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the Liberal party in Australia places very little currency in educating the Australian public about economic issues—indeed, it is in their interests to oversimplify matters, and appeal to emotive and populist rhetoric.

Taking advantage of this economic ignorance was certainly a good political move—unexpected given Turnbull’s general tin-ear for the craft. His poll numbers were slowly improving during the second quarter of the year. But his major snafu with the Utegate-email affair demonstrates that pursuing that line of argument and its positive results was more luck than anything.

That is what is vexing about Turnbull. He’s clearly intelligent, is charismatic when presenting to an audience, suitably liberal-moderate, and would probably give a fair shake as PM. But he has all the tempestuousness and impatience of a child. He likes high-risk and high-reward. Yet, you don’t get that many chances in politics. It is virtually impossible to recover. Nor is he a team player, and without a united team behind him he cannot even begin to claw back the ground necessary to win an election.

Turnbull is not the kind of man who will sit around on the parliamentary benches. There are many opportunities outside politics he could pursue. Everyone is asking “how much longer will he remain Liberal leader?” The more pertinent question is “how much longer will he be the member for Wentworth?”

“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 download Tipping the Velvet

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.

Spending cuts (and raises for that matter) are not inherently good. They must be evaluated on their merits, as Kevin Rudd surely knows. So why is his government taking a blunt 3.25% whack across all government sectors to achieve spurious “efficiency gains”?

If an institution as fundamental to Australian society as the highest court in the land is unable to be insulated against the razor gang then nothing is sacred. It is false economy to think that cutting three-hundredths of the High Court’s budget will result in savings. If an institution is underfunded, then its ability to operate is drastically constrained, resulting in far more harm than the opportunity cost of what was cut. It is high time governments realised that running a democracy is expensive — but that it is well worth it. And if they can’t get the basics right, why bother trying anything else?Gangland movie download

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(namely, a charter of rights, and limits on the tenure of judges). Rather nasty I think. A bit like Philip Ruddock attacking the federal courts during his tenure as Commonwealth A-G.

Rather typically for a politician he got a bit full of himself and gave this fluff:

“We have democratically elected politicians with the capacity, the mandate, the authority, the skill and the experience to be able to reflect the values of the community and distil those into legislation.

On a good day, the typical MP meets one of those criteria.

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to say the least, and represents a victory for “Industry” Minister Kim Carr. The industry is struggling because they make big, ugly, expensive cars that nobody wants to buy.

With the PM in his current frame of mind, I’m just imagining Oprah: “You get a handout, you get a handout, everybody gets a handout!” (Except of course single income earners. They’re perpetually screwed.)