Yesterday Tony Abbott declared the Coalition would expand the existing Education Tax Rebate to include school fees for all eligible students.

According to the Liberal Party’s press release:

“For primary students, this would mean a rebate to up to $500 per year per child in primary school. Eligible families will be able to claim a 50 per cent rebate for up to $1,000 of eligible education-related expenses for each child in primary school.

“For secondary school students, we will increase the rebate to up to $1,000 per year per child. Eligible families will be able to claim a 50 per cent rebate for up to $2,000 of education-related expenses for each child in secondary school.”

The payment is available for students at state, independent and private schools. But the government school element of this seems to have been lost on the Fairfax press, which ran with this intro:

Parents will be entitled to claim generous fee subsidies for sending their children to private and independent schools as part of the Coalition’s expanded education rebate policy.

Nowhere in the story that follows does it mention that state school students are eligible for the tax rebate, or that it is only available to parents on Family Tax Benefit A – meaning it’s already Centrelink means tested. In fact at the end of the story there is a poll which asks:

Do you think students should be able to claim a rebate on private school fees?

Which is shorthand for, should rich parents be allowed to claim tax benefits for sending their kid to Scotch College?

The Australian got into the act as well, with:

PARENTS will be able to claim for private school fees, violin lessons and dance and drama classes under the Coalition’s education tax rebate.

Do you like the addition of violin in there?

It’s true government schools don’t have fees, but they do have voluntary levies (in Victoria at least) which parents are strongly “encouraged” to pay. There have been cases of schools threatening to withhold extra-curricular services from children, such as excursions and sports carnivals subsidised by the levy, if parents don’t pay up. These levies are generally under $100 for primary school and under $200 for secondary schools, and are on top of the cost of books, uniforms, camps, shoes etc. The notion of free government schooling is virtually a myth.

Now I am the last person to defend private schools (or Liberal Party policy for that matter). However, stories on election announcements should be accurate, informative and totally objective without a sensationalist angle. If ever a journalist’s primary role of gathering information, assessing it and presenting it in an easy to digest and accurate manner was important it’s during an election campaign. Why skew a story for a decent headline when offering people tax breaks for school fees is interesting enough?

Of course, it is debatable whether or not there should be tax rebates for private school fees, but there’s a big difference between including private schools in such a scheme and it being exclusive public schools when it comes to people’s opinions on the matter.

For the record I’m sick of middle class welfare for cost of living expenses such as school fees when family carers of disabled children are doing it touch because they are unable to work and often receive less than the aged pension.