Australian needs tax reform but neither party is going to get it right if we continue on the current paths. When there is an answer to that, then there can be tax reform and science and education can be funded so the young can enjoy a future. The media needs to get behind the glossy brochures and have a look at what some of our schools, in particular, are like. Walk into any Victorian government school and you will be met by a gleaming, modern reception area. But it often hides a ghetto of cold and horrible rooms, the most dismal of which are often the science laboratories.
Analogies exist in all our universities and in every sector of society dependent on public funding.
To the Treasury bureaucrats who frame budgets this is another world they know nothing about. They, and the public, all need to know the misery that lies behind the glossy brochures, manipulated statistics and silenced voices. It would seem sensible to assume that this would need to be of at least 2 terms duration and preferably a year so they could engage in serious university based study for an extended period. So not too many are going to have this opportunity. Addendum 2 I work in a graduate diploma course preparing secondary teachers.