Tristan,

(1) I can understand your enthusiasm for the Gonski report. It would certainly be an improvement on what we have now, but there are some flaws in it that a Labor government should really correct. One is there because of the mind-boggling failure of the federal AEU to even see the opportunity that the Gonski panel presented and the direction (i.e., the current Victorian model) that it was always going to go in. the federal AEU thought it was still 1950.

The Coalition-devised socio-economic status model of school funding is such a poor quality measure of need that it underfunds half of our private schools, requiring them to be given compensation, the so-called “over-funding”, to be as well-supported as they were before the SES model. This compensation lifts private school funding to the level of the previous Labor government’s education resources index.

Yet, the Coalition, with its inadequate funding model, gets away with portraying itself as the friend of private schools, while Labor, with its much more generous funding model, is portrayed as their enemy. With the Gonski report completed, we can hope that the Gillard government will consign the SES model to the rubbish bin.

Chris Curtis

(2) While the Gonski report is outstanding in the justice, breadth and rigour that informed its recommendations, there are some areas that need to be reworked or developed further:
1. The school resource standard should be based on an explicit staffing ratio, not an illogical and unnecessarily complicated method of so-called high-performing reference schools.
2. There should be a base funding factor, as introduced by the Victorian Labor government in 2005, rather than size loadings.
3. All jurisdictions should be required to pass on the full Schooling Resource Standard entitlement to each school in which the student who gained that entitlement is enrolled, and such entitlements must be shared in the same ratio by federal and state/territory jurisdictions for both public and private schools.
4. The My School website needs to have its financing section reformatted to show more clearly how the new funding is allocated to each school, particularly if the government does not accept the improvement above.
5. The SES model should be replaced by one based on the fees and other income of private schools, or if the government is completely unwilling to go this far, the SES model should not apply to any school that charges fees below a set threshold.

If you can email me, I will send you a paper I have prepared on the topic.

Chris Curtis

Oh god! Am I in Greece? Is this the Greek OLO? Here we are in the middle of a mining boom, borrowing hundreds of millions just to pay our interest bill, & all our lefties want more spending on their own pet little areas.

Come on folks, think the other way.

China is slowing, & will be effected quite a bit by the inevitable euro crash.

Prices for our main exports are slipping right now, & we can expect them to fall a lot further in the short/medium term.

Manufacturing is headed for the realms of mythology, & is not likely to be employing anyone in the near future.

Academia has over expanded by a couple of orders of magnitude, pushing make believe courses to under prepared students, & government employing thousands of useless pen pushers, can not pay its own bills, without strangling anything that moves.

I'm afraid it will have to be the other way. Don't tell me what you want your country to pay for, tell me what you are going to forgo of what you currently get, because it has to stop.

For gods sake people, grow up, & provide for yourself, just a little, or you will end up with nothing.

Tristan,

your article tells us all exactly why labor is standing at less than 30% in the polls, why it has been destroyed in Qld and is on such shakey legs in Vic and NSW.
Your article tells us you are just not connecting with people in the electorate.
You are one of those members of the labor party that still believes your views are representative of and have import to those people who no longer vote labor because they don't see how your views are relevant to them.

They are more concerned about their cost of living, which includes petrol prices and electicity prices, taxes, excessive government debt, which they know they will have to pay back, excessive bureauracy, which includes wasteful spending on academia and, believe it or not, rejection of deceitful or muddle-headed politicians and their deceitful or muddle-headed spin-doctoring supporters.

They want governments who focus on governing, not ruling.
They want governments that focus on their concerns, not on the concerns of single issue non-mainstream carpet-baggers.
They want governments that are fair dinkum, and who are not into socialist uology and dogma... or any other uology or dogma.

Both most of all they just want governments who will listen to them and who are sensitive to their concern.

Guess where you sit in their estimation.

You are one of those university educated do-gooders who in the past would have been politely told by real Labour people 'thanks but no-thanks' and then been quietly shown the door at local Labour Party Branch meetings.

Why don't you see that?

Obviously some respondants simply aren't reading the article - Because I quite clearly argue for *extensive* Cost of Living relief - for poor and working class families - at least 1% of Male Average Weekly Earnings - or at least $600/year!

Public construction of new infrastructure would also impact positively on Cost of Living pressures as currently the higher cost of borrowing for the private sector are 'passed on' to consumers.

But tell me - how is it that readers see my priorities as 'pet areas', and hence that I am 'out of touch'?

Is Aged Care and the torment our most vulnerable suffer really a 'fringe issue'?

Do mainstream Australian working families really not care about the quality of state education their kids receive?

Do working class families forced to commute via private freeways for hours each day - biting into their family budgets - really not care about the lack of public transport and other infrastructure in emerging suburbs?

Do 'mainstream' families not care about access to dental care, housing stress and unaffordabilty, and economic stagnation in manufacturing, tourism and education?

I think rather it is the Conservatives who are 'out of touch' - who are unable to connect with how these issues impact upon peoples' lives - because the wealthy these are 'non issues'. (because they do not effect them)

The simple truth is that citizens can get a *better deal* in their capacity as taypayers for collective consumption of health, education, transport etc. And for the most poor without such collective consumption they would be excluded entirely.

Again Tristan,

totally out oif touch.

Every voter understands that education, health, transport, emerging suburbs infrastructure, city roads, housing affordability (land release) are state government issues.

Don't you understand state labor state governments have been dumped because of their inaction to solve the problems in these areas?

Interest rates, the rising cost of petrol and electricity are federal responsibilities.
Why don't you see that votes have an understanding that the 'co-operative federalism' that promoted coperation between the labor states and the labor federal government in the areas if the so-called 'collective consumption' of health, education, transport etc. was and still is nothing but a labor spun crock of c..p? ... that costs us too much.

This is just another example why you as a uni educated udologue labor spruiker are so out of touch with voters expectations and why you labor party people are being rejected ... almost universally.

Why don't you just leave Labour people alone and let them decide what's best for themselves.

You've pinched their party and now they have falling or little representation actoss this land.

Vote for them ... but get out of their road ... you are a hinderance to them.