I’ve been laid a bit low of late with the sadly not unusual back pain and of course it does tend to blacken one’s mood and it also tends to make me rather indifferent to some of the machinations of politics at present . The latest news poll shows that Labor have marginally improved their standing with the voters by a minuscule 2% to a 2PP 35% while some of my friends from the left see this as “The tide turning” I can’t help just feeling sorry for those poor desperate and deluded souls who think that Gillard can possibly get the voters to listen too her let alone decide to give her their votes again. Those same friends from the left are getting very excited by this story getting a run in the Fairfax press and they seem to me to missing the point that Tony Abbot was making about the Government funding per student definitely being in favour of the students in public schools. This is what he said:
Addressing a meeting of the Independent Schools Council of Australia yesterday, Mr Abbott stressed the Coalition’s opposition to the Gonski review’s recommendation to overhaul school funding.
”Overall, the 66 per cent of Australian school students who attend public schools get 79 per cent of government funding,” he said. ”The 34 per cent of Australians who attend independent schools get just 21 per cent of government funding.
”So there is no question of injustice to public schools here. If anything, the injustice is the other way.”
source
Its the old story of a politician making a factual observation of the way the figures present themselves and then being pilloried because our pals from the left are riven with class envy and they resent the fact that the parents who want to send their children to private schools see any of the cost of doing so supported by the state. That is the crux of lefties resenting private schools, its envy pure and simple.
Personally I send my two to state schools and I am quite pleased with the results that they are getting academically even though I have some reservations about some of the social sciences in the curriculum they can be addressed with parental input.
So does Abbott’s observation mean that he is committing a government led by him to slashing funding for the state sector to address the suggested injustice? Not in a million years I reckon. Now every parent or former parent who cares about the education of young Australians would like to see our children getting the best possible education but we also have to be totally real here in our expectations. Not every child is capable of being “rocket scientists” and my guess is that many have no desire to strive for the lofty heights of a tertiary education either. Frankly I think that we are getting to the point where we face diminishing returns when it comes to sending an ever increasing percentage of our young people to universities or other institutes of higher education because all that achieves is more prerequisites for lower skilled professions (
an Idea I explored here)
So what of the Gonski report I hear you thinking?
Well I am waiting to see what sort of dogs breakfast Gillard makes of that and just where they think the money is going to come from before I pass judgement on it. Going by Labor’s record on getting things like this right I won’t hold my breath in the hope of a good out come well at least not until a change of government that is..
Cheers Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
Oh Ian, Phoney Tony’s just showing us that the class war is as alive uptown, as it is downtown.
As for the poll jump of +1% for Labor on the 2PP vote. 1% is well within the statistical error for the polling methodology. I wouldn’t be putting my house (or a buck for that matter) on it. Just more mainstream media hype on a piece of statistical noise, There’s no indication that there is a shift in voting preference at this time and that’s coming from this little old Laborite!
I’d certainly agree with the urgent need to upgrade the education of our populace over the next several generations if we want to compete in that big and nasty world out there, rather than ending up as the ‘poor white trash’ of the Asia/Pacifi region. Do I trust either side to do anything substantial — NUP!
You’ve got two kids boyo! Maximise their educational opportunities and give them the best chance of a reasonable life in a world that is changing technologically minute by minute. Should go to at least University graduate level.
PS: The answer is . . . . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . .42! 🙂
Well my daughter is a straight A student where as my son does not do so well academically so while I think that someone as gifted as my daughter might benefit from University there is every chance that my son won’t. Which sort of comes to my main point about education, namely one size(and university for all)is not the best way to go about getting bang for our education bucks, matching opportunities to the aptitude of individuals has to be part of the process, otherwise we will end up with the requirement for ditch diggers to have degrees.
Matching aptitudes is certainly what is needed and I was speaking generally — gain the highest education that you are capable of. I was basically a dud until I realised the importance of a quality education — thanks to Gough Whitlam for that! But I suspect that there won’t be any ditch diggers, or production lines workers in Oz in future. It will be done by smart machines or it will be done overseas where labour will be cheaper.
The greatest challenge for Australia is to drag itself out of the industrial based society we inhabit into a knowledge based economy. And it really is: Adapt or die!.
Well yeah I can thank Gough for my degree as well, but doing it certainly took any rose coloured view that I had of higher education. Don’t get me wrong I loved every minute of my time at Uni and I’m still the only member of my family with a degree. You see I have always been DIY sort of guy who has the ability to turn my hand to many things (health permitting) and frankly I would like to see more development of the have a go attitude and how to practically problem solve being part of the education algorithm.
And I don’t think that it will be either economically or socially viable for machines to take over ditch digging and other menial tasks. such machines have to be incredibly complicated to match a skilled human operator and what are all of the unemployed manual workers to do instead?
No, Iain. The 35% is Labor’s primary vote. The two-party-preferred (according to the Newspoll) is actually 53 LNP, 47 ALP. Not a unbridgeable margin over 12months… especially if Abbott keeps going as he has been (down in most people’s eyes). And even more especially if KRudd comes back.
Well I reckon its no more than a dead cat Bounce Ray and the cat won’t bounce much higher, even with the return of Rudd.
You might be right, Iain, but have you seriously thought about how we’d be any better off on under Abbott? The man has no policies. None. Zero. He won’t even repeal the Carbon price. He won’t ‘stop the boats’. He’s impotent, Iain.
Well have you seriously thought of how we would be worse off and another term of Labor?
They have policies a plenty, the trouble is that they are bad policies that have bad consequences for the country the people and our economy.
So if the choice is bad policy or no policy I think that I’ll go for the latter every time.
That pretty much is the choice, Iain. It’s ‘the devil you know versus …’. Governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them, so we’ll probably get Abbott as PM late next year. Great! To draw a parallel, take a look at Victoria where we elected Ted Baillieu by default too, only to find he’s the biggest do-nothing nonce and lame-brain Premier we’ve ever had. Then there’s ‘slash & burn’ Campbell Newman – looks like you’re stuck with the LNP for a decade up there, Iain. Good luck with that.
After the Blight years up here Ray I think that I can stand a bit of Newman, I really can’t see him being worse than Labor.
He already is.
No not at all, he hasn’t gone to an election promising not to sell off state assents and then done precisely that after the count as Anna Bligh did. So he has sacked a few fat cat bureaucrats and axed some useless arts grants all good if he can balance the books as a result and put the state’s finances back into the black.
I’d expect a mass exodus from the ‘The State of Austerity’.
I doubt that will happen as there is still a very steady flow of Mexicans keen to escape the chill of the south Ray
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-22/tony-abbott-blames-carbon-tax-for-uncertainty/4216308
Ray, do you really want to re-elect a government that has run up a $145 billion dollar debt, and is increasing it by $19 million every day?
Do you really want to re-elect a government that has dismantled a refugee policy that worked, with one that has cost 800 lives, and then decided, after five years, and 800 lives later, that they had got it wrong?
Do you really want to re-elect a government that stabbed your hero in the back? Remember, it will be very hard for a Rudd led government to take over from this current lot of disloyal, neophyte losers that he installed in the first place.
Perhaps, Ray, and other rusted-on Laborites, it would be better to swallow the bitter pill and retire from the debate for a while, and let the adults take over the running of the country.
Labor has obviously failed at governing this once ‘relaxed and comfortable’ country we lived in throughout the late 90s and 2000s.
Why are you seeking to inflict another term of this failed government on the populace?
Your assertion that the Libs have no policies is silly at best. As I’ve stated before, check the Libs website. The list is there. However, in the early days of a Liberal Government, the most pressing need will be to stop the waste.
For a start, Abbott will save billions by eradicating the useless and wasteful Green programs that Labor has instigated.
He can then either get rid of the carbon tax ($23 per tonne) or wind it back to something like it is in other countries.
China – $1.55 (maybe by 2015)
California – 4.4cents. Unfortunately California has gone broke
India – $1.00
Japan – $3.30
EU – overall, less than $6.00 and going down
Abbott’s next job will be to re-instigate the Pacific Solution. That was the policy that reduced the unwanted boat arrivals to almost zero. As John Howard said,
Federal election campaign policy launch speech, John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia (1996-2007). 28 October 2001
I’m sure the majority of voters, those who will be voting Liberal, will be quite happy with those policy initiatives. They will also be glad that the useless, damaging and life-threatening initiatives put in place by Labor are terminated.
A very minor faux pas at best Paul 🙄
My prediction is this:
Gillard has failed and her government is finished; there is no possible way she can win an election in 2013. The opposition will run an almost entirely negative election campaign and win comfortably. It will then become apparent that the Coalition has few, if any concrete policies of its own. Once in power, Abbott won’t wind back the carbon scheme, the NBN or Labor’s other major policies to any significant extent. If they change anything it will be industrial relations laws and maybe some social policy.
Brian
You are wrong about Abbott axing the Carbon tax that will be the proof that he, unlike his predecessor Gillard does not break election promises, Sure it may be hard and costly but you only have to look to Gillard’s experience with doing the easy option and agreeing to the Greens and Indies on the Carbon tax to see that you have to look to the long term on such things. As for the NBN well that may be more difficult but expect some major changes to make it more cost effective and I think That IR policy will be treated very gingerly indeed lest the Ghost of workchoices be eternally haunting the party.
I’m not GD. I’m stating a fact, namely that a 53-47 two party preferred opinion poll suggests the gap is not so wide as for you to be so cock-sure that your empty-headed Abbott will be our next PM. It’s an apolitical statement; no need for you to go into a full throttled pro-Lib, anti-Labor diatribe. I really don’t give a shit if Gillard (or even Rudd) loses the next election, but what we get as an alternative will be no better. If you believe it will be you’re just blinkered.
How can I be wrong about something that hasn’t happened yet? The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. So let’s just wait and see. My guess is that Abbott (or rather his team, since Abbott is no legislator) will tinker at the fringes but leave the body of the carbon tax unchanged. They’ll then dress it up as either a repeal or a major reform. It’ll be the legislative equivalent of putting a frilly dress on a pig.
All politicians break promises, Iain. Baillieu down here has broken a ton of them. The only difference between them is how they justify doing it.
Brian
you were predicting that the carbon tax would remain well I make a counter prediction that it will be repealed so you can’t chide me for asserting a prediction when I do so only in response to your own prognostication.
As for pollies breaking promises I do understand that but given the amount of political mileage that Abbott has made out of Gillard’s “there will be no Carbon tax under a government that I lead” back-flip it would be political suicide not to do as he has repeatedly promised and repeal the tax.
As for the mining Tax I think that it is going to be a flop anyway and that Swan won’t collect anywhere near the revenue that he is dreaming about because those dreams are predicated on the notion of steady or rising commodity prices and the evidence is that prices are softening instead. so it will be somewhat easier to dump if it fails to meet the expectations of Labor and the people who wear the Che t-shirts
MY chooks have not laid any eggs for the past month—like Abbott I blame the carbon tax.
Like I said above, Iain, I suspect they won’t go for a full repeal. They’ll tinker with it or change some of the fine print, however the corpus of the legislation won’t substantially change. Abbott will claim they’ve either radically changed it (when they haven’t) or that they’ve improved it.
I say this for practical reasons, not political ones. A full repeal of a major tax reform, a year after it has been implemented, is like plucking the hairs out of your bum with hot pincers: very difficult and nobody wants to do it. Whether the ALP at that stage will be able to make any mileage on that, who knows? Anyway, it’s all crystal ball stuff.
As for the mining tax, who cares? Only Clive and Gina, I suspect.
Richard Ryan’s comments here are, umm, interesting. Is he on meds of some description?
Off them more likely Brian!
Tony Abbott will never be leader of this country——it won’t be allowed!
Well they printed my letter in the Sunday newspaper today, about my chooks and the carbon tax—-of course we know lot of ” meds” around newspapers—-they advertise them. Shalom, Richard Ryan.
Which paper Richard?
congratulations BTW, Its always good to get some recognition for one’s brilliance 😉
Sunday Telegraph——-told them I was been groomed at Iain Hall’s Sandpit. Enough said!
do you have a link to your brilliance Richard?
Richard, I couldn’t find your latest epistle to the Telegraph, but found lots of others. You’re all over the newspapers, even the Oz. And all coherent and quite funny! Well done, old son 🙂