The Federal government has announced a 15% increase to wages in early childhood education, over 2 years.

The extra money will be funded entirely by the government, and will be available to childcare centres that keep their fee increases at or below 4.4% over the next year.

Associate Professor Gillian Kirk and Julie Price discuss whether that's enough, by itself, to fix the shortfalls in the places available for children, particularly in remote and regional Australia.