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?