First show the policy will work. Then tell us the cost Former Labor adviser Cassandra Wilkinson is rightly sick of political promises being reduced to dollars and not results: But policy and cash are quite different things... For instance, the Coalition has committed to throwing out the defence white paper and replacing the current $36 billion navy submarine program with a $4bn air force drones program and, possibly, a nuclear fleet. The question of price is not inconsequential but the first-order issue is to determine the most effective defence of Australia. A sound defence is cheap at twice the price, a derelict defence expensive at half. In the realm of education, debate has been framed around a "will she, won't he" paradigm on funding the Gonski report recommendations. This discussion has quickly become about money rather than teaching methodologies, structural reform or the fact that on the watch of the last three federal governments and under state governments of all political stripes, funding per capita has gone up while standards have stubbornly refused to rise, and on some measures have slightly but definitely slipped down. Money is not the answer to this conundrum. Robust, evidence-based debate of policy is. For instance, there is still intense disagreement over the teaching of reading. Backing the wrong method will merely fail. Backing the wrong method with unlimited cash will fail a generation.