There were more males than females (64% to 36%) and most respondents were 55 years and over. The skew to the political left was not as strong as usual with 21% Greens, 27% Labor, 15% Liberal and 17% National.

Findings

By contrast we’re optimistic about our own circumstances and on balance are more optimistic than pessimistic. The increase in the cost of fuel, food and housing is being felt by some, but not many, and these are more likely to be lower income and living in regional areas.

In terms of development, we favour those that are “sustainable”, although what this word means is a little unclear. It certainly doesn’t seem to mean oil shale or coal mining, which are the worst regarded. However, coal seam gas and LNG are quite well-supported, although many see them as a fuels that buy us time while we find more sustainable forms of energy.

There is also a sense that the world needs energy and that we cannot deny it to them, so that there is an imperative to export our resources.

When it comes to who is best to exploit those resources, we prefer our own large companies, with companies like Queensland Gas, BHP and Origin being well-regarded.

The takeout message from this research to me is that, while we are experiencing growth pains, we want to see growth continue. Development is not a dirty word in Queensland, as long as it is done right.

One thing is certain, Bligh will not be rushing to an early election.

Recent Galaxy polling suggested that the Coalition and Labor were neck and neck on primaries. I thought it was a rogue sample, but when our polls, which traditionally lean to the left, say much the same thing, then something is happening. In the BCC elections I successfully picked the result by adjusting our results 10% further towards Campbell Newman. If I do that in this case, Springborg and the Coalition would be on more than 60% of the two-party preferred result, an improbable result.

Politics is dynamic, and with an election not due until the end of next year, Anna Bligh can change course and rescue her government. She's already started to do that, trying to distance herself from Peter Beattie.

In fact, she will have to behave like Peter Beattie to win the next election. Beattie was notorious for apologising for the mess he or his party had created in the first place, and then run against his own party declaring that he was the only one who could fix the problem. He got away with that partly because the opposition was regarded so poorly that voters were torn between punishing them and rewarding Beattie yet again.

Similar dynamics are in play here. When we look at the issues that are important, they are all about quality of life, as embodied in physical and social infrastructure like water supply, roads, transport, health and education. They stem from the strong population growth in south-east Queensland, and the failure of the government to plan how to deal with it. It's a mess of Labor's making.

As a result most respondents think that the state is heading in the wrong direction, including Greens voters. This leads them to mark Anna Bligh down, and blame her for being too close to Beattie. Even those who are favourable to Anna think she needs more time, a reflection of the way Beattie still defines Labor and its leadership.

However, when they look at the opposition they are not impressed. They tend to like Springborg, but even so, many feel they don't know him well-enough, despite his 20 years in public life. They are also concerned that he does not have a team behind him, and especially express concern about the behaviour of the Liberal Party. In this context some mention the proposed merger as a positive.

In terms of issues, the political climate is very much like it was in the local government elections. Environment and quality of life are central, and candidates who can credibly promise to safeguard and improve them were rewarded. In most cases, when there was a clash between independent and party candidates, such as on the Gold Coast or in Townsville, the independent won.

Not surprisingly, "party" turns up as a negative for both Bligh and Springborg."Greener" voters may well be the key to this election, and they are particularly antipathetic to the mainstream parties.

I've put some tables below. We had 924 responses, which was fantastic.

Key points:

1. There has been around a 10% swing against Labor since the last election On our poll this results in a 52% majority to the Coalition after preferences.
2. A majority thinks the state is heading in the wrong direction, including 62% of Greens voters
3. The most important issues are infrastructure, water, health, transport, roads, and population.
4. Most (61%) disapprove of the performance of Anna Bligh, and her biggest negative is Peter Beattie.
5. 41% approve of Lawrence Springborg, and 31% disapprove, and his biggest negative is his team and the Liberal Party.
6. 38% of voters each prefer Bligh or Springborg, with the remainig 24% uncertain.
7. 65% expect Labor to win, but 42% would like the Coalition to win.

However, suffice it to say that it is not good news for Anna Bligh. I think she knows that from the activity that I can see in the news.

You can download the map of attitudes to Rudd by clicking here, and to Nelson by clicking here.

Contrast this Labor voter:

"Even though I am a Labor voter, I had Kevin Rudd pictured as a somewhat uninspiring bureaucrat with a savvy media image. The budget dramatically improved my assessment of him as a genuine Labor Leader"

with this Coalition voter:

"Kevin Rudd is all talk and no action. Before the election he gave the impression that he could drive down inflation and the cost of living. It is now obvious that he can't."

Nelson suffers from two major handicaps - the former Howard government and Malcolm Turnbull. While the top ranking concept is "Nelson" it appears mostly as a negative. The discussion is about his future or his performance rather than the budget. He is seen as lacking substance so is defined by what he inherits, or what he is not.

There is also a large degree of entrenchment of views. "Vote" is the second strongest concept which appears either in the context of "I always vote Labor" or "I always vote Liberal". In other words, Nelson is relevant only in so much as he is part of the institutional arrangements. This is to be expected. We've just had an election (six months is "just" to the average voter) so the budget is going to have a minimal impact on perceptions because elections, particularly those when you change government, are psychologically decisive. We don't want to go and revisit the decision too soon afterwards.

I've tried doing this one with a pop-up image instead of an embedded one, so hopefully you will get better resolution. So, click here and you should get a usable map. I've used final preference as the variable, so Coalition voters are on the left (the software makes the decisions, not me) and Labor on the right.

There are some lessons for both sides here. For starters, "Alcopops" does not appear as a concept or a theme. There is a good reason for this. "Alcopop" only turns up 15 times out of the whole sample. All the time that the Coalition has spent on this issue has been wasted on the basis of this research. To follow-up, the strongest turn-off for Labor voters was "change". That word has been associated in all our polling in the last 12 months with "climate", and this polling is no exception. Labor was elected on a platform of fixing climate change, and some of their strongest supporters think they are not doing enough.

"Families" is another theme with risks in it for the ALP. Many of the Liberal voters are being turned off by the phrase "working families", because they feel that Labor is too narrowly focussed on a group which doesn't include them. If they're older, or divorced, or if the wife is at home, they feel as though they aren't included. "They keep saying working families as though they are the only people that are important to the economy, there are plenty of people that are working hard that don't have a dependent family and aged pensioners don't even get a mention."

"Tax" cuts all ways. Some feel they are paying too much, and others think that the tax cuts should have been directed to better services. In contrast, "Pensioners" is unambiguous. It may have surprised most commentators that pensioners demonstrated in Melbourne against the budget, but on the basis of this research it shouldn't have been unexpected, even if it couldn't have been predicted.

The "Baby Bonus" made an appearance, and again, for a number of reasons. Some thought that the rich should be encouraged to have more children, because those children were likely to be more successful than average. Others thought there shouldn't be a baby bonus, while still others thought the means test was too generous.

This is the first of the qual. I've analysed it using Leximancer, which produces the concept map below.

I've used people's final preference as the variable to which the concepts are related. In the bottom left-hand corner you have those who would preference Labor first, and in the top right-hand corner those who would preference the Coalition. The "Undecideds" are on the bottom right. Resolution is not as good as I would have liked, so I might need to do something else in future. Please bear with me.

The theme  with the largest area is "tax", and this sits closest to the Coalition voters. This is largely what you would expect, as the tax issue resonates most strongly with Coalition voters. Within the "tax" theme sit concepts like "families" and "tax" and "cuts". So, voters were largely happiest in general that the tax cuts were honoured and that there was support for families. These things are winners across the board.

What is a little surprising is that the theme most closely associated with Labor voters is "rich". When you examine the quotes, this theme is very closely linked to the one next to it - "testing". "testing" is actually a compound of two words - "means" and "testing". So taken together these concepts indicate that the means testing of benefits is what is most pleasing in the budget to those preferencing Labor. There are a couple of explanations for what is behind this. For some, means testing allows money to be saved for those who really need it. "Means Testing. If your rich then why would you need payments? Its a good way of reducing the countries costs. And the money going into education is good." Contained in this concept is also a sense of equity. Why should someone who doesn't need the benefit get it? I also detect a satisfaction in some responses that people who were seen to undeservedly prosper under the Howard regime are not doing so well under Rudd.

The other area of approval related to the budget is "education" which also contains within it the concepts of health and infrastructure. The Education Revolution still resonates, and symbolises the important social welfare/social equity issues to Labor voters. Hovering around the edges is the word "fund" or "funding", both of which predominantly refer to the three statutory funds for health, education and infrastructure. Both sides tend to approve of this concept. Labor voters associating it with a government that they see as at last planning for the future, and Liberal voters giving Rudd a mark for adopting what they see as Liberal policies.

Do you approve of the job Kevin Rudd is doing?

Our sample suggests that Rudd's approval rating is now fairly similar to a successful Labor Premier, and while extraordinarily good, is starting to come back to earth.

Would you be more likely to vote for Kevin Rudd because of the budget?

What this table demonstrates is that the budget will intensify voting intention, but make little difference one way or the other. Liberal and National voters are significantly less inclined to vote for the government because of it, but the Liberal and National votes are also reduced to a hard core because of the extremely large share of the total vote that the ALP has at the moment

Do you approve of the job Brendan Nelson is doing?

These are devastatingly bad figures for Dr Nelson. While his approval rating on this poll is higher than on other polls, his disapproval rating is more than 50%. There is limited room for him to improve as only 2% of people don't have an opinion, and 28% neither disapprove nor approve. His "strongly disapprove" figure is 27%, while his "strongly approve" figure is only 3%.

Would you be more likely to vote for Brendan Nelson because of the budget?

This poll was taken before the address-in-reply so it may have improved after that. However, what it says is that while the budget didn't win Rudd any votes, it lost Nelson some. You'll have to wait for the qual to find out why, but my strong suspicion would be that it is to do with his performance.

We also have figures on what percentage has changed its vote since the federal election. I won't reproduce the table, but 5% of last time Labor voters would vote Liberal if an election was held now, and 2% of Liberal voters would vote Labor. No Nationals have changed their mind. So there has been a small erosion of the Labor vote. Unfortunately there aren't enough of these people to be too sure what they represent, but I will have a look at the data later and see what we can make of it.

Is the country heading in the right direction?

This is an almost complete reversal from previous polls with ALP voters ecstatic (can't think of a better word for it) at the direction of the country. Liberals are fairly concerned and Nationals even more so. There is also a degree of apprehension from Greens voters.

Do you approve of the budget?

This is similarly related to voting intentions, and reflects a similar, although less accentuated division of opinion as the direction question.

Is your personal position better or worse?

To some extent approval or disapproval flows with perceptions of whether the budget has improved personal circumstances, although the close alignment with voting intention suggests that a large proportion of perception is reflected in voting behaviour.

Will it be good for the nation?

Some intriguing and minor divergences here from whether respondents approved or not of the budget. For example, while 89% of Labor voters approve of the budget, only 79% think it will make for a better country. Perhaps the deficit can be explained on the basis that they don't think it will make it better or worse, perhaps a tacit approval of the way things were.

I've been intriqued that while The Australian's respondents have pulled my sample to the right, it still leans heavily towards the left of the spectrum. There is something about the online world which begs to be analysed.

Anyway, for those of you who are interested in the Benchmark Poll you can read the relevant material here:

Benchmark Poll

• Questionnaire
• Report
• Fear factor now in Labor corner - Graham Young, 25th October, 2007

In the last election Howard’s promise that interest rates would always be lower under the Liberals than Labor may have been crucial to him holding mortgage belt seats.

My colleague John Black found no statistical relationship between the swings that actually occurred and average mortgage sizes, but he found a relationship in other seats. His theory was that the interest rate issue didn’t so much affect those who were buying houses, as it affected people, like their parents, who worried about the home buyers. Our questions aimed to test these hypotheses.

We also wanted to know how real "mortgage stress" is. Are those who spend more than 30% of their income on mortgages rich enough to afford it, gearing into investments, or desperately hanging on to a toe-hold in the housing market?

Last, we wanted to know whether voters blame Howard for high interest rates and whether nervousness about them made him more or less attractive to voters.

Our sample swings to the left, and compared to the average is older, slightly richer and more likely to own a home, and 27% of those with mortgages were making payments putting them in "housing stress". Despite being more affluent than average they gave us valuable leads on these questions.

Interest rates were a significant issue for all groups, except for those renting. Just more than a third of renters thought it was a significant issue, and about the same percentage thought it wasn’t. For those with a mortgage the figures were 54% and 17%, while for those who owned outright they were 41% and 29%.

If you were paying more than 30% of your family income in rent, then the figures were 65% significant, 11% insignificant. Safe to say that even if these respondents have bought boats, holiday homes and investments they’re still worried about the holding costs.

There wasn’t much altruism evident. When we coded qualitative responses from swingers, 23% of them came up with a variant of "I’m alright Jack" while 21% said "I’m suffering", or words to that effect. 11% were primarily worried about the effects on people other than themselves. These were mostly aged between 55 and 64, the age when you are most likely to have offspring buying a house. Another 6% actually saw a personal benefit in higher interest rates, and were also generally older, so were probably net lenders.

A problem for Howard is that 11% of swingers volunteered that Governments had no effect on interest rates, and a further 6% said it was a significant issue because he had lied about them last election. "…I believe the Liberal Party will again lie and claim they'll keep interest rates low, or lower, or at record lows (pick this week's lie)."

We also looked at those in mortgage stress and the personal impact was overwhelming – 47% were personally suffering. But only 8% nominated coalition lies. It seems that while mortgages are hurting, the government isn’t necessarily being blamed.

So, who is more likely to keep interest rates lower? The answer to this was fascinating. 80 percent of Coalition voters nominated the government, but Labor voters had no confidence in their own side with only 13 percent nominating them as the best. The apparent discrepancy is made up by those who believe neither side has an edge with 69% of Labor voters calling it a draw, compared to only 15% of Coalition voters.

A closer look at swinging voters makes this better for the government. Those voters who have crossed to Labor believe that Labor is better able to handle interest rates than the Coalition, by 21 percent to 7 percent, but those who are unsure, or moving from Labor to Coalition more strongly nominate the Coalition over Labor. So, while "Neither", a neutral position, is the answer for 50% of swingers, a quarter tend in the government’s direction as a result of interest rates.

The reason for this is clear looking at the qual. The Liberal Party enjoys a good record in voters’ eyes of keeping interest rates low, while the Labor Party doesn’t. Those who favour Labor to keep rates lower rely on abstracts like the parties’ policies. They also point to recent rate rises under Howard.

We’ve also analysed these responses with the Leximancer software. As the attached map shows, "Howard" is a negative for the Liberals on the issue, but "Rudd" isn’t even present, strange given his presidential approach. "Labor" is negative for the opposition and is associated with the Liberals being best to lower interest rates. The debate is dominated by perceptions of risk and looking for the party least likely to make rates higher, rather than likely to make them lower. IR is also absent as a concept, suggesting both that job insecurity is not an issue with interest rates, and also that the Liberal Party has not been successful in linking IR reform with a better economy.

All in all, this is not a strong hand for Howard, but it is an even weaker hand for Rudd. In the no-holdem game of political poker, if I were Howard I might be prepared to play this game to the end, particularly given the number of dud alternatives hands there are lying around.

Tables

While the sample, unlike recent quantitative polls published in the mainstream media, showed voters were underwhelmed by the Haneef affair, both the Government and the Opposition copped blame.

Our sample, which leans to the left, disapproved of the overall handling of the issue by 64% to 28%. This is similar to their two-party preferred voting patterns.

The graph shows some interesting contrasts.

As the government’s role was disapproved of by 67% and the minister’s by 66%, voters clearly identified them as the most responsible. However, they also received approval from 27% and 26% respectively.

While 51% disapproved of the Opposition’s role, only 18% approved, making the net effect very close.

The DPP emerged with most credit – 33% disapproved, while 26% approved – followed by the AFP – 53% disapproval, but with 28% approval.

As always the main purpose of our online qualitative polling is not to measure percentage support, but to understand motivations.

Key themes for Labor voters were that the government had acted politically, the evidence was weak, and that Haneef was denied natural justice.

Liberal voters were interested in “information” rather than evidence, and they tended to believe that the police had good information on which to hold Haneef. Concern about terrorism was another strong theme – it is seen as being different from other crime, justifying exceptional measures.

The key argument centred around concepts of guilt and innocence with around 10% mentioning both words together. Some insisted that terrorist suspects should be innocent until proven guilty, while others reversed the onus.

In some ways these themes are consistent with themes from previous elections. Those voting Liberal are focused on ends, while Labor voters are much more concerned about means.

The Coalition’s support has literally ebbed away. While you might expect that there would be voters changing in both directions - from Coalition to Labor and vice versa - this election the traffic is just about all one way. The Liberals' vote is as low as it is because people who voted for Howard last time have changed their minds and gone across to Rudd. Why has this happened?

There are a number of clues in our responses.

First, there is no obvious demographic group from which they come. When you look at occupations, the splits are very similar to our total sample. Teachers and the retired are still the two largest groups, and every other group is represented within the tolerance of sampling error. I’ve scanned postcodes, and there is nothing which suggests a bias towards outer-urban or rural electorates, and representation from the states is well within sampling bias. Likewise with income. This group is very typical.

Howard’s grip has loosened across the whole range. Previous election victories have been defined by capturing key demographics: like blue-collar conservatives, the elderly and young families, using combinations of special benefits - baby-bonuses and retirement benefits. Or by touching deep cultural nerves - the “elites” versus the “real” Australians. Now representatives of most of these constituencies are defecting.

The only quantitative difference between this group and the whole sample is in the gender split - males appear to be over-represented, particularly between 35 and 64 years of age, as well as in the under 24s. I’m not sure what this reflects, but the government has been running an anti-domestic violence campaign for months, so perhaps it reflects the success of those ads with younger women.

Second, these people are on balance pessimistic about the direction of the country, mildly unfavourable to Howard, and appear very enthusiastic about Rudd. While 71 per cent approve of Rudd, only 30 per cent approve of Howard, and 59 per cent think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Some days ago John Howard asked his cabinet if the problem was “him”. It appears that it is. Or at least, when these voters hear mention of the Howard Government they compare it unfavourably with the prospects of a Rudd government.

Third, these voters are more likely to be Christian than our sample in general. This suggests a less materialistic mind-set than that of voters in general. And while they are not particularly evangelical in their attitudes, on balance (52 per cent to 40 per cent) they believe that Christian values have a place in political debate. They also overwhelmingly believe (77 per cent of them) that Christian values have been valuable to society.

So while they don’t appear to have a particular geographical home, they do appear to share some deep attachments to Western conservative values. This is reinforced by the fact that only 9 per cent of them claim to be traditional Labor voters. Over half identify as traditionally Liberal or National, and 22 per cent as having no traditional political commitment. This possibly explains the seemingly inexplicable combination of lack of anger against the government in the electorate and the large swing to Rudd. Many who make up the Rudd majority are voting against their normal political family.

This makes it a soft vote. Even though everyone in this sample says they are not voting for the government, 15 per cent still wants the Coalition to win, and only 57 per cent wants Labor to win. Perhaps there is some hand-waving going on here. The statistics suggest that these voters haven’t so much deserted the Liberals, as that they’ve crossed to the other side of a valley and they’re trying to encourage the Liberals to follow after them, or give them a reason to come back.

The qual fleshes out some of these perceptions. Major concerns about the direction of the country centre around a sense that society is increasingly divided between the haves and have-nots and a concern for the environment, particularly water and climate change. The government is seen as aligned with business and the rich, and uncaring about the poor. IR is present as a supporting issue to this perception. There is also concern about our foreign policy, and it tends to be expressed as part of an overall concern that we are becoming too American in our society.

While respondents are concerned that the economic benefits should be spread around there are no suggestions as to how this might be done. Economic good times are being taken for granted, and they are providing many Australians with the opportunity to be post-materialistic in their approach to politics. This makes the government seem old-fashioned. In focusing heavily on the economy it appears to be located in the industrial-age rather than the modern world.

These concerns are reflected in the issues that respondents emphasise as being important. At the same time there are some interesting conflicts. Climate change is an issue that cuts in both directions. While many blame the government for not acting decisively, others blame the government for acting at all. Why the latter group is veering towards Labor is not at all clear if this is the important issue for them. Climate change is also an issue that emphasises the perception that the government is focused on the past rather than the future and has failed to plan.

While the ACTU has been running a concerted campaign on IR laws, it is only when asked what would make them hesitate about voting for Howard that these lapsed liberals put IR at the top of the list; and then it is a very long list where many issues get almost as many mentions. This suggests that on its own it is not a major concern, but if they have to provide a justification for their voting intention, then it becomes more prominent. Yet even then, a word search shows that IR ties with Iraq for the number of mentions, and both of them are very much a minority concern.

The major theme that runs through these swinging voters’ hesitations in voting for Howard is a perception that he is arrogant and has lost touch with “Strugglesville”. For each of them it seems to be embodied in a slightly different issue. Again, this is a soft motivation, because when they are asked what makes them hesitate in thinking of voting for Rudd, arrogance is a strong theme. This is underlined by his “mini-me” strategy where voters see him as being just a Howard clone.

Even stronger as a hesitation is Rudd’s lack of experience and a feeling that he does not have the mental toughness to do the job and stand up to his colleagues. As you would expect with a group that normally identifies as Liberal, there is a fair degree of distrust of the Labor Party, another major negative for Rudd.

Analysis of this group suggests that the election is not yet won by Rudd. A tide which ebbs in one direction will just as easily flow in the other in a few hours time. For Labor to keep hold of them it needs to address a multitude of issues, many of which run counter to others.

By contrast, the negatives about Rudd are all focused in a few areas. It would be relatively easy for the Liberals to craft a few messages that emphasised those negatives and turned the tide, and relatively difficult for Labor to pull them back. If all they are offering is a younger clone of John Howard, then it’s possible voters will decide to stick with the original. After all, they already know its defects.

In fact, if they vote for Howard this election he will be gone in another two years, and then they can get a really clear focus on the future and make a decision between two future leaders who will have had the chance to prove themselves. It’s possible that this election may end up being an audition for the next.

The debate was largely one of "sound and fury" and centred on interpretation of Newspoll data by The Australian's Dennis Shanahan. Shannahan claimed that a recovery in the Liberal Party vote in federal elections was always pressaged by a recovery in Howard's personal vote. This was disputed by a number of bloggers, including political scientist Peter Brent, who directly, or indirectly, fed into Crikey!. The counter argument was that Howard's approval rating rose as a consequence of an increase in the Liberal vote, not as a causative factor, or that there was actually no relationship between the two.

In fact the debate is irrelevant. No two elections are the same, and it depends how they are run as to whether the leaders' ratings matter, and what effect they have on the party vote, or it has on them. In the 1995 Queensland state election the Coalition went in with approval ratings for Rob Borbidge of 19%. So we didn't run a head-to-head leadership campaign because that would have meant losing to Goss who was at the time Australia's most popular politician.

It would be smart for the coalition not to run a head-to-head leadership campaign this time either. At the moment voters favour Rudd, but they're worried about his Labor Party and union connections, which is where the government should direct its campaign, in which case, Howard's personal approval rating is of much less significance.

All of which raises the question of how journalists and others read polls. At the moment a number are writing up the proposition that Howard has gone bad with the under 34 year olds. He may have, but the Newspoll figures (on which these stories are largely based) are equivocal at best.

This table suggests that the swing is greatest in the younger groups, but sampling error negates this. Newspoll advises that the sample size for those between 18 and 34 is somewhere around 250, meaning that the sampling error will be somewhere in the vicinity of 6.5%! In effect, the swing in all of the groups is statistically the same.

Perhaps journalists have been misled by the 1.5% sampling error cited in the footer of the poll. This figure refers to the error of the overall sample. The sample consists of 6,957 respondents, but they are spread over 6 separate polls, and something like 12 separate weekends. As a result each figure has a much higher sampling error than the whole sample, and it is in fact difficult, if not impossible, to think of any statistics that can be extracted from the tables where 1.5% would actually be the sampling error

As a teacher / Deputy Principal perhaps our over representation is due to:

1. The need to be somewhat tech / Internet savvy as this is increasingly incorporated into curriculum and this is the world that young people dwell in.
2. The understanding of political action / inaction on the future of society. Teachers are on the coal face of preparing the next generation for the world – we have some insight as to what the future might look like. We are in essence sick of increasingly crowded curriculum and know the implications of politicians who endeavour to fix yet another societal ill through the school system (speeding, drug taking, illicit sex, violence, plagiarism …) without any further funding, without an increase in time and where the benefit is potentially more to the politician who makes the decision than to the teachers, students and parents who are affected by the decision. We also get a snapshot into what families look like and the problems that beset them. We understand a little of the issues that will be facing the next generation of adults as we work with them now and see the signs and symptoms of what is to come – we actually have insights into what might be solutions to this problem. We are sick of politicians who don’t appear to listen and hence when someone offers to listen to our opinion we are willing to share to. We are not mere bystanders in this process – we are in education to make a difference. Teachers are generally people of reasonable initiative and creativity and are focussed on making an all-round tangible difference. We believe in finding real solutions to real problems. We have a long term view of the solutions required which must stretch beyond a 3 year political term and also we understand that the court of public opinion is not always the best place to develop policy (eg – performance pay for teachers).
3. Sadly education debate in NSW continues to be an ‘us and them’ scenario between school sectors perpetuated by ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’. Schooling is under funded in a state where education costs are the highest on average. The AEU in particular continues to politicise education in a way that ultimately does a disservice to both sectors. They are both struggling and need some long term vision and funding which the cross sector bickering fails to provide.