Australian public policy approaches, - refugees, confusion over objectives and private school funding

In Australia, the Abbott Government remains deep in troubles of its own making.

The latest troubles on Manus Island continue the running sore that is refugee policy. The first problem for the Government is that its own policy of controlling, or attempting to control, the flow of information has created a vacuum that has to be filled from other sources. The second problem is that the Government's responses seem inadequate.

Based on the polls, a majority of Australians still support Mr Abbott's border protection policy, but the constant drip of what seems to be inhumane news about the policy's application is erosive. Put simply, by criminalising and militarising its approach, the Government created a political and policy framework that ruled out specific actions that might have helped ameliorate problems while still preserving the intent of Government policies. Even those who support the Government's policy objective have some difficulties with its application in practice.

Fresh from the debacle over medicare, the Government is trying to save elements of its proposed university reforms. Back at the start of June last year (Over-reach: deregulation, fees and university education) I explained my own difficulties in understanding what all the changes meant. Now, stripped down, the most important element, the one that the Government appears to be trying to save, is deregulation of university fees. I actually support that, if with some reservations.

The Government's core problem, and the core weakness in Mr Hockey's budget, lies in the way it established a nexus between two very different things. The first was the need to fix the budget deficit, the second the desire to achieve reforms in specific policy area.

I dealt with one aspect of this back in September in If a equals b – testing the proposed Australian terrorism legislation and indeed any public policy. We need to fix the budget deficit (a), therefore you should support our university (or health) reforms (b). The two are in fact disconnected.

On an apparently different but connected matter, the Australian Scholarships Group released analysis suggesting that the cost of educating a child born in 2015 at a private school through to year twelve was now close to or in excess of $500,000.

I could believe that. When we came down to Sydney, we enrolled the girls at a private school in part because they had been going to one in Armidale, in part because time pressures made it difficult to evaluate the public option. Each years the costs went up more than the rate of inflation, so that school fees progressively absorbed a higher proportion of our family income. It's a bit like the old myth about frogs and boiling water: the frog is cooked before he realises it.

I haven't checked the numbers, but Commonwealth Government subsidisation of private schools must be one of the largest elements in middle class welfare payments. Perhaps its time to at least cap this until the budget improves.