CONGRATULATIONS TO AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION UNION ON THEIR RESEARCH

 DOGS wish to congratulate the Australian Education Union on their statistical research in recent years.

You can find it on www.aeufederal.org.au/

The most recent contribution   "AEU Response to the Australian Government's School Funding - the Facts" has referred to at least one unspoken and uncalculated figure in the ongoing and never ending State Aid debate.

This is the calculation of the true cost of aid to private schools which can only be assessed if the hidden costs are taken into account and an incremental cost analysis is made of funding of private schools.

The AEU research correctly points out that in any analysis of alleged savings of the existence of private schools must take account of the private schools involving themselves in the low cost areas of educational provision. e.g. their failure to have schools throughout all suburbs and country areas and their exclusion of the most difficult students and those requiring expensive facilities and intensive educational provision.

It is hoped that the AEU will go further to look at the economic as well as social cost to the nation of the duplication, triplication etc. etc. of state school facilities by sectional interest schools.

A.     INDIRECT SUBSIDISATION:

These represent the submerged part   of the State Aid iceberg

They include:

    1.      Council level

            Exemptions from rates and other costs to statutory bodies

    2. State Tax Exemptions and Indirect Assistance

        a) Stamp duty

        b) Land Tax ( with no repayment  on profits made from sale of real estate)

        c) Payroll tax ( paid by government schools not churches and church schools)

        d)  Loan assistance

        e)  Transport assistance

        f)   Use of departmental curriculum etc. resources and other resources like the zoo

B.    UNECONOMIC DUPLICATION OF FACILITIES

How often, in your local areas would one or two good State schools service the total student population while four or five sectarian schools are not only duplicating and undermining those facilities, but dividing our children.

C.    UNDERMINING THE DEMOCRATIC STATE

However, there is another cost which has and will cause incalculable damage. Only the DOGS in the present climate of political correctness have the guts to spell it out.

What is this cost?

It is the ultimate cost to our democracy It is best described by  the original draughtsman of our Australian Constitution, Inglis Clark in his essay on Denominational Education in 1995 where he pointed out that one should refuse State Aid to Church schools on the very first principle of political science.

.."...because the concession of it would be a recognition of the propriety of an imperium in imperio, ( a State within a State) - a divided sovereignty is simply political emasculation and asthenia.(debilitation)" 

This was reiterated in various ways by Sir Henry Parkes, one of the originators of the Federation in the 1870s and 1880s, and by Justice Lionel Murphy in his judgement in the DOGS case when he referred to "A State within a State".

When the AEU and others go the next step to analyse the almost complete lack of public accountability for the billions of dollars going into Church coffers, then they too must come to terms with the power of the Church's emasculation of our democratic State.