Yes, this essay reminds of the concerns voiced in the essay titled The New American Sadism.
Its OK to target the poor,the weak and the defenceless because the "market rules", but the moment anyone tries to curtail welfare for the comfortably well off, and the wealthy its called "class warfare".

Hi Tristan, god to see you on OLO again.

I have posted an OECD site with updated data on variety of data which you may find useful as a primary link to go to for a variety of info.

http://www.oecd.org/economy/outlook/economicoutlookannextables.htm

Tristan,

Before you get carried away by Gonksi enthusiasm, I urge you to look more closely at the panel’s recommendations, which include keeping the Howard government’s SES model. This has two consequences.

First it punishes private schools that draw students from middle class areas but try to remain inclusive of poorer students by keeping their fees low. It does this by cutting government support, thus forcing fees up and poorer students out into low-SES schools, socially stratifying our education system. The political consequence is the bad publicity Labor has had from the various lists of losing schools, which no one seems to understand are losing schools because they are being taken off Labor’s education resource index of the 1990s.

Second, it will lead to increased pressure for means-tested fees in government schools because it entrenches the funding principle as parental “capacity to pay”, rather than the resources of the school being funded.

I have presented a submission to the Inquiry into the Australian Education Bill 2012 on the problems with keeping the SES model and suggesting some transition arrangements to a new model. (It is No. 46 at http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ee/auseducation/subs.htm).

You can find a lot more detail at http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=1.

As I understand it the government has been saying no school will be worse off under Gonski - but there will be loadings for disadvantaged and disabled students etc. This funding is crucial to stop the long term drift away from state schools, though - which would see the state sector become a residual and 'second class' option compared with the resources the more advantaged private schools have.

Surely Tristan, getting rid of all the proven no-hoper & brain dead teachers who continue to infest the state school systems, would have the same effect.

Parents who care are smart enough to know that the control of the state schools given to the teacher’s union by default is ruining a once useful system.

No amount of money can fix the state schools, without clearing the dead wood first.

The cure is making principles responsible for results, on pain of loss of seniority, or return to the classroom, & giving them the power to sack the deadheads.

the irony is that Labour has squandered such huge amounts of money on nothing that their is none left to spend on education or disability. Socialist are experts at creating huge social problems and then expecting everyone to pay to fix their mess. Encourage the use of drugs and let the tax payer pick up the tab, outlaw useful discipline of kids and let the tax payer pick up the tab, promote incompetent women or ex union hacks to cabinet and let the tax payers pick up the tab, create schools of chaos and claim discrimination when private schools show what can be done. Same ol same ol

More of the tedious moral and intellectual incoherence of the coercionists.

"If only we could concentrate more arbitrary power in the hands of the state, multiply taxes, increase the number and power of bureaucracies, fund a few more grasping special interests, subject children to more compulsory indoctrination compulsorily paid for, then what a better society we could create!"

Dreary garbled nonsense. The fact that what they're saying is factually, ethically and logically false doesn't bother them.

"Perhaps if we re-name our sh!t sandwich again, it'll taste good eventually!"

I recall not so long ago, being a school teacher was a 'calling', where many dedicated, bright young people sought to dedicate their entire vocational life to teaching our precious young.

It would appear today, with support of their union, they've become a very militant, belligerent group trying hard to protect all the inferior and socialist collaborators that have ensconced themselves deeply within their ranks.

And we're all wondering why our Australian children, are slipping further behind academically, when their counterparts in S.E. Asia are advancing beyond that of Australian kiddies, particularly in those critical disciplines of Maths and the Sciences. It's no fault of the children, just the teachers !

May I suggest. instead of amusing yourself with 'social commentary', why not you and your colleagues seek better and smarter ways of imparting knowledge, then and only then you'll have plenty of time to amuse yourselves with your 'left-leaning' socialist hobby !

Most of the teachers that taught me (forties early fifties), were returned men from WW11 - they were brilliant ! Most wouldn't have the words, 'Industrial Disputation' within their Lexicon's ? As I said - teaching was a calling.

Whenever I read this author I am amazed at the many ways he proposes to spend more money. No government could ever afford to fund his wish-list without taxing its citizens to the hilt.

It does not seem to have occurred to the author that what he proposes has been tried in Europe. Look where Europe is at now. An economic basket case because their governments are drowning in debt and excessive taxes and regulation cost jobs and stifle economic growth.

Perhaps the author could read this article and re-evaluate his beliefs: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4546722.html

From the article:

"An overwhelming number of cross-country studies over the past decade that accommodate econometric innovations and richer data sets, and which often include Australia in the empirical coverage, have found that a larger public sector is associated with slower economic growth rates."

Democratic Socialism is not the answer.

"The poor, who must live on table scraps dropped by the rich can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals" - William Blum.

Some of the commenters in this thread should consider the facts rather than silly slogans and cliches:

"let's be clear - high-income earners pay way more than their share of income tax revenue. The top 1 per cent pay 17 per cent of all tax revenue and the top 10 per cent pay nearly half.

"We have the most highly redistributive and targeted tax and transfer system of all developed economies, with the top 20 per cent of income-earners receiving only 3 per cent of all cash benefits, compared with the bottom 20 per cent, who receive 42 per cent."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/what-a-hide-bodgy-numbers-derail-the-debate/story-fnbkvnk7-1226611200429

"Thirdly:Maintained commitment to a price on carbon emissions, and to direct public investment in renewable energy; as well as subsidies for low income Australians especially to invest in renewables, and so to lessen cost-of-living pressures. "

The author shows that he is science and economics illiterate.

He has been conned by the AGW believers. AGW remains hypothetical. There is no hard scientific evidence of the extent to which it is due to human activity.

Renewable energy production in Australia works out to be at least twice as costly as coal-fired energy in the case of wind power and at least six times in the case of solar. Therefore, it is dysfunctional to discourage coal-fired energy production by taxing carbon dioxide emissions so as to subsidise the switch to renewable energy.

The massive increase in electricity prices, thanks to the Government directing investment into renewable energy and taxing carbon dioxide emissions, has impacted adversely on all industries and markedly increased the cost of living, but had no measurable effect whatsoever on global warming.

Yet, surprise, surprise, the author calls for more of the same.

Tristan Ewins

This is the very old school dogma that just does not work any more. People no longer see themselves as blue collar or not or working class or not...... for starters unions only represent a minority of workers and they do it badly.

The more the ALP goes down this path of class warfare the bigger the loss will be come September. I see articles like yours as a cry for help for an ideology that died about a decade ago.

Bolt says many things, he definitely does not hide nor does he represent the class warfare of the ALP is displaying. He definitely does spell out a disastrous manifesto as you have. If the ALP goes down the path your suggesting then they may disappear all together.

What you seem to miss is that while some of what you wrote might work on the Vespa riding inner city types, out in the West of Sydney (former ALP heartland) people are far more capitalistic and don't give a toss about your little socialist manifesto or anything similar.

The ALP has to appeal to a working middle class that has bills to pay and aspirations. That is if they want to be in power. What looks really ugly is the union thuggery that is driving the ALP and hypocritical behaviour we see evident from ICAC and Ian Macdonald/Obeid inc.

Tristan,

The government is not saying that no schools will be worse off “under Gonski” but that no school will be worse off under the government’s policy. Many schools are worse off under the Gonski plan. The Howard government also made sure no school was worse off because of its SES model. Almost half of them were, so it paid them compensation. This compensation put those schools where they would have been under Labor’s education resources index model.

The Gonksi model would not stop “the drift”. It would exacerbate it because it continues the SES model, which punishes low-fee private schools in middle class areas by cutting government support, thus forcing them to increase their fees and driving poorer students out of them. The government cannot afford, from a policy or a political perspective, to implement the Gonski report as is. It has to change the system to continue the support Labor gave low-fee private schools in the 1990s.

The reporting on Gonski has been very poor, but the Gonksi review does provide me with endless amusement as I see so many of those who vehemently condemned the SES model under John Howard (e.g., the federal AEU) now vehemently demand that it be implemented. Most of these people probably do not know they have switched sides because the only journalist to report that the Gonksi panel had recommended keeping the Howard SES model was Paul Kelly, and it took him 13 months to reveal this fact to the public (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/pm-prepares-education-election/story-e6frg74x-1226607110872), even though it was obvious to me on the day the report was released (http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/we-need-to-stop-both-nation-and-needy-from-falling-behind-20120220-1tjka.html).

Hasbeen,

If “the control of the state schools has been given to the teacher’s(sic) union”, can you explain how the Victorian system pays teachers relatively less than it did in 1975, staffs its secondary schools worse than it did in 1981, gives teachers worse teaching conditions than it did in the 1984 and provides them with less security of employment than it did in 1992?