Cranky Queenslander

I saw an argument on twitter today where one party argued that private schools should not get any government funding at all. I find this idea quite repulsive;

Every child in Australia should be educated, and that education should be, to a standard, some might argue basic, level, by the federal government. There are only a few things I think the government should handle, and this is certainly one of them.

There is no reason why private schools should not exist. For the most part, they are religious in nature, and cater to parents who wish to send their kids to a school that provides  a specific type of environment, usually, one with God.

Now I am an atheist. So before you jump on me, I am not pushing a religious agenda here.

So the parents are free to choose a public school, with its particular environment, or a private school, with whatever points of difference it offers.

The fact is, the parents in the latter case DO pay for the privilege of what they would argue is an improved environment for their kids. They pay the school quite large fees.

That does not mean that the federal government should not give that school the same per child amount of funding as it gives a public school.  It most certainly should. Kids that go to a private school are not second class citizens, and should not be short changed.

The idea that the government is somehow subsidising private enterprise when it gives money to private schools is ridiculous. It is simply passing on education funding for the students those schools are taking care of. Lets be honest, if we closed every private school, those kids would be at public schools! There is no reason not to fund their education.

The Stooge

News earlier this morning that the red speedo wearing fool that confronted Tony Abbot recently was in fact a Labor Party stooge.

On the one hand, I have no problem with real people with real concerns having a crack at politicians. If I had the spare time, I’d certainly track down a few make some noise, but I prefer to rant on this blog and leave it at that.

But when members of policial parties go out and stir up a ruckus, they are being deceitful, and casting a pall over their parties credibility.

So take note people, if you are a member of a political party, or worse still, like this guy, actually work for one, then you stay home and mind your business. Leave the stunts to people with a real claim to protest.

Everyone up there in the electorate of Longman should check out the LNP Candidate, Wyatt Roy. It’s refreshing to see such a young person sticking their neck out to be a polititian. From what I’m hearing, he’s a pretty exceptional young man, who knows his stuff, and would probably make a great federal member.

The Culprit

I was listening to the Twister Wire podcast this morning, trying to get more information about the NBN, while I try to decide if it’s going to be a good thing or a giant waste of taxpayers money. While I thought the content of the episode I was listening to was okay, the presenter, one Phil Dobbie, decided to destroy any creditiblity he had by dropping a totally irrelevant and completely wrong statement at the end;

“For Tony Abbott, he wants to show how he can stop asylum seekers, trying to escape repressive regimes, unless those repressive regimes have been accommodating enough to give them a passport.”

What a bunch of tripe that is! Is this guy for real? Let’s stop for a minute and check the facts;

These “asylum seekers” pay people smugglers large sums of money to sneek across multiple borders, and eventually be packed onto rickety boats for a life threatening ride to Australia.

There is no reason they could not claim asylum in other countries they pass through, and our governments refugee resettlement program would then take some of them, as would many other countries.

Let’s also remember that plenty of them do have documents with them when they leave, showing who they are and where they are from, but then go on to destroy these papers once they get within range of Australia. Why do they do that, one must wonder?

Considering what they pay to the smugglers, it’s pretty clear many of them have the means to do things properly, so the motivation for sneaking into Australia must be challenged. Is it simply that we are the soft touch, that hands out the big bucks to new arrivals?

Even if none of that moves you, how about the fact that these rickety old boats are a death trap, and people do die both on the boats, and under the waves when they inevitably sink. The people arguing for a relaxing of our border protection laws are arguing for more people crammed on more boats and more suffering and more death.

This is NOT the kind of moving forward I vote for.

Clearly Australian media outlets are struggling to come up with good meaty stories this Election, so they are resorting to making up stuff to fill airtime and column inches.

Take, for example, the ABC’s ludicrous assertion today Tony Abbott has been anything but crystal clear on the Coalitions IR policy going into this election;

@abcnews 11:51am via TweetDeck
Abbott stumbles on IRAbbott stumbles on IR changes http://bit.ly/czZE2C

If you go on to read the full article, it is clear the ABC is drawing a VERY long bow here; What Tony Abbott is clearly saying is that;

• The coalition will not change the IR laws during the next term of government
• That nobody, including the ABC, can forsee that the laws will never need changing

Surely it is entirely unreasonable to think that any given law will NEVER need amending? Of course the IR laws will change, the world doesn’t stop turning, so lets get over this rubbish, and move onto working out who we are going to vote for on the basis of real policy and not journalist rubbish.

Normally I wouldn’t give anyone silly enough to run for parliament under the “sex party” banner any airtime at all, but the claims made in a recent press release are worth looking at, as an example of something that is clearly a political beat up designed to get press attention.

Sandy Gutman, running for the seat of Waringah, says;

“Last Thursday I had a Godwin Gretch-type character call me from the Tax Office and tell me that over the next five weeks of the election campaign and for no particular reason, I am to be audited”

I like how he throws “for no particular reason” in there. It makes it sound very conspiratorial, doesn’t it? Well Sandy, the fact is that the ATO audits many many people every, for no particular reason, other than to ensure that people are playing by the rules. If you have your affairs in proper order, then it should be a painless process. This is not a conspiracy or even a big deal.

In fact, I’m sure there are plenty of small business owners being audited right now, who wonder why Sandy should get special treatment because he is an aspiring politician.

But there’s more to this conspiracy, apparently;

Yesterday afternoon his long-running website, www.austentayshus.com suddenly vanished off the world wide web. “Neither I, nor my service provider, have any idea what has happened here”

Firstly, if your hosting provider doesn’t know what happened, then it’s time to get a new hosting provider! Honestly, nobody else in their right might would accept “I don’t know what happened to your website” as a suitable response.

Secondly, a bit of digging around and it’s pretty clear the site has been taken down at the hosting end. So it’s clear that either Sandy or his hosting provider know what’s going on, and this is simply a publicity stunt.

Now for the final bit of irony;

[Sandy] said he was a hard-working stand-up comedian who paid his taxes and led a sober and celibate lifestyle.

So why is it that a celibate individual is running for parliament under the auspices of the Sex Party?

It’s a good thing there is no chance of this individual winning the seat.

It remains to be seen if the issue of illegal arrivals will make it to the top of the issue list this election, but it is clear that Julia Gillard’s attempt to neutralise the issue before calling the election has failed miserably.

The obvious point is that she is proposing to roll out the form governments solution; The previous coalition government managed to completely stop the flow of illegals being smuggled into Australia by transporting the arrivals to 3rd party countries and processing their claims for asylum there. This saved lives and was widely popular, but the incoming deputy PM Julia Gillard was happy to throw that solution away and simply wait for the flood to resume.

A secondary but worthy point is that Julia Gillard has acted pretty arrogantly, naming East Timor as the site for her new offshore processing facility, without even ringing the East Timorese leader beforehand to float the idea. The backpeddling after that stuff up as epic to watch, and I think we need to really put the spotlight on the new PM and make sure she explains in great detail what her plans really are.

Even then, can we be sure she’ll follow through if elected?

News reported by the ABC that a South Australian Liberal candidate has been assaulted while campaiging.

I’m really hoping to hear that Julia Gillard comes out and denounces this action today; Violence is never acceptable, and bashing a politician because you don’t agree with their views has to be one of the stupidest reasons to start a fight I’ve ever heard of.

I don’t know what these fools hoped to achieve by this; Here’s hoping this kind of thing is not widespread in Labor supporters.

News out this week that our esteemed leaders in Canberra never really intended to scrap the Goodna Bypass should come as no surprise; Prime Minister Rudd has always been a man ready to say what needs to be said to get the votes, and worry about the doing later; But I think the important points have been missed completely or reported backwards by Channel 9;

First of all, there was NOT massive opposition to the bypass, and it was NOT the reason Shayne Neumann was elected; Polls conducted prior to the election in the area showed a majority supported the bypass, and anyone who has driven that corridor in the last 2 years will know why that is the case.

Even that’s not the big question in my mind; To me, the real question is, if you believe the bypass is going to be necessary, why on earth are you spending so much money massively upgrading a road that will later be bypassed?  It makes no sense at all, and you have to wonder what would motivate anyone to spend $2 BILLION upgrading a road you are going to replace.

Okay, $700 million of that is for the Wacol to Darra stretch, but still, it’s a lot of money for a road nobody will travel on when the bypass is put through.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out at the next federal election; Surely the folks who don’t want the bypass are going to be cranky, and the ones that did, equally so?

I think it’s fair to say the federal Labor government have over the 12-18 months, lost all credibility they had as a progressive socialist government. They have consistently professed a desire to redistribute the countries riches more equitably to those lower down the societal ladder, but the evidence is now pouring to disprove that.

Labor’s Building the Education Revolution program is providing ample evidence that Labor is pouring money in the union dominated construction sector by approving construction at massively inflated prices.

The Herald Sun reports on one such example, brought to light by the school’s principal, who must have had the silly idea he could save a whopping $140,000 by getting the work done by contractors other than those appointed by the government.

Interestingly, this is the same school where the principal earlier this year refused to allow the feds to fund a $3 million gym, because the school already had one!

I wish more school principals had the guts to check what was going on at their schools and call the government out for the complete waste of money it is perpetrating. The real irony here is the kids it claims will get a better education because of it will certainly need one, because they’ll be paying back the debt for years to come.