source : the age
Last week, during the leaders’ debate, Anthony Albanese put on record what he would like his legacy as prime minister to be. “We want the universal provision of affordable childcare so that it is as natural to have your child have access to childcare as it is to have access to a public school.”
Put like that, it sounds like a grand vision. But if that’s Labor’s ambition, it’s worth asking just how well our schools are going.
If he wins in a fortnight, Albanese will have proved he can win an argument with Peter Dutton.Credit: Joe Benke
In a speech last year, the Productivity Commission chair, Danielle Wood, pointed out that compared to 2000, Australian students had lost eight months of reading gains – and an entire year of maths.
Even more depressing, for a country that boasts of fairness, the gap between poorer students and richer students remains large. We tend to think of the UK as divided by class – the gap between our students is larger.
But here is the bit of Wood’s speech that really stunned me. The learning gap between kids whose folks are highly educated and those who aren’t starts out pretty big. Over time that gap widens. Think about that for a moment: our school system takes an education gap between our students and makes it worse.
One significant dimension of this problem is the division between public and private schools – and the billions of dollars governments give to private schools. This isn’t inevitable. It is embedded in a particular vision of Australia. In part, that is John Howard’s doing, which he applied to private healthcare too: persuading Australians that “choice” was a more important thing to have than “equality”. Even when those “choices” are only available to those rich enough to afford them.
It remains a pretty shocking aspect of this country: the amount of money we provide to help rich kids get even further ahead of poor kids.
Albanese unwittingly gave another illustration of a similar principle in the same debate. Asked about negative gearing, he justified Labor’s policy not to change it. He even insisted his government had not requested modelling on such changes, despite his treasurer having earlier admitted he’d done something like that. No, said Jim Chalmers, trying to fix the situation later, he’d only asked for “a view”, not modelling. What precisely the government requested doesn’t really matter – its clear Chalmers wanted advice and Treasury confirmed it did the work.
Still, Labor’s embarrassing contortions point towards its terror of the subject. And what is this but a willingness to sacrifice equality in favour of the rich having more choices about where to invest their cash?
You could put this new iron law of Australian politics even more simply: whatever you do, try not to upset the rich.
Take the housing policies offered by the major parties last weekend. Yes, some young people will get help – but only in the context of a policy which will push up prices further, making those with assets richer.
Labor and the Coalition have both announced demand-side policies aimed at helping first homebuyers.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong
If campaign momentum was against Albanese, the modelling mess could have been disastrous. But it’s not. As I’ve repeatedly written, Trump’s intervention was likely decisive. But that said, with less than two weeks to go, it seems hard to deny Albanese judged the tone of his campaign well. Labor’s case is about stable, steady progress. And the thrust of that campaign – essentially “after difficult times Australia has turned a corner and begun fixing Medicare/energy/foreign relations” – was being discussed in detail within Labor about a year ago.
As were the sharp attacks on Dutton’s record as health minister. If there was any doubt these were working, it was scotched two weeks ago when Dutton, on breakfast TV, brought up those attacks without being asked about them, so eager was he to dismiss them publicly.
This points to two facts that will stand out if Labor wins. The first is that Labor left itself lots of time to make its case: it has been running the health attack on Dutton for two years. The Coalition, on the other hand, had far too much to do going in. It had to rebut such attacks. It had to tear down Albanese at just the moment when an interest rate cut seemed to indicate things had indeed turned a corner. And it had to make Dutton more appealing to voters than he had been.
What does the Coalition do for the final two weeks? Does it still believe victory is possible? If not, it might end its efforts to make Dutton palatable and put everything into dragging Labor down. You can see an example of what this might look like in a Coalition ad released last week, with two young blokes watching TV in a pub and complaining about Albanese and his focus on the Voice.
It’s true Labor has made some moves towards addressing inequality this term. Mostly, though, they have tried hard not to upset the rich. The stage 3 tax cuts were changed – but the rich still did very well. The Gonski school funding reforms are being delivered – but the absurd divisions in our system remain in place. JobSeeker was raised once, a little. There will be some more houses – and those that get to buy one will be able to reduce their taxes.
If Labor wins, for whatever combination of reasons, we will have learned one important fact: Albanese can in fact campaign. He can, when he absolutely has to, bring home an argument.
It’s fascinating to consider what Albanese could do with his new-found skill in a conducive environment, with inflation fading and a second election win under his belt. That is, if he was determined to shift the assumptions that have reigned since John Howard established them and began to make his case early, like he did with his campaign. If he wins in a fortnight, Albanese will have proved he can win an argument with Peter Dutton. In the next term, can he win one with John Howard?
Sean Kelly is author of The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
