The Australian Council for the Defence of Government Schools find it rather interesting that Dr. Race Matthews and Mr. Alan Hunt have lent their support to a paper entitled "Why Accountability Must be Renewed". This Paper has been produced by a group calling itself Australasian Study of Parliament Group. It was launched in Melbourne on August 8, 2006.

Since the 1960s D.O.G.S. have been calling, through Press Releases, Paid Advertisements, Letters to Parliament and the Press for accountability for public money (State Aid) to church schools. We refer you to our Press Releases on Accountability at 69, 76 and 84. (www.adogs.info/pr69.htm ; www.adogs.info/pr76.htm ; www.adogs.info/pr84.htm . Also see Paid Advertisements detailed in our full page Age Advertisement 27 March 2006 available at http://www.fightingforpubliceducation.info/.

D.O.G.S. support the call for renewed accountability. They have been concerned about the corruption of democracy since D.O.G.S inception in the 1960s. ( See Press Release 90. at www.adogs.info/pr90.htm. We believe however that some of the old stagers calling for renewed accountability is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. We can only shake our heads in disbelief when we see the names of those connected in educational policy in the 1970s, Dr. Race Matthews and Mr. Alan Hunt.

In this News Release, we wish to consider briefly the background to Dr. Race Matthews and his holier than thou calls for accountability. DOGS know the track record of Dr. Race Matthews - stretching back into the 1960s.

He was part of the Whitlam crew that gave us the Schools Commission and the iniquitous "Needs" ( read "Greeds" ) policy.

This political concoction was the commencement of a "steady decline in accountability in State and Federal Government". ( See Press Release 90. ( www.adogs.info/pr90.htm ) Essential to this decline was the manipulation and suppression of key data and the neutralisation of public education pressure groups in  conjunction with a basically compliant secular press. To minimise the outcry against the corruption born from the giving of State Aid to Church institutions, it was crucial to prevent the questioning or dissent from the "Needs" ( read "Greeds") policy. In the bedding down of State Aid, after nearly 100 years without it, it was important that the taxpayer was unaware of how the church schools, particularly the systemic schools, were using the federal funds. The Schools Commission simply cut out vital information in its first annual funding report. This was done to conceal what was known in the 1970s by the DOGS as the "bottom of the schoolyard" schemes.

Attacks on the Schools Commission and the Needs Policy were virtually non-existent. The call for renewed accountability was not made in those days because, if these calls were made, public school supporters would have been attacking key personnel of their own involved in the Schools Commission.

The proposals put forward in the paper "Why Accountability Must be Renewed" do not, and cannot confront the problem created by the church school faction, namely the creation of a state within a state and a cancer in the body politic. This situation will be clarified in the next News Release.

For example, how will this Study Group :

• tackle the influence of the church school faction? 

• plan to cope with the secret deals between politicians, priests and bureaucrats?

• justify the difference between political donors of money and political donor of votes?

DOGS suggest the Study Group apply the rule that Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries should not take private sector jobs within five years of leaving politics to top senior education bureaucrats. DOGS have noted with interest how in the last 30 years key personnel in the federal education administration have transferred across into key private school bureaucratic positions?

DOGS have been appalled for some years by the above situation!

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