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Christopher must try harder in class
Volume 28 #32
January 21, 2014
Bureaucrats behaving badly We should stop pussyfooting around and name North Coast Holiday Parks for what it is: a vehicle designed to steal public land and lock it up for the benefit of a cabal of bureaucrats. The instructions may not read ‘steal’, they may say ‘maximise profits’, but the intention is clear. At least in English feudal times when the barons told their henchmen to fence the commons off from the people they used plain language. Taking away the foreshore in Brunswick Heads is arguably unlawful and unarguably immoral, and the more one looks at this shoddy mess the more the questions multiply. Whose idea was it to create an entity to deprive local councils of caravan parks and divert their income to the state? It began to happen when Tony Kelly was lands minister, that same Tony Kelly who was sacked after ICAC in another matter found him to have acted corruptly. How did Jim Bolger, a relatively junior council worker, rise through the corporate ranks to front the operation? How can regulations relating to the foreshore be so airily dismissed, and their very existence denied? What legal sleight of hand has taken a complex, interlocking mesh of government bodies that are supposed to protect Crown land for the common good, and produced a policy of greed and indifference that is directly opposed to the protection of the land and the interests of the people? What Bolger relies on, and what Byron Shire Council evidently fears, is that no matter how much local residents complain the state government will push his plan through. The only man who can act effectively is local MP and minister Don Page. If he remains true to his oath of office and the people who voted for him he can stop this injustice proceeding further. Well, Don, are you on the side of the liars or the people? Q Submissions can be sent to: NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust, PO Box 647, Ballina, NSW 2478 or by email to: secretary@ nswchpt.com.au. David Lovejoy
The Byron Shire Echo Established 1986 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Stuart Amos Production Manager Ziggi Browning
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
‘The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ – Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936 © 2014 Echo Publications Pty Ltd – ABN 86 004 000 239 Mullumbimby: Village Way, Stuart St. Ph 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 Byron Bay: Level 1, Byron Community Centre, 69 Jonson St. Ph 6685 5222 Printer: Horton Media Australia Ltd Reg. by Aust. Post Pub. No. NBF9237
MISSING
B
e grateful for small mercies. It has belatedly been revealed that education minister Christopher Pyne’s review of the national schools curriculum will not be left solely to his two hand-picked cultural warriors of the extreme right. They now say that they will co-opt experts in every field, as well as calling for submissions from all the state and territory curriculum authorities, the independent and Catholic schools, principals, teachers and parents – just about everyone, in fact, except the students themselves. In effect they will be starting again from scratch, and since the process of evolving the original curriculum took several years, Pyne’s ambition to see the results of his review incorporated in the curriculum for this teaching year seems unlikely to be realised. Indeed, state authorities in New South Wales, to name but one state, have dismissed the idea as fanciful. But then, perhaps this was never Pyne’s real purpose. When he announced the review, it was couched in terms of the need to arrest Australia’s slump in the global education stakes. From being in the front rank a few years ago, the country is now among the also-rans, having slipped behind many Asian countries and also some Europeans, notably the Scandinavians. The drop was particularly apparent in science and mathematics. It was this decline that made the review so urgent. But after drawing breath, all Pyne really wanted to talk about was the history syllabus, which, he complained in the now familiar conservative whinge, contained too much Asia and Aborigines and not enough Anzac Day and business success stories. And his two enforcers chimed in vigorously. One of them, Kevin Donnelly, even mused on the need to teach eve-
rything in terms of the JudeoChristian culture, which he believes is somehow the basis of western civilisation – the Greeks, Romans and Arabs are presumably creatures of myth. The other, Kenneth Wiltshire, is not quite as extreme but is a firm adherent to the Tory agenda – in favour of strong border protection, against gay marriage and mining taxes. In 2010 he urged the independent MPs to support Tony Abbott rather than Julia Gillard,
about how the education system is getting wrecked by left-wing teachers bent on undermining traditional Australian society and its Judeo-Christian values. Defending his appointment last week Donnelly dismissed a question about whether he was actually a member of the Liberal Party as ‘not relevant’. Wiltshire, whose expertise has been in the broad field of public administration, at least has some experience in curricu-
It is hard to see this ideologically driven review coming up with big improvements. by Mungo MacCallum selectively and deceptively quoting Edmund Burke as an authority. On the current political spectrum, both men are well to the right of the soupspoon, which is clearly the main qualification Pyne was after for his foray into the history wars. But on paper at least, that’s about where it begins and ends. When Donnelly had a real job, he taught English at a secondary school, which means he has some credentials when it comes to reviewing the English syllabus; but he has absolutely no background in what are supposedly the serious problem areas of maths and science. Since quitting teaching Donnelly has worked as chief of staff for Kevin Andrews when the Howard minister was in charge of implementing WorkChoices; and he has set up a think tank called the Education Standards Institute with himself as director and apparently sole employee. He has spent most of the last ten years writing for The Australian, where he obviously has a licence to rehash the same article week after week, month after month, year after year – the one
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lum reform; he headed a similar exercise for Queensland’s Labor premier Wayne Goss, a job which brought him into open conflict with Goss’s chief of staff, one Kevin Rudd. But once again, he has no known acquaintance with maths and science. It is hard to see this ideologically driven review coming up with big improvements in the teaching of either discipline. Fortunately, action is already being taken within the profession; science and maths teachers have been taking a close look at what has been happening in other areas, particular Shanghai and Singapore, and reforms are unobtrusively being incorporated into the syllabus in both areas. This is as it should be; sensible, pragmatic change coming from within the sector, pushed by those on the ground with the knowledge and training to see what makes a difference. The good news is that it will continue with or without political interference; this is what education is, or at least should be, all about. The bad news is that the bluster and blunder emanating from Pyne’s office might, if
not actually derail the process, at least channel time and effort away from it. Pyne has already been accused of using his review as a distraction to hide the coalition’s refusal to implement the Gonski funding model; more seriously, it may end up not by advancing, but by holding back, genuine efforts to improve the system. And in the end, of course, it may prove totally irrelevant, because Pyne has made clear that no matter how assiduously the review undertakes its task, no matter how carefully researched and evaluated its conclusions might be, they are, after all, only recommendations; all the actual decisions will be taken in his office, by him alone, so there. And this is the really bad news. However biased, prejudiced and politicised Donnelly and Wiltshire may be, they at least have at least both shown a serious interest and concern for education. Pyne, on the other hand, was not so much drawn to the subject as thrust into it as spokesman at a time when his Liberal predecessors had made a mess of the job and no-one else really wanted it. We know he went to school (St Ignatius College, Adelaide) and that he has four children, who presumably are, have been or will be at school themselves. Education has impinged on his life and probably still does. But by training, Pyne is a lawyer, and by profession and inclination a full-time politician – hence his enthusiastic revival of the bitter and divisive issue of the history wars. And as for maths and science – well, it is assumed the education minister can count up to 21 without taking his trousers off, but no-one has ever asked him to try. Q See Mungo’s video at
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