AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
Press Release 1041
Election result a win for public education
“The weekend’s election result was a win for public education. Dutton’s Coalition, promised to wage culture wars against public schools instead of funding them properly while never questioning the billions propping up Australian sectarian systems. His policy, if you could call it that, has been defeated.
Teacher unions and public school parents should be congratulated for the campaign they ran for public schools.
Hundreds of public school teachers, particularly in New South Wales, turned out to make public education a major election issue. Our For Every Child and Rebuild With TAFE campaigns were visible at polling booths all across the country. They made sure that voters knew the choice between those that value public education and a Liberal-National Coalition that wants to tear it down. Public education was on people’s minds when they went to the ballot box and bought their democratic public school sausage from parents desperately trying to provide essentials for their teachers and children.
Instead of promising to fully fund public education, Peter Dutton spent the election campaign trying to stoke Trump-style culture wars against public school teachers. The result shows how badly he and the Coalition misjudged the public mood.
Australians are proud of their public education system, value it and want it to be free, secular and universal, open to all and offensive to none.
The NSW Teachers Federation and the Australian Education Union (AEU) secured some major promises from the Albanese Labor Government, including:
- a clear commitment to fully funding public schools with guaranteed funding rolling out for all schools to achieve 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS)
- rebuilding TAFE, with a permanent 100,000 Free TAFE places annually, and increased funding that improves job security for TAFE teachers and more VET options for students
- the introduction of the Closing Loophole No 2 and Secure Jobs Better Pay laws that were further catalysts for increased job security for long-term casual and temporary TAFE Teachers
- student debt relief, which applies to HELP, VET Student Loan and Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans.
Public schools are still facing a teacher shortage and need investment to give every student access to the quality education they deserve. Nor has the elephant in the room gone away.
Billions of public dollars of taxpayer money are still being diverted to prop up sectarian systems which discriminate against children on the basis of class, creed and colour. Although religious men engaged in entangling religion with the State in the Dutton campaign, there is no evidence that Albanese will rock their well appointed boat.
There is still a place for the DOGS to state the obvious need to provide
STATE AID FOR STATE SCHOOLS ONLY
LISTEN TO THE DOGS PROGRAM
855 ON THE AM DIAL: 12.00 NOON SATURDAYS http://www.3cr.org.au/dogs
