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December 2, 2013
I guess it is best to have low expectations of the Abbott Government truth telling; expect the worst with respect to competence; be prepared for public policy in the form of large dollops of ideological revenge and lots of lectures on the evils of political correctness. Oh, and the Rudd-Gillard governments will be blamed for basically everything.
Judging from the record so far we can expect the use funding and economics aggressively to attack public sector institutions; and the use of the power and authority of the state to promote and prescribe forms of social morality – "Australian values" – that are prescriptive and traditional.
Bruce Petty
We will experience another round of the culture wars: progressive educational policy is little than more highfalutin liberal claptrap; teachers are part of a leftwing conspiracy; since the state cannot cope with, or manage, the demands of modern public education it is time to bring in the private sector.
They will find that their policy of rolling back Labor's reforms will meet with resistance as many of these are publicly popular and represent good public policy. The Gonski reforms are a good example. Abbott and Pyne are ideologically wedded to increasing funding for independent schools as their priority, as part of their “school choice” program, that they fundamentally dislike the Gonski model; and they don’t see any problem in the inequitable school funding model we have at the moment.
Of course, the Coalition will deny the breaking promises made to win the election, or making backflips, or playing their clever word games as they twist and turn in the wind.
Update
The Coalition's backflip on the Gonski reforms for reasons of political expediency has seen them weaken the obligations on the states for the federal money. Michelle Grattan points out that:
It is true the government now has all states in some sort of model. It is a model that is all give by the federal government with no responsibilities imposed on the states. The latest deals do not require undertakings by the states and the government has always planned to remove accountability requirements from the legislation to which the other states signed up.
The states have been pulling money out of public education for years. The removal of the co-contribution requirement on the states will mean more state funding could go, leaving state schools, that have the most disadvantaged students, worse off.
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The trouble is that a sucessful Gonski plan will be written into history as a Labor win. I suspect a very similar plan with a new name is on the agenda. Of coarse the bugs will be removed (cough cough) , made fairer and cheaper to administrate. Abottski.