Don’t let the permanent backlash stop education reform
For Australians who think our country can do better than cynical game-playing, the Prime Minister’s ambitious and visionary schools plan is their chance to unite behind a big national project.
First published by The Drum Unleashed on 15 April 2013.
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Authenticity is the most precious commodity in today’s politics. Not even Gillard’s harshest critics would doubt her authentic commitment to the issue that brought her to politics and which still gets her out of bed each morning. Following her announcement, even Graham Richardson told Sky News that “when it comes to education, I’ve always said she is top of the class”.
If Gillard could be remembered for one thing only, we get the firmest sense it would be her ambition for education and especially the opportunities that flow from getting the best chances as early as possible in life.
Yet despite the strong support of teachers and parents from across the education system and across the country, and many months of consultation and expert input, the Prime Minister’s schools vision has also attracted substantial opposition. In the case of Queensland’s Premier, Campbell Newman, that opposition was voiced before the plan was even detailed – a brazen but unpunished act.
We hear of Western Australia’s Premier, Colin Barnett, taking great offence to the offer of hundreds of millions more in federal funding for his state education system. He is arguably the country’s cagiest, wiliest practitioner of parochial state politics. But telling the teachers and parents of his state that it is a good idea to knock back funding of that magnitude takes opposition to all things that emanate from Canberra to costly and cynical new depths.
Opponents of the schools vision point to the different levels of funding being offered to each state. They compare the Western Australian aggregate dollar figure with the Victorian one, ignoring the fact that WA’s funding is already superior to states on the eastern seaboard. The logical corollary of Barnett’s argument is that school funding should be determined politically or geographically and not based on evidence of need and an objective formula that takes into account disadvantage or learning difficulty, or a range of other factors recommended by David Gonski.
We have come to expect from politicians like Newman and Barnett this kind of parochialism that risks such damage to the future of Australia’s kids. But why is there no accountability mechanism that punishes this sort of behaviour when cynical politics are prioritised over educational – and, in the long run, economic – outcomes?
The answer lies in the destructive politics of the permanent backlash. This is the phenomenon that most bedevils our democracy today; an obsession with opposition and criticism over vision and ambition. This backlash mentality makes it far easier to be against something than for it – the secret to Tony Abbott’s success as Liberal leader but a damaging habit for Australia.
It is the prevalence of the permanent backlash that encourages newspapers to prioritise an opinion poll that comes out every fortnight over the most significant schools policy announcement in 40 years, as some did today. It is the same incentive in our political system that gives as much attention to just over $2 billion of tweaks to still-rapidly growing higher education funding (including just $900 million from universities) as to a $14.5 billion plan which will transform the opportunities provided to our kids.
read more:http://chifley.org.au/opinion/dont-let-the-permanent-backlash-stop-education-reform/
