The weekend gave Crikey readers ample time to get fired up about the continuously troubled Morrison government. Firstly, readers found reason to debate Bernard Keane’s argument  that the Coalition’s new Catholic school funding is actually Labor’s fault. Elsewhere, there was the point (also by Keane) that the government has already run out of workable ideas.

On Labor’s role in the new Catholic school funding

Arky writes: If you’re going to blame Labor for this, you should also credit Labor for the Liberal Party being pressured into adopting the full Gonski in the first place, considering that they only did it to stem the bleeding from Labor’s very successful attacks on the Liberal Party for breaking their promises on school funding.

Marcus Hicks writes: Oh Bernard, the blame rests almost entirely with Abbott and Pyne. Remember their “unity ticket” on schools funding, leading to the 2013 election? A promise they quickly broke when they got in (using such weasel words as “funding envelopes” and other such tosh to justify their shift of funds back to the private sector. Even Malcontent was happy to leave things this way, until he realised it was hurting the Coalition’s chances of reelection.

old greybearded one: I work in this game and I pay very close attention. Yes the ALP maintained disparate funding with Gonski #1. Guess what, that was to get some kind of reform up without Abbott screaming class warfare all over and to get the legislation through. The Liberals have done nothing like maintain a Gonski scheme. As soon as Gonski got to the higher needs schools, it was abolished. This has nothing to do with the ALP and everything to do with Scummo’s entrenchment of privilege. The federals pay just over 80% 0f the SRS required for private schools and the states just over 20%. The states pay just under 80% of public school needs and the federals just under 20%. So guess what: most public schools do not get the funding needed at all.

Jim Hanna writes: The funding changes announced last Thursday are not a special deal for the Catholic Church. They are a direct result of a key recommendation in the original 2011 Gonski Review and also benefit non-Catholic low-fee schools. Gonski said the socioeconomic status (SES) methodology that estimated the wealth of parents at each non-government schools – and therefore how much public funding that school should attract – needed to be reviewed because it wasn’t accurate enough.

A review was completed this year and it found that high-fee schools were getting too much public funding and low-fee schools were being short-changed. The SES methodology will be replaced in 2020 by one based on parents’ personal income tax data. Thursday’s announcement was therefore about the impact of that new formula. Catholic and other low-fee schools will get more and high-fee schools will get less.

On the Morrison government’s lack of clothes

Xoanon writes: Let’s face it, the Turnbull government was barely re-elected in 2016 with hardly a policy to its name. Could hardly expect Morrison to do any better. The Libs’ sole purpose is to enrich the rich by fooling everyday people into voting for it, and that game is wearing very thin.

Marcus Hicks Writes: Well it sure didn’t take Morriscum long to get back to the Liberal Party’s “safe space”: namely, union bashing, huge subsidies for private schools and blatant cronyism/corruption (as shown by their preferred client for outsourcing of Visa processing).

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