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Keywords: School Funding

  • AUSTRALIA

    The things you can't get for free

    • Michael Mullins
    • 24 November 2014
    7 Comments

    Thanks to Senators Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir, we can once again trust our financial advisers. There are some things that are worth paying for. If somebody else pays for something, it's likely that we will get what they want, not what we need.

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  • RELIGION

    Constitutionally Australia is a religious country

    • Kevin Donnelly
    • 03 November 2014
    29 Comments

    Unlike France, Australia's Constitution specifically accepts the place of religion in the broader society, with its reference to Almighty God in the Preamble. Its only stipulation is that governments should not privilege one religion over another, or unfairly discriminate. Moreover, our legal system and institutions might be secular in nature, but they draw heavily on Christian ethics and morality.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Quality childcare an investment in the future

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 17 October 2014
    4 Comments

    Children of the 1980s are likely to have been cared for full-time by a parent. But most of them are now combining parenting with paid employment as they become parents today. The Productivity Commission has been asked to make childcare and early learning services affordable and flexible, to ensure children don't get in the way of workforce participation. But the other priority, which is perhaps easier to ignore, has to do with the quality of care and learning offered. 

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  • RELIGION

    National Curriculum a step forward

    • Chris Middleton
    • 16 October 2014
    5 Comments

    Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne has supported a national curriculum, while some observers have cautioned that it is not the panacea for improving educational standards that many may hope for. The Federal Review report released in the past week addresses many of the concerns, and on the whole their recommendations seem appropriate and constructive.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Self-absorption dressed up as romanticism

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 October 2014
    2 Comments

    It is almost impossible to sympathise with Aidan and his flailing ‘dream’. He decides to take the kids’ education into his own hands. He calls this ‘home schooling’, but it pretty much consists of taking them for trips into the desert or conning the salesman at a luxury car dealership into letting them take a car for a spin, while spouting trite platitudes about life, death and the getting of wisdom.

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  • MEDIA

    Homes that enable the disabled

    • Andrea McQueen
    • 27 August 2014
    10 Comments

    In recent years, people with disabilities have been coming out of institutions. They are in our streets, our shops and our schools, but not on TV. We need programs like the ABC's Dreamhouse to prompt conversation about what kinds of lives are possible for people with disabilities, and how we can best use our tax money to make dreams come true.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The unjustified secrecy of the Abbott Government

    • Jack Maxwell
    • 11 August 2014
    17 Comments

    Liberal democracies keep secrecy in check. Where secrecy is justified, this justification should itself be public. The Abbott Government has withheld important information from the public on questionable grounds, and it has shielded itself from criticism by stifling debate on whether that secrecy is justified.

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  • RELIGION

    Rules won't restore the Church

    • Chris McGillion and Damian Grace
    • 23 July 2014
    20 Comments

    It is widely assumed that rules are the solution to transgressions such as those being investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Rules are useful. They can be framed to aid compliance and deter wrongdoing. It is no argument against them to say that people will still offend, but if rules are more legal requirements than the expression of genuine morality, they will have limited effectiveness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Emergency relief fall guys for a heartless government

    • Mike Bowden
    • 30 June 2014
    37 Comments

    A week ago I get a phone call from the CEO of Northern Territory Vinnies, for whom I am council secretary. Could I come in and sign a letter about emergency relief before the next council meeting? 'Of course.' The letter is produced and, being conscientious, I actually read it. The Federal Government is offering Darwin Vinnies additional ER funds for the rest of the year. And I stop. I am not comfortable.

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  • EDUCATION

    Harvard professor defies Australian class warfare

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 27 June 2014
    13 Comments

    Amidst a whirl of media interviews and meetings, David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard University and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2014, paid a visit to his alma mater: a state school in suburban Sydney. State schools aren't the repositories of children too impoverished or unintelligent for the alternative; they're the living manifestation of democracy, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and ecumenism.

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  • EDUCATION

    Uni fee changes will erase egalitarianism

    • Paul Rodan
    • 03 June 2014
    13 Comments

    An unregulated fee regime will result in an increase in course costs and will mean substantially larger debts for students after their periods of study. The prestigious Group of Eight institutions can be expected to exploit their reputational positions to charge top dollar. How does a 17-year-old decide whether selecting the degree from the prestige university over the same course at a newer institution justifies an extra decade of debt?

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  • EDUCATION

    Shorten should handle Gonski gift with care

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 28 May 2014
    1 Comment

    The Government doesn't want it. Shorten does. He can go to the next election with uncontested ownership of one of the most widely supported proposals of recent times. The problem with Gonski's plan, however, is that he wasn't allowed or able to propose solutions anywhere near as big as the problems his review uncovered. This presents Shorten with a tricky dilemma.

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