Federal Coalition Claims Political Bias in Science and Language Centre Funding. (September 7, 2009)

A report in today's Australian states: "Ms Gillard... will face an opposition attack [in parliament] after an analysis of her Science and Language Centres for the 21^st Century Secondary Schools program that found the funding favours Labor-held electorates.

Citing specifics the paper reports that Liberal Scott Ryan said that an analysis prepared with information from the Parliamentary Library and the Electoral Commission showed that Inner metropolitan Labor electorates received average funding of close to $3.5 million, compared to below $1 million for Coalition seats, while outer metropolitan government seats received more than $5.5 million compared to under $2.9 million. All up metropolitan Labor seats received average funding of $4.4 million, more than double the $2.1 million allocated to Coalition electorates.

Regarding marginal seats the senator told The Australian Labor-held marginal electorates received an average of $5.7 million in funding, more than $800,000 more than the average $4.8 million support for projects in Coalition marginals.

That political bias in funding allocation may have occurred wouldn't be surprising, it would hardly be a new phenomenon regardless of the party in power, but what should have been disturbing to a competent opposition were the criteria promulgated for funding and the specifics of the funding itself.

There is no mention regarding the quality of staff who are to make use of the Science and Language Centres. The lack of adequately trained secondary school teachers in science and mathematics remains effectively unaddressed by the incumbents and appears not worth mentioning by the opposition.

In a word, it's pathetic.

Putting up a building and equipping it with inanimate objects is easy.

Adequately staffing it?

That takes nuance and dedication.