A belief in merit, individual effort and opportunity means little if children begin life with radically unequal chances. Strong public education should be as much a Liberal commitment as a Labor one.
For years, when writing about the neglect of public education, I have directed most of my criticism towards the Labor Party. That seemed reasonable. Public education should be central to Labor’s historical purpose: the institution through which the circumstances of a child’s birth are prevented, as far as possible, from determining the possibilities of their life.
Almost without acknowledging it, however, I had largely excused the Liberal Party from the discussion. I assumed public education occupied little place in its political imagination beyond providing a necessary service for families unable to purchase an alternative. Private schooling represented choice and aspiration; the public school ensured nobody was left entirely without an education. The box had been ticked.
But that assumption now troubles me. Why should a party that professes to believe in individual opportunity, personal effort and advancement not be among the strongest defenders of the institution that gives every child some chance to exercise them?
I began reconsidering this through memories of Liberal-supporting colleagues in the early 1970s. We disagreed vigorously about the role of government. I placed greater faith in public provision and collective responsibility; they emphasised private enterprise, individual initiative and the dangers of excessive government. Yet I do not remember doubting that we were arguing about different ways of improving people’s lives. We disputed the means, but not the broad social purpose.
Memory can romanticise the past. The common good imagined by 1970s Australia excluded many people, and the Liberal Party was never social democratic. Nevertheless, it contained a recognisable social-liberal tradition in which markets generated wealth but government retained responsibility for ensuring prosperity enlarged opportunity.
This transformation is not a new discovery. Judith Brett, Frank Bongiorno, Philip Mendes and, from a gender perspective, Blair Williams have traced the weakening of social liberalism and the rise of market individualism and social conservatism within the party. My concern is a variation on that theme: what happened when political disagreement shifted from how the common good should be advanced towards whether responsibility for it properly belonged to government at all?
Citizens increasingly became consumers; public investment became expenditure and collective provision became dependency. Freedom meant protection from government rather than possession of the conditions required to live freely. ‘Choice’ became especially powerful: departure from a public service signalled aspiration, while continued reliance upon it suggested an absence of means or initiative.
The Teals did not emerge because of public education. Climate, integrity, women’s representation and the Liberal Party’s increasingly combative direction were much more visible causes. Their success nevertheless shows that economically secure voters do not all want government reduced to markets and private choice. Some of the Liberal Party’s former civic constituency went looking elsewhere for the moderate tradition it had vacated.
The deeper contradiction lies in meritocracy, one of liberalism’s most attractive promises. Individuals should not be confined by inherited status. Ability, effort and initiative should allow them to improve their circumstances and be rewarded for their contribution. But that promise is morally credible only if people first receive a reasonably fair opportunity to develop and demonstrate their abilities.
Children do not choose their parents, family income, postcode, health, disability, exposure to trauma or early language environment. They do not choose whether they arrive at school rested and secure or carrying burdens that consume the energy required for learning. By the time society compares their achievement, it is measuring not ability and effort alone but the accumulated effects of circumstances over which the child had no control.
Meritocracy does not fail because effort is unimportant or because every child must achieve the same outcome. It fails when unequal outcomes are declared deserved without asking whether children received anything approaching equal opportunity. Inherited advantage is then converted into apparent merit, while accumulated disadvantage becomes personal failure. Meritocracy protects inequality twice: first by tolerating unequal starting conditions, then by presenting the results as evidence of individual deservingness.
School cannot give every child the same childhood. It cannot remove poverty or supply every family resource available to the advantaged. But it is the institution through which society has the greatest capacity to prevent those differences from becoming destiny.
If every child could attend a school of comparably high quality, with capable teachers, a safe and orderly environment, appropriate specialist support, a rich curriculum and high expectations, meritocracy would begin to acquire substance. Outcomes would still differ, but those differences would be less contaminated by unequal education.
Equal opportunity does not require identical resources. Schools serving concentrations of poverty, disability, disrupted learning, behavioural complexity or limited English require more, not merely the same. Treating unequal circumstances equally preserves inequality. The objective must be an equally strong educational entitlement, supported by resources proportionate to need.
Australia instead asks public schools to absorb the greatest concentrations of disadvantage while educational resources and social advantage accumulate elsewhere. We then compare outcomes as though they reveal merit. A child supported by wealth, tutoring, stable housing and a well-resourced school is described as having earned success; a child learning amid insecurity and inadequate specialist assistance is judged by the same measure.
Public education should therefore be a natural Liberal commitment rather than an issue conceded to Labor. Choice can remain, and non-government schools need not be threatened by a commitment to public excellence. But choice is meaningful only when families possess the income, knowledge, transport and confidence to exercise it. For everyone else, the local public school is not one option among many. It is the school available.
Genuine opportunity would ensure that no family needed to purchase its way out of an inadequate public system. If parental wealth determines access to the strongest educational environments, later achievement cannot confidently be attributed to merit. A philosophy that celebrates the outcome while neglecting the starting conditions becomes a defence of inherited advantage.
Labor’s failure to make equitable public schooling an immediate national priority remains a betrayal of its purpose. But public education should never have belonged to Labor alone. The Liberals need not become social democrats to defend it. They need only recognise that freedom depends upon conditions children cannot create for themselves, and that individual responsibility becomes a fair expectation only when society accepts responsibility for the opportunities it provides.
Reclaiming public education would not by itself restore the Liberal Party’s electoral position, nor should education be reduced to electoral strategy. But it would show that the party’s promise of opportunity extends beyond those who already possess it. Public education is where liberalism can prove that merit remains a challenge to inherited privilege rather than its justification.
John Frew worked in public education, including as foundation principal at a secondary school for students with Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Disturbance. John has authored numerous books the latest being ‘Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids’. Since retiring, he has continued to comment on social issues.