A common theme

The new conservative government is not governing for all Victorians - as seen in Brunswick.

Ms Garrett said the local community had been “abandoned” in the Budget.

“By failing to fund the expansion and upgrade of Brunswick Secondary College, this Government is ripping up the approved master plan for this school and betraying the many families in our area,” she said.

But James Martin, spokesman for Education Minister Martin Dixon, said the master plan would remain in place and put the school at an advantage for future funding.

“It will come into consideration for future budgets,” Mr Martin said.

 This is a common refrain this week all through the northern suburbs.  In the election last year the conservatives made one local education promise across the northern suburbs.

The broader point is that conservatives tend to govern only for those who vote for them.  labor on the other hand, somewhat naively, believes its rhetoric about governing for every suburb, every street, every neighborhood.

Child Care Watch

H/T to Joshua Gans.

mychild.gov.au has been launched today. As Gans notes it amounts to a ChildCareWatch. As well as accessing information you can check out what childcare services operate in your area. For instance in my community, Brunswick West, it identifies five services, including before and after school care. While there are more services to be added it should be a great compliment to Labor's proposed one stop shop childcare enrolment system for Moreland

Tis an autumn for an election

I am running for election as a delegate to ALP State Conference from my local area. For the record I thought I might reproduce parts of my letter to ALP members here...

As you know over the past few years I have been a member of the Coburg branch executive, including secretary. Currently I am also a member of the party’s Transport Policy Committee.

Labor, being in power at all three levels of government, has a historic opportunity to change our nation for the better. We need progressive voices at state conference that will to provide a vital counter to conservative ideas and interests.

I have been endorsed by the Socialist Left, and if elected I will support progressive policies such as:

• Planning for a sustainable future, including the expansion of public transport and opposing unnecessary and expensive road projects
• More respect for unions from Labor governments – especially in the vital areas of education and health.
  
• Economic policies that are grounded in a desire to make poverty history.
• Support for diversity and multiculturalism within a framework of respect for human rights, equality for women and the rule of law;

I am committed to reporting back to the Coburg/Brunswick branch following each State Conference and taking up your issues at that forum.

Boomers should pay

Its been a while but I had a letter published in Melbourne's The Age today.

Boomers should pay

BRUCE Chapman wants to make Australians holidaying or working overseas pay HECS (The Age, 12/12). That's fine, but he ignores the bigger problem with HECS. HECS is a tax on education imposed by the baby boomer generation on those born from the 1970s onward. There is no intergenerational equity in HECS.

A doctor, lawyer, public servant, or accountant who went through university before HECS has by default a higher earning capacity than a professional who went through university in the 1990s, or even worse, after 1996. A real reform to HECS would not be to abolish it, or cut its rates, but to introduce intergenerational equity.

Make everyone who has benefited from public funding of a university course, ever, and who is still in the workforce, pay a contribution back to the government. That way doctors, lawyers, public servants and accountants and even Bruce Chapman would have to pay — just like a 23-year-old graduate of nursing or teaching. It's time for some real intergenerational equity, not more penny pinching from the baby boomers.

Christopher Anderson, Brunswick West