Defeating the Howard agenda

Against this catalogue of attacks, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has shown itself bereft of ideas and an understanding of its own history. The ALP appears to have abandoned its past in a vain attempt to match the ideological steps of its more conservative counterpart. Instead of developing alternative policies based on Labor's historically expressed commitment to 'ordinary working people', the Federal ALP is confounded in a mix of mimicry, leadership contestation, media genuflection and an all-round failure to confront the Howard Government's agenda.

The Sydney Morning Herald in its editorial (May 6, 2003) acknowledges the deepening conservatism of Australian politics:
"Each federal government since Gough Whitlam's has been more conservative than the one before. These governments have all stressed the importance of economic growth, contributing to the rise in wealth. But they have also stressed the importance of self-reliance. The private sector, notably in health and education, has been encouraged, while the public sector has been trimmed towards a fallback position. Governments have reduced taxes on the rich disproportionately to those on the middle classes."

While the gap between rich and poor in nations like Australia narrowed in the first 60 years of the last century, this gap has widened in recent decades under the spread of this deeper political conservatism.

The role of public education and the NSW Teachers Federation -- A catalyst for "proactive solidarity"

With our unifying commitment to human rights, social justice and equity the Teachers Federation can and will continue to challenge the prevailing political orthodoxy to advocate for and defend the rights of all citizens to access a quality education in a public school, TAFE and university. Federation will maintain its honourable tradition as a strong and active campaigner for sound social policy for the re-creation of a fairer society, a better world.

Public education, and the values that define it, remains the key for a vibrant, inclusive, democratic, multicultural Australia.

Professor Stephen Kemmis, currently working with the Priority Action Schools Program in NSW, has written powerfully on how we might work in the pursuit of social justice:
"Justice requires enhancing proactive solidarity against the tug of reactive solidarity. It requires fostering conditions under which people can struggle together against injustice across social boundaries that appear to divide them. Reactive solidarity, as a refuge from difference, encourages the conditions under which domination and oppression can occur.... Pauline Hanson's One Nation seems to me a good example of this. Her supporters banded together in opposition to what they experienced as Other: a multicultural and globalizing Australia. They sought refuge in a party of like-minded people who, by holding a balance of power in Parliament, might impose their vision on Australia as a whole. But their brief success was undone by the very logic that brought them together -- the logic of reactive solidarity. As differences within the party emerged -- as they must do in any political party or movement -- the logic of reactive solidarity drove them to seek refuge in smaller groupings and factions.

"Proactive solidarity, by contrast, is the force that causes us to band together to overcome the injustices of domination and oppression. It is a powerful historical force, evident in the class struggles that dominated the politics of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, the civil rights struggles of the middle of the 20th century, and the struggle for women's rights that has been re-shaping the world in the last hundred years and more. It is also evident in the global green movement -- the struggle for a sustainable world -- and in the struggle for indigenous rights -- to find a place for traditional modes of life despite the assimilative tendencies of an increasingly homogenised world culture.

"Many institutions in our contemporary societies -- including schools -- are attempting to create the conditions that foster proactive solidarity. Many schools are striving to create relationships in the classroom and school yard, and between the school and its community, that all involved will experience as inclusive, engaging and enabling."

This concept of proactive solidarity is clearly discernible in the aims, values, principles and history of public education in our nation. It is what makes public education the cornerstone of a democratic society. Such solidarity similarly characterises the NSW Teachers Federation.

The campaign

This will be achieved through:
1. Commissioning research under the auspices of Professor Tony Vinson on issues critical to public education.

2. Intense and passionate lobbying of political parties, promoting positive public education and broader social policy. The Federation will work with the Australian Education Union (AEU) to organise a lobby day involving parents, teachers and other community members at Parliament House in Canberra. This will focus on attempting to force the ALP to adopt a position which favours public education as well as condemning the Howard Government and working with the supporters of public education. It will be accompanied by intense local lobbying of Federal Members of Parliament and candidates.

3. Producing high quality material to support action.

4. Paid and unpaid publicity.

5. The pursuance of the AEU nationally distributed workers' rights handbook/booklet designed to educate young people about their rights and unionism. A report is to be provided to October Council 2003 as to the progress that has been made.

6. Federation is to seek to obtain the services of a number of well known public identities from fields such as sport, science, culture and entertainment etc. Federation is to devise a plan to utilise the services of these people as part of a plan to combat the neo-liberal policies of the Howard Government (and indeed any prospective government) regarding public education. Such a plan could involve the use of these prominent identities in public meetings at regional and local levels in media events, in an advertising campaign to highlight the harm being done by Government policies to the positive contributions the public education system makes to society overall. The involvement of other unions and organisations appropriate to such a campaign could also be considered.

7. Federation strongly opposes Federal Government plans to massively increase university fees to students and to attack collective bargaining for university staff in the National Tertiary Education Union. We will undertake solidarity action to stop the retrograde deregulation of tertiary education and to stop universities becoming the preserve of the rich. Our perspective of how Federal Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson's massive fee hikes will lock out working class children from universities and the way that soaring handouts to private schools is defunding public education is a powerful addition to the campaign.

8. Federation give training to volunteer lobbyists to meet and effectively challenge Federal Members, other candidates and the media leading up to the next federal election.

9. This campaign will be further augmented by a nationally coordinated campaign constructed by the AEU and its branches and associated bodies. The AEU has committed over $1 million in an unprecedented campaign to achieve the defeat of the State Grants Act and the Howard agenda.

10. In the longer term the Federation will investigate the creation of a research and campaigning institute to fund research, foster debate and to campaign on progressive social policy. To this end, during the second half of 2003 the Federation will convene a meeting of representatives of possible partner organisations and individuals to establish a steering group for the creation of such an institute. The Federation will allocate resources to assist in the setting up and coordination of such a body.

Summit on the challenges facing our children

Recent tabloid media stories citing research have generated debate on challenges facing children today. The issues covered have included:

All these issues affect the ability of children to learn. Teachers find it very hard to teach students who are hungry, cannot sit still because they have not had the opportunity to burn off their great energy or are high on the sugars from junk food. Teachers find it hard to be as entertaining as the characters in popular television programs and computer games. Teachers find it hard to motivate students who have spent whole weekends at tutoring. Children should not however be demonised because of the values of the world in which they live.

Poverty is increasingly undermining the quality of life and the opportunities and outcomes of too many children. The pressure on families brought about from economic hardship, unemployment and underemployment on the one hand, and the huge number of working hours being forced upon parents to economically survive on the other is eroding the life chances of children in our community.

The issue of the effects of poverty and the pressure on families for economical survival must be a major part of this summit.

The Vinson Inquiry revealed teacher frustration at expectations that individual teachers and schools provide solutions to problems that are a broader society problem. The research of educationalists on school effectiveness focuses on what schools and individual teachers can do to improve learning. Such research goes only halfway to responding to the needs of our children because it does not examine the world which students bring to school.

The Summit would bring together a range of researchers and policy makers with an interest in children. This would allow a broad public debate on the challenges facing children, bring a greater understanding of the challenges facing our children and how both the broader society and not just schools can best respond.

The Federation is to seek financial support for the Summit from the Government and from the Federation's Public Education Fund.