Gonski:
Gavin Moodie writes: Re. “Gonski: simple, sensible model for a terrified gov” (yesterday, Crikey website). Thanks to Bernard Keane and Crikey for the timely pieces, reporting and analysing the report of the Gonski school education funding review for those of us interested in the substantive policy issue of the day despite the cacophony on the faux federal Labor leadership challenge.
Gonski and his colleagues have presented a rational method for allocating Australian and state government funding to schools. I have an additional suggestion that would ameliorate the objections of those who oppose public payments to the rich while meeting the avowed aims of the proponents of private schools.
Part or preferably all of government funding for private schools should be changed from a grant to schools to an income contingent loan to parents, like HECS. Parents would be offered a government guaranteed and subsidised loan with no real rate of interest to pay fees for their children at private schools. Parents wouldn’t have to repay their loan until their income reached a threshold, which for HECS is a taxable income of $47,196 per annum.
This would make private schools accessible to all parents, greatly expanding private schools’ potential pupils and potentially reducing private schools’ current big class bias. It would also reduce government payments to the rich, depending on where the loan repayment threshold were set.
Gillard versus Rudd:
Mary Sinclair writes: Re. “Are Rudd and Gillard really that different?” (yesterday, item 1). What if the media called a leadership crisis but nobody listened to them! Get over it, you journalists. We have elections every three years when we get to say how we want to be governed. Since when has selling newspapers (and why does Crikey buy into this?) been a good reason to whip up a leadership debate?
I’m so sick of Australian journalism. Give us analysis and let us make our own decisions. We’re old enough. Smart enough. Try us.
Maureen Ramsay writes: Why would I read, let alone subscribe, to Crikey when you report the same rubbish that all the mainstream press/media is sprouting?
How about some stories that inform me of what Labor has managed to achieve — including your own opinion about the “in Canberra” stories regarding the economy?
Keep banging on about the leadership and I am off your readership list. I am fed up with this subject.
Voting:
Joe Boswell writes: Re. Sam McLean, national deputy director of GetUp! (yesterday, comments), who regurgitated a widespread myth: “No one is required by law to cast a vote. They are simply required to turn up to a polling station on election day.”
This is, if I may use the legal terminology, bollocks. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 is very clear. Subsection 245(1) of the act provides that: “it shall be the duty of every elector to vote at each election.”
Subsection 245(15) says “An elector is guilty of an offence if the elector fails to vote at an election.”
Not voting is not voting, regardless of whether you do it a polling station or somewhere else. The only reason to do it at a polling station is to reduce your chance of being caught and penalised, but you commit the offence just the same.
Interesting point Joe Boswell but the usefulness of it turns on the meaning of the expression “to vote”. Regardless of the legal niceties, if your name has been crossed off the electoral roll at a polling booth you are deemed to have voted. The law doesn’t look over your shoulder while you mark the ballot paper (or throw it in the bin provided). So long as you have attended at a polling station and had such attendance noted by the relevant official you have observed the law – and there is nothing to be “caught and penalised” for.
I am so pleased that Gillard has withstood the pressure to do what the media and the Coalition want. The fall of Rudd was engineered by poll results and media pressure. Last Friday’s reports were feeding frenzy of journalists excitedly pointing in all directions to predict a change at the top. Can we have one week–or even one day –when we are spared such ‘reporting?’
And in “voting” one can choose to abstain – due to the poor choices offered.
Rocking up, having your name crossed off shows you were willing to participate in the process.
Does “not voting” include doing the “donkey” – or not filling in the ballot correctly, either intentionally or not?
“Not voting” means not having your name ticked on the electoral roll at a polling station. Once your name is ticked off you can do anything you like with the ballot paper you have been handed. You don’t have to mark it, you can write ‘No Dams’ or an essay on the back of it or you can use it to record some sort of ‘vote’. The law does not prescribe any particular action.
As a matter of interest, the dictionary definition of ‘vote’ is: “formal expression of will or opinion in regard to election of officer etc., sanctioning law, passing resolution, expressing thanks, etc., signified by ballot, show of hands, voice, or otherwise”. (NB. ‘otherwise’ leaves the field wide open). In my opinion, turning up at a polling station and having my name ticked off on the electoral roll constitutes a formal expression of my will. Filling out a ballot paper is an optional extra not a legal obligation.