Class war campaign comes unstuck

LABOR leader Kevin Rudd has been accused of running his own "dirt" campaign after a Labor advertisement wrongly targeted a Liberal candidate's "family home" as evidence of her wealth. Mr Rudd was forced to immediately withdraw the offending television advertisement. The ad, screened repeatedly on local TV in the Victorian seat of Ballarat, features pictures of the home of the Liberal candidate Samantha McIntosh. After pointing out that Ms McIntosh had defended the recent interest-rate rise, a voiceover says: "But I suppose when your own house is up for sale for $2.2 million, it's easy to lose touch." The ad shows the home's entrance, along with the verandas and furnishings, with the words: "McIntosh's mansion up for sale. Only $2.285 million. Liberals aren't in touch with working families. Makes you angry, doesn't it?" The ad also shows a Mercedes-Benz car, apparently parked in Ms McIntosh's driveway. But the "home" is a bed-and-breakfast business, and the car is not her vehicle.

Federal Liberal director Brian Loughnane said the advertisement confirmed Liberal Party fears that Labor and ACTU operatives in seats across the country were trawling the private affairs of Coalition candidates ahead of a negative election-campaign blitz. "I call on Mr Rudd to pull the advertisement and dismantle the dirt unit," Mr Loughnane said. Prime Minister John Howard's parliamentary secretary, Tony Smith, who visited Ballarat last week, said the McIntosh family's cars were a 1990s model Ford station wagon and a ute.

Ms McIntosh, a former nurse, bought the property with her husband when it was a disused psychiatric hospital. They carried out renovation themselves. Mr Smith told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's wrong to attack someone personally. But for (Labor candidate) Catherine King, it demonstrates mass hypocrisy. "If she really believes that, she's saying Kevin Rudd isn't fit to be in Parliament. "Kevin Rudd's a millionaire. Peter Garrett is a millionaire." Mr Rudd is wealthy, courtesy of his wife, Therese Rein. Her international employment placement business had a turnover of more than $160 million a year.

Mr Loughnane said the advertisement showed that, despite the "cosmetics" of Mr Rudd's leadership, the ALP hadn't changed its true colours: "They're still fundamentally driven by misplaced class envy and envy of people who set out in life to achieve something off their own initiative in small business." Mr Loughnane accused the ACTU of being complicit in a looming election "dirt" campaign, noting that the union movement had installed long-term campaigning officials in more than 20 marginal seats across the country.

Told of the advertisement by The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Rudd immediately ordered that it be scrapped. "Mr Rudd and his office had not been aware of this ad," a spokeswoman for the Opposition Leader said. "Mr Rudd's office today instructed Ms King the ad was to be withdrawn immediately. That has now occurred. "Mr Rudd does not tolerate in any way the class warfare that was once a feature of Australian politics."

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Western Australia: Trivial sentences for serious crime

CRIMINALS can expect to serve just two years in jail - sometimes less - for some of the most serious offences, latest figures show. The Department of Corrective Services data, released to The Sunday Times, shows the time spent in WA jails for crimes. In many cases, criminals serve as little as a fifth of the time they would have had maximum penalties been imposed. Sexual assault and robbery, for example, carry maximum terms of 14 years, but perpetrators served an average of just more than two years. Those convicted of assault walked free after a year. Extortionists served an average of two years, drug offenders one year and traffic offenders eight months.

On the whole, criminals are spending longer in jail, but the state Opposition says it is not good enough. Shadow attorney-general Sue Walker yesterday revealed she was preparing a Private Member's Bill to ensure longer sentences were served. She said the granting of parole and the fact judges slashed maximum terms by a third, in some cases, meant criminals were not locked up for anywhere near long enough.

"I feel that there is a general sense of lawlessness in WA. The community feels that,'' Ms Walker said. "People generally know that sentences imposed by the courts aren't as high as they should be. "People are sick and tired of criminals getting a slap on the wrist for serious crimes. "We need to ensure criminals serve the time they are meant to serve.''

But Attorney-General Jim McGinty said WA had the second highest rate of imprisonment in Australia. Nationally, the average daily imprisonment rate is 151 prisoners for each 100,000 adults. The Northern Territory has the highest rate with 521 prisoners for every 100,000 adults, followed by WA, with a rate of 201. "The figures tell me that we already have the toughest sentencing regime of any state in Australia,'' Mr McGinty said. "Sure, you can go down the American path and lock people up even more, but I don't think that's necessary. How much harsher can you be?''

Ms Walker said Mr McGinty had missed the point and his argument simply suggested we had more crime. "This is not about how many people are going to prison,'' she said. "This is about not having adequate penalties. "People are not frightened of committing crimes because they believe the penalties they receive will be minimal.''

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Greenie fiction about the planned Tasmanian pulp mill

HAS anyone bothered to ask Tasmanians if they really want to be "saved" by mainland "celebrities"? But what would Tasmanians know about their own island, right? That's why more than 100 kinda-famous people from nowhere near Tasmania have signed a petition to stop the island from building itself a $2 billion pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. Led by millionaire Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins, they are campaigning against another mainlander, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, warning that if he doesn't stop this satanic mill he could lose his Sydney seat.

Stop Tasmania's mill, demand playwright David Williamson from the Sunshine Coast; tennis star John Newcombe from Sydney; actor Rachel Ward from near Coffs Harbor; radio host Wendy Harmer from Sydney; Fairfax executive Mark Burrows from Sydney; TV chef Kylie Kwong from Sydney; film director Phillip Noyce from Hollywood; A-list ex-headmistress Rowena Danziger from Sydney and arts critic Leo Schofield from Sydney. Hear them cry from their concrete haunts: Stop those Tasmanians from building their forest-murdering, planet-choking, water-fouling, wine-tainting pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, that Garden of Eden, or face ruin by people who live nowhere near the place.

That's quite some bullying, and by people who have little on their side but more cash and cachet than the average voter. Certainly more cash and cachet than the workers who'll get a job at this planned mill, or a cut of the taxes on its earnings. It's odd that these far-away celebrities can so easily assume the right to block a project in Tasmania that's been backed by that state's Government, checked by its environment experts and approved by its parliament with the support of Labor, the Liberals and independents. What kind of patronising is this?

But out of this celebrity intervention comes both a lesson and laugh. The lesson is in the hazard of green dreamers making a cause of some project far away, of which you and they know little and thus imagine much. For instance, from all the hype and the soft-focus pictures, you will by now think - as these celebrities seem to think - that the Gunns pulp mill will be built in a valley as pristine and beautiful as the day Gaia made it.... see the lingering footage on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week of misty fields, babbling brooks and serene hills, all with a soundtrack of dreamy music - a vision of paradise soon to be torn to shreds and blackened by A STINKING LOUSY PULP MILL.

Ah, the advantages of a little local knowledge, rather than some long-distance Dreaming. Attention: the mill is not going to be built in Eden, or in any of the 40 per cent of Tasmania that's now national parks and reserves, but in the Bell Bay industrial precinct. Its neighbours there will not be fauns and woodsprites, but heavy industries of the kind that have been in this zone for many, many years - a steel smelter, an aluminium smelter, a wood chip mill, a fibreboard plant, a power station, a fuel depot, and a few other factories of a kind to give a green believer the vapors. Shocking, I know, that such grunting, clanking, sweating businesses are allowed to exist, even with their emissions cut to negligible - as the emissions of the pulp mill most certainly will be.

But I have a newsflash for the denizens of Sydney's smartest cafes: man cannot live on green fundraising calendars alone. It's in fact industries such as these that give Tasmanians the cash that allows them, too, to enjoy the shows a Schofield recommends, the films a Noyce directs, the dinners a Kwong cooks, the private schools a Danziger runs, the plays a Williamson writes, and the health cookies of the nearby bakery which Cousins part-owns. Who knows, they might even choose to spend their dirty dollars on the high-minded paper that Burrows publishes.

Oh, did I mention paper? That reminds me of the laugh in this campaign to stop a mill that pulps wood for paper. How are the celebrities fighting this plant? Not just by running ads in a newspaper published in Turnbull's electorate. Cousins is also stuffing 50,000 letterboxes in Sydney with copies of the endless and emotive essay of author Richard Flanagan, which he says inspired him to go on his crusade. Wow - 50,000 copies of this booklet? That's quite some paper these anti-mill campaigners are using. Tasmania will need a new pulp mill to cope.

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Little recourse against bad teachers

Jim Taylor is not the name of the primary school principal who approached me after a recent column, but it will have to do because he's not supposed to talk to the media. I'd written that it was easier to dismiss poor teachers from the state system these days and he was on the phone to tell me that it's still far too difficult. Since then I've talked to other principals and teachers about this, because it's an issue of concern to many parents, including some of those who transfer their children from the public to the private system. I don't claim to have the final word on the situation, but in at least some places it's a festering issue.

In state schools, teachers' performance is reviewed annually by their principal or a senior teacher. The review cannot include any observation of the teacher in the classroom unless the teacher agrees. In Taylor's experience, most underperforming teachers don't. Therefore the review is usually a paper exercise, conducted with different degrees of rigour in different schools. What this means is that teachers, once they finish their probationary period, can go through their careers without ever being observed and assessed in the classroom by a senior person. Some principals and teachers who talked to me say the annual performance review was a joke and poor teachers could easily make themselves look adequate on paper. One teacher says her principal doesn't even do the review, but just signs the forms and sends them off.

If a teacher is doing a really poor job this will eventually be noticed by colleagues. Her or his pupils might start to display behavioural problems in the playground and the low standard of their work will be apparent to the unlucky teacher who takes them next year. Once this is brought to the principal's attention, he or she usually tries to help the teacher informally. If this fails, the Department of Education and Training is informed and the teacher is put on a 10-week formal support program. This can be extended by six weeks if considered necessary. At the end of the program, the teacher is dismissed if there is inadequate improvement. According to the department, 600 teachers have been put on programs in the past five years, with 270 failing to meet the necessary standards and leaving the department. That's fewer than 60 a year out of 50,000 teachers in primary and secondary schools and the interesting question is whether it's enough.

Taylor believes we need a public debate on the current procedures, because they don't work all that well. He says the teachers involved nearly always take stress leave, which can be paid by WorkCover, so it doesn't affect the teacher's accumulated sick leave entitlement. He says that when the teachers he's put on a program returned from stress leave, the department told him the 10-week period had to recommence, dragging the process out for much longer. (Other principals I talked to had received different advice on this point.) As well as stress leave, teachers can claim they are being victimised or harassed by the principal, which can trigger a messy mediation procedure. In some cases the teacher will be transferred to another school during the program, which then lapses.

One senior teacher said to me: "The process gets extended and then it gets complicated and sometimes it falls over for various reasons. It drags in other staff members, even parents, for and against the principal. In a really bad case some teachers stop coming to the staff room for lunch and the school becomes a factionalised place where you just don't want to work." I have been told of some principals who retired because of the stress created by this process. Others won't initiate support programs in order to avoid the problems they bring on themselves and the school. "You can sympathise with them to a point," one teacher says. "But the other teachers can get resentful about carrying a colleague who's just coasting, and that affects staff morale. It just takes a bit longer to happen."

The present system is an improvement on the past. Geoff Scott, the president of the NSW Primary Principals Association, says: "There used to be two 10-week programs plus a five-week review. It's much shorter now and I think we've got it pretty right." Jim McAlpine, the president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, is also generally happy with the present system, although he would like to see the program always finish in 10 weeks. "At the moment," he says, "it's often drawn out when the teacher involved takes leave for stress or other reasons."

Angelo Gavrielatos, the deputy president of the NSW Teachers Federation, acknowledges the need for the procedures and says: "They have been in existence for a long time. They're the result of negotiations between the department and the federation, with the exception of the withdrawal of some appeal rights last year, which we opposed." He is concerned that "focusing on this issue detracts from the fact that the overwhelming majority of teachers exhibit a very high level of professionalism every day". I'm sure this is true. But anyone who's talked to many parents about this knows that, far more in public schools than private ones, there's a smattering of poor teachers who stay in their jobs year after year. After talking to Jim Taylor, I can understand why.

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