Page 3982 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 December 2021
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Here is the thing, Mr Assistant Speaker: Mr Hanson wants people to believe that the Canberra Liberals care about union members. Up on the hill, Mr Hanson’s colleagues in the coalition government have a workplace relations policy that deliberately undermines the collective bargaining power of union members and makes it impossible for them to see improvements in their working conditions. Just across the border, in New South Wales, the Liberal government is refusing to listen to schoolteachers, and now the Teachers Federation is needing to take strike action, just to get their voices heard.
Here in the ACT, the Canberra Liberals cannot stop putting public education down. The previous shadow education minister did not meet with the union for four years. It is like the Canberra Liberals have just acknowledged that they even exist. And that is the thing; does Mr Hanson seriously believe that he is going to convince people that he actually supports teachers or unions in the ACT? It is a bit like comparing it to when the Prime Minister thanked Brittany Higgins yesterday, after the sexual harassment report was handed down. Nobody really believes him.
The Canberra Liberals support NAPLAN and the extra work that that creates for teachers. They questioned the government’s provision of Chromebooks to high school and college students, which means that teachers spend less time troubleshooting across multiple devices. And we all know what they thought about free breakfasts and lunches in public schools. Mr Hanson decides this week to raise the AEU survey results, which were published back in August, to score political points, and that is exactly what it is.
The ACT government genuinely values public education. Here in the ACT we have heard the concerns of public school teachers. The ACT is the only jurisdiction where the government has partnered with the AEU, in a joint task force, to tackle the teacher shortage which is happening all across this country, and which the ACT is not immune to. But what we are doing here in the ACT is different—creating that joint task force to tackle the teacher shortage.
The teacher shortage task force is a genuine partnership between the AEU and the Education Directorate. The task force meets fortnightly—sometimes more frequently—to thrash out tangible solutions to improve the working lives of public school teachers. Since the task force was established in August, when the survey results were released, it has already made significant progress. One of the first achievements was to introduce a dedicated staffing hotline for schools and more centralised management of the relief teacher pool. This took the pressure off schools needing to find relief staff in the mornings.
The task force has made even more progress than that. To help retain current staff the task force has developed a new educator survey to support new teachers in their transition to their profession, and promoted a week zero professional learning opportunity for casual teachers so that they do not miss out on that important professional development.
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