Victorian Premier John Brumby chants that education is his number one priority like a mantra, but utterly fails in making it so — Victoria can proudly claim that it has the lowest paid teachers in the country. After months of negotiations with the teachers’ union (following months of the government refusing to negotiate at all) the union has reduced its ambit claim of 10% per year to nothing more than pay parity with NSW teachers. But Brumby won’t budge from the government’s standard offer of a barely-CPI 3.25% rise per year with anything over this figure to be offset by productivity gains. Ask any teacher where there’s room in their work day for extra productivity and they’ll probably laugh at you before punching your lights out.

But here’s the weird thing: Victorian opposition leader, the Liberals’ Ted Baillieu, is promising to make Victorian teachers the best paid in the country if elected in 2010. This shit’s messing with my mind.