With so many nations needing to borrow hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars, the question I’d like answered is this: who are the lenders? Which nations or banks are sitting on all that money? Or is it the printing press? What then? A world of Zimbabwes?
John Grundy
Chiswick, NSW
TANVEER Ahmed ("Unshackle our Leninist hospitals”, Opinion, 18/2) correctly identified centralised bureaucratic control as the major dysfunction in our public jospitals overlooked by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission ("Unshackle our Leninist hospitals”, Opinion, 18/2). As Ahmed predicts, no improvements will be made in the quality of health care, nor reduction in costs achieved, without changes that release health professionals from overbearing bureaucratic administrivia so they can do what they trained so long and hard for—caring for patients.
The NHHRC option for mega medical practices to take the burden off hospital emergency services is also flawed. The experience of existing private mega-practices filtering patients, as envisaged, shows health bureaucrats seek to coerce them, unwillingly, into the centralist control model of accountability, diverting precious care, attention, time and resources from patients and staff where value accrues.
Failing bureaucracy—the source of the problem identified by Ahmed—is not confined to health care, although similar problems are being aired daily as the Jayant Patel/Bundaberg Hospital case unfolds in court. The situation is reflected in virtually every outsourcing arrangement to deliver government services.
Inordinate accountabilities to an internal auditor converts best business and health practice to bureaucratic inefficiency, with attendant cost escalation and loss of sight of the objectives. Fundamentalism, even Leninist bureaucratic fundamentalism, will always be about power, control and process, not service. We desperately need a new model of governance more suitable to our times. Costs will increase and systems will be dumbed down until we do.
Paula Collins
Carina Heights, Qld
YOUR headline ("Costello says no to Treasury position, he only wants one job ... Turnbull’s”, 17/2) wrongly suggests that there are veiled threats to Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership of the federal Liberal Party. Had Peter Costello wanted Turnbull’s job, he would have competed for it last year. The only one job he really wants is Kevin Rudd’s.
Timing is everything in politics and Costello is fully aware that the current Opposition Leader will not be able to overcome Rudd’s record lead and beat him at the next election. There is nothing unethical in Costello waiting for the right time. As for those Liberal MPs who want him to either return to the front bench or resign, they should remember that Australia’s former longest-serving treasurer has contributed more to his country and party than most of them put together and is under no obligation to accept a front-bench position.
In his memoirs, Costello rightly points out that Kim Beazley’s failing was in being ascendant in the wrong part of the electoral cycle. One may cynically suggest that John Howard’s last act as Liberal leader was to throw one last poisoned dart at Costello by anointing him as his successor at such an unsuitable time.
Virad Mathur
Kensington, NSW
YOUR article ("Catholics lead exodus to public high schools”, 19/2) was totally misleading. For a start, only one-third of government school principals responded to the survey by the Australian Secondary Principals Association. Moreover, the majority of government schools surveyed showed an enrolment decline or no increase at all.
The facts contradict The Australian’s interpretation of the story. While 40 or 50 government schools across Australia may well have reported a rise in enrolments in 2009, the fact is many more non-government schools have also reported an increase.
In 2009 Catholic secondary school enrolments across all Australian states have increased by an average of over 2 per cent, or more than 3000 students, over 2008.
This enrolment trend is tremendous news for Catholic education and again shows that parents have confidence in our system of schools. It is all about parental choice and both state and commonwealth governments have consistently stated their support for this.
Therese Temby
Chair, National Catholic Education
Commission, Melbourne, Vic
JUSTINE Ferrari ("Poverty focus a failure for education”, 18/2) states that I’m critical of the Commonwealth’s targeted spending on low socio-economic status (SES) schools and areas. I wish to make my views clear.
I spoke at length to your reporter about how low SES schools can turn themselves around through focusing on evidence, quality teaching and being both responsive and demanding towards their students, enabled by teachers’ professional learning and effective school leadership. I also pointed out that the differences in student achievement are greater within schools than between schools, and the low student achievement occurs across all SES areas.
This is not, however, an argument to limit investment in low SES schools. SES does influence student achievement in the sense of advantage and disadvantage, but not in the sense of students’ ability or potential. Good teachers and schools help to overcome the disadvantages and obstacles that can come with low SES status. We are fortunate that in this country education can open so many doors of opportunity.
Finally, the expression “postmodernist claptrap” attributed to me in the interview was, as I pointed out, that of our late esteemed colleague at the Australian Council for Educational Research, Ken Rowe.
Stephen Dinham
ACER Research Director (in) Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Camberwell Vic
JOHN Howard, as usual, skilfully chooses his own ground for the debate over the Prime Minister’s article in The Monthly ("Rudd has stretched the facts: Howard”, 19/2). No amount of extolling the past success of free markets, or the strengths of the Australian economy, can obscure the clear failure of existing global regulatory systems to prevent the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market, and the ensuing global meltdown.
The intervention of governments across the political spectrum to rescue the world from this failure, has led to the rejection of a doctrinaire or laissez-faire approach relying on self-regulation by private enterprise and financial institutions hell bent on maximising profits.
It is too soon to judge these interventions, or whether perhaps neo-liberals will emerge from the process as neo-social democrats. All of us want to see a return to a world of open markets, freer trade and financial stability.
John Piper
Waverton, NSW
TWIGGY Forrest’s difficulties with the bureaucracy in implementing his plan to get 50,000 Aborigines into jobs ("Aboriginal jobs scheme mired in bureaucracy: Forrest”, 18/2), is a sample of the type of difficulty that could undermine the Prime Minister’s fiscal stimulation package. In good times, bureaucratic inertia, obstruction and power games are a tolerable joke, but not so now.
Just as extra money, without good teachers, does not guarantee better education, so too, the stimulation package will be less effective than it could be without committed public sector and private sector managers in key roles who have a make-it-happen attitude and are able to cut through red tape and get results quickly. Where appropriate, they may need support through special, perhaps temporary, legislative measures.
The bottom line is that effective stimulation involves much more than simply sprinkling lots of money about—the challenge is managerial as well as financial.
Philip Temple
Zilzie, Qld
Janet Albrechtsen’s opinion piece ("Liberal renewal starts with Bradfield”, 18/2) sounds a bit like a job application for Brendan Nelson’s old seat.
Kel Joaquin-Byrne
Randwick, NSW
MAJOR General Molan is an outstanding Australian soldier and combat commander. However, his article on Afghanistan ("End the pussyfooting in the Afghan war”, Opinion, 17/2) avoids the central issue: what is Australia’s objective in Afghanistan? Is it an Islamist-free, democratic Afghanistan? Is it merely being there, what NATO officers sarcastically call “being another flag on the American power-point slide”?
However sad the fate of Afghanistan, it is now only indirectly connected with the war against Islamic terrorist networks. To the extent that Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas harbour terrorists, those enemies can be targeted with air power, precision-guided munitions and special forces. Coalition forces do not need, and should not attempt, to occupy and pacify Afghanistan, a task the Soviets failed at, even with 120,000 soldiers.
Australia and its allies should commence planning for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and commence supporting friendly warlords with arms and advisers. President Obama’s realpolitik outreach to Iran should be supported, and through it approaches made to Iranian-armed proxy forces among the Shia Hazara tribes.
The Australian Defence Force needs to refocus on defending our core military interests. These interests do not include creating a secular, democratic Afghanistan. That mission is one for the Afghan people to accomplish.
G.A.F. Connolly
Bowral, NSW
PERHAPS I am old fashioned but the public would expect members of parliament to work to their full capacity and potential. If Peter Costello was asked to be the shadow treasurer and declined, he did not live up to that requirement.
Party politics and personal preference should take second place when the public interest is concerned, and the public interest is best served by Costello fully utilising his skills instead of languishing on the back bench.
Perhaps members of parliament, and in particular Peter Costello, need another reminder that pubic office is a privilege that has to be earned on continuing basis.
Michael Schilling
Millswood, SA
THE National Audit Office report on Centrelink shows the department believes it has a 97 per cent success rate in resolving complaints but customers put it at only 11 per cent ("Centrelink at odds on complaints”, 18/2).
Centrelink is the emperor in no clothes and the Government needs to change the agency’s role from one of stern authoritarian master into compassionate servant. Centrelink must take responsibility: accept mistakes and make amends, and have an open mind when making decisions.
The culture must be to serve.
John Dobinson
North Balwyn, Vic
I HATE that there is a now a two-tier system of dental care, and that people with smelly, eroded and missing teeth are in the growing majority.
Tier two contains folk with gleaming chompers who can afford to indulge dentists. These dentists don’t give a damn about the underdog. Rarely do health funds offer full dental coverage.
My GP is part-owner of a dental business, yet that dentist rejected my doctor’s letter of endorsement for subsidised treatment for a person who is an unpaid carer already pumping money into therapists for the disabled.
It’s a revolting, humiliating and unhealthy farce. A long sit-down for root canal therapy? Looxury!
Jane A. Salmon
Lindfield, NSW
JUSTINE Ferrari’s article ("Poverty focus a failure for education”, 18/2), citing research showing that a focus on social disadvantage to improve students’ education is misguided, could not be more timely.
To improve education for all students we need to know their potential, which means reliable IQ testing and/or achievement records available to parents and teachers at the beginning of each school year.
Grouping students into ability streams would make it easier to gauge the teachers’ success and guide the apportionment of students per class. Every teacher in a mixed classroom knows that underachieving and low-ability students take up more time in the classroom and in preparation of lessons. These students need to be in smaller classes.
Numbers per class should gradually rise with the ability of the students, placing the most able in the largest classes. However, teachers of the most able should be properly trained, just as teachers of the least able need special training.
Multi-age classes, which require more teacher effort but offer a healthier social environment, should be smaller also.
Better teachers are the only answer for all students—certainly not better buildings.
Beth Johnson
Auchenflower, Qld
I DON’T know if anybody feels like I do, but after our Prime Minister has splashed out with a $42 billion spend-up, I am starting to feel uneasy when I read and hear Treasury and government members saying that “it won’t necessarily be the total answer”. If the pink batts, school halls, and other items listed to “get this economy moving again” don’t, and with Japan blowing another $US300billion this week trying to kick-start its moribund economy without success, who has persuaded this Government to go down this road?
If that is the case please stop before we’re all living in Pauperville.
Roger Coles
Brighton East, Vic
I’d always thought of Dr Nelson as a thoroughly decent man. By choosing to leave politics, he has confirmed it.
Grant Gascoigne
Mitchelton, Qld