When will Labor learn to hit the right target?

THE Rudd Government's misguided policies make the fabled gang that couldn't shoot straight look like marksmen.

On top of an industrial relations policy that will stop small business hiring and an emissions trading system that the Government has admitted will kill jobs, Labor's education revolution is going nowhere fast and its plan to place Aboriginal people in employment is being stifled by red tape. At least the gang that couldn't shoot straight used real bullets; this gang is busily firing blanks, shooting itself in the foot or slamming slugs into the working Australians it claims to represent. Delve into almost every policy that the Rudd Government has proposed and at its core is yet another plan to redistribute the nation's wealth from the hard-working and prudent to those who are, for whatever reason, in a worse financial position. Using slogans such as "war on poverty" to win broad support for his policies, Rudd is missing the real targets. In the case of education, the focus on social disadvantage to improve students' education is misguided, according to Australian Council for Educational Research director Steve Dinham. The focus should be on low-performing students and that's where the funding should go. What has the Rudd Government done for education? Focussed on students of low socio-economic status with a handout of more than $1 billion. More wealth redistribution which will do as much for education as pink insulation batts will do for climate change. Why is the Rudd Government so pigheadedly ignoring educational realities? The answer may lie in remarks Professor Dinham made to The Australian when he said that many people, including practising teachers, "still subscribe to, consciously or subconsciously, various forms of social determinism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary". That is, they believe that kids are blighted by their post codes, by their heredity, by their parents' income and approach their education from that perspective rather than looking at low performers and low-performing schools and trying to address their particular problems. While parents can undeniably provide a better launch pad for their children if there is a high degree of literacy in the home and respect for learning, what students can achieve is not pre-determined. This is a matter that has been thoroughly researched yet the Rudd Government persists in clinging to the old approach. Why, you ask? Well, consider the money that teachers' unions pump into the Labor Party and you're halfway there. Teachers are often activists in their community and Labor panders to them - even when it means going along with a second-rate approach to education. It is also disappointing to learn that the federal Department of Education, Science and Training has placed such conditions on Crocfest, one of the few programs that encouraged young Aboriginal students to attend school, that the organisers are giving it away after more than a decade spent working with kids from isolated communities. Ironically, on Sunday the ABC will screen Voices from the Cape, a two-part series on a program the Crocfest organisation ran at Aurukun, one of the most disadvantaged communities in the nation with one of the highest populations of at-risk children. Make your own mind up when you see the program, but Crocfest has been killed by red tape. And remember that Aboriginal employment program that mining magnate Andrew Forrest put together to provide 50,000 jobs and help them break the awful welfare cycle? Well, Forrest has now written to Rudd complaining that red tape and bureaucratic roadblocks thrown up by departmental officials who aren't sticking to their end of the deal have put the scheme in doubt. In bending to the ideology of the teachers' unions, the Rudd Government has hobbled the aspirations of those who need help most, in failing to cut red tape he has smashed the hopes of Aboriginals who hoped to lift themselves out of Labor's welfare trap. As Forrest said in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Australian, "surprisingly, the economic downturn is not a risk" to the employment program. No, the risk is Rudd's red tape. Remember Kevvie from Brizzie, the shiny-faced new kid with all the answers (OK, 98 per cent were going to be answers the Howard Government had already discovered) who was bringing an education revolution and would cut the red tape? The evidence, after 15 months, is that he's failed. He's failed the optimistic parents who voted for him, he's failed their kids - the next generation of Australians, the people upon whom so much of the future of this ageing nation rests.