- (08) 8948 5399
- [email protected]
- Unit 3, 8 Totem Rd Coconut Grove NT 0810
- PO Box 41863 Casuarina, NT 0811
We are your union. You are the union.
Our membership covers educators working in government schools and workplaces including Batchelor Institute and VET/TAFE at Charles Darwin University (CDU).
Each Australian state and territory has their own AEU branch or associated body. You need to join the branch for the jurisdiction in which you currently work – in your case, us – the AEU Northern Territory Branch.
We represent all teachers in NT public education and have the right to represent education support workers who engage directly with students in a teaching and learning capacity such as assistant teachers, school council employed tutors and some school support staff.
Our strategic vision and guiding principles are embedded within our ‘Winning Aspirations’. They are:
Our union is a strong and effective presence in all schools and public education workplaces. We have powerful and dynamic leaders driving activism in all workplaces.
Our union has highly skilled, active, and informed members who understand and enforce our rights at work.
Our union champions the equitable and representative participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees. Our Aboriginal members are the first point of contact for decision-making relating to Indigenous education policy.
All staff, students and community have clear expectations around work, health and safety, backed up by clear policy. Every school and every workplace is a safe and healthy place.
We lead the education conversation in the Northern Territory. We challenge government to implement policies aimed at improving public education outcomes and hold them to account as required.
The AEU is proud to represent the people who have the most important job in the country – education. We are proud to be advocates for a quality public education accessible to all Australians.
Our working conditions and entitlements have mostly been won by many decades of collective struggle and effort. In education, our union voice remains strong because we maintain a high level of membership and engagement among teachers and educators. This gives teachers a stronger voice when dealing with workplace management and governments. Governments and employers know that if they challenge teachers and educators, they must deal with us!
As one of the largest unions in Australia, the AEU has the capacity to campaign at every level to promote positive change. In recent years the AEU has been instrumental in pressuring both federal and state governments to implement positive reforms to public education.
The AEU NT Branch is an affiliate of the Australian Education Union. Nationally, we have over 190,000 members across all states and territories working as principals, teachers and support educators in schools, TAFE institutes, Corrections Education, Adult Migrant Education Services, and early childhood education centres.
Remember, there are some slight differences in eligibility across branches and don’t forget to resign from any interstate branch you are leaving and join up with your new one!
One advantage of being the smallest branch in the country is that it’s easy to get to know our people!
The office staff, led by Branch Secretary Rachael Metcalfe and Branch President Michelle Ayres are supported and kept in line by our fabulous Administration Manager Janette Moore.
Office veteran, Mick McCarthy is our Special Projects Officer, taking the lead on industrial issues with Jengis Osman providing support on individual member cases. Bridget O’Dwyer leads membership and recruitment as branch organiser and hopes to visit your school soon!
Special Projects Officer
Project Officer
Organiser
Administration Manager
The AEU is a democratic organisation governed by a constitution and registered under the Fair Work Act. At every level - workplaces, regions, and the Territory as a whole - we have structures to ensure that our union is guided by the collective voice of our members.
Being registered under the Fair Work Act allows us to collectively enter formal enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations with Government on your behalf. This is what sets us apart from other so-called ‘unions’ that have sprung up in recent times and other bodies such as professional associations. While these groups can advocate for their members’ rights individually, they do not have the power to do so collectively in enterprise bargaining.
Members in each workplace form a sub-branch. Sub-branches elect the offices of president/sub-branch representative each year and, depending on membership numbers, a vice-president and secretary. Decisions and recommendations from sub-branches are forwarded to regional councils, the AEU NT Executive or branch Full-Time Officers for further action.
Regional councils exist in each of our six AEU NT regions: Darwin, Palmerston and Rural, Alice Springs, Barkly, Katherine and Arnhem. Alignment with Department of Education (DoE) regions is not exact due to DoE regions having shifted.
The Executive is a wholly elected body and oversees the operations of the Branch. Outside of the Annual Branch Conference, it is the highest-ranking decision-making body in the union.
The Branch Executive comprises two Full Time Officers – the President and the Secretary – and a number of honorary positions consisting of two Vice-Presidents (General Division and TAFE), Treasurer, Women’s Officer, Indigenous Councillor and Regional Councillors from the six AEU NT regions. All Branch Executive positions are elected by the membership, with elections conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission as needed. The composition of Branch Executive ensures that all regions, sectors and stages of education in the NT have the opportunity to be represented and a forum within which to raise issues and concerns.
Contact us to be put in touch with your regional representatives or relevant officer directly.
Branch President
Branch Secretary
Vice-President (General)
The term of office for all Branch Executive members is two years, except the Branch Secretary, whose term is three years. Branch Executive meets at least six times per year and holds extra meetings online as necessary. Branch Executive authorises most expenditure such as branch staff salaries, campaign costs and legal assistance for members. Executive is also the body which, in certain circumstances and within legal frameworks will authorise AEU NT members to participate in protected industrial actions such as work bans and strikes.
The union is required to make available to members a copy of our annual financial reports. The report from any year is available on request to the Branch Secretary.
Usually held in May each year, our Branch Conference is the principal forum for making and ratifying the key policies and priorities of our Branch for the year ahead. Conference is the only forum that can modify the rules of the Branch.
In line with AEU NT rules, the deadline for Conference registration and motion submission falls well in advance of the event. We recommend that, in addition to electing your sub-branch rep/s early in the year, you also elect a conference delegate and begin the process of collectively drafting motions. Contact the office with any conference related questions.
Each sub-branch, no matter its size, can send at least one delegate. For every 20 + 1 members you can send another delegate. All costs of attendance, including relief teacher coverage for your school, are met by the branch office.
For example, a sub-branch with 30 members = 2 x Conference delegates (one because each workplace can send a delegate; another one because there are more than 20 members. If there were 41 members, this sub-branch could send three delegates).
Proxy and observer options are also available.
Contact the office to request a current list of your sub-branch members. All delegates must be financial members (that means paid up by at least 2 months) of the union at time of registration to be eligible to attend Conference.
The greater the diversity of delegates from as many workplaces as possible contributes to creating a Conference that is truly representative of our membership!
Explore a brief snapshot of some key issues in the development and history of our union over the past 40 years.
2020 gave us an NT election with the result being a return to power for Territory Labor. We asked members to think carefully about who was offering the best for public education. Union priorities remain job security, workload reductions, competitive salaries and school infrastructure. The shocking state of Alekerange School was exposed, demonstrating the right of this community, along with many others to demand commitments from government to longer-term, permanent solutions to dilapidated classrooms (often made from asbestos) that were condemned decades ago. The recurring and still relevant theme is that the decisions governments make about where and how they allocate funding speaks volumes about which students they consider to be deserving of a quality public education.
On the back of this, the global Covid-19 pandemic took hold, causing our annual conference to be postponed and biosecurity zones to be put in place. For several weeks in March and April, the levels of stress within our membership base were incredible. We were all trying to adapt to a situation that changed almost daily. Despite the incredible stress everyone was under, teachers, principals and support staff continued to create a safe space for their students, maintaining routine and a sense of normality in a world turned upside down. This was a particularly difficult time for many of our remote members. Despite calls from some quarters to close schools, the overwhelming sentiment from members was to ensure there was continuity of education for children. The resilience and solidarity shown by all was inspiring. There was a valid concern from AEU leadership that, in response to the economic devastation wrought by Covid-19, wage freezes and job cuts could be on the table.
In between these stressors, the AEU welcomed the announcement by the Minister and the Department of changes in the structure of the school year for the 2023-2027 period. These gazetted arrangements have seen remote and urban schools operate on the same calendar from 2023 (Gunbalanya excepted), with urban schools no longer commencing a day earlier than remote. These changes came in direct response to lobbying by the AEU on behalf of members and were a definite win, especially for urban teaching employees.
The pre-eminent issue for AEU members in Katherine at this time was, and in many ways still is, the dysfunctional and deteriorating housing situation. This theme continued to emerge on each visit undertaken to Katherine sub-branches by AEU NT officers in 2021. This is unsurprising, given the short-sighted decision by the NT Government and Department of Education in 2019 to phase out longstanding head leasing arrangements.
Buoyed by the successful AEU NT campaign to ‘Lose the Pay Freeze, Keep Our Teachers’, AEU members again stood in solidarity with both each other and union members across the NTPS and voted a resounding NO to the pay freeze.
Early 2022 saw a change of leadership for the union with the departure of Jarvis Ryan and the arrival of Michelle Ayres. Later that year we farewelled Adam Lampe as Branch Secretary and welcomed Rachael Metcalfe to the role.
The AEU commitment to lobby for the dismantling of attendance-based funding (so-called ‘effective’ enrolment) eventually resulted in the Territory government’s announcement to progressively replace this system. For too long Northern Territory students have remained the most underfunded by need in the country – with disastrous consequences for the Territory’s most disadvantaged schools.
The AEU Federal ‘For Every Child’ campaign backed up this result and called upon Federal Government to review and improve bilateral funding agreements with all states and territories to enable the minimum level of funding needed to meet minimum academic standards, known as the SRS (Schooling Resource Standard).
A highlight of this campaign was the epic 2023 road trips that saw AEU officials and employees from across the nation descend upon Canberra for a mass lobbying event and delivery of the tens of thousands of signed postcards collected along the way to the PM.
Our members showed the Albanese Government that Australians still value public education with the announcement of a sizeable injection of cash into the Territory education system. We must now hold government – Federal and Territory – accountable by questioning the details and ensuring that money goes straight into teaching and learning.
It is only by creating mass engagement from the whole community that we will keep building on these wins and achieve the changes we need to see in our schools.
We acknowledge that our office operates out of the traditional lands of the Larrakia people in Garramilla (Darwin) and acknowledge the many lands across the Territory upon which we all teach, work and learn. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future.
At the Australian Education Union Northern Territory, we fight for the rights of our members at work, and for the right of every child to access a high quality public education.
Authorised by Rachael Metcalfe, Branch Secretary, Australian Education Union Northern Territory Branch, Darwin (2024).
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