what would you do if you were pm?

It is Wednesday afternoon. At the time of writing this, we still don’t have a government. Maybe by Friday when this post is published, politics will have sorted itself out. In the meantime, it seems that the top job is up for grabs.

So any takers? What would you do if you were the Prime Minister?

This is an open invitation for you to bring out your soap box. You can be as controversial as you like. Us Aussies are good at criticising our government. But I don’t think we really appreciate the complexities of running a country.

So I’m asking, what is your solution to one of the many issues facing Australia at the moment? Consider the following questions:

• What portfolio would you tackle?
• What are the main problem that you see that portfolio faces?
• What would you do to improve / fix it?
• How would you sell your solution to the people?
• How would you fund it?

For example, maybe it is healthcare that you want to improve. How would you fix the healthcare problem? More staff? More beds? Better facilities? More private care? How much would it cost? Where would you get the money to pay for your new policies? How would you convince the voting public that your idea is a good one?

I started thinking about this just this afternoon. Below is an idea that I came up with off the cuff. It isn’t going to be popular. I even looked up the Federal Budget to find out how much money I have to play around with. Just over $320 billion if you are wondering.

Any policy is going to need an allocation of money to fund it. Below is a graph of income and expenditure percentages for the 2010-2011 federal budget to give you an idea of how the current? previous? government has allocated funds. If you are curious like I am about the actual federal finances you can find more information here.[source] 

My Policy Idea – Literacy and Numeracy

This idea will be controversial but here it goes:

Our standard of education needs improving, especially in the basic areas of literacy and numeracy. The main purpose at the centre where I teach as a volunteer is to teach adult literacy and numeracy. A growing number of students are coming in straight out of high school. It is evident that our schooling system is failing a lot of students.

The way I propose to improve literacy and numeracy is to reduce the teacher student ratio by increasing the number of teacher aides in classrooms. Each classroom would ultimately have at least 2 –3 helpers for one-on-one reading, writing and yes, arithmetic help.

How would this be funded? Here comes the controversial part. We are already funding it. As per the above graph, 83% of revenue collected from individuals income taxation goes to social security and welfare. Of this amount about 40% goes to the old age pension. What I’m saying is, this idea is already paid for.

How would I sell it? I wouldn’t. Assuming basic health and mobility, it would be part of the pension package.

Possible additional benefits? A greater sense of community. Fellowship between age groups. A means to reducing the possible loneliness, isolation and depression that can occur amongst the elderly. One possible way, I hope, of reducing crime, violence, alcohol and drug abuse among the youth by providing positive role models (particularly positive male role models) for children who may lack good role models. I would envision other skills above and beyond literacy and numeracy would be passed down from older generation to the younger.

So, what would you do if you were PM? Share your thoughts, or critique the one above.