Bureaucrats face Rudd axe

Amazing if he does it. But it's probably of a piece with Bill Clinton's declaration that "The era of big government is over"

KEVIN Rudd has vowed to fund his election policies by taking a "meat axe" to the bloated bureaucracy if he wins Saturday's election. The Opposition Leader has also promised to keep a Labor government in touch with ordinary Australians by taking his cabinet and public service department heads on the road for monthly meetings in regional areas, including indigenous communities.

And in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, he accused John Howard of ravaging the education system through under-investment and crippling the nation's capacity to compete on the international stage.

Mr Rudd's razor gang promise, likely to alarm Canberra's large population of public servants, comes as Labor continues to lead the Government in the opinion polls ahead of Saturday's election. Repeating his election campaign mantra of economic conservatism, Mr Rudd said his razor gang, headed by finance spokesman Lindsay Tanner and Treasury spokesman Wayne Swan, would slice through the bureaucracy but leave services to the public untouched. Mr Tanner last night claimed to have identified $10 billion worth of budget savings to help fund Labor's election promises. The savings, which include $1 billion from scrapping the Access card welfare identification program, have been submitted to Treasury for costing.

However, Mr Rudd has also flagged the creation of dozens of new agencies and statutory bodies and promised at least 119 reviews - on issues ranging from grocery prices to the format of election debates - if Labor wins government. His cost-cutting approach is similar to that adopted by the Prime Minister when he was elected in 1996 and appointed a razor gang to scrutinise all departments except Defence. Mr Howard hired Max Moore-Wilton, nicknamed Max the Axe, to drive the downsizing as the head of Mr Howard's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. By June 1997, 15,000 permanent employees had left the commonwealth public service, prompting a temporary slump in the Canberra property market. But numbers recovered in later years, surpassing 1996 levels by June 2003. There are now about 135,000 permanent public servants, 16,000 more than when Mr Howard won government. There are several thousand more temporary public servants.

"When I talk about the razor gang, I am dead serious," Mr Rudd said yesterday. "It's probably not the right town or possibly the place to talk about it here in Canberra. It just strikes me as passing strange that this Government, which supposedly belongs to the conservative side of politics, has not systematically applied the meat axe to its own administrative bloating for the better part of a decade. "I am very mindful of what can be done through our razor gang process as far as (the) administrative functions of government are concerned." Mr Rudd said the razor gang's work, combined with Labor's modest spending promises and identified savings, would allow it to deliver its promises while retaining fiscal responsibility.

Finance Minister Nick Minchin scoffed at Mr Rudd's claims, saying Labor had proposed 81 new bureaucracies and 119 reviews it would undertake in government. "Labor's policies would create a vast bureaucratic empire," Senator Minchin said. "True economic conservatives propose streamlining public administration, not setting up a whole new array of bureaucracies and reviews. "Labor's approach would be a victory for career bureaucrat Kevin Rudd but an expensive nightmare for the Australian taxpayer."

The Commonwealth and Public Sector Union yesterday vowed to "vigorously defend" the interests of its 65,000 members against Mr Rudd's cost-cutting drive, predicting the overall size of the public service would not change under a Labor government. CPSU national secretary Stephen Jones described Mr Rudd's comments as "intemperate". Mr Jones said savings could be found within the public service but "if they're serious about finding savings they should sit down with the employee representatives". "If Labor is successful, they will find if they want to implement their policy they are going to need qualified and experienced staff on deck," Mr Jones said. "There is a tight labour market. The commonwealth is not immune from that. I think one of the bigger challenges of a Labor government would be finding staff, not getting rid of them."

Liberal senator for the ACT, Gary Humphries, said he was appalled by Mr Rudd's comments. "The city has grown tremendously in the last seven or eight years and has the lowest unemployment in the country," Senator Humphries said. "He has signalled that he is prepared to bring that to an end." Senator Humphries said heavy public service cuts could put the ACT into recession.

Mr Rudd also said he wanted to be the education prime minister and savaged the Prime Minister's record on education, accusing him of disinvesting at a time when all other nations were lifting spending. "Because the quality of our education system will fundamentally determine the rich and poor nations of the 21st century, the time for action is now," Mr Rudd said. On early childhood education, Australia was "stone, motherless last" when compared with other nations.

He said the Liberal Party was more interested in leadership squabbles than policy-making and its election campaign had been exclusively negative. Mr Rudd accused Mr Howard of treating human beings like "economic commodities" through his Work Choices industrial relations laws, which would be abolished under Labor. Despite continuing to criticise Mr Howard's negative campaign, Mr Rudd continued with his own negativity by repeating his claim that if Peter Costello became prime minister, he would toughen Work Choices.

Asked whether he had enough power within the Labor Party to keep its left wing and the trade union movement under control, Mr Rudd insisted he would govern in the national interest, not sectional interests. He said old ideological divides had dissolved in contemporary politics and that despite being an economic conservative, not all of his policies were conservative. "I am confident that the program we've put forward is a substantive reformist program," Mr Rudd said. "I am confident that members of our party, in all their diversity, will be in there behind the implementation of that program. For all our faults the Labor Party is about decency."

If Labor was elected, its first year would be dominated by work on climate change, education and health and it would conduct extensive negotiations with states on improving public hospitals. There would be no major changes in the machinery of government or upheavals in the structures of the public service. And much of next year would be used to define and administer a tender for the provision of computers to all high school students in line with his promise of an education revolution.

Mr Rudd said his cabinet would meet in regional areas once a month, accompanied by public servants. He said people in regional communities ought to see their government in action.

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The education consequences of a Labor Party win

Howard believes he has changed the country during his four terms, most notably to be "less politically correct", he said in an interview with me at Kirribilli House two weeks ago. And he knows that it is on education, the touchstone issue that divides Rudd and Howard, where the Opposition Leader bears the heaviest burden of political correctness.

Rudd's party has long been hostage to the education unions and educationists of the so-called progressive left, who persist with 40-year-old radical theories such as whole-word reading and student-directed learning, despite a generation of conclusive proof they do the most harm to the underprivileged children they profess to care most about. As Janette Howard, a former teacher, said during my interview with her husband at Kirribilli House, education is the ground zero of the culture wars, which she prefers to call a "standards war".

In her travels with him on the campaign trail she has found that "people are concerned about what [children] can't do anymore, that they can't spell, they can't add up . or they don't know enough history". "There's real anger about that," agreed the Prime Minister.

But Rudd has somehow managed to bypass the anger about education standards. Instead he has dazzled everyone with promises of an "education revolution" which offers little of substance other than giving laptops to every year 9 to 12 student and providing high speed broadband, as if technology is any substitute for good teachers, discipline in the classroom and the ability to read, write and think. In fact, excessive emphasis on technology confines the teacher to be a mere facilitator.

As high school teacher Jane Sloan put it so eloquently in our letters page on Tuesday: "I find myself increasingly reluctant to take up the types of mediated communication that instruments such as interactive whiteboards, computers and data projectors facilitate. "I am not particularly interested in feeding my students' desires (some would feel it as a need) to be entertained - which is how these tools are marketed to us. I believe education should be about enlivening imaginations, not simply providing people with a stock of commercially generated images and sensations that they can scroll through in their minds when the situation requires them to be thoughtful." Sloan sees students "struggling to express their ideas in writing because they have limited vocabularies, and lack the fluency and facility that the majority of educated native speakers once had".

Restoring standards in education would be the real education revolution. Concerted attempts to muscle the Labor states, which control schools, have begun under the former education minister Brendan Nelson, and now Julie Bishop, albeit with mixed success. The Government has been pushing ways to improve teacher training, introduce performance pay for teachers, push phonics as a necessary part of early reading programs, allowing more parental choice, regular assessment, a national curriculum and a more rigorous history syllabus.

It is one of Howard's greatest achievements to have incrementally dragged the debate on education away from the progressive wreckers, despite the boast of Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne, that "the conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum". His problem this election has been that Rudd will not be baited on these ideological traps, refusing for instance to be drawn into a Lathamesque "hit-list" of private schools, prompting the NSW Teachers Federation to express "disappointment".

But the monkeys on Rudd's back are such high priests of political correctness as Byrne and Wayne Sawyer, the former NSW English Teachers Association president who famously blamed the last re-election of the Howard Government on the failure of teachers to brainwash their charges and form a "critical generation". Denying such people the dues they believe they deserve after nearly 12 years in the wilderness will be the real test for any Rudd government if it is genuine about improving education. But it's hard to believe they will risk the wrath of the Howard-haters.

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One of Australia's charming Muslims jailed for sex assault on little girls

Mohammed did much the same so why not?

A 'STUDENT' who indecently assaulted a girl in a department store change room has been jailed for two years. Mohammad Sehnawaz Khan, 31, pleaded guilty to three counts of committing indecent acts with a nine-year-old girl at the Myer store in Chadstone shopping complex on May 14.

The County Court heard the girl and her younger sister were in the toy department without their parents when Khan approached them with some children's clothing. He told the older girl he wanted her to try them on because he was buying them for his niece in India who was the same size. The girl didn't want to go but agreed after Khan persisted and she wanted to get rid of him.

Judge Michael Higgins said Khan followed the girl into the unattended changing rooms, which she was not expecting, so she insisted on her younger sister being in there with them. The court heard as the girl tried on the clothes Khan touched the outside of her underwear and asked the younger sister to take photos on his mobile phone as he hugged and kissed her on the shoulder. The girls were eventually able to flee and reported back to their parents.

Khan was in Australia on a bogus student visa at the time of the assault, after being rejected entry back into Australia under his own name because of two court appearances in NSW. Judge Higgins said Khan would be deported back to India when he completed his sentence.

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Greenie defends graffiti

Australia's Greens are generally far-Leftists and the ideas below are a logical deduction from the Leftist mantra that "There is no such thing as right and wrong"

A Greens MP has launched an extraordinary defence of spray can vandals, saying graffiti brightened up the city and could be attractive. Sue Pennicuik told State Parliament new laws cracking down on graffiti vandals were draconian and unnecessary. She said graffiti vandals were being treated more harshly than dangerous drivers. Declaring that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", Ms Pennicuik said corporate logos were as much a blight on the landscape as graffiti. People who sprayed graffiti should be called graffiti markers, rather than vandals. "A lot of graffiti, including tags, can be political, aesthetically pleasing and thought-provoking," the Upper House MP said in a 48-minute speech. She said there were two points of view about graffiti, and "not everyone hates graffiti and not all graffiti is bad".

Ms Pennicuik's speech, and her bid to amend the new laws, were attacked by her rivals from across the political spectrum, with Labor MP Martin Pakula saying graffiti vandalism was idiotic. "The vast majority of Victorians absolutely detest graffiti. They detest it because it is mindless vandalism," Mr Pakula said. He said that 95 per cent of graffiti was not art. "It is not self-expression, it is not clever, it is not political comment, it is mindless vandalism."

Ms Pennicuik defended her speech, saying she was seeking to highlight concerns about the harsh penalties and police powers under the new laws, which were due to pass the Upper House last night. She said offenders, who were mostly teenagers, could be jailed under the new laws. She said the laws also created a reverse onus of proof, meaning people found with suspected graffiti implements, such as spray cans and stencils, would have to prove they were in possession of them for legitimate reasons. "I'm not saying there shouldn't be any penalties -- there should be -- but that there should be a diversionary program for young offenders. "Graffiti is a problem, I agree. No one likes tags particularly, and I don't like them. But do we want two-year jail terms for 15-year-old kids to be the penalty?"

In her speech, Ms Pennicuik said the cost of cleaning up graffiti should not be the reason for making it a crime. She argued some graffiti walls, such as those in Hosier Lane in the city centre, were tourist attractions. "So what is the price of having clean walls? "This Bill . . . is an over-reaction to the issue of graffiti." Ms Pennicuik also told Parliament that "one could say the graffiti can break up the monotony of urban space". "While in one way of looking at it graffiti is annoying and costly, the other way of looking at it is that it is an acceptable way of expression and it could be tolerated, and is tolerated, in certain circumstances."

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