Poor White Trash

I must be getting old and grumpy - because every time I look at one of the various responsibilities of our state governments - I see systemic failure. And it p*sses me off.

Take education for example - particularly tertiary education.

The states have now almost universally abandoned any notion that the tertiary education sector is there to educate our kids and turn out excellent Australian graduate doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists.

Nope, apparently now the tertiary education sector is there to charge serious fees to foreign students and to turn out excellent Indian graduate doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists.

We can't manage to educate our own kids but we can manage to educate foreign kids - I wonder if it has anything to do with the money?

As usual the states are raking it in - does anyone know where it goes?

Meanwhile we have a huge number of local kids dropping out at year 10 and going to work for $10 to $15 bucks an hour in a menial service job because they don't value a tertiary education. Mostly they and their parents don't know why such a thing is important. After all we're the lucky country - aren't we?

But the Indians have worked it out - mum and dad back in the home country scrape and save to fund a tertiary education for their children - over there in the lucky country - knowing full well that it is the key to their child's long term success.

Lee Kuan Yew nailed it - when in the 1980's he called us the "poor white trash" of Asia.