longweekend58,

If you claim that my figures on teacher salaries are wrong, you ought to present your own figures instead of blustering about how what happened could not have happened because there would have been strikes. I have fixed mistyped number after the decimal point, but it makes no difference to the argument.

In 1975, sub-division 12 teacher was paid $10,325 (The Secondary Teacher, No. 4, May, 1981). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct figure and your source. In 1975, this represented 150.5 per cent of male average ordinary time earnings (The Secondary Teacher, No. 4, May, 1981). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct figure and your source. In 1975, sub-division 14 teacher (the top unpromoted sub-division) was paid $11,400 (“Annual Gross Salaries for Teachers in Victorian Government Secondary Schools”, VSTA, 1988). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct figure and your source. If $10,325 is 150.5 per cent of MOTE, $11,400 is 166.2 per cent. If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct calculation.

The current top unpromoted salary is $81,806 (Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2008). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct figure and your source. MAWOTE earnings were $1343.90 ($70,123 pa) in August of last year (ABS). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct figure and your source. 166.2 per cent of $70,123 is $116,554. If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct calculation.

The difference between $116,554 (the 1975 salary equivalent) and $81,806 (the 2011 salary) is $34,738 (30 per cent). If this is wrong, you will be able to tell us the correct calculation.

To forestall your practice of claiming I am saying things I am not saying: I am not arguing that the salary should be returned to exactly $116,554, just that it ought to move in that direction.

Chris. I wish I could put into words how painful it is to read what passes for English in your posts, interminably repeating lame catch phrases, writing confusing and unenlightening paragraphs, and ignoring the tenor of what has been said by everyone else. You do the public school system no favours by acting as their advocate, with friends like you they have no need of critics like myself.

I will ask you for the last time to answer the points I have made in my earlier posts. Answer, or go away, but drop the patronising tone of your writing. I have no problem with arrogance when it is deserved, but you've only embarrassed yourself on this forum.

Chris, Your posts miss the point time and time again. Being a parliamentary candidate is irrelevant and of even less interest. Bottom line is, your analysis on teacher salaries is fraudulent and fails the most basic test of comparing 'like to like'. The only valid way to test yoru ridiculous statement that teacher salaries have dropped 30% is to compare 1975 salaries adjusted by the CPI with today's salaries. It is therefore a great pity (to you) that this shows teach salaries have in fact RISEN in real terms - as have almost all salaries.

Your 'analysis' is to compare RELATIVE INCOMES which is a poor and sinjectve methodology in the short term and totally fraudulent over the time span you specify. Since the mid 70s the australian economy and workforce has been compeltely transformed. What was once a predominantly semi-skilled, low-paid manufacturing economy has moved into a semi-professional/professional economy with significantly higher wages. Keep in mind the massive, very highly-paid IT industry effectively didnt even exist in 1975. Comparing teacher salaries to the average wage (which is itself a poorly understood concept) over the decades is interesting in a socio-economic analysis, but of zero value in an absolute wage-earning one.

So, in short... You were wrong but at least we now know why.

longweekend58,

The relevance of my being a DLP candidate is that your accusation was that I was opposed to private schools and their funding, even though nothing I posted here said this. Yet, I stood for parliament on the platform of the very party that succeeded, via preferences, in bringing in government funding of private schools, demonstrating how absurd your accusation was. You should be thanking me for the fact that private schools get government support. Instead, you made a false accusation against me. I gave evidence, the stuff you don’t actually bother with, showing how ridiculous it was.

You have misrepresented what I said in my first post. I did not say, “teacher salaries have dropped 30%.” I quoted figures re percentages and average earnings and said that teachers had a “relative” pay cut and that restoring the “relative” value of their salaries would require an increase. The wording makes it clear that I was never talking about purchasing power.

I did not compare teachers’ salaries to the average wage, but to male average ordinary time earnings, “male” because that is how the comparison was presented in 1981 and “ordinary time” to remove the influence of overtime and penalty rates. Yet again, you fail to produce a single figure to back your assertion that I am wrong.

The change in the economic structure of Australia does not alter the point of my argument, which I would be wasting my typing to repeat for you, but which anyone else (except Riddler) can get by reading my previous posts.

P.S. I did not say that academic success is “solely” a function of the child’s ability, but given that I don’t have to say anything at all for you to accuse me of saying it and that even when I say one thing you follow up by accusing me of saying the opposite and that if I present relevant evidence you tell me you are not interested, perhaps you could save me some time and submit all my future posts for me. That way, you could make up anything at all.

Take yourself off, you're only embarrassing yourself now.

I know that you think being a candidate for a 5th tier party like the DLP makes you special, but it doesnt. And the 'logic' of your argument explains why the DLP is such a waste of voter space. But moving on from you and your unjustified ego...

RELATIVE positioning of salaries is the argument that people who dont understand the real world make. If EVERYONE had to maintain a relative salary position in a rapidly changing world then teachers would be paid a million dollars a year now and complaining because the average wage was $900K. In salary terms, a relative measure is worthless which makes me wonder why you think it is so important. Teachers are not underpaid and never have been. Their salary has kept up with inflation and then some - just as everyone else has. But other occupations have arisen that inflate the average wage without damaging the absolute position of teachers. Private schools make a total mockery of the notion that improved salaries make better teachers. they get paid basically the same with vastly superior outcomes. But they exist in superior schools which allow them to show superior skills and generate superior outcomes.

If there is one thing this topic brings out it is the people like yourself who bring in irrelvancies and meaningless rubbish while avoiding the three obvious criteria in play here: choice, outcomes and cost to the public purse. In all three, private schools are significantly superior. I dont even know what your position even is. Beyond complaining about everyone else and wasting time debating irrelevant measures (which you get wrong anyhow) and telling us how great the DLP is (insert mock here), I have no idea what you REAL position is!

So whats your complaint again? And please, no more references to the DLP. No one is impressed. If anything, it makes you look worse - like being a Family First candidate or a Green.