Let's hold Rudd to account on his terrible record, writes Richard Wilson.
Since my previous piece for Menzies House, Kevin Rudd has made a series of promises on health. To get an idea of how seriously we should take his 2010 election pledges, let’s look at how he is going on delivering his 2007 election promises.
Take the education revolution, the delivery of which has so far consisted of a national curriculum, the construction of school halls, and a website (MySchool). Setting aside whether or not these are good policies, the reality is that Rudd hasn’t delivered on these promises.
For instance, it might surprise some people to know that a national curriculum has only been developed for four subjects – mathematics, history, english and science. The development of curricula for other subjects - geography, languages, the arts, information and communication technology, design and technology, health and physical education, economics, business, and civics and citizenship – will only occur in 2011, after the next election. Furthermore, the four subjects where curricula have been developed are currently only being trialed in 150 schools. The timeline for rolling out the curriculum to the other 9,000 schools across the nation is not known. In short, the national curriculum Rudd promised before the last election will not be implemented for years, let alone before the next election. So why is this considered an achievement? Surely it’s just another example of a half-delivered Rudd promise masked by spin?
Similarly, the construction of school halls had such a massive amount of money thrown at the programme that schools were getting things built that they admitted they didn't even need. These projects are costing three times as much as they should, so value-for-money does not seem to have been a criteria in the procurement process. So why is Building the Revolution considered a success? How do such blow outs make the Rudd Government worthy of re-election?
Finally, MySchool was basically an exercise in data entry and then displaying that data in a standard format. It required a good desktop project plan, some coordination of incoming and outgoing emails by bureaucrats, and nothing more. Even so, MySchool has got an implausibly high level of kudos from the media, despite objections from teachers and educational experts. These objections have led the Rudd Government to consider changes to the website, even though MySchool was unveiled less than three months ago: just another example of a poorly delivered policy trumped up to get a headline.
Behind all of these half delivered promises are the broken ones. We haven't seen laptops for every school child, trade centres in schools has dropped off the agenda because of the poor progress in building them, teacher merit pay hasn’t had an airing because Gillard doesn’t want to upset the collectivist education unions, and there is no trace of granting school principals greater autonomy, even though it is the best way to improve school performance. Neither Indigenous education nor the much vaunted productivity gains from early childhood education measures have been mentioned since the last election, apart from a quiet change in ministerial responsibilities from Maxine McKew to Kate Ellis.
And remember: these broken promises only span one portfolio. I haven’t even mentioned the others.
On the basis of previous performance, we should laugh at the Prime Minister when he makes one of his new promises, like “ending the blame game” on health.
“The Federal Government will take over all hospitals” – I mean, this must be a joke. It will never happen. The takeover will never get through the Parliament, COAG or a referendum. Rudd has made the promise simply to claim back ground on an issue which he feels the ALP has a natural political dominance, and to divert attention away from the fact his government hasn't done very much. Conservatives should dismiss the plan for the pipedream it is.
“There will be one set of tough national standards to drive and deliver better hospital services” – like the standards you set for those that installed pink batts? Hilarious. How can we trust your Government to ensure our complicated health system is fixed if it can’t even insulate a roof properly? Playing Rudd's game on health not only draws attention away from his broken promises, it stops us looking at the failings of his Ministers. At every turn we should remind people about pink batts, illegal immigrants and Copenhagen. These are the reasons Rudd's satisfaction ratings are collapsing, they are already resonating, we should not stop mentioning them for one moment. We can’t be distracted or conned into playing on Rudd’s home turf.
“For the first time, eight state-run systems will become part of one national network” - will this network be implemented as effectively as the national broadband network?
We cannot allow Rudd to drag us off on to his issues. Even allowing the debate to be held lets the Rudd Government off the hook - instead of asking whether they can deliver on health we should be asking why they haven't delivered on all their other promises.
Rudd’s record is terrible, let’s make him defend it.
Richard Wilson is the Federal President of the Young Liberal Movement of Australia. He holds a BA(Hons) from UWA and an MPubPol from ANU. The Young Liberal Movement will be highlighting more of Kevin Rudd's broken promises in the lead up to the Federal Election.
Similarly, the construction of school halls had such a massive amount of money thrown at the programme that schools were getting things built that they admitted they didn't even need. These projects are costing three times as much as they should, so value-for-money does not seem to have been a criteria in the procurement process. So why is Building the Revolution considered a success? How do such blow outs make the Rudd Government worthy of re-election?
Finally, MySchool was basically an exercise in data entry and then displaying that data in a standard format. It required a good desktop project plan, some coordination of incoming and outgoing emails by bureaucrats, and nothing more. Even so, MySchool has got an implausibly high level of kudos from the media, despite objections from teachers and educational experts. These objections have led the Rudd Government to consider changes to the website, even though MySchool was unveiled less than three months ago: just another example of a poorly delivered policy trumped up to get a headline.
Behind all of these half delivered promises are the broken ones. We haven't seen laptops for every school child, trade centres in schools has dropped off the agenda because of the poor progress in building them, teacher merit pay hasn’t had an airing because Gillard doesn’t want to upset the collectivist education unions, and there is no trace of granting school principals greater autonomy, even though it is the best way to improve school performance. Neither Indigenous education nor the much vaunted productivity gains from early childhood education measures have been mentioned since the last election, apart from a quiet change in ministerial responsibilities from Maxine McKew to Kate Ellis.
And remember: these broken promises only span one portfolio. I haven’t even mentioned the others.
On the basis of previous performance, we should laugh at the Prime Minister when he makes one of his new promises, like “ending the blame game” on health.
“The Federal Government will take over all hospitals” – I mean, this must be a joke. It will never happen. The takeover will never get through the Parliament, COAG or a referendum. Rudd has made the promise simply to claim back ground on an issue which he feels the ALP has a natural political dominance, and to divert attention away from the fact his government hasn't done very much. Conservatives should dismiss the plan for the pipedream it is.
“There will be one set of tough national standards to drive and deliver better hospital services” – like the standards you set for those that installed pink batts? Hilarious. How can we trust your Government to ensure our complicated health system is fixed if it can’t even insulate a roof properly? Playing Rudd's game on health not only draws attention away from his broken promises, it stops us looking at the failings of his Ministers. At every turn we should remind people about pink batts, illegal immigrants and Copenhagen. These are the reasons Rudd's satisfaction ratings are collapsing, they are already resonating, we should not stop mentioning them for one moment. We can’t be distracted or conned into playing on Rudd’s home turf.
“For the first time, eight state-run systems will become part of one national network” - will this network be implemented as effectively as the national broadband network?
We cannot allow Rudd to drag us off on to his issues. Even allowing the debate to be held lets the Rudd Government off the hook - instead of asking whether they can deliver on health we should be asking why they haven't delivered on all their other promises.
Rudd’s record is terrible, let’s make him defend it.
Richard Wilson is the Federal President of the Young Liberal Movement of Australia. He holds a BA(Hons) from UWA and an MPubPol from ANU. The Young Liberal Movement will be highlighting more of Kevin Rudd's broken promises in the lead up to the Federal Election.
No, let's make him be ashamed of it. I don't think we should celebrate the fact that he's half-baked his socialism; rather we should point out that solutions 'from on high' do not work! And where is our alternative? Do we have an alternative? Or are we--the parliamentary party--just as addicted to centralised, 'on high', solutions as the socialists are?
This sounds like an article written to pat our politicians on the back rather than providing some good old fashioned amusement or provoking some good old fashioned debate.
Posted by: Michael | April 15, 2010 at 06:51 PM
I think the "My Schools" information is a good thing, and something our side of politics should support.
But I agree that our focus should be on pointing out the broken promises, failed schemes, stimulus waste, ETS & border control.
Posted by: John Humphreys | April 15, 2010 at 09:49 PM
Julie Gillard has been fabulous in her advocacy for the MySchools website.
Posted by: TerjeP | April 16, 2010 at 06:51 AM
I think the Health debate shows that the Coalition needs to propose rather than just oppose the government. The Coalition can run on Rudd's record but eventually they'll need some substance to promote.
Posted by: Sean Garman | April 16, 2010 at 03:54 PM