By Laurie Patton  

The Coalition has announced that a further $3.5 billion will be poured into the NBN. But, don’t get it twisted, this is not an upgrade.

In the end, it was inevitable. The government couldn’t risk heading into another election with the NBN in the mess that has resulted from Tony Abbott’s fateful instruction to his communications minister Malcolm Turnbull to ‘demolish’ Labor’s state-of-the-art fibre model.

With millions of Australians struggling with slow and unreliable Internet connections – especially people in highly contestable rural seats held by increasingly nervous National Party MP’s – current communications minister Paul Fletcher has finally hoisted the white flag.

NBN Co will now spend $3.5 billion replacing inferior connections with the fibre they should have had from the start.

Of course in all likelihood, this will blow out (perhaps to more than $5 billion). After all, Turnbull’s so-called multi-technology mix model was supposed to be built for under $30 billion but now sits on the books at well over $50 billion. This includes a $20 billion-plus debt to the government needed just to complete the dud network we have now.

To be fair to Mr Turnbull, he took advice from a few of his ‘techie’ mates who should have known better. He also relied on the communications department who should have warned him that Telstra’s copper network had been let run down for years in anticipation (by Telstra) that it would be replaced with fibre.

Don’t let anyone tell you this is just an upgrade, or that it was planned from the start. Most of the FTTN technology out in the field will be redundant and will have to be junked.

The other flaw in the MTM version was the decision to use old pay television cables. The entire Optus network had to be abandoned and it’s costing a bomb to remediate large sections of the Telstra/Foxtel cabling.

Curiously, we are now told that NBN Co can roll out fibre for less than half the costing they’ve used in every financial report since 2013 to justify using copper.

This is a total surrender and a complete repudiation of the Abbott/Turnbull folly.

We’ve spent billions of dollars on a dud technology that has left a third of the country behind in a digitally-enabled world.

And don’t let anyone tell you this is just an upgrade, or that it was planned from the start. Most of the FTTN technology out in the field will be redundant and will have to be junked.

Paul Fletcher is to be congratulated for having the courage to admit the mistakes of his predecessors. Stephen Conroy and Kevin Rudd have been vindicated.

Access to technology and ‘digital literacy’ are two of the most critical issues confronting us in the digitally-enabled 21st Century.

During the Coronavirus crisis, many more people have become accustomed to working from home. Predictions are this phenomenon will continue long after we return to a ‘new normal’. What’s more, real estate experts are now predicting a technology-led increase in decentralisation as many more companies and their employees realise that they don’t need to operate from overcrowded and expressive capital cities.

Over in New Zealand (where they persisted with fibre) they found ways to reduce their per premises installation cost by around 40 per cent. The same would have occurred here. Chorus NZ (the equivalent of NBN Co) is already delivering gigabit speeds to many of its customers.

Thanks to petty politics we’ve just wasted the better part of a decade. As I’ve been saying for more than five years now, we need #BetterBroadband!”

This article was originally published The Big Smoke.

1 I have always said that polls at this time of the election cycle only ever tell us what people are thinking at the time, and Monday’s Newspoll tells us that during times of crisis the electorate generally sticks with the incumbent government, at least in the short period.

At 51/49 in favour of the Coalition this poll shows a normal fluctuation but in the longevity of a recession I would expect it to turn against the Coalition.

Analysing the numbers, The Poll Bludger also tells us that:

“Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are little changed, up one on approval to 65% and down one on disapproval to 31%, while Anthony Albanese is respectively down four to 39% and down one to 40%, and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 58-29 to 59-27.”

In addition, The Poll Bludger also provides us with some interesting information on COVID-19 and some international polling:

“An international poll by the Pew Research Centre finds 94% of Australians believe their country has handled the pandemic well and 6% badly, whereas 85% think the United States has handled it badly and 14% well, while the respective numbers for China are 25% and 73%.”

“Twenty-three per cent have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing for world affairs, down from 35% last year, equalling a previous low recorded for George W. Bush in 2008.”

“Only 33% of Australians have a favourable view of the United States, down from 50% last year, a change similar to that for all other nations surveyed.”

2 The USA is nearing 2000,000 pandemic deaths. Many of which could have been saved had Trump acted earlier. Remember the blond buffoon had earlier said that keeping deaths to 100,000 would represent “a very good job”.

3 US President Donald Trump in complete disregard of the Supreme Court judge’s dying wish that her replacement be appointed after the election says he will pick a woman to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and expects to reveal his nominee within days.

Convention, ethics and respect for her final judgement would suggest that only a few weeks out from the election whoever is elected should make the appointment. Not Trump, of course, he wants dead-set conservatives to control the agenda. Most normal people would find this form of politics objectionable, but not Trump.

Could it be that Trump wants a conservative majority court to give him the presidency if the vote is close? Add to that the hypocrisy of the GOP given that they took away the right of Obama to make an appointment in a similar situation.

As an Australian what l find remarkable is that judges are appointed on the basis of their politics rather than their impartiality.

4 On Insiders last Sunday the Prime Minister let the cat out of the bag with yet more lies by omission. Last week we needed another gas fired power station to produce 1000 megawatts of power to replace the Liddell power station, now we find it is 250.

He also repeated that other oft told lie that we will reach our 2020 emissions targets in a cantor which is categorically untrue.

It has to be said that this bombardment technique of Morrison’s when talking about issues is wearing a bit thin. He bombards the media like a talkfest. Nothing is said about policy, just talk about announcements, that may or may not happen.

There are no concrete plans, just ideas and proposals involving the private sector or public investment that amounted to bluff.

With Morrison talking in a non-committal mode it’s difficult to know what he is serious about.

5 The Member for Banks has been away from work for 9 months or more. It does seem to be an inordinate amount of time without any explanation.

6 Back to the David Speers interview with the Prime Minister: For what It’s worth, I thought, given that he rarely appears on Insiders, that the segment might have been given more time.

Obviously, there are a multitude of questions that Speers could have asked but didn’t. Aged Care and the controversy surrounding it required some attention but received none.

Some prompting as to what may be in the budget would also have been worth some questions.

The Prime Minister was his usual self with quick fire answers to everything. Speers did however (as I mentioned earlier) extract from him some repeats of previous lies but it was all over before it began.

The major thing to come out of it I suppose it that coal has at long last been defeated.

7 Joe Biden plans to re-join Kyoto and spend trillions on renewable energy. In doing so Morrison would find himself under great pressure.

That being so, the US would expect us to dramatically improve our climate change policies. If we don’t, we will be out of step with our nearest ally. If he wins, we could see a whole new era of climate change leadership.

8 Now about my state Victoria. Not so long ago the daily figure of new COVID-19 cases was about 700, and Premier Danial Andrews put in place new rules to combat a problem that was becoming catastrophic. On Monday 20 September we were down to 11. No other democracy to my knowledge has been able to do that in the space of five weeks.

9 The true test of any nation surely must be the manner in which it treats its most vulnerable, but I think our November 6 budget will see the poor giving to the rich.

By John Haly  

Disparaging the unemployed youth as lazy, pampered and opposed to hard work is a conservative mantra. Conscripting youth into the army (as Jacqui Lambie would have it) or off to rural farms to do hard graft, has been a talking point for years amongst conservatives.

This opinion has been prevalent during the pandemic associated with mass disappearance of jobs. Senator Gerard Rennick and Colin Boyce MP have respectively expressed these views, in Facebook posts from 16th Aug and 6th Sept 2020.

Similar views are echoed in the Courier Mail articles they posted. “Unemployed youth should be conscripted” by Peter Gleeson and “Crops rot as lazy young Aussies snub lucrative hard work” by Michael Madigan. The first article discussed claims Unions are calling for an end to the working holiday Visa because of exploitation of backpackers on Farms.

Despite the hyperbole, unions were asking for a reformed Visa system, rather than terminating the Visa. This distinction was missed by Peter Gleeson who dismissed union concerns about exploitation with the phrase, “What bulldust“. However, other Murdoch news sources have acknowledged systemic abuse problems when promoting a documentary about Backpacker abuse. Sydney Criminal Lawyers have also documented visa abuse by farmers as has the ABC and business-oriented websites. So, sorry, Peter, these union claims are not “bulldust“. The federal ministers supporting these stories should know that because of their Federal paper on the subject “Labour exploitation and Australia’s visa framework“.

The second story by Michael Madigan implies typically extravagant wages of $3800 are being offered by farmers desperate to find workers. Both articles have exaggerated the earning capacity of a good fruit picker (although Peter’s article “modestly” claims that farmworkers can earn up to $1500 a week). According to Madigan’s article, Gavin Scurr managing director of Piñata Farms (a multi-million dollar business) said, “We recently paid a worker $3800 for a weeks work recently, and that is a top pick up working six days a week, probably around 10 hours a day,…”. Now on that basis, one might be forgiven for presuming that you can earn $63 an hour for picking strawberries. This assumption would reflect a misunderstanding of how much growers pay their workers. Despite both Michael and Peter’s claim that farmworkers can earn extravagant amounts of money, it is somewhat contrary to the Horticulture Industry Award of $19.49 for full-time or $24.36 an hour for casuals.

None of these articles mentions the practice of bonus payments paid on top, of a meagre base pay rate. Performance bonuses are only given to their top picker to encourage competition amongst the workers. Neither do these articles mention the standard rate paid, to everyone else who picks fruit. It is only about the total paid to a single worker who had – in the case of Piñata Farms – worked a sixty-hour week for a farmer who “turns over more than $50 million a year and employs 70 full-time staff and 300 seasonal workers.” Contrast this with the projected cash income for Australian farms of an “average $216,000 per farm in 2016–17, the highest recorded in the past 20 years,” cited by the Department of Agriculture.

At least Peter’s claim of $1500 a week is possible if – at $25/hr – the casual worker picks for 60 hours a week. However, maintaining that level of manual labour on a farm would be unsustainable. Which is presumably why Piñata Farms paid one of their workers who did precisely that, a huge bonus, as per Madigan’s article.

Is the picture of the real potential earning for casual farm worker, gaining any more clarity now?

Senator Rennick’s FB protest disparaging Australian Youth

Colin Boyce’s FB protest disparaging Australian Youth

Why is it a backpacker industry?

Lower rates of pay than are legislated, are typical as many citizen’s confirmed on Colin Boyce MP’s Facebook feed. So why do backpackers take on this work? To qualify for the second Working Holiday Visa (subclass 417) applicants have to finish three months (or 88 days to be exact) of regional farm work in the country. The Visa promotes specific jobs such as fruit picking and packing, trimming vines, fishing, working in tree farming, or working in mining. Backpackers put up with being paid under the award and overcharged for food and accommodation and even sexually exploited. With backpackers in short supply, our politicians are suggesting the use of the “many young, pampered Australians [who] have an aversion to hard work.“

Selected social media comments on Colin Boyce’s FB page

Australian youth who are not seasoned backpackers, face relocation issues, such as the costs associated with travel, accommodation and feeding themselves while on a farm, which would diminish their earnings considerably. Although being accustomed to the poverty level of dole payments have presumably inured them to scrape by on very little. Current travel restrictions prevalent under pandemic conditions would limit Australian youth to work on farms only in their State. Is seeking minimum wages in an industry well known for underpayment, exploitation and poor working conditions the best we can do for our young Australians?

Senator Gerard Rennick echoing these sentiments elicited reaction to his post varying from gratuitous approval like, “Totally agree with this…” to criticism noting why relocation and picking work was fraught with problematic issues. These included the propensity for exploitation and anecdotal stories of the poor working conditions on farms.

Dubious claims that CQ with 4.4% of State pop’ is a booming jobs zone

Logistic Viability

Is farm work a viable option to occupy our “indolent” and unemployed youth, irrespective of possible low pay rates?

Total unemployment is massive under the pandemic. Historically, it has not dipped under a million workers since May 2012, and it did so, only for that month, according to Roy Morgan. For regular numbers below one million you have has to look back before September 2011. ABS only reports half the numbers of domestic unemployment because of their international methodology, which I have explained previously.

Under/Unemployment and Job Vacancies under the coalition

Youth unemployment (15-24 yrs) has had a long history of being more than twice as high percentage-wise as the national average, even by ABS’s low standards. Which in July 2020 measured 16.3% of the youth labour market (Table 13) or 345,900 people.

ABS Youth Unemployment compared to all

Youth Unemployment

So what are the job prospects for this mostly unskilled market of unemployed youth? Are there plenty of jobs in the market?

The Government publishes such data every month in the IVI job vacancy statistics. Under the classification of Labourers, there is a sub-classification for “Farm, Forestry and Garden” Workers. Early September’s seasonally adjusted figures show that in July of 2020 there were 750 such jobs advertised in a class of general unskilled labourers of 10261 vacancies, that were a subset of total job vacancies advertised in Australia of 131072. Unemployment figures, according to Roy Morgan in July were 1,786,000 although the August figures (at the time of writing) were released showing a rise to 1,980,000 people. So from July’s perspective, we can note that farm labour vacancies represent 7.3% of general unskilled labour and 0.57% of all job vacancies advertised.

ABS Youth Employment/Unemployment and unskilled Labour jobs

Keep in mind that the IVI job statistics only drill down to the level of “Farm, Forestry and Garden” Workers which means that Farmworkers specifically are a subset of that 0.57% of Australia wide job vacancies. Given that the Courier Mail stories are spruiking the idea that Australians should be taking up these jobs, I think it is also safe to suggest farmers have been increasing their advertising for workers.

No matter how you cut the numbers and consider all the variables of remote location, physical suitability, skill limits, accessibility limitations, competition, financial limits, of young people; coupled with accounts of employer discrimination, exploitation, feeble pay and working conditions; one has to ask this question. Is the conscription of young people or shaming them into compliance, the best possible recourse of action, for which our political senators and ministers should be lobbying?

There are far greater vacancies in other industries. Should not these parliamentarians not be focusing on where the greatest needs are? Not that farmer’s needs are illegitimate because they are not. These crops do need to be harvested. But professional job roles like engineers, scientists, Health (particularly now), ICT, Lawyers and the like for which there are at least 39580 jobs advertised or 30% of the job market. Managerial roles have 13800 job vacancies (10.5%); Technical and trade workers have 18194 job vacancies (13.8%); Community and personal services workers have 12821 job vacancies (9.8%); Clerical and Administrative workers have 18655 job vacancies (14.2%). These jobs need an educated population to fill them so a better focus for young people would be – one might presume – to promote policies to make education more universally available to young Australians.

Instead, our political conservatives and Murdoch media are focused on the largest unemployed group in Australia to fill jobs in one of the smallest markets for jobs in the country. Dare I make the pun, that there will be no bonuses for your work ethics as you’re all targeting, the easy pickings of the lowest hanging fruit!

This article was originally publish on Australia Awaken – Ignite your Torches.

By Denis Bright  

Educational priorities particularly in Humanities (HASS) and both Literary and Environmental Sustainability are key initiatives for the emergence of a more independent and creative Australian society.

Curriculum innovation in HASS ensures that young people are less likely to vote for conservative populists who rely on fear strategies to extend their political influence. The mobilisation of preferences from far-right minor parties in support pf the federal LNP in outer metropolitan and regional seats with high levels of social disadvantage will be an essential strategy to save the Morrison Government at a strategic early election in  late 2021 before the attack on living standards begins in earnest.

Should the LNP achieve endorsement for its future austerity measures, living standards and even civil liberties will be under threat, particularly if the Trump Administration happens to be re-elected on 3 November 2020, this is unlikely but always a possibility until every vote at the US Electoral College is fully counted.

Labor’s challenge to this attempted return to normalcy in a corporate state will require brave initiatives which are comparable to the consciousness raising which produced such good results in the 1960s in areas like health, education, infrastructure planning and greater national independence in defence and foreign policies.

There will be no opposition in Australia to Labor initiatives on behalf of our national curriculum priorities in HASS and improvements to the future focus of literary studies.

However, Labor’s prospects will be diminished if the 2021 poll becomes a khaki election with a focus on national security and a virtual referendum on a deepening relationship with a Republican Administration in the White House with or without President Trump who could be forced to resign as in Nixon’s Watergate years.

Educational priorities in HASS and English literature is always highly political.

Even environmental education can be is highly political. Any creative emphasis on Australia’s links with the Indo Pacific Basin, enhances  Australia’s consensus-roles in international affairs at the expense of conventional strategic relations from the Cold War era.

A Canberra insider warned me about the excessive costs of our fleets of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at a  not fully finalised cost (SMH 6 December 2018). The current price tag for each plane is $124 million. The purchase of 141 military planes would certainly purchase a lot of good resources for environmental education and literary studies in our schools (Costs from ABC News 10 December 2018). The federal LNP did not blink at this level of financial commitment.

The pressing demands of disadvantaged schools was easily over-looked by the federal LNP.

In national curriculum reform the Morrison Government has already taken Australians into a cul de sac in which students from disadvantaged areas are left behind the success stories of elite private schools and public education initiatives in well-resourced localities such as the ACT.

The hopes of educators were raised after the election of the Rudd Labor Government in 2007 (ACARA 2020):

Development of the Australian Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) used an extensive and collaborative curriculum development process to produce the Australian Curriculum.

The Shape of the Australian Curriculum, first approved by the council of Commonwealth and state and territory education ministers in 2009, guided the development of the Australian Curriculum. The paper reflected the position adopted by ministers collectively in their 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (PDF 978 kb). The Shape of the Australian Curriculum v. 4.0 (PDF 402 kb) was approved by the ACARA Board in late 2012, reflecting the evolving processes used in the development of the Australian Curriculum.

Over a decade later, the federal LNP has moved from innovative educational priorities to a focus on testing of standards in basic areas of reading, writing and numeracy as measured by NAPLAN test results.

COVID-19 has given students and teachers a reprise from this testing regime at least until 2021 or later.

Funded by joint federal and state expenditure, ACARA has moved to extend the back to the basics through fine tuning strategies in relation to new Australian curriculum goals:

“Today, education ministers have agreed to terms of reference for the review of the Foundation – Year 10 (F–10) Australian Curriculum, with the review to be completed by the start of 2022.

“We welcome the opportunity to ensure the national curriculum continues to meet the needs of students. The Australian Curriculum is well regarded, however, as it has been in place for some years now, it is timely that it be reviewed,” said ACARA CEO, David de Carvalho.

“Teachers have told us that, particularly in primary years, the Australian Curriculum is overcrowded and does not allow enough time to teach for deep understanding of core concepts or application of knowledge in the learning areas.

“Schools and teachers want a less crowded curriculum, one that provides flexibility and scope for greater depth of learning – and a more helpful curriculum, one that provides more meaningful connections within and across its three dimensions,” said Mr de Carvalho.

In preparing for the review, ACARA has been consulting with key education stakeholders to define the approach to, and scope of, the review. Through its program of research, ACARA has benchmarked the Australian Curriculum against the curricula of Singapore, Finland, British Columbia and New Zealand, and sought feedback from states and territories on the effectiveness of the Australian Curriculum through its annual monitoring process. This work has informed the terms of reference agreed by education ministers.”

The overall finding from ACARA’s program of research is that there is no need, nor support for, a major overhaul of the F–10 Australian Curriculum, but there is broad-based recognition that the current curriculum needs refining, updating and ‘decluttering’ to better support teachers with implementation.

The new ACARA Annual Report 2019-20 is scheduled for release soon. The latest available report shows a disappointing emphasis on National Assessment of School standards and data collection  at the expense of a mere 26 per cent commitment of funding to National Curriculum.

Excessive flexibility in the application of curriculum priorities, makes it extremely difficult for corporate publishers of curriculum providers to cope with the differing demands of schools in the various states and territories. Compared with expenditure on NAPLAN testing, expenditure on Curriculum Development was halved in just one financial year from a slender ACARA Budget:

The back to basics rhetoric sounds good but it is time for a progressive national government to rekindle the spirit of the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians:

SchoolGovernance (21 February 2019) reminded everyone that the Melbourne Declaration was not merely about more standardised testing:

The most innovative state and private schools will have the resources needed to advance their own curriculum priorities.

In mainstream schools, attaining these goals without adequate curriculum resources is a great pressure on teachers who are under siege from an over-commitment to standardised NAPLAN testing and wider administrative demands.

The Bricks and Mortar strategies to achieve this in a cost-effective manner might justify the formation of senior school campuses within existing school complexes.

During my teaching career, I was really impressed by behaviour management at schools like Phillip Senior College in the ACT. It is now called Canberra College with its two campuses in the Woden Valley and Weston Creek.

Although it is beyond the resources of most state education authorities to extent the network of such well-resourced senior high schools, it may be possible to expand senior education hubs within existing campuses and new school facilities.

At a recent forum in Mt. Crosby on 12 September 2020, a member of the audience questioned the validity of capping of student enrolments at Kenmore State High School for residents from adjacent suburbs of Ipswich.

The forum was organised by the Kenmore-Bellbowrie Branch of the Labor Party to introduce Roberta Albrecht as ALP Candidate for Moggill at the forthcoming state elections.

Bricks and mortar initiatives to build senior schools within existing 7-12 high school campuses would be a possibility at least for new schools in the Palaszczuk Government ongoing school-buildings programmes:

The Queensland Government’s Building Future Schools (BFS) program is delivering world-class learning environments for Queensland students.

The BFS program is delivering new state schools in growth areas across the state, investing in existing school assets, and making strategic land acquisitions for the future—delivering new and innovative education infrastructure solutions for growing communities.

Over the 10-year period from 2016 to 2026, around 8,000 additional students are forecast to join the Queensland state school networks per year, with a majority of growth within the south–east Queensland region.

Initiatives in the bricks and mortar as well as administrative practices are all necessary to support new curriculum innovations of a new generation of national curriculum programmes.

I was courageous or fool-hardy enough to issue a press release to the Queensland Times in Ipswich during 1983 about the unfortunate state of some local secondary  schools in The Low Tax State.

Image: QTU’s Ipswich Secondary Branch Press Release (1983) authorized by Denis Bright with Artistic Work from Teaching Colleague, Rod Cassidy

The LNP’s Focus on School Standards

Years later the focus of educational reform has moved from Bricks and Mortar to the issues connected to curriculum standards and transitions from school to work which I covered in the press release that accompanied the cartoon sketch. The LNP,  at both state and federal levels, welcomes this evolution but hardly in the direction that I intended in 1983.

League tables of standardised test results are now scanned as an indicator of comparative school performance to the cheers of the manufacturers of these crude testing indicators both in Australia and overseas.

Australia’s Council for Educational Research (ACER) is now an enthusiastic advocate of the standardised testing model for schools:

Coordinated in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the IM²C sees students use their research, mathematical and creative abilities to develop a mathematical model to address a real-world problem.

ACER Principal Research Fellow and IM²C Australia Director, Ross Turner, said this year teams had to review data on goods to be offered during a sale, including the price and discount to be given, in order to identify which items would likely be most popular and the store layout factors that might affect damage risks.

“Teams had to develop and use a model that would predict damage to goods in order to recommend optimal product placement and department locations for the given store layout. Teams were also asked to create and evaluate a new and better floor plan for the flash sale scenario, and to write a one-page letter to the store manager presenting and supporting their findings,” Mr Turner said.

Teams from Caulfield Grammar School in Victoria and North Sydney Boys High School in New South Wales will represent Australia in this year’s International Mathematical Modelling Challenge (IM²C), which requires students to determine how a ‘bricks and mortar’ store should arrange its goods during a flash sale to minimise the risk of damage.

The teams each received a ‘meritorious achievement’ award from the Australian judging panel and will progress to the international judging round for 2020. The international results will be announced in July.

The ACER provides opportunities for corporate sponsorship of such events with differing acknowledgements for Major Partners and Supporting Partners. Perhaps the cultural and political blind spots in some of these activities should be cause for concern at a time of cultural wars in the USA and beyond about the best ways of dealing with problems like violence in our cities and schools.

The excesses of commitment to mathematical models over democratic political processes is reflected in this intriguing problem for the International Mathematical Modelling Challenge. A sample answer provided for students after the event is equally devious in its implied assumptions.

The authors of the test item clearly want a mathematical answer but surely the answer extends well beyond mathematics.

Sample answers developed after the competition produced these correlations between potential contributing variables and rates of violent crime. At least the answers offered were a win for better school and higher graduation rates.

In this new era of dislocation from the current pandemic and social unrest across the USA, the young minds can of course work on their problems through Zoom events to avoid the hassles of international travel.

In their new life, our deceased members of the old National Party in Queensland would be cheering on the regressive sentiments about the need to return education to the basics of that old schoolhouse on the prairies (Kevin Donnelly, The Australian 18 December 2016):

Instead of education and the curriculum being objective, whereby students are taught to be critical-minded and to weigh alternative points of view, the AEU’s leadership is only concerned with imposing its politically correct views on controversial issues.

While parents are shocked by the Marxist-inspired Safe Schools LGBTQI program, which teaches children gender is fluid and celebrating being a man or a woman is heteronormative, the AEU gives it full support. Its federal president, Correna Haythorpe, describes critics of the Safe Schools program as “extreme conservatives” opposing a “highly effective and positive program”.

At a time when Australia’s international test results are in free fall, the AEU, instead of focusing on the basics, is more interested in campaigning for “global movements for peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, justice for refugees and the environment.”

Creative Paths for HASS and Literary Studies?

It seems that only a progressive Labor government will have that balanced curriculum to bring the Humanities and the Social Sciences into a truly well-resourced national curriculum programme. There is rhetorical commitment in the federal LNP’s Australian Curriculum Programme in these key areas for Australia’s future.

New curriculum resources are needed to assist secondary student to move personal development into a creative social frameworks and meaningful employment. Commercial providers of textbooks and other resources cannot be expected to have the resources to fund the new curriculum in an environment where more emphasis is being placed on league tables of standardised testing results.

In less prestigious schools, there are still high rates of school suspensions as student react to inadequacies in both national curriculum priorities and behaviour management practices. The two state high schools with the highest numerical rates of suspensions in Queensland are indeed in the City of Ipswich. The ratio of suspensions to school enrolments is running at 42.3 per cent from one school and 46 per cent in another. Some smaller schools in the Ipswich area have even higher rates of suspensions.

Full details are published in the Queensland Education Department’s data on school suspensions and exclusions 2015-19. Adjacent state high schools in more advantaged parts of Brisbane West have caps on their enrolment to restrict attempted catchment hopping by parents on behalf of their children and the growth of enrolments in alternative private schools.

Times may have changed since 1983 but the need for broadly based educational initiatives still involves the need for innovative bricks and mortar as well as state of the art curriculum and administrative initiatives on behalf of our future generations particularly from disadvantaged communities with high rates of youth unemployment and a dismal performance in federal funding of TAFE programmes.

This is my first article devoted to educational issues. ACARA in Sydney has made a commitment to keep me informed on the commencement of its timely review of national curriculum priorities which need to extend far-beyond a focus on NAPLAN using standardised testing models which have their origin in that land that is keen about our purchases of F-35 fighters at an undefined price tag.

It is the future of young Australians which should indeed be priceless.

By Ad astra  

What’s happened to Josh Frydenberg? As many have commented, Frydenberg’s vicious attack on Victoria’s Premier, Dan Andrews, came as a surprise. It’s intensity was extraordinary. Why?

Only he would know. We can but surmise. What did you conclude?

Here’s my assessment:

First, here are his acerbic words:

”Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg labelled the premier’s handling of the (COVID-19) crisis as ‘the biggest public policy failure by a state government in living memory’”.

Josh Frydenberg is ambitious. He hopes one day to become PM. He knew that his very public attack on Andrews would propel him into the public limelight and portray him as a strong future leader. Was Morrison watching? Did he feel the need to protect his back? Or was he so sure of himself that he thought he could allow Frydenberg to go out as an attack dog to do his dirty work?

And Dan Andrews was the ideal target – a Labor figure who has been attacked from all sides of the conservative spectrum. Andrews’ daily press reports on the status of COVID-19 in Victoria have been helpful and informative. He stays put at the rostrum until every question has been addressed. You can imagine how irritating his opponents find him! Some express their distaste of him in florid terms in the social media: “I can’t stand the sight of him”. Frydenberg knew that attacking Andrews would draw enthusiastic support from his conservative colleagues.

Frydenberg is politically smart. He knew that any attack he mounted would need to be dressed up in economic garb to give it authenticity. This was easy for him – being Treasurer, he has an abundance of economic bullets in his armoury. But his bullets we not aimed simply at wounding Andrews’ economic credentials; they were intended to wound him personally. The venom of Frydenberg’s words is testimony to that. If you’re sceptical about this assessment of his intentions, read his words again.

So why is this piece titled Frydenberg’s folly?.

Because in one fell swoop he has morphed his image as a credible commentator on the nation’s accounts into just another partisan attack dog. He has replaced his reputation in the area of finance with what we have come to despise so profoundly.

That is his folly!

By Denis Bright  

The drift to corporate healthcare should be challenged at all levels of government across Australia. It is a treatment model with unintentional costs all in the name of that imperative value of freedom of choice. Interested readers should take in the glowing coverage of the rhetorical commitment to elderly people from the web sites of some LNP federal members and senators.

Commitment to the federal LNP’s competitive model of society will of course generate its own health stresses associated with lifelong mortgage payments and the stresses of working in largely non-unionised workplaces. The corporate healthcare model is embedded a wider social perspective. It places profits before the needs of people.

Permit me to promote some discussion on the hollowness of this rhetoric with a few examples from a recent trip to South West Queensland.

As I passed through Toowoomba, I noticed that the scare campaign against federal Labor from the last federal election was still a feature of the local federal LNP member’s site. The so-called retirees’ tax of course referred to Labor’s plans to remove tax credits for dividend imputation (John McVeigh MP in Groom):

Labor’s plans to tax retirees would have the most impact on those on a low and middle income and could force many people onto the Age Pension.

Federal Member for Groom John McVeigh said Labor’s retiree tax would negatively impact around one million Australians including pensioners.

“This is a disgraceful attack on people who have saved throughout their lives to be independent in retirement including more than 6 300 people who live in my electorate of Groom ” Dr McVeigh said.

“On average individuals adversely impacted by the policy stand to lose $2 300 a year and self-managed super funds will lose on average $12 000 a year. For many the losses will be much higher ” he said.

“Like all Australians the people of the Groom electorate deserve a Government that encourages personal responsibility rewards hard work and allows them to keep more of what they earn.

“Labor’s retiree tax undermines these values ripping over $57 billion out of retirement savings. This is part of Labor’s plan for more than $387 billion in additional taxes to people’s homes incomes business and savings.”

Dr McVeigh said suggestions from Labor that this policy would only hit the wealthy have proven to be completely untrue.

“Many retirees in the Groom electorate rely on tax refunds from share dividends to help pay basic household bills,” he said.

The urban sprawl along the Warrego Highway to Toowoomba and beyond reminded me of what I had seen in the USA, some thirty years ago. This is not a healthy model for personal and community development.

The appeal of the countryside in Virginia south of Washington D.C. was shattered by the construction of the Potomac Mills Shopping Centre in 1985. It defied all principles of sustainable urban planning beside Interstate 95. Interested readers might like to check out the details of this development which is currently operated by the Simon Property Group.

Elements of this style of urban sprawl are evident here as the federal government pushes Australia towards a corporate model of urban subdivision and private motorised transport in the name of our own national competition policies.

Near the exists to the motorways serving the second range crossings north of Toowoomba, I noticed the extent of urban sprawl around natural landmarks like Gowrie Mountain where new housing was allowed on its middle and lower slopes by local urban planning guidelines. There are numerous pictures of this style of outer-suburban development on Google Image. So much for those Dreamtime perspectives about natural landmarks which had sustained Indigenous cultures for millennia.

These days the younger residents and retirees from the bush can be sustained by their own commitments to private healthcare. After payment of five or six thousand dollars a year for premium health care cover, these families must expect these hypothetical conversations when they front to pay for routine health procedures like X-rays and other diagnostic tests:

Reception Staff:

Well your procedure will cost $250 today. Would you like to take advantage of the Medicare rebate when you are making your payments for our procedures? We have your Medicare details on file from last time, so it is just a matter of paying the gap fee which reduces your payment by $130.

Patient:

Oh, I thought all these fees might be covered by Medicare as I have not been able to receive a rebate from my own health insurance in the past.

Staff:

Well, our current apt will enable you to gain the fullest possible Medicare rebates even without the need for private health insurance which covers you for a large proportion of in-hospital care.

Patient:

Yes, I appreciate that. Here is my credit card. It’s a charge of only $120. I always support Medicare and voted LNP this time because our government is fully committed to Medicare. Paying $120 is a small sacrifice to make if it is helping to preserve Medicare.

In the spirit of this self-sacrifice, constituents of the new suburbs on the outskirts of Toowoomba supported the LNP at every booth at both state and federal levels.

For the elderly in adjacent countries towns, the corporate style of healthcare is extended to Commonwealth Home Support Programmes (CHSPs) provided by charities and authorised for profit-making agencies.

Basic accounting strategies to minimise perceived assets through the formation of family trusts, enabled more affluent elderly residents to collect the optimum levels of nursing home bond subsidies and in some cases the full pension although their assets were actually in the millions.

The South Western Hospital and Health Service of the State Health Department has skewed the CHSP guidelines to the needs of local communities. I was pleasantly surprised by some initiatives being taken in Charleville, 750 kilometres west of Brisbane.

Image: South West Hospital and Health Service (2018) Showing Healthy Ageing Client May Williams on that New Public Sector Bike

The South Western Hospital and Health Service offers this best practice in community outreach which extends beyond the dependency model of some aged care practices:

Older residents of Charleville now have a fun way of getting around town after a luxurious new multi-passenger pedal cycle hit town.

Healthy Ageing Charleville Project Officer Deb Alick said the organisation had purchased a Surrey Bike for use locally.

“The Surrey Bike is a 4-6-seat, pedal-powered, covered vehicle which allows everyone to participate in pedalling the vehicle along, while one person steers,’’ Ms Alick said.

“It’s like a bicycle, only bigger and better.’’

Ms Alick said Healthy Ageing had several stationary bicycles in place at its Alfred St premises in
Charleville for use by program participants.

“They will be able to use the skills and muscle power developed on the stationary bicycles to take the
Surrey Bike around town for a spin,’’ she said.

“It will help promote physical activity, cooperation, fun and social interaction in our community.

“We already have a waiting list of very excited participants and some very bright helmets, so keep a look out on the road for us in Charleville!’’

The absence of commercial and charitable providers of age-care packages in remote areas has enabled the state Department of Health to fill some of the void and to skew the services offered towards healthy living over nursing care with the assistance of some other voluntary agencies.

This might be a blessing in disguise to the recipients of these healthy living models which can be delivered at a fraction of the costs of the commercial alternatives offered in larger urban centres.

Local TAFE courses are also being offered to train local people in effective caring strategies.

Latest OECD health data shows that the federal LNP is hell-bent on promoting a model of healthcare with a focus on treatment over preventative health. In whole sectors like mental health, diabetes, drug dependence, care of disabled people and the elderly, the model is drifting Australia towards the US corporate model of healthcare with its unproductive levels of expenditure and out-of-pocket expenditures.

Constituents are still largely in love with the sweet rhetoric in favour of corporate healthcare even though its excesses are a burden on the levels of economic growth and community development to which the LNP aspires.

Medical practices cannot run efficiently on current Medicare bulk-billing rates which represent less than half the over the counter fees charged in most clinics for both medical care and essential ancillary care services.

South West Hospitals and Health Care Services offer a more balanced healthcare model with an emphasis on preventative care that tunes into the local stresses imposed by financial and social disadvantage.

Similar applications could be extended state-wide in Queensland through systematic applications by agencies of the state health department for similar CHSP packages.

Let’s hope that blind-spots created by the use of soothing LNP rhetoric do not bring the state back to the Joh era through the strategic allocation of preferences by far-right political parties at a time when constituents are under siege during the current national recession.

By 2353NM  

You have to wonder if some with a high profile in the ALP have a political death wish. Recently, the government’s performance was summed up by the Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck sitting at an enquiry into aged care, speechless for half a minute because he couldn’t answer a pretty obvious question on the number of deaths in aged care homes due to COVID-19. Rather than kicking back and watching the train wreck, Agriculture and Resources Shadow Minister Joel Fitzgibbon sticks his head up the next day and suggests that the ALP will split at some point over environmental issues, but not in his political lifetime.

Fitzgibbon represents a large chunk of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, and anyone who has ever driven through that area will attest to the extent of the mining infrastructure. Apparently Fitzgibbon has been arguing for a while that the ALP needs to support the continuation of coal mining in Australia. Regardless of Fitzgibbon’s opinion, the use of coal has been falling for years in most parts of the world, with demand likely to fall further — for example Japan has announced it will close its older and inefficient coal fired power stations by 2030. It’s ridiculous to plan to maintain or increase the production of a product when there is no demand.

We live in a world that is constantly changing. If we go back to the beginning of the 20th century there was a considerable industry in horse drawn transport, from farriers to wagon builders to the people who supplied the hay used as ‘fuel’ for horses and those that cleaned the hay up after ‘processing’. While the horse drawn wagons still exist, they are more an advertising medium rather than a genuine attempt to move the product from point A to point B. Those supporting the horse drawn transport industry had to adapt as the internal combustion engine gained popularity.

In the 21st Century, renewable energy production is increasing as evidenced by the Clean Energy Council claiming that 2 million Australian homes now have solar panels on the roof and

An average of six panels per minute are being installed in Australia, with the Australian Energy Market Operator estimating an average of 10-20 panels per minute if large-scale solar projects are factored in.

which suggests we won’t be taking up the slack locally as our coal exports reduce.

Regardless of the machinations of those that want to keep the status quo, a number of institutional investors and financiers have announced that they will no longer invest or insure fossil fuel infrastructure. While there might be a commercial advantage to the promotion of a newly discovered environmental focus, if there wasn’t a business case to be made for a swift exit from fossil fuel investments, it wouldn’t be happening.

Surely, someone like Fitzgibbon is supposed to be a leader in his community. He should be having discussions with concerned residents that his side of the political fence is aware of the problem, working on ways to adapt the local and national economy to ensure continual growth when the inevitable happens. Rather, he seems to be sticking his head in the sand and humming ‘Kumbaya’ in the vain hope that the world will go on as it has without radical change. Is it any wonder that the ALP’s primary vote has declined? About 10% of the population now vote for the Greens — a lot of them probably used to vote for the ALP but shifted on the basis that the environment is changing for the worse and some in the ALP seem to be hoping for a miracle (or even hoping and humming Kumbaya), which really isn’t a great mitigation strategy.

What makes Fitzgibbon’s publicity stunt even less intelligent (if that was possible), the government isn’t looking all that good at the moment. We’ve already mentioned Colbeck’s failure to remember details of his portfolio. Let’s face it, if Colbeck was asked if Mrs Jones’ en-suite door was on the left or right wall in Room 15 at the Happy Valley Aged Care home, he would be forgiven for not having a clue. The number of people who have died from COVID-19 in his care — aged care is a federal responsibly and he is the responsible minister — shouldn’t be an obscure fact that requires the ruffling of what appeared to be numerous briefing notes before he could answer. On August 21 (the day Colbeck couldn’t recall the number), Morrison claimed he had confidence in his Aged Care Minister.

Ahead of the August 21 ‘National Cabinet Meeting’, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton re-entered the fray claiming that Queensland’s ALP Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was playing populist politics in the lead up to the October state election by keeping the borders closed to those from New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. Queensland’s Chief Medical Officer responded, demonstrating that pandemic management is yet another thing that Dutton is clueless about. Queensland Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles offered to accompany Dutton around some shopping centres in the northern outskirts of Brisbane (where Dutton is the federal representative and Miles is the state representative) to actually ask the public. Dutton seems to have crawled back into his box and Queensland announced an unknown origin COVID-19 cluster the next morning, giving further fuel to those demanding the borders remain closed.

Morrison has some problems with his trusted ministers which the ALP has been capitalising on by generally keeping quiet and enjoying the show. However, when ‘the other mob’ are continually demonstrating they can’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag, let alone a pandemic, why on earth would you tip a bucket on your own side of the political spectrum as Fitzgibbon did, giving ‘the other mob’ a chance to point and suggest that we all look over there?

We all get that the transition from a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewable energy is not business as usual. Nor will it be stress free for all involved. Certainly, there needs to be a discussion on how the ALP will manage a transition to a renewables based economy while supporting workers that are in sunset industries, but surely it should be behind closed doors until there is a policy.

Then, and only then, there needs to be a public discussion on what the problem is, what the ALP has planned to mitigate the problem and help those adversely affected. That would explain to a lot of their supporters past and present why the ALP is a far safer environmental bet than the Greens who seem to have a problem articulating agreed policy in a number of areas. Both however are a better option than the Coalition that wants to fund the business case for construction of new a coal fired power station as a sop to vested interests who can’t see the wood for the trees.

What do you think?