The O'Farrell government is taking heavy flak this week over big policy announcements, primarily cuts to education funding. The Premier explains the reasoning for the cuts on Mornings...

It has cut 1.7 Billion dollars from the state education budget affecting all schools, public and private as well as TAFE.

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I will say here that it's ludicrous to remove tracks to make a road... For starters, there are many roads in Sydney that still have the old rails of tramways embedded in them...

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, has accused Julia Gillard of ''caving in to pressure from green groups'' after the Prime Minister walked away from a promise to hand over environmental decision-making to the states.
Mr O'Farrell and the Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu, told Ms Gillard they were ready to immediately sign a deal to reduce ''green tape'' at a meeting on Thursday also attended by senior business leaders.
But, as revealed by Fairfax Media, Ms Gillard had already decided to shelve the green-tape deals because the negotiations were resulting in wildly varying arrangements between states and some state approval processes were inadequate.
''It's clear the Prime Minister caved in. She blinked to pressure from the green groups who wrongly characterised this as a watering down of environmental standards,'' Mr O'Farrell said, referring to a campaign by environmentalists and scientists against the proposed handover.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/ofarrell-green-tape-pressure-got-to-pm-20121206-2ay73.html#ixzz2EPYH1vX0
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Environmentalists, scientists and Julia Gillard have made the right choice... The proposal to remove "green tape" and hand over environmental concerns to the States was only a small bait to gauge the Homer-Simpson-noticing-a-doughnut salivating reaction of the Liberal (conservative) states at the prospect of being able to roughshod the environment. Of course conservative does not mean "conservation". Conservative means steamrollers and concrete trucks as ways to conserve the value of money...

THE consultant employed to test the noise levels of helicopters for the controversial heliport on Sydney Harbour has admitted he is not an acoustic engineer and has never previously produced a report on helicopter noise.
Carl Holden, director of the noise testing company, Airport Friendly Solutions, also conceded that he had been wrong to describe himself as a member of the Australian Acoustics [sic] Society. The peak body, which is actually called the Australian Acoustical Society, told Fairfax Media Mr Holden has never been a member, although he used to subscribe to its magazine.
The first ''noise assessment'' report Mr Holden wrote for Newcastle Helicopters, the company planning to operate the heliport, has since been ridiculed by industry leaders and removed from the project's website. That report was produced in October. Mr Holden was also involved in acoustic tests from residences around the harbour hastily commissioned by Newcastle Helicopters this week as opposition to the project mounted.
The O'Farrell Government has been heavily criticised for failing to adequately check the heliport proposal, which was trumpeted by the Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner last month as a boon for Sydney tourism.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/expert-had-never-reported-on-helicopter-noise-levels-20121220-2bpgg.html#ixzz2FfGoAd9j

Overall, 10 states have school-finance challenges working their way through the courts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Four other states recently wrapped up legal challenges.

But school-funding advocates have found that winning a lawsuit doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of education — or even boost funding over the long term, as funding formula changes and budget cuts can eat into court-mandated increases.

“Some argue that the status quo before the litigation eventually comes back into place,” said Dan Thatcher, an education finance expert at the NCSL.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court held that San Antonio’s financing system was not an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause because education is not a constitutional right. But a footnote in Justice Thurgood Marshall’s dissent in the case made clear that there was no obstacle to challenging school finance plans at the state level. Since then, all but five states — Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah — have experienced school-funding lawsuits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2013/01/02/4d9a7cca-544d-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_print.html

MAINTENANCE on the vast majority of Sydney's roads is set to be outsourced, leaving hundreds of Roads and Maritime Services workers facing an uncertain future.

The O'Farrell government has decided its department, the RMS, will not be able to tender for the private maintenance contracts, which would cover the whole of Sydney for the first time.

RMS officials briefed workers on the plans on Wednesday. The government has already committed to privatising more road maintenance, but the cabinet has not yet signed off on the details.

Under the plans presented to staff, maintenance on the Harbour Bridge would not be changed, nor would Traffic Emergency Patrols, which help clean up after crashes or other events.

The NSW Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, said: ''The NSW government is committed to pursuing a range of options for working with the private sector with the aim of delivering better services at a lower cost and with greater innovation.''

http://smh.drive.com.au/roads-and-traffic/public-service-not-allowed-to-tender-for-roadworks-20130123-2d7in.html

On the Eastern Seaboard, it would appear there is a competition on to see which state government can do the most damage to education.

In a move that seemed to completely ignore the irony of it, the NSW State Government stripped $1.4 billion out of education at around the same time the widely-anticipated Gonski Report advocated for an additional $5 billion to be spent on education nationwide.

Meanwhile, down in Victoria, teachers are at logger-heads with the State Government who apparently got into office on the back of a promise that Victorian teachers would be the highest paid teachers in the land.

Two years on, teachers are preparing for more widespread strikes, with the Catholic sector ready to join their public sector colleagues. It could only have added insult to injury when the Education Department released a memo reminding teachers that time spent on school camps was actually free time.

Up in Queensland, the State Government has moved to remove the maximum class size limit, and reduce the amount of planning time available for teachers.

It's hard to see how this supports improving teaching standards.

Presumably the Queensland Government is confident of a Coalition victory in the September federal election, given that shadow education spokesman Christopher Pyne is on record as saying that class sizes have little impact on teaching.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4499136.html?WT.svl=theDrum

meanwhile in the land of daylight-saving fading curtains, Queensland:

The issue of religion being taught in Australian state public schools is a controversial one. In primary schools around the country, the State Education Acts allow for Religious Instruction, or Religious Education, to be taught for an hour a week by representatives of the church—who do not need a qualification in education to do so. 

These classes are meant to be an ‘opt in’ scenario. 

But, it appears that in some state schools in Queensland Creationism—the belief that the Christian God created the earth in a different time scale to that agreed upon by evolutionary science—is entering the science curriculum. 

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/creationism-in-queensland-schools/4496260

See toon at top...

Fresh from leaving Christopher Pyne high and dry, NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli has set his sights on TAFE students, cancelling students’ courses a week before enrolment. Peter Wicks from Wixxyleaks reports.

ON WEDNESDAY IN SYDNEY, many were reading their morning papers and digesting the news that the Federal Education MinisterChristopher Pyne was lying when he said that the NSW State Government was “on board” with his so-called education reforms.

From an article by Matthew Knott in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The NSW government has rejected the $70 million Abbott government plan to encourage public schools to become independent, contradicting claims by federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne that the state was on board.

The rebuff from the nation's biggest state is a blow to the federal government's plan for a quarter of all public schools to become independent by 2017.

Announcing the initiative on Tuesday, Mr Pyne said ''every state and territory, including Labor states and territories, have signed on to the initiative with the exception of South Australia''.

The claim was rejected by the NSW government. ''The NSW government has not signed an agreement with the federal government to introduce independent public schools,'' the state Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said.

While some were coming to terms with yet more deceit from the new Abbott-led Coalition Government, others apart from Chris Pyne were also thrown into turmoil by the NSW education minister.

Before explaining why, let me provide a little background.

Some of you may remember Adrian Piccoli for signing a pledge during the 2011 NSW election campaign guaranteeing no cuts in TAFE funding:

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/no-early-warning-nsw-government-leaves-tafe-students-stranded,6142

Read article and see toon at top...

The New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell has defended accepting donations from corporations for next year's election campaign, despite having previously introduced laws to ban them.

The High Court overturned Mr O'Farrell's bans on political donations from corporations, unions and other organisations last year.

Lawyers for the state government had argued that corporate donations had the potential to undermine the integrity of government processes.

The NSW Liberal party has now resumed accepting corporate donations and the Greens say it is hypocritical of the Government to accept them.

But Mr O'Farrell says his party is simply abiding by the court's decision until more reforms can be brought in.

"What's important is that people who raise funds across all parties abide by the laws," he said.

"My colleagues will abide by the law whilst we review the options to try to put in place again our reforms to political donations."

Greens MP John Kaye says that is hypocritical.

"The O'Farrell government told the High Court of Australia that donations from corporations bought particular integrity concerns," he said.

"And yet now, despite that warning, they themselves are taking money from the big end of town again. It's pretty clear that the O'Farrell government was only interested in gaining partisan political advantage."

Dr Kaye says the government is in a morally ambiguous position.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-11/nsw-government-27hypocritical27-for-accepting-corporate-donat/5252080