18 November 2025: ABOLISH ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOW!!!

What I'm talking about today:

1. ANOTHER TEACHERS STRIKE

2. HICHINBROOK BY-ELECTION

3. MORE ENVIRONMENT LAWS....

4. TWO NEW LEADERS

TEACHERS STRIKE

First up, the Queensland Teachers’ Union has announced yet another strike for next Tuesday.

Perfect timing, right in the middle of Year 11 assessment block (which counts for 25% of ATAR). The adults are fighting again.

For context: back in August they had their first strike. Their demands were higher pay and better conditions. The government offered them an 8% pay rise over three years plus other benefits. They rejected it. The main reason they gave was simply: “not enough money.”

The problem is, these strikes don’t hurt politicians. They hurt kids. Politicians still get paid. Union bosses still get paid. The people who cop the damage are students and their families.

But to really understand what’s wrong here, we have to go to the root of the problem: the way public education is set up.

Public schools are run and funded by the government. That sounds nice in theory, “free education for everyone.” But it destroys the basic incentives that make things work in a normal market.

Here’s why:

1. Schools get money whether they do a good job or not. A public school doesn’t close if its NAPLAN results are terrible. The funding keeps coming, no matter what.

2. Parents can’t easily take their funding elsewhere. If your local public school is awful, you can’t just say, “Give me my share of the money and I’ll spend it at a better school.” You’re stuck unless you can afford private fees on top of your taxes.

3. Teachers and administrators answer to government, not customers. Their real bosses are bureaucrats and ministers, not parents and students. So the system focuses on ticking boxes, not delivering value.

4. No competition means no pressure to improve. In a normal market, if one business does a bad job, another can take its customers. In public schooling, the “customers” are captive.

5. When there’s no competition, unions have all the leverage. If teachers strike, parents can’t just switch to another public provider. They’re trapped. That gives unions huge power to shut the system down whenever they want more.

That’s the situation we’re in now.

By contrast, private schools are the best evidence of the success of capitalism. They have to attract and keep families. If parents hate the culture, the discipline or the results, they leave. The school loses money. That pressure forces private schools to provide what families actually want - decent teaching, discipline, and a culture that isn’t completely insane.

Obviously, the title “abolish all public schools,” is hyperbolic. But the results really are getting worse. This year’s NAPLAN results were the worst in history. Around one in three students failed to meet proficiency benchmarks in literacy and/or numeracy. And schools are just ridiculously woke it's not even funny.

So how do you fix this?

Economist Milton Friedman had a simple solution: education vouchers.

Here’s how it would work:

• Instead of the government funding schools directly, it gives parents a voucher, a set amount of money per child.

• That voucher can be spent at any accredited school, public or private.

• Schools then have to attract students to get the funding.

• Bad schools have two choices: improve or slowly die, because parents will pick better ones.

It’s simple accountability. The money follows the student, not the bureaucracy.

Why doesn’t this happen now?

Because our system is run by people who love government control, and they’re backed by unions who benefit from the status quo. We literally have a socialist as prime minister. He likes centralised power. He’s not about to hand real control to parents.

On top of that, teachers’ unions are one of the biggest obstacles to fixing education.

1. They push wages and conditions above what the system can afford. When unions demand more and more, there are only two options: higher taxes, or fewer jobs and fewer resources elsewhere.

2. They protect bad workers along with good ones. Unions make it very hard to remove underperforming teachers. The worst teachers get the same shield as the best.

3. They use strikes as a weapon, which hurts students. Their leverage is disruption. That means the “pressure” lands on kids and parents, not on politicians.

4. They lobby for more central control, not more choice. Unions naturally want bigger government systems they can influence, not decentralised choice where parents decide.

In summary, there are so many layers to this mess it’s hard to know where to start. But the first serious step would be to embrace something closer to the voucher model: give parents choice, make schools compete, and stop pretending that central planning and unions will magically fix everything.

HICHINBROOK ELECTION

Today’s also a good time to look at the upcoming Hinchinbrook by-election for the Queensland Legislative Assembly.

The sitting member, Nick Dametto from Katter’s Australian Party, resigned to run for (and win) the Townsville mayoralty. That’s triggered a by-election in a seat that’s historically been held by the Nationals/Coalition or Katter. In other words, it’s a naturally conservative area.

So who’s running?

Let’s start with the people who basically have no chance:

1. Maurie Soars (Labor)

   Standard left-wing script: more government spending, more public sector roles, progressive social policy. In other words, the same approach that has helped turn Australia into the mess we’re in now. His campaign is against tougher sentencing for youth crime. That’s a huge problem. If kids know they won’t face real consequences, they keep offending and crime spirals.

2. Aiden Creagh (Greens)

   Why the Greens even bother in a seat like this is a mystery. This electorate is conservative. Nobody here is desperate for more radical Marxist climate and identity politics. Aiden hasn’t really offered concrete solutions beyond acknowledging the cost-of-living crisis. Well, yes... we’ve noticed. And his party’s policies are a big part of why everything is so expensive. You can safely assume the usual Greens formula: higher taxes, more regulation, less freedom. COMMUNISM!

Now for the people who actually matter.

Wayde Chiesa (Liberal National Party)

Premier David Crisafulli has been heavily campaigning for Wayde, and you can see why. His big policy push is mandatory jail for juvenile bail breaches. That matters. If someone breaks bail and nothing happens, bail conditions become a joke. Mandatory jail tells repeat young offenders that there is a hard line you do not cross.

He’s also clearly pro-business. As an accountant, he understands money and disciplined spending, something Albanese and his socialist mates could really use. I actually quite like this guy. While some of the other candidates are closer to my ideal policy mix, I’d still be pretty happy if he won.

Amanda Nickson (Family First)

I agree with almost everything Amanda stands for:

• opposes woke ideology in schools,

• cares about housing affordability and cost-of-living pressures,

• stresses strong family values.

The problem is that Family First doesn’t really offer a detailed economic program, and realistically they’re not going to win this seat. It’d be great if a bigger party like the LNP stole a page from their cultural and family policy, though.

Mark Molachino (Katter’s Australian Party)

Mark is probably going to win. Katter’s party has held the seat since 2017, and there’s a lot of local loyalty.

He focuses on regional advocacy, infrastructure and local issues - especially public safety. And when I say public safety, I mean crocodiles. As Bob Katter (the party leader) once said, “Every three months someone in north Queensland is torn to pieces by a crocodile.”

He’s not especially conservative on every issue and KAP can be a bit all over the place, but at least he’s not Labor. OR IS HE??? There have been accusations and rumours of a quiet DEAL between Labor and KAP, with preferences flowing in ways that block the LNP. If true, that would be… not good.

Steven Clare (Independent)

Steven is a... spray painter. He's focused on youth crime, cost of living and welfare dependency, all things I strongly agree need attention. He’s run as an independent and for One Nation before in other seats. He’d probably be a solid local representative, but like most independents, his chances in a multi-candidate field are slim.

Luke Sleep (One Nation)

Luke is my personal favourite in terms of policy. He supports mining and resources, recognises that immigration needs to be slashed to help housing affordability, and pushes hard on youth crime and infrastructure.

If I could wave a magic wand based purely on policy, I’d pick him. But politics is about strategy too.

Ultimately, the best one to campaign for is probably the LNP, simply because they’re the most likely to actually beat Katter and stop any backdoor Labor influence. And that’s the big lesson here: the right keeps splitting itself across five different parties, while Labor usually turns up with one logo and walks away with government.

MORE ENVIRONMENT REGULATION...

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act is basically Australia’s central federal law for protecting environmental things: threatened species, ecosystems, wetlands, that sort of stuff.

Right now, penalties for breaking these rules are relatively small and limited. I’m fine with that. The less heavy-handed federal interference in business, the better.

Today, Labor is once again trying to crank things up. They want harsher penalties under the EPBC. Business groups are pushing back, saying there should at least be softer, tiered penalties for less serious breaches. Environmental groups are complaining that even Labor’s reforms don’t go far enough even though nobody knows who they are or cares about them.

My view is simple:

• We should protect the environment.

• But you don’t do that by strangling the sectors that keep the country alive.

If you make penalties insanely harsh and vague, you scare off investment in mining, agriculture and regional projects. Companies either don’t invest at all, or they go overseas to places with lower standards. That means:

• Fewer Australian jobs,

• Less tax revenue,

• And ironically, more global environmental damage because projects move to countries with far worse regulations.

Once again, Labor’s answer to every problem is more central control and more punishment, socialism in a green hat.

LEADERSHIP???

There are also two pretty big leadership stories today, but I’ve done enough Liberal/Nats bashing this week so I’ll save the deep dive for tomorrow.

In short:

• The Victorian Liberals have elected Jess Wilson as their new leader, the first woman to lead the state party.

• The NSW Nationals have picked Gurmesh Singh as their new leader, the first Indian to lead a major Australian political party.

There’s a lot to unpack in both of those, especially what it means for the future of the right in those states. I’ll get into that next time maybe.

Bye

School