THE Australian Childhood Foundation has launched a campaign to warn parents not to smack their children because it may “teach children that violence can be an acceptable way to solve problems”. A recent poll revealed 92 per cent thought that smacking was “sometimes” necessary. Tony Abbott also thinks going the thump on kids is fine. 

I’ve never been sucked in by any of the fads and fashions in the extreme sport of parenting. I’m such a maverick mother my kids were all on solid food at three months. Which is why I can’t believe that I’m agreeing with something called the Australian Childhood Foundation.

I’ve just done some quick sums and I’m up $676,600, minimum. No private school fees, no private health insurance and no wedding. Three kids at a private school for six years ($540,000 — that’s just the basic fees, excluding building funds, uniforms, balaclavas, etc). One wedding ($40,000 is the average price). And basic private family health insurance until the last kid reaches 18 ($96,600). That’s not counting the cover before the babies were born or the out-of-pocket expenses for any private health treatments or private health care after the kiddies leave home. Which I hear they don’t do these days. Stuff ’em. They can keep sharing a room and sleep in bunks.

The look on their faces when I tell people who send their kids to private schools this? Priceless. That amount is net, not gross. Before tax I could be saving closer to a million bucks. All by doing stuff all. I’m a financial genius!

People are being sacked left, right and centre, the economy’s on life support and if it weren’t for Father Kev and his $1000-a-head per child stocking filler, the kiddies would be waking up on Christmas Day to hessian bags full of phlegm.

What a breath of fresh air it is to have something other than gloom and doom in the paper. Private school fees are going up. About bloody time. Double them, I say. Other things on my wish-list? Shoot-on-sight laws for people who use leaf blowers, more fat chicks on telly and spot checks to locate people whose remote controls outnumber the books they own without pictures. I’d be open to re-education camps where necessary.

Back to private schools and why I’m rapt the fees are going up. A survey of calls to the Sensis 1234 directory service from May to October showed that requests for state schools are up 372 per cent. Yippee! More kids at state schools. More funding, better schools and happier parents because they’re not slaving their guts out to pay for a school with a blazer to impress their friends and compete with their adult siblings. Happier kids because they don’t have to be on a train at 7.15am and because their parents aren’t as stressed out. Hooray for the financial crisis!

Just so we’re clear, this page is called opinion and my opinion is private schools should not receive any government funding. If people want to send their kids to a school that is a social, single-gender and/or religious ghetto in an attempt for them to meet the “right” people, keep away from the “wrong” people, live out the dreams of their parents or continue some unbroken line of inherited bigotry, they should pay for it themselves. Every. Single. Cent. The Government reckons it’s supporting choice. Funding private schools encourages, finances and promotes intolerance, inequity and social apartheid.

The more expensive private schools are, the more people will come back to government schools. Jack up those prices. Get the kids back to the local and find out that it’s about what’s best for kids and not about having something for your kid that you consider better than what everyone else’s kid has. “Oh yes, Kenneth goes to Up Your Grammar. It costs $5000 more than the school you send your kids to. Oh yes, I know what they all cost. Not only does that prove we love our child more than you love yours but it also proves we’re richer than you and therefore better. And you know what the best thing about our school is? No poor people!”

Education is the whole society’s responsibility because we’re a society and the outcome of education affects us all. It’s wrong and unfair for any child to have a better resourced school than another. It’s wrong and unfair for some teachers to work in better conditions than others.

Lucky for the 70 per cent of us who send our children to public schools, we understand that a school is not their education. And that diversity in the classroom, excellent government-funded education and well-rounded kids are the key to a clever country, a tolerant community and a modern society. And saving a million bucks.

The first thing you notice about Two and a Half Men is the laugh track. Hard, fast and involuntarily. That laugh you have when a primitive button deep inside is pressed that reveals something we try to hide to everyone, including ourselves. The laugh track encourages people to join in, not to feel alone. The second thing you notice is Two and a Half Men is on every weeknight and three times on Tuesday nights. The fact this phenomenon sucks in up to half a million Melburnians a night made it worthy of an investigation

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Now everyone’s had their say about the canonisation of Mary MacKillop it’s time for the final word from me. And Zoo magazine. Go with me people.

When I heard Mary MacKillop was becoming a saint, my first thought, like any Melbournian was, “I didn’t even know she was in the draft.”

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Did you read about the boy who may lose hearing in one ear because a Melbourne Grammar boy threw an egg at him during a muck-up prank gone wrong? Did anyone else feel sickened but at the same time not at all surprised when the principal of Melbourne Grammar said in an interview: “[The injured boy’s mother] asked for help because . . . her son was not able to gain access to a surgeon. I was able to, through contacts, get him an appointment with a surgeon the very next day.”

Through contacts – those were the words that made me sick. Through contacts. How kind and noble it was for the important man from the privileged school to help the boy less fortunatethrough contacts.

Through contacts – those were the words that made me sick. Through contacts. How kind and noble it was for the important man from the privileged school to help the boy less fortunate through contacts.

What’s astonishing is the stunning lack of insight those two little words revealed. What does it say about a school when the principal brags about queue-jumping? Through contacts. Celebrating a two-tiered health system that leaves one person to wait in pain simply because they have less money.

What kind of values does a school have to acknowledge an inherently unjust system and brag they can rort it? What’s the school motto? ”Who you know. Through contacts”, ”Meeting the right people. Not those wrong people.” Perhaps its mission statement is: ”It’s not through merit people will be rewarded, nor the society being one of equity we want to promote. We are committed to reinforcing discriminatory hereditary privilege and attracting insecure parents who tragically use the school their child attends as social currency. We suck in parents with fear, dazzle them with hype and comfort them with social apartheid, gender segregation and elitism.”

PRIVATE SCHOOL VALUES TWO
Last year I wrote about a private school contacting me to mentor one of its year nine students for its ”year nines are privately mentored by professional writers” part of its sales platform.

When I asked what the fee was, they said I was the first to ask and they hadn’t thought about payment. (Their school values did not extend to paying people to increase their company’s profitability but did extend to attempting to covertly shame people for asking to be paid for what they do.) I explained I was happy to do charity for charities, but I couldn’t afford to work free for businesses. Long story, but in short I suggested a $200 donation to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre as payment.

I mentored a student and it was fabulous.

The school approached me again this year and I agreed to the same terms. I had contact with the young lad, he was bright and keen, and we were looking forward to working together. Before we got down to work, I asked the school to send me confirmation of last year’s donation.

The contact stopped dead. Countless emails and phone calls and I haven’t heard from the school or the student since. That was three months ago. I called the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre. It had received no donation from the school. Ever. The school is now building a new wing that looks like a project by Denton Corker Marshall.

A high-profile Australian writer told me he was approached via his publisher by the same private school. When the publicist asked about a fee, the English co-ordinator responded: ”I’ve not considered a payment, to be honest. The only person who has asked for payment in the past has been Catherine Deveny (GREEDY BITCH) and we (WE? YOU MEAN I) managed to come to a settlement involving a donation to charity.”

My new one woman Melbourne Comedy Festival show Curvy Crumpet tickets are selling much faster than expected. If you’re coming I suggest you get cracking BUY HERE.

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