Goldstein News
February-March 2011
Good policy is not just about new taxes
A common complaint about politics these days is that both major parties have become bereft of ideas and vision.
Both parties are driven entirely by spin rather than substance, and good policy has fallen by the wayside, so the conventional wisdom goes.
Yet the Coalition’s dedication to new ideas and good policy has never been more evident than it has been recently.
Despite the Government’s attempts to label the Liberal and National Parties as obstructionists and wreckers, the Coalition continues to put forward common sense solutions to the issues Australia faces.
This is in stark contrast to Labor’s approach, whose solution to any problem of any variety is a new tax.
In my portfolio of disabilities and carers, the Coalition took a policy to last year’s election that highlights the difference in approach between the Labor Party and the Liberal and National Parties.
The Coalition’s Education Card policy was created with the aim of ensuring that Australian students with disability are not left behind in the education system.
There is a huge disparity in levels of support for students with disability between the government and non-government education sector.
The figures vary wildly between states, but in some cases a student with disability at a non-government school is only eligible to receive around a tenth of the support a child at a government school would receive.
In order to boost support for students with disability and give parents real choice when it comes to selecting a school for their child, the Coalition proposed a program in which, initially, 6,000 students with disability would receive an entitlement of up to $20,000 per annum.
Parents of children with disability could take this entitlement to any school and use it for whatever purposes they saw fit. For example, they could purchase equipment or engage an aid. For many students with disability, the right support is all that is needed to achieve their full potential.
Portability of education funding for students with disability will allow the decision about schooling to be made by the people who know what sort of school will be most suitable the parents themselves.
The Education Card policy is just one of many that demonstrate the Coalition’s commitment to new ideas and creative solutions.
Providing the Australian people with a credible alternative government is a core responsibility of an Opposition.
The Coalition continues to provide such an alternative through our belief that good policy is not just about slugging Australians with more and more new taxes.