Our profession needs political leaders who respect teachers and education support personnel who are giving 100% every day across the nation. Leaders who are prepared to stand up for them, and, most importantly, to deliver for them.
Peter Dutton has demonstrated very publicly that he is not one of those leaders. Nor are his ideas original as our video shows.
Mr Dutton made a Trump-style commitment to slash the Department of Education although he refuses to say how many jobs will go, and has now backflipped, saying it will happen through attrition and freezing new hires.
In the three years as Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton has not once said he supports full funding of public schools and it’s clear he sees teachers as the problem, not the solution.
He has followed Trump’s playbook by suggesting public school funding would be conditional on schools teaching only what is approved by his government.
After repeatedly criticising the national curriculum (reviewed and endorsed by the last Coalition Government), Mr Dutton is promising to “restore a curriculum that teaches the core fundamentals in our classrooms”.
He has cast himself as the lone warrior fighting against a teaching profession determined to indoctrinate students and turn them out as “disciples of a woke ideology and agenda”.
This fake claim of indoctrination is just a way to hold money back from public schools. This is not an education policy – this is a destructive attack on public school teachers and schools.
This is also just the tip of the iceberg, as we are yet to see any details about his education policy.
There has never been an election where more has been at stake for the future of public schools and the teaching profession.
Australia cannot afford to make the wrong choice.
Public schools can’t risk a Dutton government. Share this video now to make sure every voter knows what’s at stake.
In hope,
Correna Haythorpe
AEU Federal President