Maurie Mulheron - President NSW Teachers' Federation
A recent retirement function for a school counsellor colleague gave me an opportunity to reflect on the critically important role that the school-based teacher counsellor service plays in our system. As I listened to the speeches I thought of the countless students who are provided with professional advice, comfort and support each and every day, sometimes in life-threatening situations. Students who have mental health issues or find themselves in conflict situations at home or find themselves struggling to form positive relationships or are just lonely and sad or are not coping with the pressure of school.
Many, of course, may seek the advice of a counsellor because of bullying or nasty peer behaviour that is a result of intolerance. We know that students who engage in intolerant behaviour are often influenced by adults. During the function I also thought back to the real stories, the real students who I remember were supported.
Of course, counsellors work closely with teacher colleagues in creating the supportive student welfare network that is a feature of public schools. An important role of student welfare is the work that goes into, not just responding to a problem, but establishing educative programs about gender, race, age, disability and sexuality as we create a positive school culture.
Some days after the retirement function, I had cause to think back to this important work when I opened the newspaper to see that the chief legal officer of the nation, the Federal Attorney-General George Brandis, was quoted as saying that a person has a right to be a bigot. It was simply a breathtaking and audacious statement which, at first glance, made me think that I had misread the article. But no, it was true. The Attorney-General was making good a promise made to a conservative shock-jock at the last election that the Racial Discrimination Act would be amended to make it much more difficult for him to be prosecuted and for citizens to be protected from racial abuse.
The Attorney-General used a classic straw man argument to justify his action, that is, that the Act prevents a person from being a bigot. It doesn’t. What the Act was intended to do was to prevent a bigot from hurting others. It was designed to protect people from insults, from being denigrated on the basis of their race. It was an Act that reflected important values of tolerance and acceptance.
Adults can be powerful role models, both for the positive and the negative. What will worry public school teachers is that we know that macro policy changes can be like a stone thrown in the pond with a ripple effect that is felt at the community level. Clearly the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act by the Attorney-General do not reflect the values of the public education system. But worse, the real concern is, will this lead to some community members feeling that racial intolerance is acceptable?
The pressure to change the Act came from powerful vested media interests whose income may be threatened by fines for racial vilification and the possible loss of advertising revenue that may follow. But the natural sympathies for teachers will be with young people who need to be protected and supported, not with wealthy, right-wing radio announcers who refuse to conform to acceptable community standards.
Wednesday, May 07, 2014
MUA: Safeguarding Workers in Hostile Political Territory
They’re Howard Government Mark Two, Crumlin said, pointing to Abbott’s deliberate industrial agenda.
“Make no mistakes, removal of trade unions is their ultimate agenda,” he said.
“We have to go through an enormous period of trial – our enemies want to knock us out, we don’t have the largesse to sit back and relax.
“But crisis creates opportunity.”
Trade unions were the best placed organisation globally to hit back against neo-liberalism, conservatives and far-right agendas.
The challenge, he said, was for unions to connect with mainstream values and aspiration.
Employers and the Liberal Party have turned out to be just as, if not more, susceptible to corruption and division as the trade union movement and the Labor Party. However, those on the right are not faced with the same media opposition, therefore it was the union’s duty, Crumlin said, to better communicate with the public.
Crumlin said 457s were back on the agenda, along with the Royal Commission, ABCC and the Commission of Audit.
“The Commission of Audit shows their true colours,” he said.
Corporate Culture: Unions Locked Out of Budget Lock-up
Unions have been frozen out of the Abbott government's first budget lock-up, in what one representative said is an ''unprecedented attack on transparency''.
Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Community and Public Sector Union and the Australian Services Union say they have been refused entry to the stakeholder lock-up next Tuesday.
Only the ACTU has been allowed access to the lock-up and the organisation says its usual five seats have been reduced to three.
In a joint statement issued by the ASU, AMWU and CPSU, they said the move was unprecedented.
"Unions and community groups have always been welcomed to the budget stakeholder lock-up so that they might best understand how the budget affects their members and their industries," the statement says.
"To deny places to trade unions is beyond the pale and shows the true nature of this government. They are trying to escape any accountability for their budget."
ASU NSW and ACT secretary Sally McManus said every union that had applied to attend the budget, with the exception of the ACTU, had been denied entry.
"Even under the Howard government, you just had to be a member of a body representing the people and you got in. And this is an important part of our democracy," Ms McManus said.
Ms McManus said a lot of charities were attending the lock-up in addition to their peak body, the Australian Council of Social Service.
CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood, who represents thousands of Canberra's public servants, said the move was a terrible look for the government."The staff numbers in Treasury might have shrunk but the meeting rooms haven't, so it's hard to see any real justification for excluding unions from the lock-up," she said.
"We represent hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs and futures are on the line. Surely if big business, employer and industry groups are considered stakeholders, workers can be recognised as having a stake in the budget?"
AMWU national secretary Paul Bastian said his union had only requested one seat in the lock-up but was denied entry.
He said several of the National Commission of Audit recommendations would put 200,000 workers out of a job, including a number of the AMWU's members.
"This is an unprecedented attack on transparency," he said.
"I shudder to think about what the budget contains for working people if workers' representatives are being locked out.''
ACTU president Ged Kearney said she had never seen a budget lock-up where representative stakeholders had been purposefully locked out.
She said it was a blatant attempt to cut unions out of the first round of analysis of the budget.
SMH Read more:
Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Community and Public Sector Union and the Australian Services Union say they have been refused entry to the stakeholder lock-up next Tuesday.
Only the ACTU has been allowed access to the lock-up and the organisation says its usual five seats have been reduced to three.
In a joint statement issued by the ASU, AMWU and CPSU, they said the move was unprecedented.
"Unions and community groups have always been welcomed to the budget stakeholder lock-up so that they might best understand how the budget affects their members and their industries," the statement says.
"To deny places to trade unions is beyond the pale and shows the true nature of this government. They are trying to escape any accountability for their budget."
ASU NSW and ACT secretary Sally McManus said every union that had applied to attend the budget, with the exception of the ACTU, had been denied entry.
"Even under the Howard government, you just had to be a member of a body representing the people and you got in. And this is an important part of our democracy," Ms McManus said.
Ms McManus said a lot of charities were attending the lock-up in addition to their peak body, the Australian Council of Social Service.
CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood, who represents thousands of Canberra's public servants, said the move was a terrible look for the government."The staff numbers in Treasury might have shrunk but the meeting rooms haven't, so it's hard to see any real justification for excluding unions from the lock-up," she said.
"We represent hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs and futures are on the line. Surely if big business, employer and industry groups are considered stakeholders, workers can be recognised as having a stake in the budget?"
AMWU national secretary Paul Bastian said his union had only requested one seat in the lock-up but was denied entry.
He said several of the National Commission of Audit recommendations would put 200,000 workers out of a job, including a number of the AMWU's members.
"This is an unprecedented attack on transparency," he said.
"I shudder to think about what the budget contains for working people if workers' representatives are being locked out.''
ACTU president Ged Kearney said she had never seen a budget lock-up where representative stakeholders had been purposefully locked out.
She said it was a blatant attempt to cut unions out of the first round of analysis of the budget.
SMH Read more:
Monday, May 05, 2014
Hockey Hocked - Federal Government "WIDE OPEN FOR BUSINESS" !
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| "Work Till You Drop" Hockey ... |
Treasurer Joe Hockey is offering privileged access to a select group including business people and industry lobbyists in return for tens of thousands of dollars in donations to the Liberal Party via a secretive fund-raising body whose activities are not fully disclosed to election funding authorities.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is probing Liberal fund-raising bodies such as the Millennium Forum and questioning their influence on political favours in NSW.
Mr Hockey offers access to one of the country's highest political offices in return for annual payments.
The donors are members of the North Sydney Forum, a campaign fundraising body run by Mr Hockey's North Sydney Federal Electoral Conference (FEC). In return for annual fees of up to $22,000, members are rewarded with "VIP" meetings with Mr Hockey, often in private boardrooms.
The North Sydney FEC officials who run the forum – which is an incorporated entity of the Liberal Party – say its membership lists and therefore the identities of its donors are "confidential". Mr Hockey also says details of who he is meeting and what is discussed are confidential.
What little public information is available reveals members of the forum include National Australia Bank as well as the influential Financial Services Council, whose chief executive is former NSW Liberal leader John Brogden.
The FSC's members, including financial advice and funds management firms, stand to benefit from the changes to the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) laws being considered by the federal government, which would involve a winding back of consumer protections introduced by Labor.
The National Australia Bank would also benefit from the changes.
The chairman of the North Sydney Forum is John Hart, who is also the chief executive of Restaurant and Catering Australia – a hospitality industry lobby group whose members stand to benefit from a government-ordered Productivity Commission review of the Fair Work Act that is expected to examine the issue of penalty rates.
On Monday, Mr Abbott was asked if he was comfortable with Mr Hockey's fundraising activities during an interview with Channel Nine.
Mr Abbott responded by saying while he had not read the article, "all political parties have to raise money".
"Typically, you raise money by having events where senior members of the party go and obviously they meet people at these events," he said.
"The alternative to fund-raising in this time-honoured way, is taxpayer funding."
Mr Abbott said that in the context of a "very tough" budget, the idea that taxpayers should fund political parties was "very, very odd".
When asked if there should be a federal ICAC, Mr Abbott said that he thought that Canberra had a "pretty clean polity".
"The thing is that we’re going to keep the lobbyists out [of politics]. And the problem that ICAC is exposing is a problem of lobbying, essentially its influence peddling . . . and we’re going to make sure that that has no place whatsoever federally."
SMH Read more:
ACTU - Campaign Against Big Business Attack On Wages
From ACTU President Ged Kearny
Last Thursday big business proposed the biggest attack on Australian wages since the Great Depression. The scary thing is that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are taking it seriously. The Government’s so called “Commission of Audit”—headed by the chief of the Business Council—wants to slash the minimum wage every year for a decade, destroy the independent umpire that sets the minimum wage and then scrap the wage altogether. We can make sure that this radical proposal is confined to the dustbin of history where it belongs but our fight has to start now and it has to start with you.
Joe Hockey has indicated that he isn’t going to rule this change in or out until budget in a week’s time. We need to show him that Australian’s simply won’t cop this assault on our wages system.
This is their plan:
By destroying the wage floor big business is trying to drive everyone's wages down.
We know that Tony Abbott and the Liberals would love to drive down wages. It is in their blood. We have beaten back radical changes before and we can do it again. Big business might have the money, but if we stand together we have the power.
Please stand with me and join the fight against this radical attack.
Last Thursday big business proposed the biggest attack on Australian wages since the Great Depression. The scary thing is that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are taking it seriously. The Government’s so called “Commission of Audit”—headed by the chief of the Business Council—wants to slash the minimum wage every year for a decade, destroy the independent umpire that sets the minimum wage and then scrap the wage altogether. We can make sure that this radical proposal is confined to the dustbin of history where it belongs but our fight has to start now and it has to start with you.
Joe Hockey has indicated that he isn’t going to rule this change in or out until budget in a week’s time. We need to show him that Australian’s simply won’t cop this assault on our wages system.
Sign on to join fight against big business’ radical attack on wages: http://www.australianunions.org.au/your_wages_are_under_attack
- Abolish the independent umpire that sets the minimum wage;
- Cut the real value of the minimum wage every year for ten years;
- Scrap the national minimum wage altogether in ten years’ time;
- Pit each state against each other in a race to see who can have the lowest wage after that.
By destroying the wage floor big business is trying to drive everyone's wages down.
Stand up for Australian wages and join the fight here: http://www.australianunions.org.au/your_wages_are_under_attack
Please stand with me and join the fight against this radical attack.
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