Liberal doses of in/equality: Advance Australia where?

In so doing, Australia has succeeded in delivering similar employment and productivity outcomes with less income inequality. This is principally due to John Howard’s Family Tax Benefit transfer system - however first, such policies tend to obscure increasing income inequality trends and second, passive redistribution encourages welfare dependency through effective marginal tax rate disincentives.

This is something that the recent Coalition government’s WorkChoices legislation is intended to prevent but it has also edged Australia further towards the far right of the spectrum - closer to the US system, which is epitomised by extremes in both wealth and poverty. These extremes are mirrored in the starkly inequitable distribution of educational achievement by North American 15-year-olds in the TIMMS and PISA assessments.

Mounting research evidence is showing that market-based systems informed by a neo-liberal rationality, which leave education systems uninsulated by active social investment and a healthy social fabric, place inordinate strain on teachers, schools, parents and communities. Moreover, inadequate safety nets due to social policy failures leave gaping holes leading to social closure and lives spent in the constant shadow of stress, insecurity, low self-esteem, increased risk of depression, suicide, substance abuse, low intergenerational mobility, welfare-dependency and general despair.

None of this is conducive to producing active citizens in a healthy democracy.

In order to underpin an inclusive democracy for the future of this country, a comprehensive education system must be well-supported both within and out. It should be of high quality and that quality should be fairly distributed.

Education should be public, universal, compulsory and free but public schools must be of equal quality for (somewhat ironically) evidence from the Nordic countries shows that “parent choice” is rendered irrelevant when the best schools in the nation are equalled by their local comprehensive. In those same countries however, the excellence in that school is matched and supported by strong communities and welfare networks built through strategic social investment.

While Australian schools and teachers have so far been plugging the gap between increasing expectations and decreasing resources, they cannot do it forever. Teacher attrition is one indicator to which governments should be paying closer attention.

Ultimately, Australian public schools can do little to address the yawning divide in educational achievement unless our governments realise that high quality and high equity in education are inconsistent with a political rationality that sees education simply as a (costly) economic lever. State and federal systems alike must therefore turn to more responsible governance structures that are supportive of education as a public good and a fundamental democratic right.