If Kevin Rudd can get the punters to stay awake while he makes the states and the Jurassic education unions line up where successive Howard government ministers failed, then that’s terrific. After all, there’s no copyright on decent policies in Parliament, where one man’s plagiarist is another’s visionary.

While the messages are various, the stands taken by Kevin Rudd this week will send a few shudders through state government and the unions. They’ll also suggest to the “battlers” that on some things, not all that much has changed from the former Howard government.

As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard began the hard sell of tough new measures to improve school standards, the trade unions continued to flex their muscles behind the scenes over a number of policy measures.

Kevin Rudd is determined to be different, to live up to his promise of being a fresh politician who not only has new ideas but also sticks to what he says. What’s more, he is not just making this comparison with John Howard and the previous government.

Kevin Rudd’s narrative was akin to that of Karl Marx (the least funny of all of the Marx brothers). That’s not to say that Karl Marx’s exhortations to revolution bear any similarity to Rudd’s middle-of-the- road politics. Clearly, the two men have little in common politically. But they share a certain similarity in verbosity.

The Prime Minister must now seek agreement from the states to reveal the performance of their schools from next year, with individual school reports available to parents within three years that detail their child’s results and a comparison against a group of comparable schools.

Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith has labelled the Prime Minister’s plans as copycat measures and says Mr Rudd has not yet delivered his promise of a computer for every senior secondary student. The Australian Education Union also says Mr Rudd’s proposals are not new and are merely a diversion.

In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra today, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has outlined his government’s agenda for the promised education revolution, including greater autonomy for schools to hire and fire teachers, and greater transparency for parents.

For too long, welfare has been seen as an unfettered right, without any attendant responsibilities. Now, the children of the generation lost in the rights-based culture of the 1960s and ’70s risk being lost too unless policies encourage parents to accept responsibility for their children. Accordingly, Labor’s belated acknowledgment of past policy failures is to be applauded.

Belgian Gardens State School in Townsville has banned all gymnastics activities during lunch breaks, declaring it dangerous because it has the potential to cause back and neck injuries.