Kevin's education revolution
Looks as though Kevin Rudd may have rushed his fences on the issue of stopping welfare payments to parents who don’t send their children to school.

Or did the media over-simplify his tough talk on the education revolution that is so dear to his political heart?

Either way, the public reaction was predictably intense, and it was left to his deputy, Julia Gillard, to do the clarification- which of course is weasel word shorthand for hosing down negative public reaction.

The obvious questions in the public mind, and asked repeatedly by radio talk-back callers, were: What would become of the families affected by the stopping of benefits?

If they were on welfare, how would they pay rent without the Centrelink cheque?
Would they just add to the numbers already homeless?

Or calling on the already stretched charities?

In the event, Julia G made the whole initiative seem much less draconian.

Rather than a full frontal attack on truancy, she outlined an intricate web of conditional power sharing and consultation between federal, state and school authorities, leaving me at least with the impression that Centrelink benefits would be stopped only after the ticking of innumerable bureaucratic boxes.

Clearly, there’ll have to be a lot more than fine tuning before this initiative gets traction, and Kevin Rudd might have been better to talk to Noel Pearson before verbally lowering the boom on truancy.

Up Cape York way, Pearson’s common-sense trial initiative doesn’t stop payments to indigenous parents who don’t send their kids to school; it just quarantines some of the money to ensure that it’s spent on necessities.

Why not apply the same principle nationally?

Smell the flowers
Ready to put spring in your step on Monday?

Forget the silly Sydney suggestion that it should officially start on August 1 because spring flowers are in bloom well before September.

The seasons are dictated by Earth’s position in relation to the sun, not by what plants do in those seasons.

Here on the Coast, of course, the change-over from season to season is much less clearly defined than in the higher latitudes, and certainly lots of what are generally called spring flowering plants have been showing off for weeks, but for me, September is the month celebrated so beautifully by Henry Kendall:
The silver voiced bellbirds, the darlings of daytime
They sing in September their songs of the Maytime.

With their Sunshine Coast hinterland habitats being whittled away, I hope you’ll be lucky enough to hear those silver voices some time this spring.

And another thing
Newspaper headings are a happy hunting ground for those who love the delightful quirkiness of our language.

Cairns reader Brian Darcey (yes, the Daily casts its net wide) shared an e-mail chuckle with AAT over a heading in his local paper: Man critical after fall from roof.

“So he should be,” Brian suggests.

“An apology from the roof is the least he should expect.”