What appears to be a gigantic leap of faith for the east-coast ALP governments is really just a simple plan from the average punter's point of view. In fact, I can hear voters across the nation bellowing out to Premiers Bracks, Beattie, Iemma & Rann ...
"Well, derrrrrrrrr !!!!!!"
Time and time again, pollsters ask the average voters what the contemporary issues are leading into an election. Time and time again the same answers come forth ... education and health (aside from law and order). Everyone, it seems, thinks that health and education is low on the priority list for governments and that we all would like to see them both improved on an immense scale.
But, at the same time, we all are only too happy to blame the state governments for the obvious lack of will and fortitude while they in turn blame scrooge-like Commonwealth funding, despite record flows of cash through the GST ON TOP of the abomination of sneaky taxes, e.g.: stamp duty.
It has been my belief for many years, even before I read the policy papers from the Democrats, that States are somewhat redundant. I would dearly love to see our second and third (local government) tier bureaucracies replaced by a simple regional government similar to that seen in some other countries. In the UK, for example, the National Health System (NHS) provides funding to local councils that provide the services.
Such a move would, ideally, transfer ALL constitutional powers to the Commonwealth, whereby we would have one entity controlling the collection the tax revenue and the distribution thereof. One government to disperse ALL funds according to a fair and equitable rule of need, rather than the current rule of possession.
I dare the states to hand over jurisdiction in health and education to the Federal Government - lets have one national health system under medicare, but more importantly, we should demand a single education system with one national curriculum for all.
I'm wary of mass centralisation of government services. There are good economic rationalist reasons for consolidating, say, the nation's health service, but I think the notion of a nationalised curriculum is problematic.
ReplyDeleteNationalising a curriculum is akin to centralising knowledge, and you'd be replacing a state curriculum body with an even more distant national bureaucracy (Ministry of Truth, anyone?). It'd be an Orwellian situation where one body alone decides what all students across the country learn, and it makes any kind of bottom-up development and reform even more difficult. For the sake of national diversity I think the states should be left to create their own curricula, subject to some recognised, agreed minimum standards.