sitting next to an IKEA highchair, listening to Paw Patrol in the background," wrote Jen Fleming, a co-founder of both Childcare Choice and For Parents.

"Your policy design needs to start in homes like mine.

"Parents are not asking for special treatment. We're asking for trust. For funding that follows children, not institutions."

The groups quickly won the attention of the Liberal Party — Ms Fleming stood alongside newly minted Liberal Leader Angus Taylor just days after his victorious challenge where he adopted their campaign, vowing to "expand childcare choice".

"[Parents want] a way to get child care that suits them in a world where people want more flexibility and choice around child care, not a universal system," he said.

But that was not Ms Fleming's first meeting with a Liberal leader.

She was once a staffer to Peter Dutton — a media adviser for half a decade, who in 2015 was fined $500 and given a good behaviour order for stealing a Labor election sign.

And the group that she fronts has several other links to the Liberal Party, which it does not disclose on its website or in interviews.

Ms Fleming told the ABC that since finishing up as a staffer in 2018 she had worked for a number of not-for-profits and charities, and that Childcare Choice was run by volunteers who had campaigned or advocated on the issue of child care for years.

"Everyone working on this campaign is doing so as a volunteer," Ms Fleming said.

"The money we've raised is nominal and has gone entirely to set-up costs and a small amount of online advertising. Nobody has been paid."

Shadow treasurer held stakes in agency running Childcare Choice site

Childcare Choice's website is registered to a political campaigning agency called Narractive — a company that was owned and directed by Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson and former MPs Trevor Evans and Jason Falinski until 2024.

The directorship was handed to William Dempsey, a former staffer to Mr Falinski, but the trio of MPs maintained a stake in the agency, ASIC files show.

The shadow treasurer held a 10 per cent stake in Narractive through a family trust, though his office says those shares were sold the day before Mr Wilson took on the treasury portfolio just over a fortnight ago.

Mr Dempsey is also the campaign manager for Australians for Prosperity, which has commentators Caroline Di Russo and Parnell Palme McGuiness as a spokesperson and adviser, respectively.

Both have recently promoted Childcare Choice and a policy of expanding the Child Care Subsidy to informal carers.

Ms Fleming said that as campaign director for Childcare Choice, Ms Palme McGuinness had been able to enlist Mr Dempsey's help to provide campaign infrastructure support.

"The Childcare Choice campaign is not an [Australians for Prosperity] campaign, but is aligned with the values of the group," Ms Fleming wrote.

She added that Ms Palme McGuinness had refrained from advocating for Childcare Choice in her regular column with the Nine newspapers "as is her practice".

Childcare Choice's other co-founder, Madeline Simmonds, is a former staffer to Liberal James McGrath, and helps run a regular "Conservative Breakfast Club" that has hosted Nationals senator Matthew Canavan and former prime minister Tony Abbott, among others.

Ms Simmonds's husband Julian Simmonds is a former Liberal MP who was also executive director of lobby group Australians for Prosperity until last year.

Ms Fleming told the ABC that Childcare Choice supported "anybody who argues in favour of flexibility and choice for parents".

"This International Women's Day we celebrated Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young [and others] … for blazing a trail on childcare choice," she said.

Ms Fleming, in her opinion pieces and television interviews, described herself as "a mum of two little girls and a spokesperson for a volunteer-led campaign, Childcare Choice".

"We are up against powerful vested interests. But at the end of the day, most parents instinctively feel that it's time the government supported parents, not providers," Ms Fleming wrote in The Australian Financial Review last week.

'Aussie mum' who previously ran Keep the Sheep campaign

Ms Fleming was until January one of the faces of another group, For Parents, which said it launched mid-last year in response to a series of horrific cases of alleged child abuse in the early childhood sector.

Like Childcare Choice, For Parents calls for more types of care to be eligible for government funding including "nannies, grandparents, au pairs and co-working spaces that keep children close".

"[The current] system funnels money into the pockets of for-profit childcare owners — some of whom cut corners and sacrifice quality and child safety for profit margins," For Parents said.

For Parents, which describes itself as a "leading independent" advocacy group launched in July by "two Aussie mums", was founded by four women: Amy Cobb, a former chief-of-staff to Mr Evans, Ms Cobb's sister Cecilia, former Dutton staffer Ms Fleming and Veronica "Von" Hosking, a former staffer to Liberal senator Zed Seselja.

The founders of For Parents said it began "as a group of mums at a local playgroup saying enough is enough".

Ms Hosking is also the co-founder and director of a political campaigning agency Campaign Surge, which says, "just like a dentist, unfortunately we can't talk about most of our clients."

However Von and her husband Peter Hosking, a former Dutton staffer and one-time candidate, do boast of one previous success they are "exceptionally proud of" — the Coalition-aligned Keep the Sheep campaign to end the ban on sheep exports which Campaign Surge said it "built" and helped to raise half a million dollars.

It has also previously developed content for Liberals Garth Hamilton, Henry Pike and Jonno Duniam.

Like Childcare Choice, For Parents does not declare any political affiliations.

On Linkedin, Ms Hosking described her approach: "I don't separate 'mother' from 'strategic communicator' because the skills are the same — reading your audience, managing chaos, protecting what matters most."

"Now, with my husband and our team at Campaign Surge, I build creative campaigns for political and not-for-profit clients who want to create movements, not just messages. Grassroots campaigns that build real communities around issues that matter," it said.

For Parents says 'no obligations' to political parties

Ms Hosking told the ABC it did not ask its volunteers to "declare their voting history", and said For Parents was "completely independent".

"We won't take money from anyone with vested interests, including political parties, unions or government. We have no obligation to anyone, except the parents who believe in us and the families we're fighting for," Ms Hosking said.

"Our campaign is run by unpaid parent volunteers using what skills we have. Our volunteers are not just the people seen in the media but an army of mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, aunts and uncles and friends who believe the current system is failing us.

"We are deliberately bipartisan. We have been heartened by support from across the political spectrum."

Ms Cobb told ABC Radio National that For Parents was motivated by "our own experiences in communities seeing how families are really struggling to piece together care".

"We have nothing to disclose because there is no link to the Liberal Party. To the extent that some of our tireless volunteers are up working late at night — we are just parents here trying to make a change," Ms Cobb said.

"We were actually really disappointed to hear it was the ABC who was asking questions yesterday about who some of our volunteers worked for once and who we might know, rather than asking about the crippling state of the childcare industry and how we might be able to fix it."

Education Minister Jason Clare dismissed the idea of the Child Care Subsidy being extended to nannies or au pairs.

"It seems to me the Liberal Party have a lot of questions to answer here. What looked like a grassroots organisations now looks like something more rooted in the Liberal Party," he said.

"We've seen this campaign before. We’ve seen trials and vouchers for nannies before and they don't work."

Ms Fleming and Ms Hosking both noted rival advocacy groups such as The Parenthood, which they said had political affiliations including receiving funding from the United Workers Union.

The Parenthood received $75,000 from the union last year, as well as $99,000 from not-for-profit childcare centre chain Goodstart Early Learning, which it disclosed as part of Australian Electoral Commission annual returns.

Its chief executive Georgie Dent told the ABC "real choice" in child care required a strong foundation of early learning services.

"Without that foundation, choice risks becoming a privilege for families with flexible jobs, nearby relatives or the income to bridge widening out-of-pocket costs," Ms Dent said.

"The idea that nanny vouchers will fix the accessibility and affordability crisis families are facing is mistaken. Australia already trialled nanny subsidies and they didn't work. 

"Without strong oversight, expanding subsidies into more lightly regulated or informal arrangements risks creating new blind spots.

"After the safety crises families have endured, the answer is not to loosen frameworks around children but to make them stronger and more coherent."

Editor's note (10/03/2026): An earlier version of this story reported that Mr Wilson held a 10 per cent stake in Narractive. The article has been updated to reflect Mr Wilson's stake through his family trust, Bolger-Wilson Investments, was sold on February 16, the day before he became shadow treasurer.