Australian Leftist leader calls for tax breaks for private school parents

(More support for the view that Australia is the world's most conservative country)

Parents who sacrifice their lifestyles to send their children to private schools should be thanked and supported with tax incentives and childcare support, says Labor Party national president Warren Mundine. Just a day after Labor leader Kim Beazley discarded his predecessor Mark Latham's class-war policy of cutting public funding to the nation's wealthy private schools, Mr Mundine said his party should consider offering tax breaks on school fees and direct subsidies for parents using the private school system, similar to the childcare rebate.

Mr Mundine called for an end to the ideologically driven debate that has dominated the ALP's education policy for the past two or three decades and for debate instead on the best ways to support families in their choice of education. "I think they're great parents, I take my hat off to them," Mr Mundine said of people who sent their children to private schools. "These families are contributing on top of their taxes. They're paying for education twice. "They're paying $4 billion (in private school fees) on top of their taxes to provide the best education for their kids. Not all are wealthy people, they're just ordinary, average Australians trying to do the best for their kids."

Mr Mundine, a father of seven, said his own children attended both public and private schools. His two children still at school include his daughter, Garra, 14, who attends St Scholastica's at Glebe, in Sydney's inner west, and son Yawun, 17, who attends St Joseph's College in the northern suburb of Hunters Hill.

Despite confirmation yesterday that wealthy private schools may not secure real funding increases under Labor's plan, Mr Beazley's pledge that no private school would be worse off won support from elite school principals unhappy with the current funding system. Melbourne Grammar principal Paul Sheahan said the Howard Government's funding system for private schools was unfair and said it had entered into too many special deals with different schools.

The federal Government's funding model - known as the socio-economic status (SES) model - does not take private school fees and income into account when determining funding. Instead, it links enrolment details of where students live with census data on average income and education levels.

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