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.
Rudd gaffe: puts electorate before journalists
Jul 21
Posted by David in Federal election 2010, Media, Politics | 2 Comments
Kevin Rudd should be in damage control for putting children before journalists, say journalists.
Kevin Rudd’s first appearance of the election campaign bordered on ludicrous today as he snubbed the most important people in this election campaign, the travelling media pack.
Mr Rudd refused to answer questions of the journalists, who were most considerate when repeatedly yelling out the same question about his relationship with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as he tried to talk to a group of school children.
The man who was ousted as prime minister three and a half weeks ago spruiked something trivial about the benefits of school spending to Year 3 and Year 4 students, totally oblivious to the needs of the journalists, some of whom invested in new clothes and opened Twitter accounts specially for this election campaign
Mr Rudd wanted media coverage – be there at 12:15pm, the hard-working, all-important reporters were told.
They obliged, some even had to catch taxis, and 45 minutes later the local member arrived at the school’s back entrance, then took the chatty principal with him to the front entrance where the waiting media cameras rolled.
The anxious media scrum, some with sore feet, encircled Mr Rudd as he spoke to principal Greg Kretschmann about facilities built with stimulus program funding.
But today, in Mr Rudd’s safe Labor seat of Griffith in Brisbane’s south, it seemed Cooparoo State School was the place where you are not supposed to ask questions, even in the unlikely event they were sensible ones.
“This is just great,” said one journalist sarcastically. “We’re not here to show him looking at schools and communicating with children from his electorate. He should be talking to us about what’s most important in this election campaign; his relationship with Julia Gillard. Doesn’t he know who we are?
“First they make us fly in a loud air force Hercules and now this.”
Mr Rudd finally spoke to journalists as he walked to his tax-payer funded Commonwealth car.
“I’ll just say one thing before I go… and that is throughout this election campaign I’ll be speaking only about local issues here in my community here in Griffith, such as this school building program, and the need to complete that program in each and every one of the 42 primary schools in my electorate,” he said, pretending to be oblivious as to what election campaigns are really about.
Apologies to the ABC’s Annie Guest
Tags: griffith, journalists, Kevin Rudd, no comment, school