Democratic Accord

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The full version of The Australian Learning Lecture document referenced above is available here.

Government funding of private education now sees hundreds of private schools across the country receiving more government funding than comparable public schools.

For many years taxpayer largesse has helped fund the extraordinary facilities of elite private schools, where student fees can be as much as $50 000 per annum. Meanwhile, under-resourced comprehensive public schools are left to educate the vast majority of children from low-income families.

At the same time, the country's seen increasing numbers of middle-class families choosing to educate their children in the private system, often at significant financial sacrifice. Whether for faith reasons, or to give their children a real (or perceived) advantage, this increasing compulsion has only served to make the country's education system more segregated and less equitable. All the while, the overall performance of Australian students against international benchmarks has, for many years, declined.

Public money should not fund schools which are only available to the few. We can retain a system which allows for parental choice, but not at the cost of providing public money to fund opportunities not available to every student.

Our choice should be to:

• Provide every student a guaranteed place at a local public primary or secondary school, as happens now
• Reserve for out-of-area enrolments a proportion of places in each year group in each public school, to be filled on application and awarded according to merit, or demonstrated interest, as does not happen now
• Fully fund private schools with their distinctive faith-based or learning approaches, provided such schools do not charge fees, and accept all local area enrolments, as happens in countries like New Zealand
• Allow private schools to charge fees and set their own admissions processes only if they receive zero government funding, as happens in many overseas jurisdictions

This compelling document outlines the reasons for making this very choice. As a counterpoint, consider this summary from Independent Schools Australia.

Accord's wiki should include curated lists of links to good external sources of information, arranged by policy area. These lists could be a source of useful information for members and non-members alike.

Responsibility for maintaining these lists could fall to individual members, with different members responsible for different topics. Direct appointment by the Appointments subcommittee might be the simplest way of assigning this function to members.

Within a topic area, an ordering of resources from basic to most technical would probably be helpful for readers. A concise and objective review of the resource, together with a measure of its trustworthiness, may also be useful.

Resources should not be restricted to documents or external bodies in line with the party's established policies but include the best contrary material as well.

The private health insurance rebate, another Howard government policy, is so ripe for reform it positively reeks.

As a matter of principle, the government should provide universal high-quality and affordable public hospital care, including timely elective surgery with a clear health benefit. This — the promise of Medicare — is surely what most Australians want.

There's clearly an excellent case to scrap the private health insurance rebate altogether, together with lifetime health cover and the Medicare levy surcharge.

These measures, in driving people to take up private health insurance, do the following:

• Cost the taxpayer billions of dollars per year (the PHI rebate)
• Arguably do little to alleviate pressures on the public hospital system
• Represent an inverted government welfare measure as the biggest rebates are paid to those Australians with the most expensive policies — by definition the wealthiest amongst us
• Help cement a widespread (but faulty) notion that individual choice should be compensated by those unable to make the same choices or derive the same benefits

Here's a couple of references that briefly list some of the arguments for and against the private health insurance rebate:

• The private health insurance rebate has cost taxpayers $100 billion and only benefits some. Should we scrap it?, The Conversation, 20 April 2022
• Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Medicare: Medicare - healthcare or welfare?, Parliament of Australia, 30 October 2003 (full report available here)

The capital gains tax concession was introduced by John Howard in 1999. Its introduction has been central to the property boom that now sees houses utterly unaffordable for a great many Australians across the country.

Why should wage and salary income be taxed at a rate greater than the lazy earnings of appreciating assets — stocks, or property, or art, or boats, or whatever?

Work for the country and do something productive through your labour, and you're worse off than a bloke trading shares or currency from his bedroom in his pyjamas — provided said pyjama wearer holds his shares longer than a year. That is, work in a hospital, or in a school, or in a police station for your money, or for a small business servicing a community, and you're worse off than our pyjama wearer. How is that defensible?

Why aren't all capital gains discounted for inflation, but then taxed at the full marginal tax rate for individuals? Some proposals for reform have talked about halving the discount to 25%. But that still leaves a discount in place! Surely a dollar received by a taxpayer is still a dollar, however obtained?

The CGT concession is overwhelmingly paid to those with money to invest. In other words, the benefit derives almost exclusively to the richest. It's money gifted to the wealthy, rather than the needy — an inversion of what ought to be the case.

How is the CGT discount defensible? Is there even a single argument in its favour?

Arguments against it would appear to be:

• It encourages speculation, and other unproductive investment,
• It's fuelled the completely unsustainable boom in house prices,
• It comes at an enormous cost in terms of tax receipts withheld,
• It's completely unfair — a benefit that derives almost exclusively to the richest.

How to remove the CGT discount? Sure, grandfather existing investments, and continue to exempt the family home. But otherwise, why not get on and eliminate it for good?

Here's an initial list of tools that show promise for Accord's purposes:

• Kialo, with possible benefits here
• Polis
• Decidim
• Your Priorities

Vikunja has been installed as the Party's (light-weight) issue management tool. Like Wiki.js and NodeBB, it's FOSS and works with our SSO (OIDC) provider Auth0.

Unfortunately, attempts to install a couple of replacement tools failed. Both Taiga and Planka, for example, were unable to work with Auth0, despite indications that this ought to work.

Taiga is now defunct and has been replaced by Tenzu. Might it successfully work with Auth0 OIDC? Alternatively, might a second attempt at getting Planka to work succeed? Is there another FOSS product out there that'll do the job for us, or should Accord eventually look at a tool like Plane One for this function?