Labor worse than Greens on economics:PM


AAP – 1 hour 14 minutes ago

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has accused Labor of being worse than the Australian Greens for economic vandalism.

The Greens are in discussions with the government to try and resolve the debt ceiling row before the current $300 billion limit is reached on December 12.

The government wants to raise the debt limit to $500 billion, but Labor wants to limit the increase to $400 billion.

The Greens are happy to scrap the ceiling altogether as long there is greater transparency over why debt is being raised.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten asked Mr Abbott how he could be considering doing a deal with the Greens when he once labelled them "economic fringe dwellers".

"Bad as the Greens are, it wasn't the Greens that gave us the five biggest deficits in Australia's history, it was members opposite," Mr Abbott told parliament on Wednesday.

"I agree that the Greens have been economic fringe dwellers and that just means that members opposite are worse, worse than the Greens when it comes to economic vandalism."

Treasurer Joe Hockey agreed, saying Labor is the party of debt.

"I never would have thought I would be standing at this dispatch box and saying `the Greens are proving to be more reasonable than the Labor'. I can't believe it," he said.

"Just because you leave us with your problems do not stop us from fixing them."

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/labor-worse-greens-economics-pm-080311568.html?



Libs and Greens just voted to remove debt ceiling.....

I wonder what the odds are on the next budget being inside that vaunted top 5?

At least he won't be able to blame the debt ceiling for any budget cuts he makes.

So...what happened to that "debt emergency" that the LNP were elected off the back off? Does that just not matter any more?

Such things do not matter for those born to rule. :roll:

Look taking away all the political rhetoric around this debt talk the Government is doing the sensible thing. Slashing and burning the economy simply to get into the black is economic vandalism, so it's good to see a more measured approach being taken from what I can see.

As far as the debt ceiling goes the Government is right in getting rid of it, it always gets pushed up when needed and the only purpose it serves is sparking public scrutiny of the budget when we reach the limit. We don't need that, that's what the May budget is all about. And really the debt ceiling is completely useless anyway, even if the limit is reached the Government can still borrow for the next 12 months so long as an agreement is reached in that period.

So instead of getting into the whole he said, she said, I'll give points to the Government on this one for now.

good post....=d> =d> =d> =d>

i wouldn't call you an idiot for arguing with Afro....;) ;)

it's widely acknowledged(except for the ignorant) that Labor withdrew the funding for Qld,WA & NT.

was also documented in the pre election fiscal report and shorten will not deny it because it is true.......

So when Abbott made his promise it may well have been based on the budgetary figure outlined by the previous Government, who knows......not great politics but possibly why they backed up and threw the $1.2 billion back in......disappointing to say the least.....

Education systems need hard lesson

THE feral critics of federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne made one simple but seriously-flawed assumption when they attempted to savage him over the former Labor government's terminally damaged Gonski education reform.
In the collective view of the leftists at the ABC and Fairfax Media, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments possessed some degree of competency.
That's a bad place from which to make any assessment of the programs they left in place - like Gonski.

Respected businessman David Gonski must rue the day he agreed to look into the education funding shambles for former prime minister Julia Gillard.
In the end, it became nothing more than an ideologically-driven scheme to bribe state and territory leaders.
To think it would ever break with Labor tradition and achieve success was always too much to ask for.
But a few Pollyannas remain ever willing to sacrifice thoughtfulness for wishy-washy idealism, despite the evidence of such lethal failures as Labor's pink batts scheme, its tragically fatal border protection scheme, its extravagantly wasteful and inefficient national broadband rollout, its laughable carbon tax and ineffective mining tax. Media figures tripped over themselves in their rush to embrace Gonski as the latest educational panacea.
But what was it ever going to achieve beyond increased funding - Labor's ever-ready toss-more-money-at-the-problem universal but always ineffectual solution?
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell should have been aware of the risks posed in getting into bed with Labor, as should his Education Minister Adrian Piccoli. They should have given more thought to the substance of Gonski rather than let themselves be dazzled by the cash Gillard was offering to entice them and other states to sign up. In education, principles as well as principals count.
The key defect in what is now known as Gonski is that Labor gutted the plan of genuine forward-thinking reform and ensured that it was about nothing more than cash handouts which Labor would place on the national credit card.
There is nothing wrong with that, if it's affordable. The big error lies in believing money is the sole answer to educational problems.
In the past decade the education budget has increased by 40 per cent but results have declined in real terms across every subject. Australian taxpayers pay $42 billion a year for shocking results.
The Abbott government has been faced with the choice of continuing to fund bad policy and fail our children or trying to help them gain from their schooling. Given that the federal government doesn't own any schools or employ any teachers, the choice seems simple.
Give the states and territories some guidance on curricula, replace the hideously ideological literacy program, for instance, with the universally accepted and proven phonics method of teaching reading, improve the quality of teachers by getting more involved in teacher training within universities, permitting school principals to assume greater responsibility and enjoy greater autonomy and, crucially, actively promote the engagement of parents or grandparents in the education of their children and grandchildren.
What happens in the classroom has far greater influence over a child's education than the amount of money being handed out.
It is clear Pyne is relentlessly focused on teacher quality and training and understands that university students who don't understand basic principles of English, let alone science or maths, are being trained as teachers.
They are the victims of failed educational fads and yet are expected to be able to teach future students.
The most hysterical criticism of the Abbott government's plans for education has come from the teachers' unions, because they can see their control being diminished as principals are given greater responsibility.
Hypocritically, the leftists who have always campaigned for more state schools are opposed to the creation of more state schools if they are to be given greater independence.
Independent state schools introduced in Western Australia are now so successful they are luring pupils from non-government schools, which upsets teachers' unions and the left enormously.
The schools are owned by the state but run by principals, with involvement from parents. Parents say the education their children receive at such schools is transformational.
Pyne firmly believes he was elected to make a real contribution, not merely occupy a seat in parliament. He knew he was always going to be attacked by the educational establishment for identifying its core weakness.
Labor never tried to make the necessary changes because it didn't want to create conflict with its trade union support base.
While the Abbott government has not cut the education funding agreed to during the forward estimates period, it is going to insist on value for money.
That's a principle which principled principals will happily agree to.

Cool source bro.

-PB

How many fucking times do you have to be told to source your articles, batfink?

Especially when you've just been shown to be making shit up.

i posted that article not as proof, but as an indicator that we can throw as much money at education as you like and has made no difference over the last 10 years, our results continue to slide.......

we need to look at our curriculum and methods of education, test our teachers and lift the standards of our teachers.........

and my source for the withdraw of funding to WA,NT & Qld is the pre-election fiscal report....FYI....and confirmed by Shorten's reluctance to deny he withdrew the funding....

no making shit up mate, you just can't accept the fact....

1) It's against forum rules to post news articles without a source
2) you were just shown to be making shit up as you please.

Everything else is irrelevant.

LOL.....](*,) ](*,)

sorry you are wrong dolt......you are seriously up yourself and full of shit....major troll and noodle.......just smash a few cones and think to yourself how good you are, at least you will feel good about yourself until the buzzz lasts.....

you are irrelevant...tosspott

Got a link there batty?

-PB

believe it was news.com.au

Standard batfink response: resort to personal insults because he knows he's been shown to be full of shit again.

You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-26/donnelly-why-pyne-is-right-to-review-the-gonski-reforms/5117438

Why Pyne is right to review the Gonski reforms
By Kevin Donnelly
Posted Tue 26 Nov 2013, 3:40pm AEDT


With its misguided emphasis on students' socioeconomic backgrounds and its discrimination against private schools, the Gonski education reform needed to be reviewed, writes Kevin Donnelly.

Christopher Pyne, the Commonwealth Education Minister, is right to argue that the Gonski funding model, enshrined in the Australian Education Bill rushed through Parliament in the weeks before the last election, is flawed, inconsistent and lacking in transparency.

Pyne is also correct to agree that any review of the school funding model will occur next year - thus giving schools, system authorities and the states and territories the certainty that current arrangements, especially in terms of the amount of funding for next year, will remain set at the agreed level. The Coalition will also match Labor's overall spending over the next four years, though the distribution may change beyond 2014.

That the Coalition government is committed to reviewing the Gonski model, or what should be described as Gonski light given that what was being implemented by the then Rudd government bore little relationship to what the original Gonski report recommended, shouldn't surprise.

The Coalition's education policy, released during the election campaign, states that any incoming Abbott government will guarantee existing arrangements for 2014 while signalling the need to amend the Australian Education Act and revisit the issue of funding to ensure greater consistency, stability and certainty.

One only needs to read the submissions by independent and Catholic school authorities to the Senate inquiry into the Education Bill to appreciate that the Gonski school funding model is inconsistent and opaque.

Such were the criticisms and fears about the funding model, and the associated cumbersome and intrusive National Education Reform Agreement, that the Coalition senators recommended "that the bills not proceed, pending detailed examination in the 44th Parliament".

In addition, such are the fears about Gonski representing a Commonwealth takeover of schools, constitutionally the preserve of the states, that two premiers on different sides of the political fence, Napthine in Victoria and Giddings in Tasmania, expressed fears about Canberra's command and control model of education policy making.

Ministers Piccoli in NSW and Dixon in Victoria, if they have been properly briefed and have any sense of political realism, must recognise that jumping on board the Gonski bandwagon during the dying days of the Rudd government was fraught with risk.

This was especially so given that Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory had not endorsed Gonski, the Rudd government undermined any consistency by signing different agreements with different jurisdictions, and most of the promised funding was never to eventuate until years five and six - two years beyond the forward estimates.

The Coalition Government is committed to reviewing teacher training and the national curriculum; Pyne is also correct to reaffirm the election promise to review Gonski. In addition to being inconsistent and opaque, the Gonski report and its recommendations are inherently flawed.

Contrary to the argument that Gonski is fair and reasonable, the funding model, embodied in the Australian Education Bill, unfairly discriminates against the 34 per cent of Australian students attending Catholic and independent schools.

On the contrary...


There are three simple reasons why Gonski is the right way to fund education in Australia, writes Jane Caro.
The quantum of funding for non-government schools, what is known as the Schooling Resource Standard, is reduced by a figure of at least 10 per cent - described as "parents' capacity to pay". Wealthy parents sending their children to privileged, well-resourced state schools face no such impost.

The statement in the Gonski report that "students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and Indigenous students have the most significant impact on education outcomes" mirrors the cultural-Left argument that socioeconomic disadvantage is the prime cause of students' underachieving.

The evidence proves otherwise as detailed in a recent publication by the University of Melbourne's Gary Marks. In his book Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability, Marks dispels the myth that postcode is destiny by detailing other more influential factors, such as: student prior ability, school culture and classroom environment, and effective teachers and a rigorous curriculum.

After examining debates about the impact of students' background and recent research, Marks writes: "... arguments that the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities across generations is strong and enduring and that cognitive ability is irrelevant are simply not true."

Reinforcing a number of studies associated with the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth that also question the significance of socioeconomic background, Marks also concludes, "Deliberations on education policy should not be based on the premise that the bulk of inequalities in education can be attributed to socioeconomic background".

The Gonski report is based on a mistaken view of what leads to educational disadvantage and underperformance. Gonski also discriminates against Catholic and independent schools and represents a highly centralised, bureaucratic and inflexible model of education guaranteed to stifle creativity and innovation and drown schools and teachers in red tape and compliance costs.

The Coalition government is right to honour its election promise to review Gonski next year and to work in collaboration with the states, territories and non-government school authorities to fashion a more transparent, credible and equitable outcome for schools.

I thought the ABC was just a left-wing mouthpiece.

Now it's a Turnbull PR machine.

Ah yes, those oh so poor Private schools, railing against their inability to add another shooting range, Olympic swimming pool or 5th rugby pitch.

That must be so tough for them while my school couldn't even afford to have aircon in all the classrooms :lol:

My high school had 30+ demountables and aircon that had to be turned off all the time because the power grid at the school wasn't good enough to handle it. :lol:

My dad had parliament time on the telly the other day. Health minister came up and started by saying, im paraphrasing of course, 'The previous government introduced a scheme to pay out people who were suffering from some disease and help them with monetary funds for treatment etc etc. They did it too slow. They were too incompetent. I have done more in six weeks than the opposition can ever hope for.'

FFS. Honestly. Do our politicians ever do anything but attack each other. Not one politician can agree with another. Even if the other guy does a good job, they still have something to say. Absolute utter crap. They cant even respect one another and they lead countries. Absolutely pathetic how they always at each others throat. One politician could save someone from a burning building and the opposition will say they could have done a better job or the building was not burning enough or something stupid.

Our high school burned to the ground and was more or less the same. Portable classrooms everywhere while they attempted to rebuild. Over $2m in damage was done. The budget to rebuild was $1.4m

Oh, my Catholic school built three brand new wings of classrooms (roughly 75 classrooms all up), a new science wing, smartboards and laptops for every classroom, plus a state of the art AFL pavillion, double story sports change rooms, and a full sized hockey pitch all within the last 8 years. Every teacher wants to work there because they are given all the support they need, teachers' aids for classes where students struggle and students with learning disabilities, special indigenous and ESL programmes. We had over 10 students get an ATAR of 90 in my cohort of 180, and from year 7-12 only 7 students dropped out of school all together.

At the public school I went to for ten years the only upgrades we had the entire time I was there (and even since I have left) has been building a shed to house the tractors we used for agricultural studies, moving a demountable to the other side of the school, and installing two smart boards. Teachers felt neglected, only one teachers' aid in the whole secondary school, continual rotation of teachers who wanted out. Of my cohort that remained at the school the dux got an ATAR of 55 (I and and a friend who left on scholarships in year 9 got over 90), of my year 7 class by year 12 a quarter were in other schools and half dropped out all together.



The quality of physical educational infrastructure does correlate to educational outcomes, but that is more or a signal of schools have excess money to spend, among other reasons. More money does need to be spent, but not on infrastructure. Teachers' aides, extra curricular programmes, teacher training, encouraging all teachers to undertake some level post graduate study. Private and Catholic schools already have these initiatives in place and a reaping the benefits as a result. Some public schools too have this in place but a large proportion don't, leaving many teachers stagnating in their professional development after they've completed their tertiary studies. Teacher quality needs to improve but that still requires significant funding, which is exactly what the Gonski model is seeking to remedy. Trying to teach a class with a mix of ESL, autistic, and gifted students by yourself severely inhibits the teaching quality of even the most experienced teachers. People point to extra funding and falling outcomes over the past decade as proof spending more is futile. But nothing could be further from the truth, it simply shows that Howard's flawed SES funding structure and Labor's focus on infrastructure spending is the wrong way to go. Gonski's focus on spending to improve the quality of teacher training and support and effectively implementing to new National Curriculum (which is a superb curriculum expertly crafted), is spending that will bring the public school up to a level that will help address the inherent disadvantage in the current educational system and improve Australia's standing as a whole.

My opinion is based upon my research for my Bachelor of Education at Monash University

More balance to the budgeting and not making teachers feel like they're working for the retarded little brother of the private schools would be a great place to start.

..............................

:lol:

-PB

scrutiny always tends to get people back on track.....;)