AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS - D.O.G.S.

PRESS RELEASE 114#.

THE AUSTRALIAN' NEWSPAPER'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST PUBLIC EDUCATION

AND

PROMOTION OF RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS - A CANCER IN THE BODY  POLITIC

7 July  2005

The Editor,

The Australian

Dear Sir/Madam,

Through its news columns and editorial the Australian in the past week has continued its ongoing attacks on public education together with the promotion of State Aid to private religious schools.

The basis of their attack in the past week took the form of an editorial and news support for the attempt of the Labor Party’s right wing to bury Latham’s policy of reduced funding for outrageously wealthy schools.

It is notable that the Australian report used the son of a well known DLP supporter, Steve Bracks, Bill Shorten, a product of Xavier College Kew, and Craig Emerson, a product of St Patrick’s College  Strathfield as promoters of a version of the fraudulent “needs” policy which has resulted in current inequitable funding policies.  DOGS wonder whether Mark Arbib comes from the same religious school stable.

The Australian, through its columns pulled out  the time worn misleading arguments in support of Aid to private schools even though the results of State Aid are there for all with eyes which wish to view realities. The Australian promotes without batting an eyelid the sectionalist, sectarian collection and distribution of tax in a liberal democratic State.

They continue to cast doubt on impoverished, demoralised State education bureaucracies whilst leaving highly centralised and autocratic Roman Catholic bureaucracies strictly alone. Yet the Victorian Roman Catholic education bureaucracy in recent years has been described by the Melbourne academic Hedley Beare as a behemoth. For the uninitiated a behemoth is a great or monstrous beast.

While any citizen questioning State Aid to religious schools is denigrated as “divisive” yet State Aid is now the very lifeblood of sectarian schools which divide children on the basis of class, creed, colour, and culture.

The Australian editorial ( 5 July 2005) has the temerity to raise the question of accountability of  administrators in the public education sector while ignoring the outrageous lack of any real public accountability for the billions of taxpayers dollars spent in the private sector every year.

Both the article and the editorial are abysmal when it comes to a discussion of good public policy. Public education is for the public good. Private education is for the private good. Public Education promotes the res publica above private, selfish privileged interests.

Nowhere in the Australian is there any consideration of why public education was set up in the first place and why State Aid to private schools ceased during the years in which Australia led the world with its social policies. We are paying and will further pay a heavy social and economic, not to mention political price for rushing to imitate the religious divisions and problems of Europe and Asia.

Church schools are and always have been a cancer in the democratic body politic.

Since it is against the Australian’s policy to publish DOGS letters we will place this letter on our web site for an ever wider readership than that enjoyed by the Australian.

Yours in anticipation,

RAY NILSEN

PRESIDENT DOGS