Labour's figures on laptops don't compute

Straight away you see the problem. If each eligible school applies for a $1 million grant, that actually implies a budgetary cost of $2.659 billion and not $1 billion.

So much for fiscal responsibility and "economic conservatism" - Labor’s policy has a gaping black hole of $1.659 billion.

Labor sneakily tries to get around this by saying that under their policy, "every Australian student in years 9-12 to have access to their own school computer".

There are just under 1 million students in years 9-12 in Australia.  But as anyone who has attended an Australian high school knows, Year 8 is not a primary school year in any Australian State or Territory.  And in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, Year 7 is also counted as "secondary school".

If we count those students, we arrive at a much larger number: 1,431,918 secondary students in 2006.  Labor - the party touting an “education revolution” - has ignored more than 400,000 students.

It gets worse. The number of secondary schools and students is growing steadily. Each year there are about 15 additional schools and 15,000 additional students added to existing stocks.  By 2011 there will be over 2730 schools with well over 1.5 million students.

Moreover, computers have a three year life - they are usually depreciated on a straight-line basis over three years. This means (as Labor’s policy explicitly acknowledges) that the stock of computers will need to replaced every three years.

But Labor's spending figures don't appear to have taken any of these facts into account. Even if the grants are spread evenly over existing schools during the next four years, spending which occurs in the first year will need to be repeated in the fourth year.

In other words, allowing schools to reapply for grants mean that a four year policy could cost five years worth of funding, because some schools will be double dipping.

All of this means that Labor’s policy will cost much more than they admit or that some schools will miss out on the full amount of funding - or both.

The ALP has put out two school computer plans - one through the tax system and one through a grants system. Why each student needs to have two computers remains a mystery.  Perhaps not having two computers is the poverty of the future.