Sources and coverage

86 SA3 regions in Greater Sydney and Greater Melbourne · Earliest: 2012–13 financial year

Department-owned CC BY 3.0 Australia statistics. SA3 2011 geography; LDC, ASC and BSC by age group. Total-age rows used without double counting. Not a national entity register or a continuation of later CCS boundaries. CSV, XLSX and HTML collection plus manual saved-file import are implemented independently of ACECQA.

Victorian limited hours and occasional care register · Earliest: 2026-09-06

Source month retained separately from collection day. Service/provider IDs, addresses, maximum children and approval dates retained. Approval dates do not reconstruct opening history. NQS ratings do not apply; fees and verified operation are unavailable.

Queensland QEC register only · Earliest: 2025-12-31

Distinct Queensland-law population. Service/provider IDs, names, addresses and published maximum capacity retained. No NQF approved-place, fee, quality, opening or closure series is inferred.

National and all eight states · Earliest: 2018-Q3

CCS centre-based day care services reporting care in each quarter. This does not count all NQF services or identify individual openings and closures.

National, states and 333 to 334 SA3 regions · Earliest: National: 2018-Q3; states: 2019-Q3; SA3 fees: 2018-Q4

Department CBDC hourly averages. Regional fee means use published service samples; suppressed values remain unavailable. Nominal dollars, before subsidy, with no conversion to daily fees.

333 to 334 published SA3 rows per quarter · Earliest: 2019-Q3 for service counts

All-care service counts as published by SA3. Full release identities exclude ASGS 2011 and match 2016/2021; ABS confirms no statistical change for these 334 regions. Exact publisher edition is inferred. Changes require two unsuppressed, audited observations; future releases require fresh verification. No apportionment to a drive-time catchment.

Existing index: NSW, QLD, VIC and capital cities · Earliest: 20 Aug 2026 baseline

The existing index is one stored aggregate baseline. Current approved places cannot reconstruct previous capacity. New ACECQA history publication awaits commercial reuse evidence.

ABS provider mix: all eight states; entity register: permission pending · Earliest: 2020 for ABS preschool provider mix

ABS 2020–2025 provider counts and government share cover preschool programs, including those within day care. They do not identify corporate owners. The national register collector is implemented but cannot run until commercial permission is verified.

ACECQA historical releases identified · Earliest: Source offers Q3 2013 onward

Historical NQS releases exist. They are not loaded or represented as commercially reusable in this dashboard. Rating standards and rated-service denominators must remain explicit.

Service observation model implemented · Earliest: Not established

A first-seen service is not an opening. A missing service is not a closure. Temporary closure, approval, verified operation and observed address changes remain separate.

NSW statewide 2026 application cohort and public preschools · Earliest: 14 Aug 2026 for NSW public preschools

A fixed 100-site NSW public-preschool cohort has August and September observations. Enrolment stages do not establish construction or exact opening dates. The DA/CDC collection started 2026-09-06 and contains 307 childcare-classified applications lodged in 2026, not distinct new centres. It cannot establish prior stages or proposed places. Other states remain unavailable; older NSW approvals remain DDK-297.