Australian Politics
Federal Budget 2023: Funding for 5000 teaching scholarships and new ad campaign
Typical Leftism: They think that they can solve a problem by throwing money at it. Tackling the feral environment in classrooms that their discipline policies have created does not even occur to them. It occurs to those considering a teaching career, though
Five thousand teaching students will be offered up to $40,000 each if they stay in the classroom and a $10 million advertising blitz to recruit new teachers will be launched by the Federal Government in a bold bid to tackle crippling school shortages.
The moves come in the wake of News Corp’s groundbreaking Australia’s Best Teachers and Best in Class campaign, which Education Minister Jason Clare said had already made teachers feel more valued and respected and inspired the government’s follow-up campaign.
The Minister has just returned from a high-level international gathering of 22 international education ministers in Washington DC, where he was alarmed to discover fewer than half of Australian teachers felt their work was valued, well behind countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Finland and even Mexico.
In an exclusive interview with News Corp, Mr Clare revealed the 5000 $10,000 scholarships would be included in next week’s Budget – making good on an election promise.
However they will now be tied to teaching graduates committing to serve a number of years in the classroom, most likely five – a condition teachers themselves urged the Minister to place on the scholarships in order to boost flagging retention rates.
It is part of a broader government push to elevate the status of teachers to that of other professionals and attract the highest performing students to the nation’s schools.
“There’s nothing more important in a classroom than the teacher shaping the outcomes for our kids,” he said.
“These are 5000 scholarships worth up to 40 grand each. They encourage some of our best and brightest to become a teacher rather than a lawyer or a banker and applications for those scholarships will open later this year.”
Following the success of our education advocacy campaign, Mr Clare will also later this year launch a multimillion-dollar recruitment drive in partnership with the states and territories.
The $10m campaign – $5m of which will be provided by the Commonwealth and $5m by the states – will take inspiration from a powerful ad Mr Clare saw in the New York subway 20 years ago, long before he even entered parliament.
The billboard simply read: “Everybody remembers their first teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?”
“We’re developing that campaign now with teachers and principals,” Mr Clare said.
“We’re bringing them together to help us design this campaign, which will involve TV, social media, but also ads on the back of buses and taxis and billboards.”
The Minister said the comparative data he saw at the US conference showed there was a clear link between teachers feeling valued and teacher shortages and was alarmed that only around 38 per cent of Australian teachers believed they were valued by society.
“In countries like Singapore and Finland, where there is no shortage of teachers at all – in fact people are queuing up to become a teacher – that percentage is more like 60 or 70 per cent,” he said.
“So that data underlies the importance of the campaign.”
However, Mr Clare said the education advocacy campaign and his own personal determination to place teachers front and centre of education reform had already started to turn around this attitude.
“It’s important for me to get on the record, to say thank you to News Corp for this campaign, it’s really important,” he said.
“We’ve got a teacher shortage crisis in the country, that’s been building for a long time. And if we’re going to recruit more great teachers and retain more great teachers, then that starts with respect. And that’s what this campaign at its core is all about.”
But Mr Clare also stressed: “It’s a whole of community job. It’s not just the job of ministers, and the media, it’s the whole community pulling together. Because if we respect teachers, we’re going to get more of them.”
The Australia’s Best Teachers campaign launched in February to help change perceptions about the role of teachers, many of who feel the public does not respect the work they do. Major organisations ANZ, Teachers Mutual Bank, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, Care For Kids, Griffith University and PwC have also backed the campaign.
Samantha Brimfield, a teacher at Santa Sophia Catholic College at Gables in Sydney’s northwest, said it was a rewarding career.
“You develop such beautiful relations and connections with the students and families you work with,” said Miss Brimfield, who features in The Daily Telegraph’s list of Australia’s Best Teachers on Saturday.
“You are not just a teacher, you are someone your students look up to and are inspired by. It is a special feeling knowing you have made an impact on a child’s life and that you have the ability to leave a lasting impression.”
Miss Brimfield said it was important the public valued and respected the work of teachers.
“How the community views teachers can have an influence on student’s and their attitudes and feelings towards school,” she said.
“Schools that have a great partnership with their wider community help to create a sense of belonging within the families and students and aids in creating a positive learning environment.”
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Blacktivism and the Crown
Given the coronation of King Charles III, there are differing and often conflicting opinions about the significance of the British monarchy and what the institution means to Australia.
While many celebrate the long history of ritual and ceremony surrounding the occasion, there will be some, like the ABC’s Aboriginal host of Q&A Stan Grant, who condemn the monarchy as a symbol of white supremacy, colonial exploitation, and responsible for the way Indigenous Australian’s have been, and continue to be, exploited and killed.
In his recent book The Queen Is Dead, Grant describes Australia’s history as riven with cruelty, exploitation, and genocide and argues those with Indigenous blood are always victims of racism, and cruelty.
Grant wrote the book as a result of the ABC daring to present Queen Elizabeth’s death in September last year in a measured and respectful way instead of using the occasion to reveal the monarchy’s complicity in exploiting and subjugating Grant’s Indigenous ancestors.
Because blacktivists argue society is structurally racist and Indigenous people are always oppressed, the highly successful and well-paid ABC journalist argues, ‘I felt in my own organisation … a sense of betrayal because the ABC, everyone donned black suits, everyone took on a reverential tone.’
In an extract from the book, Grant also condemns the way, as the host of Q&A, he had to allow a white person on the panel when discussing the significance of the Queen’s death.
A death, Grant argues, that led him to relive the way the British invaded the country ‘shooting defenceless people, cutting off heads, dismembering bodies’ and forcing Aborigines off cliffs, setting fire to homes, and lacing food with poison.
Such was the trauma Grant writes: ‘The night after, I am lying on my bed. My heart is racing. I am struggling for breath. I really feel like I am dying.’ Not unexpectedly, the book is described as ‘a searing, viscerally powerful, emotionally unstoppable, pull-no-punches book on the bitter legacy of colonialism for Indigenous people’.
Grant’s book and his black armband worldview explain why so many Australians are becoming fed up with the incessant claim the nation’s history is characterised by cruelty, exploitation, and genocide and, even today, those with Indigenous blood are always victims of racism and white supremacy.
Along with the loss, suffering, and dispossession that inevitably occurs when a civilised society encounters one not as advanced, it’s also true the British did all they could to establish friendly relations.
The Admiralty’s orders to Governor Phillip stated, ‘You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them.’
As detailed by Watkin Tench, a marine who arrived with the First Fleet, it was also the case that Governor Phillip stressed the need to deal peacefully with the local Aborigines and even after being speared himself refused to take retribution.
While there is no doubt as the fledgling colony advanced over the Blue Ranges conflicts occurred as a result of European pastoralists taking Aboriginal land, it is also true Governor Macquarie did much to help Aborigines adjust to the arrival of the British.
Ignored by Stan Grant is also the reality that thousands of Indigenous Australians have followed his footsteps and achieved prosperity and success notwithstanding the supposed structural racism. Aborigines like the magistrate Pat O’Shane, academics Marcia Langton and Anthony Dillon, plus the 11 members of the Commonwealth Parliament are evidence that Indigenous Australians have the same legal and political rights and chance to succeed in life as all other Australians.
Also ignored is the reason all Australians are treated equally is because the nation inherited a legal system based on British Common Law and a Westminster-inspired parliamentary system that includes the monarch as the nation’s sovereign.
Instead of Aboriginal activists parading their victimhood status and whinging about being oppressed, maybe it’s time to follow the example of the descendants of the Irish who arrived with the First Fleet and later during the Irish famine and the Gold Rushes.
Reading Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore and David W. Cameron’s Convict Hell: Macquarie Harbour, where Irish convicts, especially the Fenian’s fighting against British imperialism, regularly received 100 lashes and were starved and imprisoned in solitary confinement, there is cause for complaint.
Ireland suffered years of oppression with 1 million starving and dying during the great famine. Add the terror and violence perpetrated by Oliver Cromwell and much later Winston Churchill’s black and tans and there is obviously a case for truth-telling and compensation. Unlike Indigenous separatists, though, the Irish have assimilated, are proud Australians, and don’t spend all their time self-identifying as victims.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/blacktivism-and-the-crown/
*********************************************Labor governments defend gender ideology at the expense of children
Alan Jones
I have written before about the disgraceful treatment in Victoria of the Liberal MP, Moira Deeming, a teacher turned politician.
We need to hear more from this woman and nothing from the incompetent Liberal Opposition leader in Victoria who wanted her expelled from the Party.
As I have previously explained, Moira Deeming attended a rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament, protesting, peacefully, the need for safe spaces for women.
In other words, there needs to be full debate on what rights transgender women (biological men who transition to women) – should they be allowed in spaces reserved for women?
Common sense would say no.
Moira Deeming attended a rally arguing for safe spaces.
It was infiltrated by a few Nazis and she was accused, virtually, of being a Nazi sympathiser.
I said previously that she should be the Opposition leader in Victoria and that bloke Pesutto should be provided with an undignified exit.
Interestingly, Moira Deeming said, at the time of going into Parliament, ‘I don’t think it is healthy to tell children that they can change sex; or that their feelings on what sex they are, are the thing that they should affirm, rather than their biology; because which thing is going to leave you healthier in the long run?’
She wants to see an inquiry in Victoria into youth gender medicine, arguing that the inquiry ‘has to be genuine, it has to be real, and it has to be open and it has to go for six months, a year, or whatever it takes’.
Victoria is home to Australia’s largest and most influential gender clinic at the Royal Childrens’ Hospital in Melbourne, where new patient referrals, this is a gender clinic, have multiplied 100-fold over the decade since 2011.
And the clinic gets moral and financial support from the Andrews Labor government.
Moira Deeming used her maiden speech recently as a Liberal Member of Victoria’s Upper House to call for ‘an open inquiry into gender affirmation practices’ involving minors.
She described hormonal and surgical interventions as ‘medically unjustifiable, irreversible and devastatingly harmful’, but argued ‘ideologues continue to vilify and incite hatred towards anyone sounding the alarm’.
We are talking here about gender ideology in schools, which prompted Moira Deeming to say she could no longer teach in Victoria in good conscience.
She said, ‘I didn’t want to be involved in telling a child that medicalised gender change was good. I didn’t want to be involved in confusing a child. I didn’t want to be involved in lying to parents… I felt like I was being used by the Government to push an ideology behind parents’ backs, which was not anywhere near close to being harmless.’
Well, that is Victoria.
Let’s go to Queensland where the Labor Government has legislation before the Parliament to help people in Queensland more easily change the sex indicated on their birth certificate by removing the requirement to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Under the legislation, parents would be able to opt not to record a gender on the birth certificate of their newborn. These are supposedly plans, as part of reforms, to promote transgender rights.
I spoke, off air, recently, to the Opposition leader in Queensland, David Crisafulli. He told me that the legislation hasn’t gone through the Parliament, but it will with the support of the Greens.
If the legislation is passed, children over the age of 16 will be able to legally identify as a different sex without parental consent. But they will need a supporting statement from an adult whom they have known for at least a year.
Those aged 12 to 15 will need parental permission to change the sex on their birth certificate; but they will be able to apply to the courts if they can’t get their parents’ support.
A medical statement from a doctor or a psychologist will not be required.
At what point is legislation of this kind completely out of step with community expectations and with parental rights, to say nothing of the safety of women.
But the Attorney General in Queensland, Shannon Fentiman, condemning those who questioned these moves, is saying that those who criticise ‘will try to cloak their transphobia in the guise of women’s safety – making claims about trans women accessing women’s spaces, including changerooms or even domestic violence shelters’.
So, you see, dare to criticise and you will be vilified as transphobic. But it appears that if you are an MP like the Attorney-General in Queensland, you can tell untruths as you blunder your way through.
Says Attorney-General Fentiman, ‘I want to be clear, there is no evidence, domestic or internationally, to support these outrageous claims.’
That is not the case. There was a 2020 incident in Britain where transgender prisoners sexually assaulted women in jail; and, yet, trans inmates were still allowed to be transferred to female prisons upon request.
The British Ministry of Justice said that, ‘Since 2010, out of the 124 sexual assaults that occurred in the female estate, a total of seven of those were sexual assaults against females, in custody, perpetrated by transgender individuals.’
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Rent freezes off the table in NSW as new government focuses on bonds and bidding
Some realism in the matter at last
The NSW government will turn its attention to rental reforms in its first sitting week since the state election. (ABC News)
Rent reforms designed to even the playing field for tenants will be introduced in the New South Wales parliament this week, but there will be no relief for those facing soaring rents.
The new Minns government is prioritising a proposed ban on secret rent bidding and a portable bond scheme amid the worsening rental crisis gripping the state.
But tenants and advocacy groups say these changes would fail to provide the urgent hip pocket relief needed after months of rising rent prices.
The latest CoreLogic data puts the median weekly rent in Sydney at $711, meaning there's been a 13 per cent increase in the past 12 months.
Over the past 12 months in regional NSW, rents have increased by 3.8 per cent, which puts the median weekly rent at $550.
A mismatch between supply and demand is driving rents up, along with a surge in overseas migration and a slowdown in the construction sector.
Last week at national cabinet, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tasked the states and territories with developing proposals to strengthen renters' rights across the country by the second half of the year.
Both the federal and NSW Greens are proposing rent freezes, with the member for Newtown, Jenny Leong, introducing a bill in state parliament this week.
"The Greens want to see a two-year emergency rent freeze, to press pause on skyrocketing unchecked rent increases — while we work constructively with the new government to develop and implement long-term solutions to the housing affordability crisis," Ms Leong told the ABC.
However, the government has ruled out rent caps, arguing they cause major drops in housing supply by driving investors out of the market.
"If it puts pressure on new entrants and builders coming into the market and supplying households for the people of Sydney, we could make what is a desperately bad situation worse," Premier Chris Minns said last week.
But Tenants' Union of NSW CEO Leo Patterson Ross says many European countries have shown it's possible to balance increased rent regulation with supply.
"[Rent freezes] do not have the supply implications some people are concerned about, we need a mature conversation about this," Mr Patterson Ross said.
"Last year we saw bipartisan support across the country to stop energy prices rising a few hundred dollars, whereas rents have risen thousands of dollars a year.
"It's not consistent to say some essential services need pricing consideration and some don't."
Minister for Industry and Trade Anoulack Chanthivong is charged with tackling the state's rent crisis and says the government is focused on long-term supply solutions as "you can't have rental affordability without rental availability".
He says the new role of NSW rental commissioner will be key to providing expert advice in this area, with applications now open for the $300,000-a-year job.
Until then, the government aims to restore some fairness around bonds and rent bidding as the 58th parliament sits for the first time this week.
A portable bond scheme would allow tenants to apply their current bond to their next lease via the Rental Board and prevent the need to pay "double bonds" when moving.
"This will relieve financial pressure and increase cash flows for renters, what we're trying to do is fix what is a very stressful time for renters," Mr Chanthivong said.
The government will also seek to tighten the rules around rent bidding by making it mandatory for landlords, real estate agents and third parties to tell all prospective tenants when an applicant has made a higher bid on a property.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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