THE AGE http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/printversion.pl?story=3D20001116/A52480-2= 000Nov15 Public services at the sharks' mercy By KENNETH DAVIDSON 2000-11-16 00:45:08 Like the shark, the federal Coalition is a force of nature. Few people blame the shark that attacks a surfer. Similarly, it is pointless to get angry because of what the Coalition is doing to public health, education and broadcasting. Only a moron would now think the Coalition has any commitment to Medicare and public hospitals or government schools, except as poorly funded residual services for the poor. (Given the size of the budget surpluses $7.8 billion in 1999-2000 and $4.3 billion in 2000-01 the "no money, sound finance, the banks wouldn't like it" excuse for not financing basic universal services essential to the maintenance of a rich, civilised society is risible. The Coalition doesn't fund first-class public services because the maintenance of such services is repugnant to its values and ideology.) The Labor Party claims it is a different fish altogether. It isn't. It pretends to be a friendly, socialised dolphin. The record suggests it is simply another shark in disguise. The Hawke-Keating government had the nous to recognise that Medicare was a popular policy, which probably won Labor the "unwinnable" election of 1993. When Kim Beazley and his right-wing political thugs ambushed the Labor spokeswoman on health, Jenny Macklin, at their showpiece shadow cabinet meeting in Ballarat during the Sydney Olympic Games, and accepted that a future Labor government would continue to subsidise private health insurance on the scale set by the Coalition, Labor effectively drove the last nail into the Medicare coffin constructed by Michael Wooldridge. Now Beazley Labor is in the process of sanctifying the Coalition demolition of public education as a first-class, universal system while pretending otherwise in order to pacify the parents of the 70 per cent of children whose future is being diddled by the funding changes. Just because Beazley and his education henchman, Michael Lee, are trying to stir up the mob by focusing on the inequity of the Government forking out $53 million to Australia's top 61 schools, that doesn't prove they are on the side of public education. Far from it. They take the hard-nosed view that the public schools and their parents have nowhere else to go except Labor. For Beazley Labor, education policy equals shoring up the Catholic vote. And what is the Catholic attitude to funding? One word: more. And they are getting it in guaranteed bundles from the Coalition. Until the 1990s it was possible to see a concert of interests between the Catholic schools and the state system. No more. Like the rich independent schools, the Catholic schools want money without responsibility. According to the 1999 report of the National Catholic Education Commission: While Catholic schools receive public funds, they are not public agencies. Fidelity to the church's education mission is the primary concern of Catholic schools, which ought not be compromised. In order to comply with a Catholic community as essential to the character and mission of Catholic education, the latter must prevail and no penalties, financial or otherwise, should result. Under David Kemp, anybody can start up a school providing they have a teacher, a toilet and a classroom. Argue that the Catholics should be unaccountable for their public money if you like, but what about the Scientology school at Mooroolbark or the Martarishi Yoga school at Bundoora and the Muslim schools everywhere? The Democrats have put up a series of thoughtful amendments to Kemp's education bill. The ALP has not supported them. Why has Labor rejected amendments that would require: that private schools continue to report on their level of resourcing; that funding under the new parental means system be based on the actual parental income of students at that school; that a national school board be established along the lines of the Schools Commission set up in 1973 by the Whitlam government to make the state-aid process transparent and fair, so schools funding could be free from sectarian and class politics? Forget about the money for a minute. Why has Labor rejected the Democrats' amendment requiring that 95 per cent of teachers employed in private schools be qualified? Surely this is impeccable policy for any political party that believes in a competitive, consumerist education system in which you get what you can afford to pay for and the devil take the hindmost. Kenneth Davidson is a staff writer. 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