Press Releases

Victorian children can no longer regard a public education in a public school as their right. The Victorian Lib-Lab governments, along with their federal counterparts, have provided preferential funding of religious schools to the severe detriment of proper public provision. Now, in of all places, Ballarat - the Catholic church is rewarded for shocking behaviour with a new school while public schools are overcrowded.

Mr Turnbull has scraped home and is announcing this as a mandate for the Coalition budget and policies. But, given a slim majority, the cross bench and adverse Senate, has he won an election or been given a poison chalice ?
Australian citizens wandered further and further away from the major parties. Why? Have they rejected the neo-liberal mess created by three decades of lib-lab governments?
DOGS note that while the political group – the DLP - that initiated State Aid in the 1960s, together with their offspring, are in political disarray, and while the more public education friendly Labor Party and green senators have strong representation in the House of Representatives and hold the balance of power in the Senate, the outlook for public education is not as bleak as it might seem.

Privatisation of Medicare by the Liberal Government has become part of the Labor Party campaign. But nobody dares to talk about the ongoing privatisation of public education, particularly in Victoria.

For this might open up the REAL funding problem, namely, State Aid pouring with no strings attached into private schools that duplicate and undermine our cash-strapped public school facilities.

Parents have always had to make a lot of noise and develop political clout in order to obtain, maintain, and save their public schools. Even middle class inner city parents are discovering this. They are on the move. DOGS received this email from the City Schools for City Kids group.