Matthew Abraham: When getting pricey really does imply something else

The price of education, specifically Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas’ education, was the subject of a reader’s letter this week. Matthew Abraham takes the time to discuss the difference between pricey — and costly.

Mercedes College in Adelaide. Picture: Mercedes College

Greetings Matthew Abraham,

I am writing in reference to your article in the Sunday Mail about the Labor Leader, Mr Peter Malinauskas.

In that article, you used the word “pricey” in respect to the schools that he and his wife attended. What has the cost of their school education got to do with anything? Were you trying to imply something else? Perhaps as many other Catholic families, it was a struggle for his parents to send him to Mercedes College. I believe that your family has used the excellent education offered by Mercedes College? Should I read something into this fact?

So began a letter from one of you, wending its way from the newspaper office to our home.

It was signed and had return postal and email addresses, a dying courtesy in an age of anonymous, gutless critics on social media.

The letter went on to critique some of my other scribblings, particularly on the ETSA sale and the one-way Southern Expressway, as “playing more to the gallery”. But that’s water off this little black duck’s back.

It’s the troubled matter of the word “pricey” that deserves a decent answer.

Why use that particular word to describe Mercedes and Loreto Colleges — the Catholic schools that educated Peter Malinauskas and his wife, Annabel, respectively?

The simplest explanation is that in a profile piece on the new Labor leader, where he went to school, and what kind of school it was, is interesting.

We’re a nosy bunch, and South Australians love nutting out where a person learned to read and write. It helps us paint a picture of them. Sure, sometimes we paint the wrong picture, but it is what it is.

And while most Catholics would be familiar with these two excellent schools, and their exorbitant fees, many people wouldn’t have a clue.

Loreto College science Lab. Picture: Supplied

Mr Malinauskas wasn’t sent to the public Mitcham Primary or Unley High schools, both closer to his family home in Colonel Light Gardens, because his working parents made a significant financial sacrifice to educate him not just in a Catholic school, but an expensive one to boot.

But to the question “Were you trying to imply anything else?”, the honest answer is “Yes, indeed”.

I knew very well the word “pricey” would prickle a few consciences, particularly for thinking Catholics.

Loreto’s annual fees range from $11,545 in reception to $18,630 in Years 11 and 12, for the first child, plus a $95 application fee and $675 enrolment fee, both non-refundable.

Mercedes charges $8725 for reception, up to $14,110 for Years 10 to 12, plus a capital levy starting at $2040 and “resource fees” ranging from $825 to just shy of $2000.

The Catholic system educates 46,000 students in 103 schools in SA, and does a fine job of it.

But many Catholic schools are now priced beyond the reach not just of poor families, but increasing numbers of middle-class families as well.

It’s an issue the Catholic Church in Australia needs to confront because it goes to the core of what is meant to be its missionary ethos.

This is a message Pope Francis has hammered bluntly since his election as pope in 2013, when he urged priests not to sit at their desks waiting for people to walk through the presbytery doors, but to venture out into this untidy, unhappy, unhelpful, unchristian world and to be shepherds “living with the smell of the sheep”.

Ironically, it seems that increasingly it is our public schools that are living with the smell of the sheep, minus the religious statues.

The day after I interviewed the Labor leader he came down with appendicitis. Guilty, your honour.

He chose to be treated at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, instead of a pricey private hospital.

He copped flak for taking up a scarce public hospital bed when he could well afford private treatment on his pricey salary of $334,817.

But if the Labor leader had gone private, he’d have been bagged for turning his back on the pricey RAH that Labor built and is costing us $1 million a day for the next 30 years, non-refundable.

Pricey? It’s simply priceless.