Bracks' Miracle Cure on Stateline Victoria (SBS) tonight

Steve Bracks finds a Miracle Cure for 6500 sufferers!

Steve Bracks' miracle cure for those with language disorders -- simply by raising the standards by which they qualify for an integration aide -- will be reported on Stateline Victoria on SBS tonight.
It's an all too familiar story in Australian politics with an election coming up.

Another example of taking from those in need to give to those in greed.

There was this small program funded by the state for $50 million. There were a few million in federal matching funds.
The Bracks' government needed to buy a few votes and needed a few more millions for its campaign funds, so ... they raised the standards for the children to qualify for the program.
Instantly, 6500 students were cured of language disorders, -- leaving less than 800 in Victoria!

The government's actions are a little questionable though. First, they increased the funding for language disorders last year by $1.4 million. Now, suddenly, most of the $51.4 million or so will go to principals and school boards to do with as they choose.

When asked directly on Stateline if the money could be used by school principals for any purpose, the government representative hemmed and hawed a bit, then tried to pawn the responsibility for this atrocity onto school boards. The reality is that the money will go to the principals first, and the school boards will only have the chance for a decision later. Every Victorian principal knows this.

You see, the children with language disorders don't vote, but principals and teachers do.

If the pattern of Australian politics is followed, all of the federal matching funds and most of the $50 million will go into Mr Bracks' campaign advertisements. How? Well, he will have to explain why he cut 6500 students with real needs from the program, won't he? And you can't expect him to take the money from his own campaign funds.
That would be un-Australian.

The Bracks government was happy to spend hundreds of thousands for its cadre of lawyers to take on the individual cases that arose. That was expected, I'm sure.
Now it faces a class action filed on behalf of all 6500 students. The class action is supported by Speech Pathology Australia which -- strangely -- was not consulted on the change in standards, although they are under contract with the state for exactly this purpose.

Parents of a girl with a learning disability have taken a case against the Victorian Department of Education and Training to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), arguing that changes to the definition of disabilities in government schools are discriminatory. In 2005, students in government schools qualified for language disorder support if their language skills were two standard deviations below the mean.
In 2006, however, this criteria was altered so that students had to be three standard deviations below the mean to qualify for funding. According to evidence presented to VCAT, more than 6,550 government school students have been rendered ineligible to receive funding under the changes. The Department of Education has informed
VCAT that the $50 million that had been saved through the criteria change has been re-distributed to schools.
However, lawyers for the disabled girl have claimed that only a small portion of the funding is being re-allocated to schools, and that schools have no obligation to spend the funding assisting students with disabilities. The Herald-Sun claims that several other families arepreparing to take similar action against the Department.
Herald-Sun, Jane Metlikovec, 27/07/06

The cynical truth behind the class action is the money was to help students get through school. By the time the class action is decided, all of those students will have either finished school or dropped out.
But that's not really the concern of the Bracks' government, is it? Not with an election coming up, certainly.

Bracks has found a miracle cure for not only these disabled children, but for his own campaign effort.