The biggest blunder yet!

While, of course, it remains to be seen...I suspect we have seen the biggest Opposition blunder yet with Ms Bishop's breaching of the protocol with regard to security information (here).

While she may post factum have tried to put the genie back in the bottle and say that she didn't reveal information that can only have come from confidential briefings as the SMH said

When asked directly if Australian intelligence agencies forge passports, Ms Bishop – a former cabinet minister in the Howard government – replied “yes”.

There was a bit of furious back-peddling but it is pretty clear that she was relying on being privy to security information, about which there is a strong convention hat nothing is ever said.

Can't help but think that this political game-playing to try and embarrass each other has got a bit out of hand.

What will this mean? Well I was surprised to see both Mr Smith in the Parliament and the PM last night both seething ...and indeed quite shaken...that this had happened. Bishop, as I say, seemed to be furiously back peddling, but it's rather too late and exposes that sometimes there are serious misjudgments about what can be used to beat your political opponent over the head.

The politics of personality

The ongoing decline in the Rudd Government's popularity and approval rating is part of the inevitable reflection communities make on incumbent governments. How did it happen? How can a government that was so phenomenally far in front now be behind in the run-up to the election?

There is no doubt that the answer to that is: Tony Abbott. His political savvy and relentless discipline in the last little while has been remarkable. Not unlike that of his former leader and mentor, John Howard.

But it needs to be said that, by and large, the battle ground has not been policy (what are the Liberal policies any way?) but personality. The Liberals have ruthlessly and relentlessly painted Rudd as boring, wordy and remote. One would have to say that they have been successful.

They have also been able to hammer the enormous spending spree that the fiscal rescue seemed to demand. (What would they have done?) and despite the annoying nature of its repetition...the idea of the Great Big New Tax has been fed into the nation's psyche and people don't like such an idea.

Equally well, political liabilities have been kept out of the public eye. Where, for example, has the agressive Ms Bishop been? or the twee Mr Pyne?

I suspect that the Libs have had (good) advice that they are both political liabilities and so have been kept very much in the background.

Will the Labor party then be sucked into this game and start playing personality politics. It will be fun to watch! It will be dirty! But is it good?

I don't think it is yet all over for the Labor Party, but they need to get their act together if they are to be credible.

No clue about education

I was vaguely horrifed to hear Education Minister Julie Bishop pontificating about what education ought to be at the National Press Club today. I only caught the last few minutes (so maybe I do her an injustice) she seemed to be saying something like......Schools ought to be consulting with employers so that they can find out what parents want children to learn at school, and so that we may continue to have economic propsperity and they can share in it
Now I don't have much problem with that bald statement as a part of the vocational function that schools should see as theirs to address. But Minister Bishop seemed to be suggesting that this was the main function of education.
Here we have a travesty of educational philosophy, I suggest; and more than that a profound denigration of the role education should play in a civilised society.
If all it is meant to do is to provide fodder for the economic machine then God help us all.
Such a philosophy would spell the death of history, literature, pure maths, research science, music and anything that does not "upskill" the average participant.
We already see the narrowness that is engendered by those who, like Ms Bishop's Prime Ministerial colleague, have the narrowest of narrow views of what education in history is about, and who bandy the word "values" around and yet have no idea of the complexity of that sociological concept.
Contrast this with avid blog reader W who is a gifted educator (even if self-doubting) presently involved in helping immigrants to learn English. Earning a quarter of what Minister Bishop is reaping from the communal coffers, and struggling with a government that seems to think that 100 hours/student (or less) is all that they are prepared to fund; she has thrown herself into this work with gusto.
Ever looking for ways to engage her charges she tried to boil a potato in a classroom and set the fire alarms off, she is now confined to only using a microwave if she intends to teach English in such a challenging way.
To hear her talk about education is to hear one speak about a process which is immensely practical, and yet which is also mind-blowing. It is setting people free to live life.
She needs to talk to the good Minister and excite her too about the fact that education is more than just preparation for participation in the economy it is about engagement with the profundity of life, its challenges and its excitement...which, I suggest, is more than just being able to fill in a Centrelink form.
W's charges will remember her, I suggest, long after we have forgotten the narrow opportunistic philosophy of Julie Bishop and her boss....Julie who? I hear you ask