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Sam Molloy’s sophistry (he is debating captain after all) is not convincing.

“Choice”, both “practical” and “moral” is the crux of his argument in favour of retaining public funding of private schools. “Practical choice” in his argument, is about recognising individual differences, and finding the best educational institutions to meet the needs of individual students. “Moral choice” on the other hand is about ensuring that parents choices are not subsidised by others.

All of this is padding around the real point of contention, which he freely admits in his op-ed: the balance of funding is not right. It is easy to argue in the abstract that choice is good and beneficial, but look at the numbers — millions are being spent on the “élite” private schools, that are well-funded, well-resourced, and hardly in need of public support. It is deeply mendacious of Molloy to suggest that specialist schools focussing on the special needs of students would be targeted. (As a side note, is getting the debating captain of Sydney Grammar School to push for public funding of private education really the best look?)

His assertion that “[i]ndependent schools… emphasise different values” is another stock phrase used to disingenuously bash public schools. What it is really suggesting is that public education is values-free which is untrue.

He correctly recognises that education is a public good, and that is so for a variety of reasons. It has a multitude of positive externalities which cannot be accurately priced through the market. If provided, it is available to all, and each dollar spent usually benefits the totality of students, not discrete individuals. But most of all, it is incredibly expensive. If education were completely privately provided no average family could reasonably afford it. The recognition of its public benefits is why there is a long-standing commitment in Australia from both sides of politics that education should be “free, secular and compulsory”.

Molloy’s suggestion that completely stripping private schools of funding would create a mass exodus to the public system, putting undue burden on it. This may well be true, but that would be the result of a botched implementation of a policy no reasonable person is suggesting. Even if the argument that private schools should receive no public funding wins the day, it would be implemented over an extended period. Further, he doesn’t recognise that the vast capital costs of running an education system come with efficiency benefits. The massive push to create smaller class sizes means that currently the marginal costs of educating an extra student run at a declining rate. In addition, pooling money into one system rather than two achieves greater efficiency outcomes.

What should come out of this interminable public vs. private debate is recognition that there is room for both systems, but that the current funding formula, at a federal level is out of kilter with the principles of equity AND efficiency. By all means there should be continued funding of special needs schools, but should an under-resourced school continue to be hobbled by continually increased funding of a well-resourced one? The issue is not public vs. private but one of ensuring practical equality among all the schools we fund.

• The latest New Yorker cover was done completely on an iPhone.
• Barack Obama: The Freshman
• According to that great arbiter of taste and style, the New York Times, Teenagers are big huggers

For the Wall Street Journal, which is popularly referred to as the ‘Bible of capitalism’, the events of the past 1–2 years have been difficult. The election of left-leaning governments around the world, particularly in the United States, and the shift back towards more Keynesian policy leaves WSJ editors and columnists gaping (and possibly fuming) chiefly because it does not fit within their narrow view of the world. To them it is quite literally incomprehensible.

And, like any animal that perceives it is under siege, the WSJ is hitting back the only way it knows how — taking up arms as an ideological warrior. What else would explain this screed against Kevin Rudd, whose government is enacting an economic stimulus package in line with most other developed countries.

Outside the confines of Canberra and Washington politics, the social mood is distinctly post-ideological, with an emphasis on policy that works rather than that which adheres to utopian doctrine. Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama both understand this; Obama explicitly campaigned on it. Yet within the echo chamber of the national capitals, ideology still runs rampant in the opposition parties — the Republicans in the US, who recorded exactly 0 votes for Obama’s economic bill in the House of Representatives, and the Liberal party in Australia, who implacably opposed the Australian stimulus package. This is not because they are offering some kind of coherent alternative to the current economic crisis, but because they are fighting an internal battle of relevance.

For the past decade, at least, the conservative side of politics has raised phony issues with which to take stances on to create reasons for their existence — in Australia, it was industrial relations, in the US gay marriage and ‘small government’. This hid the fact that modern national governments engage in little more than service delivery in the domestic sphere. The phoniness was readily apparent. Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA; individual employee contracts) were introduced in 1996. WorkChoices, designed to beef them up, and presented as ‘essential’ industrial relations reform was introduced a full decade later. Yet, in 2006, the total number of workers on AWAs was a mere 3%. In the US, George W. Bush presided over large expansions in government size, power and scope. The War on Terror gave fleeting legitimacy to the latter. Yet as an ideological totem, it was fragile, and any politician raising it as justification for action today is a laughing stock.

What peeves the WSJ so is Kevin Rudd’s political skill. He is delivering one message — of competence, and yes, hope — to the post-ideological masses, and splintering the Liberal opposition with an ideological message designed to break apart Malcolm Turnbull’s tenuous hold over his own party. It does not matter that Rudd’s 7700 word essay in The Monthly contained some minor errors, or strawmen caricatures of Hayek and his followers. No-one who votes cares about that. The only ones who do are in the political class. They work themselves up into a tizzy and end up kicking own goals. The right continues to describe the Rudd government’s plan as ‘Whitlameqsue’. Yet, who under 50 even understands this reference, or perceives it as an insult? The right continues to struggle by speaking only to its base, and this is clearly reflected in the opinion polls. How they will recover is a mystery, but they must do so soon. It is not healthy to have politics so one-sided.

The Hong Kong Law Fair will be coming to the University of Sydney this year, and it’s being coordinated by the Chinese Law Students Society. Register now to attend, and spread the word!

Fleeting wishes on this blest anniversary,
populate the barricades of your visage tome;
Syntax and shortenings torture this simple wretch.

What made him cross borders, continents, wind and seas?
Was it all for waste or chaste, the spirit that he chas’d?
From the land of tuppence to the Orient gates,
did the winding Silk road embolden frail ego?

… Read MoreVerily! cries this echo.
Puerile exteriors mask a wise pneumic self.
Levi by another name, this winged saint shall soar.
‘nother rev’lution, yet Sol barely notices,
the world will know this man, his time has barely come.