See text below.
EXCERPTS
Education revolution? Bah humbug. Both the Rudd Labor and Howard Coalition's so-called initiatives are poorly targeted tax rebates to families with children which, according to tax accountants, will add unnecessary complexity to the tax system.
At least Howard has a plan. His fees rebate is the first step to replacing funding for schools with the Friedmanite ideal of vouchers for parents. By providing base funding to parents and allowing non-government schools to top up with fees, school resourcing becomes about what parents can afford, rather than equity. Vouchers (and flattening the progressive income tax structure to which both parties are committed) are about institutionalising the intergenerational transfer of wealth and advantage.
Public education is underfunded especially in regard to the universal service it is still expected to offer. And yet in this election Rudd Labor never mentions the special needs of government schools. The neo-liberals are now so confident that the Labor candidate for the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, was slapped down yesterday for saying the existing method of funding private schools would have to give way "eventually to a proper needs-based approach".
...
The reason why a targeted approach to funding based on needs wasn't considered is because it wasn't a vote buyer. But even this tawdry political excuse is not available to the Premier, John Brumby, who announced earlier this week that the schools to be built in Melbourne's new growth areas to the west and north will be financed by public-private partnerships rather than less costly government borrowings.
The beneficiaries of this decision are the shareholders and executives of the financial institutions such as Macquarie Bank, ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank, which specialise in financing PPPs. They are well connected politically &emdash; former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale and former NSW premier Bob Carr joined Macquarie and former NSW treasurer Michael Egan joined the Plenary Group, which is associated with Deutsche Bank, after retiring from politics.
Egan pioneered the building of state schools as PPPs. I understand he is involved in promoting school PPPs in Victoria. The NSW school PPPs have been proclaimed as a success, backed up by the NSW Auditor-General, who said: "We found that the Department of Employment and Training presented a persuasive case that the the proposed project using a PPP approach was likely to provide value for money … although this was not supported by comprehensive financial and economic analysis of all the alternatives." This did not prevent the director-general of the department from saying: "I am pleased the review confirms our opinion on the success of the delivery model for new schools."
One of the big innovations of the NSW PPPs was provision on site for before and after-school care, which has turned out to be the least profitable part of the deal.
At the same time as the AG's report was signed off last year, the department faced a barrage of complaints over the quality of before and after-school care that forced the NSW Government to spend six months negotiating an "out" clause from the unprofitable business. According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald, "the schools affected were left to cobble together their own before and after-care programs while ABC Learning continues to operate the more profitable aspect of child care in each of the schools &emdash; long-day care for children under six, charged at a commercial rate".
The financial engineers who design these school projects expect to get their money back within a couple of years and a return on their highly geared equity in the projects of about 125 per cent. It will be extracted from the very battlers that governments constantly claim to serve.
- reprinted from The Age