Australian Education Union, Victorian Branch

AEU 

NEWS 

v o l u m e 18 I i s s u e 4 I j u n e 2 012 

v i c t o r i a n b r a n c h 

Rally special | Gonski funding campaign | Performance pay 

A E U 

t : 0 3 9 4 1 7 2 8 2 2 f : 1 3 0 0 6 5 8 0 7 8 w : w w w . a e u v i c . a s n . a u

#2159 

AEU 

NEWS 

AEU Victorian Branch 

Branch president: Mary Bluett 

Branch secretary: Brian Henderson 

AEU VIC head office 

address 112 Trenerry Crescent, Abbotsford, 3067 

postal address PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067 

tel (03) 9417 2822, 1800 013 379 fax 1300 658 078 

web www.aeuvic.asn.au email melbourne@aeuvic.asn.au 

country offices 

Ballarat (03) 5331 1155 | Benalla (03) 5762 2714 

Bendigo (03) 5442 2666 | Gippsland (03) 5134 8844 

Geelong (03) 5222 6633 

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Contents 

cover story 

The loudest message 

12 

AEU members did their union proud 

with the biggest stopwork in the 

union’s history on June 7. 

features 

14 

18 

18 

30 

regulars 

A cynical performance 

Rallying cry 

COVER PHOTO: Meredith O’Shea 

Ted Baillieu reveals new levels of political cynicism 

in trying to impose payment by results on 

Victoria’s public school teachers. 

We give a Gonski 

What difference could the Gonski recommendations 

make to Victorian schools? AEU members headed 

to Canberra to let their MPs know. 

TAFE teacher and Anna Stewart Memorial Project 

participant Jennifer Walsh found herself in the 

middle of the action when the TAFE cuts hit. 

Playground talk 

Ned Manning has distilled a lifetime of teaching into 

a book that tells it like it is. 

3 president’s report 27 safety matters 

4 letters 28 classifieds 

23 women’s focus 29 christina adams 

24 AEU training 30 culture 

25 on the phones 31 giveaways 

contacts 

editorial enquiries Nic Barnard 

tel (03) 9418 4841 fax (03) 9415 8975 email nic.barnard@aeuvic.asn.au 

advertising enquiries Lyn Baird 

tel (03) 9418 4879 fax (03) 9415 8975 email lyn.baird@aeuvic.asn.au 

AEU News is produced by the AEU Publications Unit: 

editor Nic Barnard | designers Lyn Baird, Peter Lambropoulos, Kim Fleming 

journalists Rachel Power, Sian Watkins | editorial assistant Helen Prytherch 

PrintPost Approved: 349181/00616 ISSN: 1442—1321. Printed in Australia by Total Print on Re Art Matt 100% Recycled 

Paper. Free to AEU members. Subscription rate: $60 per annum. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the AEU News are 

those of the authors/members and are not necessarily the official policy of the AEU (Victorian Branch). Contents © AEU 

Victorian Branch. Contributed articles, photographs and illustrations are © their respective authors. No reproduction 

without permission. 

Printed on ReArt Matt 100% recycled paper 

2 aeu news | june 2012

The day TED saw RED 

Thirteen thousand protestors outside Parliament reminded the 

Premier it’s time to honour his word. 

president’s report 

YOUR message to Ted Baillieu 

could not be clearer: honour your 

promise on salaries, rein in contract 

employment and forget performance 

pay and so-called “productivity” 

trade-offs. 

June 7 was an unforgettable day 

— the biggest AEU teachers and 

principals’ strike in Victorian history. 

For the first time we filled Hisense 

Arena to its 11,000 capacity with a 

further 1,500 members locked outside 

watching the meeting and debate on a 

large video screen. 

In Mildura, 350 members were 

connected to Melbourne by video link. 

Another rally and march were held in 

Wodonga. 

The meetings overwhelmingly 

resolved to continue the campaign for 

as long as it takes. We unanimously 

reject performance pay — so counterproductive 

to the collegiality required 

for the best student outcomes. 

Members are incensed by the 

underlying assumption of performance 

pay — that we don’t give our utmost to 

achieving the very best for our students. 

Level 3/432 St Kilda Road, Melbourne 3004 

Visit us at www.retirevic.com.au 

What an insult to propose that 

dollar carrots will improve your efforts. 

A significant body of research 

supports our view. Merit pay schemes, 

most recently in the USA, have 

failed to produce improved student 

outcomes and in some cases have led 

to poorer results. Trial after trial has 

been abandoned. 

The river of red flowing from 

Hisense to Parliament was another 

spectacular demonstration of member 

determination. And just as the number 

striking was unprecedented, so was 

the media coverage. 

All this builds strong pressure on 

the Government, and Premier Baillieu 

in particular. It was his repeated 

pledge to make Victorian teachers the 

highest paid — at every level — that 

the public has responded to. They 

expect politicians now to honour their 

promises. 

We have received many messages 

of support from the public and from 

parents. While there were a few (very 

few) complaints about the stopwork, 

overwhelmingly parents understood 

the issues and that we did not take 

action lightly. 

They supported their children’s 

teachers in glowing terms. Peak 

parent bodies Parents Victoria and 

VICSSO gave their support. We thank 

them. 

Not a short campaign 

We must prepare for a long campaign. 

We will need to be determined, disciplined 

and above all strategic. The 

resolution endorsed at the meeting 

provides the basis for that campaign. 

We have watched other disputes 

and seen the Government’s game plan 

— we must not be forced into Fair 

Work for arbitration. We must win with 

a strategic campaign that is sustainable 

over potentially a long time. 

Thank you 

A heartfelt thank you to the tens of 

thousands of members who took a 

stand on June 7. 

To the many CRTs who refused to 

scab on the day — thank you. We are 

committed to achieving better pay and 

conditions for you. 

To those members who did not 

take action on June 7, I urge you to 

support the campaign of bans and 

limitations that we will now roll out. 

I also ask you to consider joining us 

at future actions and increase the 

pressure on the Government. 

Finally, welcome to the almost 3000 

new members who joined to support 

the June 7 action. You made a difference 

too. ◆ 

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www.aeuvic.asn.au 3

letters 

Letters from members are welcome. Send to: AEU News, PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067, 

fax (03) 9415 8975 or email aeunews@aeuvic.asn.au. Letters should be no more than 

250 words and must include name, workplace and contact details of the writer. Letters may be 

edited for space and clarity. Next deadline: July 25, 2012. 

Betrayed by my party 

HAVE been a member of the AEU for 10 years. 

I Until last month I was also a member of the 

Liberal party. Before you judge me for that, please 

read on. 

I have decided not to renew my Liberal party 

membership. I was asked why I had made this 

decision. What follows is the reply I gave the party. 

I was a party member for about 12 years. 

I worked the whole time to get a Liberal 

Government elected. 

I was in the audience at State Council when Ted 

Baillieu talked about making Victorian teachers 

the best paid in the country. I feel humiliated and 

betrayed by the approach that the Government’s 

representatives have taken towards the negotiations, 

and see the Government’s offer as nothing 

short of an insulting attack on my working conditions 

and career prospects. 

To me it is now shamefully obvious that 

the Liberals generally hold public education in 

contempt and consider the kids of parents who 

make the “choice” to send their kids to government 

schools as second-class Victorians who are 

not worthy of the best facilities. It’s as if they 

think they are not pulling their weight by relying on 

the Government to provide them with their kid’s 

education. 

As for the teachers in these schools, it would 

appear we are thought of as under-performing 

slacker bolshie radicals who need to be held 

responsible for an apparently under-performing 

state school sector. Never mind that our results 

are often as good or better than other states’, 

despite being proportionally under-funded, and 

that we are continually asked to do more with less. 

Oh, and never mind that one of the first 

things done was to withdraw $450 million from 

the system then a few months later put a similar 

amount towards a new prison. I find that insulting 

as well. 

I have an obvious interest in public education, 

but it is only one area where I find this 

Government disappointing. We used to talk about 

Bracks as the “do-nothing Premier”. Compared to 

Ted he was an over-achiever. 

— Jeremy Leeson 

Doncaster SC 

Don’t forget the teachers 

in the middle 

IN THE last schools agreement it 

was claimed that those at the top 

and the bottom of the pay scales 

were the biggest winners. If this is 

the case, why does the AEU continue 

to compare these teachers with 

those interstate? Shouldn’t we be 

comparing those teachers who are 

climbing the scale? 

I started teaching in 2004 and 

since then haven’t taken any leave 

other than sick leave and have passed 

all of my incremental reviews. Despite 

this, I started 2012 on $67,451: the 

pay of a six-year-out Victorian teacher 

despite being in my ninth year. 

A nine-year-out teacher is at the 

top of the scale in most states. This 

means I started the year being paid 

between $10,000 and $25,000 below 

every other state. Our top-of-thescale 

teachers might be 8.85% 

below Western Australia, which is 

disgraceful, but a nine-year-out 

teacher in my situation is 36% below 

WA. 

I even started the year 15% below 

Queensland, which has the second 

lowest level of pay. 

Mine isn’t an isolated story 

as most teachers climbing the 

incremental scale are either the 

lowest or close to the lowest paid 

in Australia. There are a significant 

number of those teachers like me 

who are getting paid more than 

$10,000 less than in any other state 

or territory. Shouldn’t our campaign 

be directed towards pay justice for 

these teachers? 

— Steven Adams 

Hallam Senior College 

Fund us to do our jobs 

I AM A late-to-teaching person 

in my fourth year, age 38. I work 

at Korumburra Secondary in 

careers, VCAL, MIPS, VET, alternative 

programs, work experience 

and whatever else is going on. I am 

extremely stressed in my job and 

had started to wonder why I actually 

wanted to be a teacher. I found June 

7 extremely empowering and for 

the first time this year I did not feel 

powerless in my situation. 

However, a couple of parents at 

my son’s school did whinge about how 

good teachers have it, why do they 

want more pay, etc etc. On June 7 

I was not striking for money. I was 

striking for the funding and resourcing 

at our schools and how pathetic it is 

in Victoria. 

I did my first year of teaching at 

Katherine High School in the Northern 

Territory, teaching its VCAL equivalent 

program. Every teacher at Katherine 

had an average of nine hours 

planning time each week, contrasting 

greatly with the three or four hours 

we get if we are lucky. 

If Baillieu wants productivity, then 

fund me and my school so I can do 

my job properly. 

Like the nurses, we need to take 

this away from being about wages to 

being about resourcing our schools 

properly so Victorian kids get the best 

education possible. 

Thanks for June 7. 

— Jodie Matthews 

Korumburra Secondary College 

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news 

Pollies BANNED 

Dixon, Hall and colleagues unwelcome in state schools. 

Nic Barnard AEU News 

COALITION politicians are “banned” 

from visiting public schools as the 

AEU steps up its EBA dispute with the 

Baillieu Government following the June 

7 strike. 

Members have already staged 

protests at a number of visits by 

Schools Minister Martin Dixon following 

the rally. The Minister got noisy receptions 

at Sandringham, Gisborne and 

Castlemaine secondary colleges with 

members greeting him with placards. 

“We gave him a pretty colourful 

welcome,” organiser Meaghan Flack 

said after the Gisborne protest. 

AEU branch president Mary Bluett 

said: “As we’ve heard consistently in 

messages to the union and in calls 

to talkback radio, the community has 

a strong expectation that politicians 

should keep their word. 

“In that context, it’s totally inappropriate 

for Coalition politicians to expect 

to use government schools for photo 

opportunities and good news stories. 

They’ll find our members greeting 

them whenever they try to do so.” 

The June 7 rally overwhelmingly 

supported a program of bans, 

limitations and further strikes. After the 

record turnout at Hisense Arena on 

June 7, the union has pledged to rally in 

even greater numbers next term at Rod 

Laver Arena if the Government does 

not drop its stance on performance pay 

and productivity and produce better 

offers on pay and contract teaching. 

As AEU News went to press, branch 

council was due to debate the next 

steps in the campaign. Details will 

be posted at www.aeuvic.asn.au/ 

eba2012. 

Banner bugs 

Baillieu 

Ted Baillieu may 

have contrived to 

be in Gippsland for 

the June 7 rally, 

but he still got the 

message to keep his 

promises. 

Enterprising member Kirsten 

Norman, living opposite the Premier’s 

East Hawthorn mansion, strung up 

a banner on her balcony with the 

message: “Honour your word Ted, 

invest in teachers.” 

Baillieu arrived home from his 

morning swim as the sign went up. 

Kirsten (pictured above at left with 

colleague Naomi Maes) says he stood 

on his doorstep staring at it before 

going inside. 

The message was too much for 

Taking our message to the Premier’s front door — literally 

one sensitive soul — surely not 

the Premier — who called police 

complaining of “offensive language”. 

Detectives had a chuckle when they 

arrived at Kirsten’s house, and told 

her they were “right behind you”. 

Kirsten moved out two days after 

the rally, taking her banner with her. 

It’s now safe for Ted to leave his house 

… though he may wish to avoid Lygon 

Street (see page 6). ◆ 

Rally special: pages 12–17. 

The rear of Sandringham’s banner has the signatures of members who have stopped work over the years 

Members put on a colourful display at Castlemaine SC 

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news 

PHOTO: ANGELA BAILEY 

VTHC backs AEU fight 

THE Victorian Trades Hall Council has 

strung a giant banner across the 

front of its building in Carlton in support 

of the AEU’s agreement campaign. 

The banner reminds the public of 

Baillieu’s broken pay promise and says: 

“Support our teachers and support 

public education”. It matches the 

AEU’s March billboard campaign which 

highlighted the Coalition’s $481 million 

education cuts. 

VTHC secretary Brian Boyd was 

among speakers at the June 7 rally, 

telling strikers: “The union movement is 

100% behind your campaign for justice. 

“We have a premier who isn’t 

listening to people. … His government 

has a key responsibility to the people 

of Victoria and yet they’re treating the 

people they employ to do that work like 

dogs.” ◆ 

Behind the image 

NEW healthy body image and 

A media literacy program allows 

Year 8 students to explore beauty 

and gender stereotypes and unpack 

advertising and media techniques. 

SeeMe — the media, my body 

and me is an online resource 

designed to fit the English curriculum. 

It was produced by the Queen 

Victoria Women’s Centre (QVWC) 

with student and teacher input from 

Melbourne Girls’ and Doncaster SC. 

Centre CEO Vivia Hickman said a 

majority of students in pilots felt more 

confident and “significantly happier 

about their bodies”. The site includes 

an interactive “behind the scenes” 

look at Photoshop techniques used 

in the media to make models look 

slimmer and less blemished. 

To find out more go to the 

website at seeme.org.au. ◆ 

Merit pay “SELL OUT” by principals’ body 

School leaders face results-linked pay under deal with principals’ federation. 

Brian Henderson branch secretary 

THE Australian Principals Federation is close 

to reaching agreement with the Baillieu 

Government to introduce performance pay for 

principal class officers. 

APF president Chris Cotching reported to a 

meeting of Victorian state school principals on 

May 15 that the deal would mean probable salary 

increases of 3.5%, 3.25%, 2.4% and 2.4%. 

Ominously he said that productivity gains were 

expected in return for anything above 2.5%, but did 

not say what the APF had traded off. 

The merit pay system negotiated by the APF 

would see principals stripped of incremental 

progression with three-quarters instead receiving 

rewards linked to school performance — a 20% 

bonus for 20% of principals, 10% for 10% and 

1.4% for the rest. Seventy per cent of school 

leaders would get 1.4% or nothing. 

All decisions on bonuses would be made by the 

regional director. Principals would be eligible for a 

further 2% for remuneration or range reviews if 

they do more work beyond the school or take up 

positions in “difficult” schools. 

Once again the APF has, in a repeat of the 

Kennett years, negotiated salary increases based 

on principals doing the work of the public servants 

the Government intends to cut. 

More work will be piled on already overburdened 

leaders, taking them out of their schools while 

being paid according to how their school performs. 

Premier Ted Baillieu last month announced that 

performance pay for senior public servants is to be 

phased out for new and renewing contracts. If such 

a system is no good for government executives, why 

is it good for PCOs? 

Asked if there was any research to justify 

performance pay, Cotching replied: “No, but 

the model is the only pragmatic way to receive 

improved conditions for principals.” The APF is 

again selling out its principles and principals to the 

Baillieu Governments’ budget cuts. 

AEU principals, at a well-attended meeting earlier 

this year, unanimously rejected performance pay on 

the grounds that it was divisive and insulting to their 

professionalism. 

If and when the APF publically announces 

its sell-out, the AEU will campaign against any 

agreement that features performance pay. ◆ 


news 

Cockatoo’s pool goal 

for NT KIDS 

Schools urged to join fundraising to build an 

Arnhem Land community a swimming pool. 

Sian Watkins AEU News 

VICTORIAN primary school is 

A seeking support to help raise 

$2 million to build a swimming pool for 

students at a partner school in remote 

Arnhem Land. 

Cockatoo Primary is urging other 

schools to join it in holding an out-ofuniform 

day on August 1 to raise the 

money for students in Ramingining, 

600km east of Darwin. 

The waterhole used by Ramingining 

(pronounced Ramin-gin-ing) students 

is not in walking distance from 

the town and is not always safe to 

swim after heavy wet seasons when 

crocodiles roam further afield. (Google 

Maps gives an excellent view of the 

township.) 

For 20 years, about nine 

Year 5 students from Cockatoo, 

in outer eastern Melbourne, have 

spent a week in Ramingining after a 

week acclimatising and sightseeing 

in Darwin. Year 5 students from 

Ramingining make a reciprocal visit to 

Cockatoo for about 10 days in spring. 

Cockatoo teacher Tim Stapleton, 

who has accompanied students on 

three trips north, says the exchange 

engenders a “profound sense of 

reconciliation”. 

“The kids are totally blown away by 

the rich social life and enjoyment of 

people and the way they are embraced 

so keenly by the community. 

“As soon as they arrive they are 

taken off to play. Race and colour and 

the political agenda of reconciliation 

all vanish — it’s just people getting 

on. It’s beautiful to observe.” 

Stapleton says there have been 

“no major dramas” on the trips, apart 

Ramingining and Cockatoo students 

from a suspected snake bite. “It’s 

heavily regulated — it has to be, for 

insurance and liability reasons. When 

we go walking across the mud flats the 

local kids dance across it in bare feet 

and our kids plead with us to be able 

to take their shoes off, which are like 

bricks and caked in heavy mud.” 

The school’s relationship with 

the Ramingining community started 

in 1993. Cockatoo’s then assistant 

principal, Lance Walker, was visiting 

his daughter in Darwin and called in 

on the Northern Territory Education 

Department to express his interest in 

establishing a relationship with a NT 

school. 

Coincidentally, on the same day, 

Ramingining principal Leigh Mullins 

rang the department to let them know 

he’d be interested in forming a relationship 

with a school “down south”. 

Stapleton says Cockatoo hopes to 

make August 1 a national out-ofuniform 

day. Two million dollars would 

build a “reasonable-sized” pool, filled 

with bore water. The NT Government 

has pledged $200,000 and local 

groups, including the Arnhem Land 

Progress Association, have offered 

to contribute to ongoing maintenance 

costs, including chemical costs. 

Money can be deposited in the 

Ramingining Fundraising Account 

held with Bendigo Bank (deposits 

are also accepted at Commonwealth 

Bank branches). The BSB number is 

633 000 and the account number 

146014337. 

The campaign has a Facebook 

page: www.facebook.com/ 

MalaManapantogetherDay. For more 

information call Cockatoo PS on 

(03) 5968 8017. ◆ 

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news 

Fire works rewarded 

Jane Hayward kept her school going after the Black Saturday fires. 

Sian Watkins AEU News 

STRATHEWEN Primary School principal Jane Hayward was appointed a 

Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday honours list for 

her service to the Strathewen community, particularly schoolchildren and their 

families, following the “Black Saturday” fires in February 2009. 

The school, near Kinglake, north-east of Melbourne, was destroyed by the 

Kilmore East fire. Four days later, Hayward got the schools’ 30-plus students 

back to school in a borrowed space in nearby Wattle Glen. Students returned 

to a rebuilt school on the original site in October 2010. 

After the fire, Ms Hayward’s work included teaching, coordinating counselling 

services, distributing aid, organising activities to cheer students and 

helping prepare plans for a new school. 

The hard hat that students decorated and which Hayward wore on site 

visits during the school’s rebuilding in 2010 now sits in the Melbourne 

Museum as a symbol of community loss and rebirth. 

On the morning of the fires, Hayward visited her parents in Hadfield. As 

she returned home to Kinglake her brother warned her by telephone not to 

travel via Whittlesea. He had only just managed to evacuate safely. 

Taking an alternative route, she was flagged down by her sister at the St 

Andrews CFA shed and told not to continue up the mountain. Hayward had no 

idea whether or not her daughter and husband were safe. She learned hours 

later they had found refuge on the Yea football oval with 2000 others. Hayward’s 

brother and his family lost their house at Humevale. 

Hayward was aware she had been nominated for the AM award but receiving 

a gold-embossed envelope from the Governor-General’s office was still a 

surprise. 

“Research scientists and surgeons tend to get AMs, not principals of little 

country schools.” 

Membership 

OVER THE TOP 

AEU membership has hit a new record, breaking the 48,000 

mark for the first time as the EBA campaign prompted school 

staff to join the union. 

The union’s membership centre staff were deluged with almost 

3000 applications between May 1 and the stopwork on June 

7. Some are returning members, but centre manager Glenda 

Piddington said the majority were new to the union. 

Only AEU members can take protected industrial action in 

pursuit of a new agreement. Non-members risk being sued for 

taking action. EBA campaigns always bring a spike in membership 

but the rush to join this year has been unprecedented. 

Glenda praised her staff for keeping calm heads as they rushed 

to process the applications. 

“The online joining system has made it faster than entering all that data by 

hand like we used to do. We don’t have the piles of paper around the office 

anymore. But even so, it’s been pretty impressive. There’s been a bit of 

overtime going on,” she said. 

The award is “very humbling to receive for the work of a whole team,” she 

says. “I’ve had a wonderful support crew and staff and support from the wider 

community. It’s been very special for everyone. Staff and the kids and the 

community have been so excited.” 

Hayward, who attended Glenroy High School and trained at Phillip Institute, 

formerly Coburg Teachers’ College, will be presented with a medallion at a 

ceremony at Victoria’s Government House later this year. ◆ 

L-R: Membership centre staff Glenda, Lina, Wanda, Leonie, Helen and Judy. 

“There’s a big group of young teachers coming on board — a lot of 

students making the conversion to full membership. They want to be part of the 

campaign and when you see the footage of June 7, you know it’s pretty historic.” 

Non-members can find out about the benefits of membership and join online 

at www.aeuvic.asn.au/join. ◆ 


news 

TAFE protests flood Parliament 

TAFE4All’s e-lobby campaign has jammed the inboxes of 

Baillieu and Hall 

Gillian Robertson deputy branch secretary 

THE message is getting louder, Premier Baillieu — you have got the cuts to 

our public TAFE institutes so horribly wrong. 

The TAFE4All campaign is proving crucial in helping working class Victorians 

tell Ted Baillieu and other state politicians that the public will not cop the massive 

cuts announced in the May budget. 

Over 22,000 emails have been sent to local MPs by people disgusted at what 

the cuts mean to students and communities. Baillieu and Skills Minister Peter 

Hall alone have received almost 3000 each. The number of emails, sent via the 

tafe4all.org.au website, continues to grow. 

The AEU has held 11 regional rallies on TAFE campuses and outside MPs’ 

electorate offices, including Skills Minister Peter Hall’s office in Traralgon, each 

attracting hundreds of teachers, students and supporters. We finished in style 

with 350 people at a Ballarat unions rally chanting “Save TAFE, sack Ted” as 

Baillieu arrived for a speech at the Rural Press Club. 

A feature of the rallies has been the number of people coming forward to 

tell the crowd why TAFE matters to them. Some of the stories have left people 

in tears. 

The Aboriginal learning support officer who had been made redundant and 

was finishing up the following day just wanted to tell people of her concern for 

the 26 young Koories who would no longer have the study support they needed. 

The young African man who came to Australia as a refugee, enrolled in his 

local TAFE for a diploma of community studies, then went on to take a degree in 

social work. He’s now working in his chosen profession — he would never have 

done it without the pathway TAFE gave him. 

The young woman who approached Mary Bluett in tears, telling her that her 

disability support person had lost her job. The student had lost a friend in the 

classroom, the person who helped her learn. 

Another young woman moved from Bairnsdale to Traralgon this year for a 

certificate IV in graphic arts. She had planned to continue on to a diploma; but 

the course has been cut, the campus is closing and she’s left high and dry. 

Every one of these stories needs to be told. They illuminate the barriers to 

education and training that working class students have to deal with because of 

Baillieu’s cuts to the public TAFE system. 

AEU TAFE members are now anxiously waiting to see whether they will be 

among the redundancies announced. Imagine what it is like working at South 

West Institute of TAFE in Warrnambool, Portland or Hamilton. So far, 56 SWIT 

staff have been told they’re no longer affordable. That means 56 families in 

western Victoria that are going to be devastated, and hundreds of students 

locked out of education and training. 

They, like their teachers, are totally bewildered and shocked. 

Western Victoria is a Coalition stronghold — Denis Napthine, Simon Ramsay, 

David O’Brien, Terry Mulder and Hugh Delahunty its MPs. Their constituents will 

not forget what they are doing to their local TAFE, and to their chances of an 

affordable and high-quality education. 

South West TAFE is just one of 18 institutes dealing with redundancies. They 

have advised staff the job losses will continue until at least early next year. 

Our TAFE4All campaign will hold more rallies in marginal seats, a Melbourne 

city rally in Term 3, lobbying of MPs at state and federal levels and a return to 

the regions as well. 

The issue will not go away for this Baillieu Government. Already, 510 media 

articles have been written about the TAFE cuts. Local papers know what matters 

to their readers. It’s more proof that TAFE matters to working class people. ◆ 

WHO else could be the AEU’s rep 

of the month for June except … 

all of them? 

The extraordinary turnout on 

June 7 came thanks to the hard work 

of sub-branch presidents, secretaries, 

treasurers and executives in 

schools from Mildura to Mornington, 

Warrnambool to Bairnsdale and 

beyond. 

The almost 3000 new members 

who have signed up in the past six 

weeks are also testament to the 

work our reps have done, recruiting 

in staffrooms and getting out the 

message that this campaign affects 

everybody. 

Putting up posters, sorting out 

meetings, signing up student teachers 

and sending out letters to parents 

— our reps have been the engine of 

the campaign. They are the ones who 

made the trek to Abbotsford to make 

sure their members had campaign 

tee-shirts, who ordered banners for 

them to rally round and arranged the 

buses to bring them to Melbourne. 

They are the first point of contact 

for members in schools, the conduit 

for information from the union to the 

rank and file. Without them, stopworks 

and industrial campaigns simply 

cannot happen. 

It’s not just in schools that our 

reps have been working hard. Our 

TAFE reps have an unimaginable 

burden to cope with as cuts and 

redundancies devastate their institutes. 

Our disability service reps have 

been key to our equal pay campaign. 

So to every AEU rep in every 

workplace, we say thank you for your 

work. 

There is no union without you. ◆ 

Nominate your REP! 

Does your school or workplace AEU Rep deserve special recognition? Email aeunews@aeuvic.asn.au telling us who 

you’re nominating and why. 

www.aeuvic.asn.au 9

news 

CONGRESS 

pushes for job security 

Unions reject move to “shortterm 

insecure” employment 

culture. 

Justin Mullaly vice president, 

secondary 

THE ACTU Congress in Sydney saw 

unions unanimously endorse a plan 

of action to improve the working lives 

of Australians. 

Congress approved policies 

covering all aspects of work and union 

activities including delegates’ rights, 

young workers and unions, improved 

bargaining legislation, work/life 

balance, work health and safety, 

recognition of Australia’s first peoples 

in the constitution and the role of 

women in unions among many others. 

Reporting on the Secure Jobs, 

Better Future campaign, re-elected 

ACTU president Ged Kearney outlined 

how success would define the working 

lives of Australians for decades. 

She reported that 40% of 

Australian workers are employed in 

contract or casual work. With little 

or no job security, too many have no 

rights to holiday or sick leave, are paid 

varying amounts each week and often 

have little control over when they work 

and for how long. 

More than one million contractors 

are still employed casually after a year 

in the job and another 15% have been 

in their job for more than five years. 

They earn on average over 20% less 

than permanent full-time workers over 

ACTU president Ged Kearney 

a 35-hour week and can be sacked at 

short notice with no redundancy pay. 

Kearney called for unions to fight 

for these workers to have the same 

rights, entitlements and certainty as 

their permanent colleagues. 

“Australians don’t want a society 

where short-term, insecure work is 

the norm. We want a society where 

everyone has the right to a permanent 

job — to feel secure in their work, 

to grow their career, to support their 

family and own their own home.” 

With vocational education and 

training one of the keys to job security, 

and given the Baillieu Government’s 

savage cuts to TAFE, Victorian unions 

keenly followed the VET debate. 

Given the Federal Government’s 

foolhardy decision to allow VET to 

follow Victoria down the road to 

privatisation, the ACTU reaffirmed its 

commitment to a strong, high-quality 

and well-resourced TAFE system. 

Congress also considered policy on 

the important role of early childhood 

education and care, with delegates 

supporting the need to professionalise 

the childcare workforce. 

To locate Australian unions in an 

international context, Congress heard 

about the experiences of unionists in 

Fiji and Wisconsin — both of whom 

face anti-democratic anti-worker 

governments. ◆ 

Quality conference 

GRUEN Transfer panellist Dan Gregory (left) 

is among speakers at this year’s AEU K–6 

Conference for early childhood and primary educators 

on August 17–18. 

The conference theme is Quality: Defining, 

achieving and celebrating the best of what we do. Gregory will speak 

on shifting parent and community perceptions about your school or 

kindergarten. 

Workshops will cover collaborating with families, mentoring, Reggio Emilia, 

science for young children, music teaching, teamwork and more. To register 

or find out more, go to www.tln.org.au/k6. ◆ 

PHOTO: PHILIP MARTIN 

Lesson well learned 

A 10-year-old takes the premier to task. 

YEAR 5 student Bailey Kitchen is 

still waiting for a reply to his letter 

to Ted Baillieu in support of the June 

7 stopwork. 

The letter, forwarded by his mum, 

Bentleigh AEU member Shelley, was 

read out at Hisense Arena by AEU 

president Mary Bluett. 

Bailey, 10, wrote to the premier: 

“I know how hard teachers work 

because my Mum is a teacher and 

I see first hand the time she and all 

of the other teachers at the school 

work. 

“Some teachers even take on 

extra roles, area coordinator, lunch 

clubs, sports, etc which are all 

benefiting the students. Lots of these 

extra things are in the teacher’s own 

time.” 

He continued: “Teachers are 

a very significant part of society 

because … everyone deserves 

a good education. Without great 

Croydon Special Developmental School 

Support 

staff 

support 

teachers this can’t happen. 

“(My teachers teach us) good 

values such as honesty and respect 

… in their own actions and words 

and that shows I can trust them. 

When I see the ads on TV where you 

promise that Victorian teachers will 

be the highest paid in the country, I 

wonder if I can trust you.” 

Shelley later wrote to Ms Bluett, 

saying: “Thank you for taking notice 

of Bailey’s letter and showing him 

that some people are prepared to 

listen to what children have to say. 

“He has had no response from 

the Premier’s office and I expect he 

never will.” 

She added: “If students broke 

promises to their teachers, that 

would be considered unacceptable 

behaviour, so let’s try to teach 

Baillieu the lesson my 10-year-old 

has already mastered!” ◆ 

ES staff at Peninsula Specialist College 

EDUCATION support members were unable to strike on June 7 but backed 

their colleagues with a display of red in staffrooms across the state. ES 

members are covered by a separate agreement to teachers and principals, 

for which negotiations are still continuing weekly. Members can get progress 

reports at AEU regional meetings. 

Croydon Special Developmental School and Peninsula Specialist College in 

Dromana were among those where staff donned red AEU tee-shirts in solidarity. 

The support was reciprocated. Many members at the Melbourne rally 

cited low pay and insecure employment among ES staff as reasons for their 

anger at the Baillieu Government. ◆ 


news 

SOUTH AUSTRALIA 

THE SA Government is copying 

Victoria’s changes to VET that 

threaten TAFEs and favour private 

training providers. 

AEU-SA vice president David 

Smith says the Weatherill-led 

Government’s “Skills for All” plan 

and its TAFE SA bill are “squarely 

based” on Victorian legislation. “The 

Government is desperately trying 

to distance itself from the Victorian 

disaster, but any politician with a 

little nous can see that it’s the same 

bodgie recipe,” Smith says. 

“It is unthinkable that South 

Australia, poised on the brink of 

a huge mining and defence boom, 

is throwing its world-class training 

provider to the wolves.” 

NEW SOUTH WALES 

TAFE funding was cut by $16m 

in this month’s NSW budget, with 

training delivery projected to decline 

by almost 250,000 contact hours. 

The budget also allocated $13m less 

to TAFE infrastructure and $25m 

less to support the training system. 

Opposition MPs said TAFE 

colleges would incur a disproportionate 

share of up to 10,000 

public-sector job cuts in the next 

year. “This is the first time I have 

ever seen vocational training 

funding go backwards in dollar 

terms,” opposition education 

spokeswoman Carmel Tebbutt said. 

NORTHERN TERRITORY 

Contract teachers regularly went 

unpaid for their end-of-year leave 

until the end of January, until the 

AEU-NT branch intervened. Branch 

president Matthew Cranitch said 

he’d been “appalled” to learn the 

practice had existed for years. 

“Teachers having worked all 

year are sent off on the longest 

break, and to have their Christmas 

celebrations, with as little as one 

week’s pay,” he said. 

The union complained to the NT 

Education Department and contract 

teachers now receive their entitlements 

at the end of their contract. ◆ 

New push for GONSKI deal 

Web campaign urges Canberra to end delays 

over new funding system. 

NEW AEU campaign urges schools, 

A parents and communities to say 

they “give a Gonski” and put pressure 

on Julia Gillard to deliver a new funding 

system and a $5 billion boost to 

education. 

A poll of 1,261 Australians by 

Auspoll this month found that nine 

out of 10 believe that public schools 

urgently need greater funding and a 

majority support recommendations 

of the Gonski Review of education 

funding. 

Most state schools would get 

hundreds of thousands of dollars 

more every year if the recommendations 

were enacted. The panel chaired 

by David Gonski called for a new 

funding system, and the investment of 

an extra $5bn with the bulk going to 

state schools because they teach the 

majority of disadvantaged students. 

But any changes require federal 

legislation by the end of the year if 

they are to take effect in 2014. The 

Gillard Government has yet to commit 

Creating change 

$15,000 prize is on offer for the 

A winning school in an arts competition 

that aims to raise awareness and 

get young Australians actively involved 

in the initiative to end Indigenous 

disparity in one generation. 

The GenerationOne campaign’s 

CREATivE CHANGE competition 

encourages primary schools to 

Stay informed — Join the debate 

Keep up to date and have your say on the AEU’s campaign and social media sites. 

MY SCHOOL NEEDS 

TAFE4All (tafe4all.org.au) 

Your starting point for the fight to save TAFE. 

My School Needs (myschoolneeds.com.au) 

Our public campaign for the funding and resources 

we need to support our students. 

I give a Gonski (igiveagonski.com.au) 

Lobby the Federal Government to implement 

findings from the Gonski review. 

to the Gonski recommendations and 

Schools Minister Peter Garrett said 

this month that the amount of work 

needed to fill in the details of a new 

system could blow reforms out by a 

year. 

That may be too late. The Tony 

Abbott-led Coalition says it would not 

change the existing funding system if 

elected next year, at least until 2017. 

People can register their support 

for Gonski’s proposals on the I give a 

Gonski website, igiveagonski.com.au. 

It explains why the review was initiated 

and why it recommended overhauling 

the existing funding system that 

favours private schools. Fact sheets, 

posters and logos can be downloaded. 

The campaign was prominent at the 

AEU’s June 7 rally, filming members 

talking about Gonski. The video can be 

found at youtu.be/0lFUmxAhnI8. 

Under the existing funding 

system, introduced by the Howard 

Government, between 65% and 

70% of Canberra’s direct funding for 

perform and film their own version 

of the GenerationOne theme song, 

Hands Across Australia. 

Secondary schools are invited to 

use the Warumpi Band’s Blackfella/ 

Whitefella song to inspire a creative 

response to Indigenous disparity. The 

competition is open to all Australian 

schools, whether they have 

Indigenous students or not. 

In some rural areas, up to 70% 

schools goes to the Catholic and 

independent sectors. 

State schools’ share of Canberra 

money will decline by 12% in real 

terms over the next two years 

($670 million a year) while funding to 

private schools increases by 15% over 

the same period ($1.3bn) 

Of those surveyed by Auspoll, 47% 

said their opinion of the federal Labor 

Government would improve if it acted 

on Gonski and 56% said their opinion 

of it would worsen if it didn’t act. 

How can you help? Go to 

igiveagonski.com.au to register your 

support for better funding. 

You can also write to or email your 

federal MP. Find contact details at 

australia.gov.au/directories/contactparliament. 

◆ 

We give a Gonski: pages 18–20. 

of Indigenous students regularly do 

not attend school and Indigenous 

students are half as likely to stay at 

school until the end of Year 12 as 

other students. 

A resource pack will be sent 

to every school this month. 

GenerationOne is supported by 

the AEU. More details at www. 

generationone.org.au. Entries close 

October 19. 

Facebook 

www.facebook.com/aeuvic 

www.facebook.com/tafe4all 

www.facebook.com/myschoolneeds 

Twitter 

@marybluett, @aeuvictoria, and follow our 

campaigns at @tafe4all and @myschoolneeds. 

You Tube 

www.youtube.com/AEUVictoria. 

www.aeuvic.asn.au 11

campaign 

The loudest message 

THE list of strike-closed schools 

that Mary Bluett read out was so 

long the Auslan interpreter gave up 

and signed “etcetera, etcetera”. All 

seats in the 11,000 capacity Hisense 

Arena were taken. Members from 

Gippsland rose in the dead of night 

and drove through floods. Others from 

Shepparton got caught in traffic and 

found the doors locked, house full. 

To call the June 7 stopwork rally a 

success would be putting it mildly. 

It was the first such rally to be 

broadcast live to the satellite rally in 

Mildura — and the first time that a 

rally was also organised in Wodonga. 

And it was the first marked by 

social media, with the volume of 

traffic generated by teachers and 

supporters so great that the union’s 

twitter tag, @AEUVictoria, was 

among the most used on Twitter 

across Australia that day. Members 

commented on the debates, posted 

pictures and read messages of 

support from parents, nurses and 

others. 

When a picture of the march taken 

from an office block appeared on the 

AEU’s Facebook page, 1100 people 

gave it the thumbs up within 48 hours. 

Those at the rally showed their 

determination to take on the Baillieu 

Government — not just over its 

derisory pay offer to teachers but 

its attempts to divide the profession 

through performance pay and its 

vandalism to public education from the 

axing of student support to its cuts to 

VCAL and TAFE. 

Members agreed to a long and 

committed campaign, including further 

stopworks and, for the first time in 

years, bans and limitations, which 

were not possible during the last 

pay dispute because of the Howard 

Government’s WorkChoices legislation. 

Branch president Mary Bluett told 

the crowd, including those watching 

on screens outside the arena and 

members in Mildura: “By your action 

today, you have put Ted Baillieu on 

notice. 

“Premier, Minister (Hall), you 

promised, your word. We teach our 

students about values and a key value 

is ‘don’t make promises you don’t 

intend to keep’. You are judged on 

your word. Premier, Minister, you have 

failed the values test.” 

Members heartily applauded a 

call for an end to the widespread 

use of contracts, especially for new 

teachers. A call from the platform for 

members on contracts to raise their 

arms brought a shamefully wide show 

of hands. 

Bluett’s most scathing comments 

were for the Government’s performance 

pay and workload proposals. 

“Secondary teachers would 

increase their average face-to-face 

teaching by one hour a week. No 

time allowance for jobs like career 

counselling, year-level coordinator or 

curriculum leader. That will save the 

Government money by reducing 1000 

secondary teachers from the payroll, 

probably by getting rid of 1000 

contract teachers. 


campaign 

AEU members did their union proud with the biggest stopwork in the 

union’s history on June 7. Nic Barnard and Sian Watkins report. 

Photos by Meredith O’Shea. 

“And, as if they didn’t have 

enough incentive to leave the profession, 

the Government proposes 

that only 80% of teachers on the 

incremental scale would progress 

each year. 

“They want us to work harder … 

(But) all teachers work beyond the 

38 hours in the agreement.” 

She said a survey of 200 primary 

and secondary teachers found that 

one-third worked 15 hours or more 

at home each week, and one in 10 

worked 20 hours’ overtime. 

A call was made, but rejected, for 

a second stop work in the first month 

of Term 3. Heard sympathetically, it 

was rejected after AEU leadership 

spoke of the need for campaign flexibility 

and its desire to hold the next 

rally in the bigger Rod Laver Arena. 

A handful of members, led by Will 

Marshall from Footscray City College, 

wanted to tear up the resolution and 

instead opt for a national grassroots 

campaign opposing federal and state 

education policies. Members comprehensively 

dismissed this proposal, 

although it prevented the ultimate 

vote for action being unanimous. 

The same group also tried to push 

the rally entertainment — a rap by 

teacher Kevin Hunt and a song by 

Melbourne singer Henry Wagons — 

to the end of the agenda. Comments 

were later made about frivolous 

diversions but the enthusiastic 

reception from a foot-stomping 

singing crowd suggested this view 

was not widely held. 

With Melbourne’s locked-out 

members leading the march, the 

crowd set off for Parliament House 

where it was greeted by parents 

and unions, including the Australian 

Nursing Federation, veterans of 

their own clash with the Baillieu 

Government earlier this year. 

Nurses’ union leader Lisa 

Fitzpatrick voiced the solidarity and 

gratitude of nurses for the support 

given by teachers during their 

dispute, and summed up the importance 

of the action by teachers. 

“You must ensure that (Baillieu’s) 

promise is delivered. Each and every 

day we entrust our most precious 

possession — our children — into 

your hands, and we thank you for 

that.” ◆ 

Maths and science teacher 

James Green from Bellarine 

Secondary (right) taught in 

contract positions for three 

years before securing a 

permanent teaching position. 

He joined the stopwork 

because the Government’s 

2.5% pay offer was inadequate. 

Yet to pay off a 

$20,000 HECS debt, he 

says he has “mates who 

went into the trades and are 

now earning a lot more than 

I am. I have a friend in a 

roof plumbing business who 

employs three people. He’d 

make twice the money I do.” 

His friend, Damian Van 

Wyk (left) from Drysdale 

Primary School, is on his 

second 12-month teaching 

contract. Referring to the 

Baillieu Government’s 

pre-election promise to 

make Victorian teachers 

the highest paid in the 

country, Van Wyk said: 

“When you make a promise 

to people, you must stick 

to it, particularly when you 

promised something to win 

government.” 

Janis White, from Ringwood 

Heights Primary School, 

whose granddaughter Ellia, 

18 months, was at her first 

stop work. 


campaign 

A cynical performance 

Ted Baillieu reveals new levels of political cynicism 

in trying to impose payment by results on 

Victoria’s public school teachers. John Graham reports. 

TED Baillieu has attempted to weasel out of his 

broken salary promise to Victoria’s teachers by 

claiming that he will make the “best performing” 

ones the best paid in Australia — not every teacher 

as he actually said in his infamous election pledge. 

His Government’s mechanism for rewarding 

those teachers combines a competitive paymentby-results 

bonus scheme with arbitrary limits on 

salary progression and a heavier teaching load for 

secondary teachers. 

Ignoring the overwhelming weight of research 

that links improvements in student outcomes to 

effective teamwork across a whole school, teachers 

would be required to compete against each other 

for bonuses. The “best” 10% would get a 10% 

bonus, the next 20% would get 6% and a further 

40% a 1.4% bonus. The remaining 30% would get 

only the 2.5% across-the-board pay rise. 

At the same time an 80% limit would be imposed 

on the number of eligible teachers gaining a pay 

increment in any one year. 

The money freed up by denying 20% of teachers 

their due increment, combined with the reduction 

of staff needed in secondary schools by increasing 

average teaching hours, would fund the bonus 

scheme for the rest. 

The proposal is a jumble of ideas. It derives from 

the so-called “Teacher Rewards” performance pay 

trials initiated with federal money by the previous 

Brumby Labor government. Those trials were a 

flop. Despite heavy pressure from the Education 

Department, only a handful of schools were willing 

to take part. 

The marginally less offensive school-based 

model in which a whole staff work together to 

compete against other schools — also trialled 

by the previous government — is not on the 

negotiating table. It appears to be contrary to the 

Baillieu view of work and society as atomised places 

where the individual is everything and the team a 

dangerous union-influenced construct. 

The Liberal Party origins of Baillieu’s performance 

bonus model are the Julie Bishop proposals 

(as education minister in 2007 in the Howard 

government) and the Professional Recognition 

Program (PRP) introduced in Victoria during the 

1990s under Jeff Kennett. 

The Bishop scheme offered a payment-by-results 

bonus financed by some teachers missing out on 

their annual increments. If Tony Abbott’s Liberals 

come to power there is little doubt they would try 

to resurrect something like this and apply it to the 

whole country. 

The bonus part of the Kennett government’s 

PRP scheme consisted of performance pay for 

leading teachers and principals linked to a set of 

targets. 

It was another lemon. Research by Rod 

Chadbourne and Lawrence Ingvarson found it did 

nothing to improve the quality or status of teaching. 

Even the Education Department’s contracted 

evaluators (KPMG) concluded: “Best practice is still 

some way off.” 

Principals and teachers generally viewed the 

PRP bonus process as divisive and onerous; it 

was an additional task with inconsistent and unfair 

outcomes. It was compared to a complex (and 

time-consuming) game — with shonky rules and a 

biased umpire. 

The PRP scheme also offered some hard 

lessons about the difference between pay rises and 

bonuses. In 1995 the average bonus received by 

principals was 10.5%; in 1996 this fell to 8.3% and 

in 1997 to 8%. In effect the bonus system became 

an underhand means of reducing salary costs. 

The research on the sort of teacher performance 

pay scheme the Baillieu Government wants to 

introduce is fairly damning. 


A 2007 report into pay by the Australian Council 

for Educational Research (ACER) commissioned by the 

Federal Government concluded: “Few merit-based pay 

schemes have survived when applied to teaching.” 

It found that they led to staff dissatisfaction and 

dissension and that there was no evidence that they 

improved student performance. 

The report dismissed the idea that financial 

incentives can improve what teachers know or can do, 

or lead them to teach more effectively. 

A growing number of recent American studies 

(New York, Nashville, Houston, Iowa, Texas, Denver 

and Chicago) of schemes very similar to the Victorian 

Government’s proposal have found that they have 

either no effect on student achievement or a negative 

effect. 

They also highlight the statistical invalidity and 

educational and professional distortions required in 

using student results to measure teacher performance. 

Further, they have found no significant impact 

on outcomes such as teacher motivation and 

retention. 

The New York bonus program, which influenced 

the make-up of the Victorian Teacher Rewards 

scheme, was recently abandoned by New York City 

authorities as a complete failure. 

Among other things it illustrated the perils of 

substituting a bonus system for an enforceable 

salary agreement. In the 2008–9 school year, more 

than 80% of participating NY schools won bonuses, 

costing the city $31 million. In 2009–10, that fell 

below 15% and cost $4m, after the state made its 

school tests harder. 

Closer to home, in a press release on May 2 

Premier Baillieu announced that the bonus scheme 

operating in his Department of Premier and Cabinet 

was to be “phased out”. 

You would never guess from the State 

Government’s proposals that Victorian teachers (as 

evidenced by the superior achievement of the state’s 

students nationally and internationally) are among the 

nation’s best. 

This success has been built through a system 

which values collaboration rather than competition 

between teachers. The clear evidence from recent 

evaluations and surveys of teacher opinion is that 

they do not want a competitive performance-based 

pay system. 

They do not want a system where bonuses to 

one group of teachers come from downgrading the 

salaries of another group. 

They do want salaries that are competitive with 

similar professional occupations and commensurate 

with the value of their social and economic contribution 

to the community. 

They also want Ted Baillieu and his Government to 

demonstrate that their election commitment to make 

teachers the best paid in Australia was not what it 

looks like now — a cynical con job. ◆ 

John Graham is a research officer at the 

AEU Victorian branch. 

Ian Willson, a maths teacher at Fitzroy High 

School, said the Government’s conditional 

pay offer “sends a chill through us. To talk 

about decreasing preparation time and 

adding more teaching time shows the 

Government has no understanding of what 

we do on a day-to-day basis.” 

Joanne Heyman, a Deaf teacher 

of the Deaf at Pearcedale Primary 

near Frankston, said funding cuts 

meant deaf students’ access to 

school transport at her school had 

been restricted, as was her access to 

professional development . 

State Government funding cuts leading 

to the demise of the Auslan course at 

Kangan Institute also angered her. 

History teacher Tim Lambert from Bundoora Secondary College stopped work 

because he is sick of being treated “as being at the bottom of the food pile”. He said 

the Baillieu Government was making the performance of its Labor predecessor “look 

good”. 

The Baillieu Government’s treatment of the profession was “death by disdain and it 

won’t end here today. Kids who need the most from the education system are getting 

the least.” 

Principal Sue Muscat said the Government had gone “too far” in removing schools’ 

component of the Education Maintenance Allowance. She said that 45% of Years 7 

to 10 students at Bundoora received the EMA. Bundoora’s component of this funding 

— amounting to “tens of thousands of dollars” — was used to help many students 

attend excursions and camps and pay for breakfast and lunch clubs, uniforms and 

learning resources. Losing this money “will have a direct, significant impact on low 

SES kids”. 

Bundoora will lose its VCAL coordinator next year as a result of the Government’s 

VCAL funding cuts. “I’ve done all I can to keep the coordinator’s position this year but 

I can’t keep finding $50,000 from somewhere to pay for her,” Muscat said. 

campaign 


campaign 

David Adamson, principal at Essendon Keilor College and 

secondary convenor of AEU Principals 

Teachers at my school are really angry about the TAFE cuts. 

About 45% of our kids go on to TAFE and the availability of 

courses has been slashed. 

Victoria University has taken a 30% hit in its funding — 

they’re cutting courses and they’ll also be bumping up the 

price to cover their costs. Our kids, who already struggle to pay 

their fees, will have to pay more. Kids who need it the most will 

have to pay the most. 

Kids choose their courses next term and my teachers don’t 

know what to tell them. 

The 2.5% (pay offer) they just see as insulting, and the idea 

that they’ll pay the top 10% a bit extra when they all work in 

teams, they just think that’s really divisive. Principals hate it 

even more. How do we make these decisions? What about the 

11th per cent or the 12th per cent? How do we draw the line? 

It’s going to set principals against teachers. 

It’s not how you improve performance. If you haven’t got the 

skills, you’re not going to magically develop them — you need 

support to raise your skills base. 

Chris Taylor, Ashwood 

Special School 

Art teacher Chris Taylor doesn’t 

like the many cuts that the State 

Government has made to public 

education, or its performance 

pay plan. “In special education 

you work together and in teams 

— how on earth are you going 

to single out some teachers for 

performance pay? 

“I really oppose all the money 

that’s being put into private 

education, too. It’s pathetic and 

disgraceful. The state education system deals with more kids 

with higher needs. Extra money should be going to it. 

“The EMA cuts will affect us a lot, too, because we work 

with a lot of single-parent families (who receive the EMA). 

Marriages often break down when there are kids with 

disabilities.” 

Diana Santaera (right) with Joanne Elliott, Bentleigh West PS 

AEU rep Diana Santaera says she wants “a fair go for our 

ES staff. This government is making it impossible for them to 

live and work. A lot of them aren’t members (of the AEU) ... 

simply because they can’t afford it, their pay is so low.” 

Workload is her other big issue: “We don’t get out until 

5.30pm every day — we’re doing at least 40 hour weeks. 

Sundays are preparation days, not to mention report writing 

at the moment which pretty much has to be done in our own 

time. And it’s all at the expense of the kids.” 


campaign 

PHOTOS: MEREDITH O’SHEA 

Jaclynn Jones, recently retired 

from Sunbury Heights PS 

(I’m here) for better working 

conditions for teachers and 

better outcomes for the 

students. Baillieu has been 

very dishonest. He’s treated 

teachers very shabbily. 

Education should be a 

priority not treated the way it 

is by the Government. It’s a 

disgrace. 

Rosie Tyers, Sunbury Heights 

Primary School 

I don’t agree with contract 

teaching. I think Baillieu 

needs to be pulled into line. 

I want young kids to have 

the opportunity to be great 

teachers. 

Edi Candotti, Copperfield College 

Edi Candotti (with sons Sam, 12, and Noah, 9) says teachers 

need better pay and job security and more respect. The 

Government’s pay offer amounts to “throwing a few peanuts on 

the ground at us”. 

“I see the profession disintegrating,” he says. There’s no job 

stability and people are focusing on maintaining a job rather 

than being a better teacher. The contract system is resulting 

in a serious loss of consistency in teaching and learning — 

there’s no continuity. 

“I don’t want to keep losing good young men and women to 

other jobs or the private schools. I want my boys to have quality 

teachers whose bosses nurture them and spend money on PD.” 

Mr Candotti, a teacher for 22 years, says the Baillieu 

Government’s handling of public education reminds him of 

former premier Jeff Kennett’s reign in the 1990s. “He tore the 

system apart and a lot of good people left. 

“It’s now Jeff by stealth. Baillieu doesn’t say anything. The 

Government doesn’t consider or understand what teachers are 

doing — delivering varied programs to kids working at different 

levels or teaching the kids that the private schools won’t or 

wouldn’t accept.” 


feature 

We give a GONSKI 

What difference could the Gonski recommendations make to Victorian schools? 

AEU members headed to Canberra to let their MPs know. Sian Watkins joined them. 

PRINCIPALS, teachers and parents are urged 

to lobby the Federal Government to enact the 

recommendations of the Gonski Review of federal 

school funding by year’s end to prevent momentum 

for change being derailed by the Coalition and 

private-school interests. 

About 65% of the Federal Government’s direct 

spending on education goes to private schools. 

Victorian state school parents, principals and 

teachers visited Canberra last month as part of an 

AEU delegation to remind MPs of the urgent need 

to enact the Gonski Review’s proposed overhaul 

of school funding. The review recommends that an 

extra $5 billion a year be spent on schools, with 

most of this extra money going to state schools, 

which teach the majority of disadvantaged students. 

This extra money equates, roughly, to about 

$1500 for every state school student. Michael 

Phillips, principal of Ringwood Secondary College, 

reckons his school would get an extra $700,000 

every year. Legislation before the end of the year 

is vital to ensure that the foundations of change 

are well underway before next year’s federal 

election. AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos 

said the Tony Abbott-led Coalition would keep the 

existing, indefensible funding system should it win 

government. 

Sydney University’s Dr Jim McMorrow told 

delegates that, under existing funding arrangements 

introduced by the former Howard government, 

federal funding to state schools will decrease by 

12% in real terms over the next two years (a cut 

of more than $670 million a year). But funding to 

private schools will increase by 15% in real terms 

(a $1.3bn increase on this year’s non-government 

spending). 

Dr Morrow said state schools were doing all the 

“heavy lifting” and their share of federal funding 

would decline further with the approaching end of 

National Partnerships funding. It was “time for a 

sustained federal commitment to public schools,” 

he said. 

DELEGATE Michael Phillips, principal of Ringwood 

Secondary College, reckons his school would get about 

$700,000 extra a year if Gonski’s recommendations were 

implemented. 

What would he spend the extra money on? “Where do I start? 

“More learning support programs and I’d do the ESL program 

differently. I’d halve their class sizes. I’d run more stuff for kids that 

need extending which is important when you’re competing with the 

private schools in the eastern suburbs. 

“I’d spend more money on the co-curricular programs like music and sport 

— we’ve got nothing when you see what the private schools have got in these areas — and deliver 

more PD for staff.” 

Phillips said that some refugee students arrived at his school with two years of education in total. 

“They only get three years of funded support in high school but they need it for much longer. Gonski 

would allow me to support ESL kids right through to Year 12.” ◆ 

Christine 

Milne, 

Greens leader 

“We are in the middle of a 

mining boom with one of the 

strongest economies in the 

Western world. Now is the time 

to fix structural 

deficiencies in education 

funding.” 


Learning to fly in 

paper planes 

feature 

One teacher tells her MP the stark 

reality of teaching without a budget. 

Mr Gavrielatos urged members of the AEU delegations 

from all states and territories to “maintain 

the momentum for achieving a fairer outcome for 

our kids”. He said that $5bn amounted to less than 

1% of GDP and was only a 15% increase on 2009 

federal education spending. “Why do we provide 

billions of dollars to schools that don’t need it when 

so many kids are deprived of resources?” said an 

impassioned Gavrielatos. 

Greens leader Christine Milne told delegates that 

the $5bn could easily be raised by abolishing fossil 

fuel incentives and subsidies, which this financial 

year amount to $12.2bn, according to the Australian 

Conservation Foundation. “Spending more money on 

education is a no brainer,” she said. 

“Five billion sounds a lot but we’d have to spend 

$7bn to average OECD spending on education as a 

percentage of GDP. And Nordic countries spend a lot 

more.” 

The Gillard Government is yet to commit to 

the reforms, instead allocating $5.6 million in this 

year’s budget, over two years, for further policy and 

technical work. 

The funding review, led by Sydney businessman 

and lawyer David Gonski, recommended a single 

funding model for all schools — public, independent 

and Catholic — with additional funding for disadvantaged 

children and schools. It was set up following 

increasing concerns about inequity in federal funding 

and the huge, increasing gap between the top 20% 

continued on page 20 ➠ 

LESS than halfway through the school year, Faye Natoli’s school has $900 left in 

its art budget for the rest of 2012. Its annual art budget is $3000. 

The school’s annual PE budget has fallen from $10,000 to $1500 in the past 10 years and PE 

reduced from one hour to 45 minutes a week. Such a tight sports budget has made even the 

purchase of new netball bibs traumatic, she says. 

“Kids at our school are now getting less than 30 hours a year of PE. We don’t have the 

money to run a motor skills program — and this in an age of obesity.” 

Natoli, a teacher at Rangeview Primary School in Mitcham, was one of four 

delegates who met Deakin MP Mike Symons at Parliament House. 

Most state schools would get an extra $1500 per student every year 

under the Gonski funding formula. This would mean an extra $840,000 

every year for Rangeview Primary School. 

Natoli told Symons that teaching literacy and numeracy was critical 

but “kids get very excited about art and sport and music. They will 

keep that clay dragon they made with green glitter on it when they move 

out of home.” 

The school runs an effective literacy recovery program three hours a week. Thirty students 

need it “but we can only deliver it to eight. We don’t have the money to train any more staff and 

aides to do it.” 

Nine students have been formally diagnosed with learning difficulties at the school but only three 

are in the literacy recovery program. “We need ongoing funding to make commitments to these 

sorts of programs,” Natoli told Symons. 

She recently taught her grade six students about flight. A friend of hers who teaches at an 

eastern suburbs private school taught a similar unit; her students took a trip in a light plane and 

“had a go at the controls”. 

“My class made paper planes and mention was later made of me wasting paper,” Natoli said. 

She asked Symons to specify what he planned to do to help get enabling legislation passed by 

Parliament before year’s end. Symons said he would visit Rangeview soon and that better reporting 

mechanisms were required “to monitor how states spend federal money. It disappears into the 

black hole of state bureaucracy.” ◆ 

Carmen Lawrence 

Gonski panel member and 

former WA premier, on the 

Government’s inaction. 

“I was disappointed the Government 

didn’t say on day 1: ‘This is what we 

are going to do’ and step it out over 

five to 10 years. 

I was disappointed when … they 

said they would have another round 

of consultation. We had done that 

— we had gone 

out and talked to 

everybody. 

The brief (we 

were given) was 

that no school could 

lose a dollar, so the 

only way we could start to overcome 

disadvantage was to recommend 

additional funding. 

The longer we wait, the more the 

forces of reaction will muster and 

position themselves in their usual 

arrangements.” 


feature 

Ken Boston 

Gonski panel member 

and former directorgeneral 

of NSW schools. 

“The increasing performance gap 

between the top and bottom 20% 

of students in Australia (equivalent 

to about five-and-a-half years of 

schooling by Year 9) represents 

an extraordinary waste of potential 

human capital. 

The consequences … are 

immense. The loss accruing to 

the individual in terms of lost 

opportunity and lost earnings, the 

loss to the community resulting 

from the inability to capitalise on 

unrealised skills, and the associated 

costs to society arising from 

the need to support a consequent 

socio-economic underclass, are 

extraordinarily high. 

The growth of that performance 

gap is not the result of serendipity, 

but of deliberate funding policies in 

the 1990s, which sharply increased 

the disparity between rich and poor 

schools. This situation can and 

must be reversed.” 

Christopher Pyne 

Federal Coalition 

education 

spokesman. 

“We remain firmly 

committed to the current 

funding arrangements so that 

schools can plan with certainty into 

the future.” 

Barry O’Farrell 

NSW Liberal Premier 

Gonski’s “formula 

benefits public education 

and non-government 

education and it’s a formula that we 

would dismiss at our own peril.” 

➠ continued from page 19 

of students and the bottom 20%. 

Education Minister Peter Garrett spoke to 

the AEU delegation at an evening forum to 

mark National Public Education Day. 

Acknowledging the union’s frustration at the 

Government’s inaction on Gonski, he sought 

their continued support in the struggle for 

well-resourced public schools. He desired to 

introduce legislation to establish a funding 

framework by the end of the year. 

Work had started on technical aspects of 

implementing the proposed funding formula. “It 

is not work that grabs the headlines, but it is 

being done,” he said. For example, “we don’t 

yet have agreed measures beyond NAPLAN to 

choose our reference schools and we don’t yet 

have a definition of disability that would enable 

a loading to be constructed. 

“The review panel gave us a range in which 

a low SES loading should be paid, but not 

the precise increments or amounts in which 

it should be paid, or what specific conditions 

should be attached to its payment.” 

Ken Boston, a Gonski review panel member 

and former director-general of NSW schools, 

said continuing the existing schools funding 

system would have terrible economic and social 

consequences. The existing funding model 

expires at the end of next year and “we need 

the new model in place by 2014”. 

“We’re all pretty anxious about that.’’ 

Coalition education spokesman Christopher 

Pyne told the AEU delegation that the Coalition 

remained “firmly committed to the current 

funding arrangements”. Unlike Mr Garrett, he 

did not stay for the post-forum reception. 

Delegations told MPs in marginal seats that 

state schools desperately needed extra money 

to help them bridge the huge gap between topperforming 

and bottom-performing students. 

State schools teach most children from lowincome 

families, single-parent families, rural 

and remote areas, those with disabilities and 

those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 

backgrounds. 

What would state schools do with the 

extra money that Gonski believes they need? 

Their lists are long and include more support 

programs in literacy, numeracy, ESL and 

student welfare, extension programs, more 

professional development for teachers, new 

and improved equipment and resources in art, 

sport and music, and new buildings. 

Delegations revealed the disadvantages 

faced by many of their students (disengaged, 

separated, absent or drug-addicted parents, 

for example) and pointed to the success of 

National Partnerships-funded programs as 

evidence of the difference increased funding 

can make. 

Helen Trickey, a maths/science teacher from 

Gisborne Secondary College, said the message 

she carried from her principal to McEwen MP 

Rob Mitchell was the need for consistent, not 

piecemeal, funding. 

Her teaching had improved greatly with 

numeracy coaches paid for with National 

Partnerships funding, but this ends soon. 

Coaches helped her and others with task 

creation and differentiation, questioning 

techniques and the use of examples and 

analogies to explain not just how but why 

different maths activities were important 

(extrapolating from patterns has real-life 

applications in medical research, for example). 

The coaching she has received has made a 

“visible differenence to kids’ learning. You can 

physically see them ‘get it’. There’s been a lot 

more lightbulb moments,” she said. 

Ringwood Secondary College principal 

Michael Phillips told Mike Symons that drip-drip 

state and federal funding made a mockery of 

the autonomy that schools were supposedly 

being given. A Gonski funding system would 

“take the politics out of funding” and allow 

schools to plan long term and consistently 

deliver learning support programs, he said. ◆ 


profile 

Rallying cry 

Teacher Jennifer Walsh found herself in the middle of the 

action when the TAFE cuts were revealed. She talks to 

Cynthia Karena. 

TAFE teacher Jennifer 

Walsh’s fortnight 

involvement in the Anna 

Stewart Project did not 

go according to plan. 

It started with crisis 

meetings over the 

newly announced TAFE 

cuts and ended with 

her and fellow Anna 

Stewart participant Maria 

McLaverty leading chants 

atop a flat-bed truck 

at a rally outside the 

Premier’s office. 

Jennifer, recently 

elected AEU sub-branch 

rep at Victoria University 

TAFE, arrived for her two 

weeks at the AEU on a 

Jennifer Walsh and Maria McLaverty 

fraught Monday morning 

after news had leaked 

over the weekend of the devastating TAFE cuts to 

be announced in the following day’s state budget. 

The Anna Stewart project is a development 

program for women who want to become more 

involved in their union. Its usual timetable was 

“thrown out the door”. 

Instead, Jen attended strategy meetings and 

discussions about the impact of the $300 million 

cuts. 

“I was excited to be involved,” she says. “But 

at the end of the day many of the meetings were 

about job losses and they were not very pleasant. 

“When people find out about losing their jobs (at 

VU) it will be draining and emotionally upsetting for 

me and I’ll have to guard against that.” 

The AEU has ramped up its TAFE4All campaign 

as a result of the cuts, which have ripped out about 

a third of the sector’s funding. The TAFE Directors’ 

Association and the AEU expect 2000 to 3000 

redundancies. 

One of Jennifer’s meetings was with Federal 

Skills Minister Chris Evans. “It was a productive 

meeting but talking to the regional TAFEs was 

heartbreaking,” she says. “They are so integrated 

into their local communities. Where are regional 

people going to do courses? Some of them are 

disadvantaged. How are they going to afford to do 

courses now?” 

Jennifer finished the fortnight with the AEU’s 

hastily arranged rally outside Premier Baillieu’s 

office. With less than a week’s notice more than 

1000 people attended. 

Does she think rallies will 

work this time? 

“They are an opportunity 

to express yourself 

in a public way. The 

more people that come 

together, the more impact 

the message has.” 

VU has set up its 

own group in response 

to the cuts, made up 

of teachers, students, 

staff and members of 

the public — “everyone, 

including future students, 

who may not realise how 

severe the impact of 

these cuts will be. TAFE 

is going under, and we 

want people to understand 

how these cuts are 

affecting everybody.” 

Jennifer, who teaches hairdressing, had already 

been thrown in the deep end as the new sub-branch 

president at VU TAFE. A first round of job losses 

was announced just as she was getting to know the 

ins and outs of the job. 

“I rang the union to tell them I’m a novice and 

I need support!” Jennifer says. “I have a lot of 

questions, but if I need help I can email or ring 

anyone at any time, and I have. The people there 

are so intelligent and inspiring”. 

Before joining TAFE in 2002, Jennifer worked 

with a private provider where there were large 

classes and no time for professional development 

as teachers were in class five days a week. “There 

is a high level of professionalism and skills in TAFE. 

For example, we work off-campus one day a week to 

do professional development or go into industry to 

develop our skills.” 

As if Jennifer’s life wasn’t busy enough, she 

is also doing a Masters of Education and sits on 

the AEU branch council. She goes to the gym to 

de-stress. 

She “really weighed up” her decision to become 

an AEU rep. “I’m taking on a big responsibility but 

I feel strongly about it. I want to be an advocate 

and have a voice, especially now that TAFE is being 

decimated. I’m here at a time in complete turmoil. I 

can sit here and do nothing or I can do something in 

a situation that is really dramatic.” ◆ 

show& tell 

The most important thing I take into 

class every day is … A smile. 

The secret to coping with staff 

meetings is … To listen. 

The best piece of advice I ever received 

was … Live for the moment. 

My advice to a beginning teacher is … 

Learn from everyone around you, including 

your students. 

The most important thing the AEU does 

for its members is … Care about the 

members and demonstrate compassion 

and action, especially now that TAFE is in 

crisis. 

The most inspirational figures in my 

life are … My daughters. They are a 

breath of fresh air. 

In my other life, I am … Calm. 

The book that changed my life was … 

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, as it 

helped me view life through a different lens. 

My favourite teacher was … Judith 

Guantai, my hairdressing teacher at 

Flagstaff College (before it became 

VU) because she knew how to take 

me and others from the unconscious 

to the conscious in a way that was 

quite transformative. 

If I met skills minister Peter Hall, I’d 

tell him … You have made the biggest 

mistake of your life — what are your 

thoughts? ◆ 


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TCI COL UNION AD DRAFT FINAL.indd 1 

22 aeu news | june 2012 

5/06/12 6:14 PM

Member 

BENEFITS 

Winter travel offer 

STATE Schools’ Relief, the charity formed by teachers to support 

disadvantaged students, has teamed with Peregrine Adventures to 

offer private tours of China and Vietnam during the September school 

holidays. 

AEU members can take advantage of a 10% “winter warmer” 

discount. Part of the cost of the tour goes to State Schools’ Relief to 

support its work providing new school wear for students in need. 

The China tour takes in historical and cultural sites in Beijing and 

Xi’an — home of the terracotta warriors — before travelling on to 

Yangshuo and Hong Kong. The cost is now $1,603 plus flights from 

Melbourne. 

The Vietnam tour will explore its history as French Indochine and as 

a centre for traders and travellers, with stops in Saigon, Hanoi, Hoi An 

and Halong Bay. The cost is now $1,266 plus flights from Melbourne. 

For more details go to www.ssr.net.au or call Peregrine Adventures 

on 1300 854 439. ◆ 

Winter wellbeing 

POSITIVE psychology and emotional intelligence will be the tools for 

giving AEU women a winter wellbeing boost in two events run by 

popular consultant Deb Ferguson in August. 

Deb will lead an all-day seminar and an after-school forum at the AEU 

office in Abbotsford, offering practical strategies to build resilience and 

improve wellbeing and health. 

The after-school forum on August 15 will present positive, practical 

ways to build resilience through emotional intelligence, while the all-day 

seminar on August 29 will develop skills in positive psychology. 

In both sessions, participants will learn strategies to feel more in 

control and better manage stress and stress triggers. The focus on 

mental, emotional and physical wellbeing will benefit participants and 

their colleagues, students and family. 

Costs to members are $30 for the forum and $50 for the seminar 

(including lunch). Both events meet VIT professional development 

standards. 

Book online at www.aeuvic.asn.au/calendar. ◆ 

Women’s FOCUS 

Barb Jennings women’s officer 

Letting the side down 

A talk on the topic of mean girls was 

a stimulating centrepiece to this year’s 

conference. 

HOW prevalent are cases of women bullying or mistreating other women? 

The issue, highlighted in a presentation by Meredith Fuller, author 

of Mean Girls, proved a controversial one at this year’s booked-out AEU 

Women’s Conference. It is a subject that has been increasingly raised at our 

women’s program PDs in the past few years. 

Feminism has female solidarity and compassion at its core and many of 

us are very sad to see that some of the worst examples of discrimination 

against women are perpetrated by other women. We need to begin a conversation 

about the complexity of this issue. 

It was starkly illustrated once again in the recent experiences of a young 

woman AEU member who works at a secondary school in Melbourne. 

Her (female) principal refused her requests for leave to cover family 

responsibilities. The woman, with a four-month-old child, had no choice but 

to return to full-time work — where she was offered no support to maintain 

breastfeeding. 

Ironically, the woman’s partner received much support and assistance 

from his (male) principal. 

We consider this issue to be so serious that we will publicise full details 

as a case study once the young mum has settled into her new role. The very 

pregnant young member attended the conference 10 hours before giving 

birth. Mother, father and baby boy are all doing well. 

Nina Funnell, a social commentator and expert on preventing violence 

against women, explored young people’s use of technology and social media. 

She said we need to talk to young people to help them make decisions in this 

fraught area. 

Nina has worked closely with young Australians and seen the 

ineffectiveness of the “Just Say No” approach. Her view is that respectful 

relationships and programs developed with young men and women will help 

them negotiate issues of consent. 

She advocates an ethical framework involving care of self, care of others, 

and reflection. This is the approach she uses in her work with elite athletes 

and in her advisory role on the NSW Premier’s Council on Preventing Violence 

Against Women. 

The feedback was exciting and we are trying to arrange a full-day 

professional development event with Nina later in the year. 

Conflict resolution 

Conflict resolution is a high priority for members and almost all the 150 

attendees at the Women’s Conference chose one of the conflict resolution 

workshops. 

Popular consultant Christina McMahon will run two more one-day 

workshops at the AEU in July. Check our website for details at www.aeuvic. 

asn.au/womenPD. We advise you to book quickly as her two workshops in 

March booked out very quickly. Maximum number of participants is 50 

for each. ◆ 

inside the AEU 



AEU TRAINING & PD 

Kim Daly and Rowena Matcott training officers 

Get your campaign on 

A well organised sub-branch is the key to a successful campaign. 

Our training program will show you how. 

The focus of our training is inevitably fluid during 

negotiations for new schools agreements. 

We still cover the basics of establishing and 

running an effective AEU sub-branch but we will also 

update members on the role that sub-branches play 

in the political cycle. It is essential that workplaces 

are organised and informed. 

CRT costs are provided for teacher and ES 

members and we recommend you share the load by 

sending two members. 

Our program over the coming months includes 

one-day and two-day AEU Active courses around 

the state, a consultation workshop online, ES 

programs, a CRT conference and another of our 

new GLBT professional development sessions — all 

details below. Bookings must be made online. 

Given the current campaign, we have postponed 

our AEU Active for special schools until later this 

year. 

AEU training is an excellent opportunity for 

networking and discussing how other schools and 

sub-branches operate. Members often comment 

that the courses are a chance to take time out from 

their huge professional demands and to consider 

the industrial rights and organisation of members at 

their workplaces. 

We are heartened to see a variety of members 

attending our courses, from those in the first year 

of their careers to others who have taught for more 

than 30 years. There are lessons to be learned 

from both ends. 

Please look at the program below and make your 

booking online at www.aeuvic.asn.au/calendar. 

We also deliver PD at schools. 

Email rowena.matcott@aeuvic.asn.au or kim. 

daly@aeuvic.asn.au for more information. ◆ 

AEU ACTIVE 

TWO-DAY COURSES 

August 1–August 2...........Abbotsford 

August 1–August 2...............Bendigo 

August 16–August 17.......Pakenham 

August 23–August 24......Abbotsford 

Sept 12–Sept 13...................Geelong 

ONE DAY COURSES 

July 26..............................Dandenong 

August 10................................Melton 

August 30..........................Abbotsford 

September 7.........................Warragul 

AEU Active for principals 

September 19 ...........AEU Abbotsford 

Consultation: Live & Online 

July 25.......................AEU Abbotsford 

Twilight dinner workshops 

September 10....................Venue TBA 

GLBT 

Introduction to supporting 

gender and sexual diversity in 

schools 

August 22................AEU Abbotsford 

AEU TRAINING CALENDAR TERM 3, 2012 

GETTING A JOB 

Application writing and interview 

techniques 

July 24........................AEU Abbotsford 

August 7....................AEU Abbotsford 

August 13..............................Geelong 

August 14............................Wodonga 

August 16..............................Ballarat 

August 21............................Traralgon 

Sept 3........................AEU Abbotsford 

Returning to work 

September 19............AEU Abbotsford 

Application writing for leading 

teacher positions 


September 5..............AEU Abbotsford 

Application writing for principal 

positions 


September 10...........AEU Abbotsforfd 

OTHER EVENTS 

Branch conference 

August 4 ...................AEU Abbotsford 

Post-50 Retirement Seminar 

July 3..........................AEU Abbotsford 

WOMEN’S PROGRAM 

Conflict resolution 

July 30.................... AEU Abbotsford 

July 31......................AEU Abbotsford 

TAFE women councillors 

August 3..................AEU Abbotsford 

Returning to work 

September 19..........AEU Abbotsford 

Winter wellbeing 



Book online at 

www.aeuvic.asn.au/ 

calendar. 

AEU Prins Conference and Dinner 

August 30...............Sofitel, Melbourne 

CRT Conference 

July 12........................AEU Abbotsford 

K-6 Conference 

August 17 & 18 .........AEU Abbotsford 

NEW EDUCATORS 

Student Teachers Conferences 

September 28............AEU Abbotsford 

Young Member Activist Program 

Sept 10–14...............AEU Abbotsford 

Meet the principals 

August 28 (primary).AEU Abbotsford 

August 29 (sec)........AEU Abbotsford 

September 4..........................Geelong 

September 6..........................Ballarat 

September 11......................Traralgon 

September 13.......................Bendigo 

September 13................Warrnambool 

EDUCATION SUPPORT 

ES Conference 

August 31.........................Abbotsford 

ES twilight Conferences 

August 6...............................Swan Hill 

September 11........................Geelong 

ES Advocates 

Sept 10 - Sept 14......AEU Abbotsford 

ES Agreements 


ES=Empower and support 


All places can be booked on our online calendar. Go to www.aeuvic.asn.au/calendar, 

select the date of your chosen event and click through. 


On the PHONES 

Membership Services Unit — 1800 013 379 

Who’s paying my bus fare, your honour? 

Fiona Sawyer MSU officer 

WE GET a lot of calls about court attendance. 

There is no paid leave to attend court for 

personal matters; however teachers can apply for 

leave without pay or long service leave in such 

instances. 

If you attend court in your official capacity as 

a teacher — as a Crown witness or on summons 

— this is treated as duty and you can expect to be 

paid. You may also be entitled to claim necessary 

expenses on provision of receipts. 

Jury duty is another matter; this is a civic duty 

and any teacher called up is entitled to be paid 

under the Jurors Act 2000. The payment, made by 

the Government, is nominal, but is topped up by the 

Education Department to your normal salary. 

Behaviour checklist 

There is a checklist you can use to develop or 

review your school’s procedures for managing 

challenging student behaviour. Based on a WorkSafe 

document, we have developed it for schools. You can 

find it at www.aeuvic.asn.au/behaviour (PDF). 

Why we need your details 

About 16,000 of you voted in our ballot for industrial 

action which resulted in a successful stopwork 

rally attended by teachers and principals from all 

over the state. 

But if you couldn’t vote because you did not 

receive a ballot paper, it might be a timely reminder 

to update your details with us if you change school, 

address, name, or time fraction. Some of you 

will have missed out because the address on our 

records did not match the department’s payroll. You 

can change your details online at www.aeuvic.asn. 

au/update. You should also check your details on 

eduPay. 

The AEU is a national body and each state has 

its own branch. If you move interstate you need to 

change membership. We offer advice to members of 

Do you have an issue you’d like to see covered in 

On the Phones? 

Email aeunews@aeuvic.asn.au 

or call the MSU on (03) 9417 2822 or 

1800 013 379. 

other branches but if you’re working here, join us! 

Is my new salary right? 

If you are a teacher on a fixed-term contract, a 

retired teacher coming back to work, or a contract 

teacher who’s just been made ongoing, there is a 

clear procedure for determining your starting salary 

in any new period of employment. 

Every teacher must be paid either the same 

salary they received in their previous employment 

or a higher level determined by the Education 

Department’s starting salary calculator, based on 

your total years of employment. 

The calculator can be found on the department 

website at tinyurl.com/c46uzkk and takes into 

account leave without pay, stopworks and in certain 

cases any work as a casual relief teacher. 

A few teachers with special salary arrangements 

may find on moving schools that their pay drops 

to the level they would have been on if not for the 

special arrangement. If you’re not sure if you are 

on the right level, ask your business manager to 

check. ◆ 


Top up your super before the end of the tax year. 

The end of the financial year is the perfect time to look at your super savings and 

make the most of any tax advantages available to you. 

If you are an ESSSuper member 1 , you have the opportunity to contribute extra 2 

to your super. And if you contribute before June 30, you may be eligible for rebates 

and deductions in your upcoming tax return. 

Come and talk to us about how you can top up your super. 

Salary sacrifice into super and you may only have to pay 15% tax on those contributions. 

Contribute up to $3,000 on behalf of your low-income or non-working spouse and 

you may be eligible for a tax rebate of up to $540 3 . 

Make an after-tax super contribution and the Government may match what you 

put away by up to $1,000 4 . 

Take stock of your super today. 

You can check your current super balance at any time via the secure Members Online area 

at www.esssuper.com.au. Take action now, so you don’t have to worry in later years. 

ESS3189_(04/12)_AEU 

Tax time’s the perfect 

time to add to your 

super strength 

For more information visit 

www.esssuper.com.au or call 

1300 655 476 to book an appointment 

with an ESSSuper Consultant. 

1 Members include State Government employees who commenced employment prior to 1994. If you are not already an ESSSuper member you 

are not eligible to join. 2 Contribution cap limits apply and tax deductions will be assessed by the ATO (www.ato.gov.au). Limits subject to change 

in the 2012/13 tax year. 3 Paid into an existing or new Accumulation Plan account. 4 Provided you earn less than $61,920 in the 2011/12 tax year. 

This document is issued by Emergency Services Superannuation Board ABN 28 161 296 741 the Trustee of the Emergency Services 

Superannuation Scheme ABN 85 894 637 037 (ESSSuper). The information contained in this document is of a general nature only. It should not 

be considered as a substitute for reading ESSSuper’s Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) that contains detailed information about ESSSuper 

products, services and features. Before making a decision about an ESSSuper product, you should consider the appropriateness of the product 

to your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. It may also be beneficial to seek professional advice from a licensed financial planner 

or adviser. An ESSSuper PDS is available at www.esssuper.com.au or by calling 1300 655 476. 

Proudly serving our members 



New Educators NETWORK 

Andrew Cassidy graduate teacher organiser 

PHOTO: DENIS EVANS 

What a turnout! 

June 7 saw many new teachers strike for the first time. 

❛THIS is my first stopwork. It’s been amazing. 

A huge turnout. I didn’t know what to expect 

but everybody at our school bar three or four 

teachers are here. 

I’m not on contract myself but it’s a huge 

issue for young teachers — to still be on 

contract after seven years. For some people 

to be taking long service leave but still be on 

contract — that’s ridiculous. 

And the hours we put in — we deserve 

a good pay increase. If we want the best 

people in such an important job we need 

to pay them well and keep them in that job. 

That’s why I’m marching. ❜ 

 

Laura Fitzgerald 

Caulfield South Primary School 

DON’T think I have ever had 

I as much adrenaline running 

through my system as I did on 

June 7 at the stopwork rally at 

Hisense Arena and then outside 

Parliament House. 

It was the biggest stopwork 

meeting in this union’s history. 

Never before has Hisense Arena 

been filled to capacity for an 

event like this. 

One pleasing aspect was 

meeting so many graduate 

teachers taking action for the 

first time. I spoke to members 

and it was great to get a 

genuine sense of why teachers 

were there — to send a clear 

message to Ted Baillieu that 

public education must be valued. 

For one graduate, the idea of 

performance pay was “extremely 

divisive and no good for 

teaching teams”. For another, 

two years into teaching, the idea 

of leaving the public system 

for a more attractive wage was 

“very appealing”. 

Victorian government schools 

have some fantastic graduate 

teachers and many of them 

did their part in sending their 

message to Ted Baillieu. 

The other pleasing feature 

of my day was meeting up with 

former teaching colleagues. 

There were five AEU members 

when I started at my school. 

Now, thanks to the fantastic 

work of some excellent AEU 

representatives, there are 

27 members and 22 of them 

stopped work on June 7. 

It is important now to keep 

up-to-date with the latest 

information about the campaign. 

Keep an eye on the AEU website 

— www.aeuvic.asn.au — and 

read information from the AEU 

when it comes your way. 

You can also keep in touch 

through our Facebook site — 

www.facebook.com/aeuvic 

and follow us 

on twitter at @AEUVictoria. ◆ 

❛I’m supporting all my colleagues and 

supporting the movement. I’ve been teaching 

for two years. I teach the VCAL program. 

A lot of the program has been slashed 

which is unfair for those students. I’ve got 

a big concern about TAFE programs getting 

slashed as well because that’s where my 

students end up.❜ 

 

Curtis Parker 

Braybrook Secondary College 

❛ 


Budget 

sacrifices 

The federal budget has put new limits on 

salary sacrifice schemes. 

Geoff Allen Retirement Victoria 

MANY AEU members salary sacrifice into their superannuation fund and 

some of you could be affected by a policy announced in last month’s 

federal budget. 

The amount of “concessional” contributions (by your employer, through 

salary sacrifice or personal tax deductible) that can be paid into superannuation 

in any given year is capped. Exceeding the cap can result in heavy tax 

penalties, so care is needed. 

Until now, this cap has been age-related. In 2011–12 it was $50,000 a 

year if you were aged 50 or over, and only $25,000 for the under-50s. 

From July, the start of the 2012–13 financial year, the cap will be $25,000 

for all contributors, regardless of age or level of superannuation savings. 

Many contributors will need to reduce their level of salary sacrifice or risk 

facing the excess contributions tax of 46.5%. 

To illustrate the potential impact, consider “Annette”, a 55-year-old teacher 

with a salary of $84,100 a year. 

Her employer is paying superannuation guarantee contributions of 9% 

($7,570) into her fund. Annette salary sacrifices $41,600 a year into the 

same fund. Her total contributions are $49,170, just below the existing cap. 

From July 1 she will need to reduce her contributions significantly. Assuming 

her employer continues to contribute $7,570 a year, Annette’s contributions 

need to fall to $17,430 ($670 each fortnight) or less. 

AEU members who belong to the defined benefit schemes run by ESSSuper 

— the Revised, New and SERB Schemes — face additional complications. 

Members of these funds must determine the level of their “notional contributions” 

before working out the appropriate level of salary sacrifice. 

Some principal class members may no longer be able to salary sacrifice at 

all, given that their notional contributions are close to the cap. 

These changes affect your potential savings and could affect your retirement 

planning strategies. A review may be needed to take into account 

financial and lifestyle factors and ensure you get maximum savings efficiency. 

For example, a member retiring in the next 12 months should consider 

maximising salary sacrifice contributions while still working. 

Some members pursue “transition to retirement” strategies that 

incorporate superannuation transition pensions and salary sacrifice to superannuation. 

These strategies should be revisited and fine-tuned if necessary. 

Whatever your circumstances, now is the time to review your planning to 

ensure your objectives can still be achieved. ◆ 

Dollar Notes is an occasional column featuring updates on financial and superannuation 

matters for members. 

Retirement Victoria is the preferred provider of financial planning services for AEU 

members. Appointments: (03) 9820 8088. Information in this column is general in 

nature. No person should act on its basis but should seek appropriate professional 

advice based on their circumstances. 

Safety 

MATTERS 

Janet Marshall OH&S organiser 

Striking a balance 

Overwork puts a strain on families and 

does little to improve productivity. 

THREE-quarters of education workers work more than 45 hours a week, and 

the number who feel “rushed and pressed for time” is above the average 

for Australian workers. 

These statistics and others were presented to our occupational health and 

safety conference this month by keynote speaker Natalie Skinner. 

They form part of the evidence collected by the Centre for Work and Life at 

UniSA in developing a national index of teachers’ work and wellbeing to inform 

education policy. 

Natalie’s research was timely given the teachers’ dispute with the Baillieu 

Government. Despite numerous findings of the hours we work, the Government 

wants secondary teachers to work even longer, adding an hour to their 

teaching time and potentially increasing the number of meetings they must 

attend. 

Almost 100 elected health and safety representatives and other educators 

from all sectors of the AEU attended the conference. Its starting point was the 

idea that the way we work is at least as important as what we do. 

Work — as much as we love it — often conflicts with our family and 

community lives. The consequences of excessive work-life conflict and long 

work hours for individual health, family strain and dysfunction and organisation 

productivity are well documented. 

We need to raise awareness of the right to part-time work and flexible 

work options and help people to access it. We must also regulate our hours by 

maintaining good labour and OH&S laws. 

A highlight of the day was hearing from HSR Bryan Woollard from Galvin 

Park College, where years of neglect followed by heavy rain rendered buildings 

unsafe. Many rooms had dodgy electrics and mould infestations were a health 

hazard. 

Bryan explained how the OHS Act had enabled him to issue four provisional 

improvement notices (PINs), resulting in the closure of several buildings. He 

explained the challenges and successes in that process. 

The conference was far too short to achieve everything we’d hoped but it 

did raise lots of issues and questions. 

OH&S is about procedures and systems but it is equally about communication. 

Health and safety reps need to meet and talk to learn from each other. 

The AEU is keen to re-establish regional network meetings to address this 

need. 

Another strong message from the conference concerned the importance 

of health and safety reps accessing relevant five-day training, which they are 

entitled to receive under the OHS Act. 

The AEU recommends the Victorian Trades Hall training, which is offered in 

Melbourne and regionally. It’s designed for education department workplaces 

but is relevant to other education settings. 

Bullying in Australian workplaces 

Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten has asked the 

House of Representatives’ education and employment committee to investigate 

and report on bullying in Australian workplaces. 

The inquiry will examine the nature of workplace bullying and consider 

proposals to address bullying cultures and prevent their development at work. 

The AEU will be providing a national response to this inquiry. ◆ 



classifieds 

TRAVEL AUSTRALIA 

AIREY’S INLET HOLIDAY RENTAL 

Holiday rental, 3 bdrms, 2 living, large 

decks, 1 acre garden, bbq, woodfire. 

Phone 0416 234 808, 

(03) 4208 0668. 

AIREY’S INLET 

SATIS BEACH HOUSE 

Stylish and comfortable 3 bdrm house 

for six on the beach side of Great Ocean 

Road. Paddle our canoe on the inlet, walk 

to the lighthouse, cliff walk and beaches. 

Phone (03) 5380 8228 or email 

melrose@gjr.net.au. 

Website: www.satisbeachhouse.com 

HOLIDAY HOUSE 

PHILLIP ISLAND, VENTNOR 

Two bedroom sleeps 6, available 

weekends and holidays. Jane 

(03) 9387 9397 or 0431 471 611 

or Louise (03) 9343 6030 or 

0413 040 237. 

WILSONS PROMONTORY 

Promclose Cottage. 

www.promclose.com 

0418 125 412. 

TRAVEL INTERNATIONAL 

driveEUROPE 

Peugeot Citroen Renault 

2012 European specials out NOW 

Our 38th year of service to the 

European traveller. Email: enquiries@ 

driveeurope.org (02) 9437 4900 

FRANCE 

Five cottages for rent. Provence, 

Dordogne, Burgundy, Ile de France. 

Only $1175 pw. 

Contact maxtens@gmail.com 

www.stayinafrenchcottage.com 

FRANCE — LANGUEDOC 

Two renovated stone houses in tranquil 

village near Carcassone, sleep four 

or eight, from $600 a week. See 

website at www.frenchrentalhouses. 

bigpondhosting.com; or phone 

(02) 4757 1019; 0414 968 397; 

email marjen1946@hotmail.com 

FRANCE — PROVENCE 

Restored 17th-century house in 

mediaeval fortified village of Entrevaux. 

Spectacular location, close to Côte 

d’Azur and Italy. Contact owners 

(03) 5258 2798 or (02) 9948 2980. 

www.provencehousestay.com. 

MOBILE ACCOUNTANT SPECIALISING IN 

TEACHERS TAX RETURNS 

SPECIAL RATES FOR AEU MEMBERS 

TAX RETURNS FROM $80 

in the comfort of your own home or place of work. 

All possible deductions will be claimed, superannuation 

advice, retirement planning available. 

Experienced Accountant/Registered Tax Agent 

Call Artur on 9503 4366 

info@taxwindow.com.au 

www.taxwindow.com.au 

FRANCE — SOUTH WEST 

Renov 17thC 2 bdrm apart in elegant 

Figeac, “centreville”, or cottage in 

Lauzerte, 12thC hilltop village. Low cost. 

www.flickr.com/photos/clermontfigeac/ 

or www.flickr.com/photos/ 

les-chouettes/ Ph teacher owner 

(03) 9877 7513 or email jimmcdon@ 

tpg.com.au for brochure. 

ITALY — FLORENCE 

Beautiful fully furnished apartment 

in historic centre. Sleeps 2-6, 

$1,700 pw, telephone 0419 025 996 

or www.convivioapartment.com. 

ITALY — UMBRIA 

Apartment. Beautiful sunny 2 bdrm. 

Historic Centre Citta Di Castello 

€625pw 2p, €675 3-4p. 

0414 562 659 darylhely@gmail.com 

ROME 

Studio apartment, Piazza Bologna, 

beautifully appointed, sleeps 2, opens 

onto garden courtyard, $1100 pw, 

telephone 0419 488 865 or 

www.ninoapartmentrome.com. 

SOUTH OF FRANCE — LANGUEDOC 

Two charming newly renovated traditional 

stone houses with outside terraces. 

Sleeps 4 or 6. Market town, capital of 

Minervois, wine growing region, close to 

lake, Canal Midi, Mediterranean beaches, 

historic towns. From $460 per week. Visit, 

Web: www.languedocgites.com 

Email: info@languedocgites.com. 

BENALLA COLLEGE TO 

CELEBRATE 100 YEARS OF 

STATE SECONDARY EDUCATION 

2012 would have been the 100 years 

centenary of Benalla High School. 

Benalla College will be hosting events to 

celebrate 100 years of public secondary 

education in Benalla. This will incorporate 

recognition of Benalla High School, 

Benalla Technical School, and the 

current Benalla College on the 7, 8 and 

9 September. For more information visit 

Benalla.co@edumail.vic.gov.au 

NOTICES 

CRT GUIDE 

Detailed and practical book to help 

primary teachers new to the role as a 

CRT. See details www.vjsalescom.au 

$24.95 Free postage 

FUNDRAISING with 

Little ‘smart’ Artists 

Let your kinder or school’s Little ‘smart’ 

Artists make you money. 

Kids can now have their artwork put on an 

Australian made T-shirt and your kinder/ 

school makes a percentage from every 

T-shirt sold. Requires minimal work on 

your behalf. 

Contact sales@littlesmartartists.com. 

au or 0431 995 165 (Meri) 

www.littlesmartartists.com.au 

(MPS) MELBOURNE PROPERTY 

SOLUTIONS 

VENDOR ADVOCACY — SELLING YOUR 

PROPERTY? 

Take away the stress and engage an 

independent advocate and a former 

teacher and AEU member. 

There is no cost when using Melbourne 

Property Solutions, as the agent you 

select pays (MPS) a set percentage of the 

fee from their total commission. 

Mark Thompson, Licensed Estate Agent 

Melbourne Property Solutions. 

Buyer and Vendor Advocate Services. 

Ph 0409 958 720 

Email: mark@mpsadvocates.com.au 

Website: www.mpsadvocates.com.au 

RETIREMENT VICTORIA 

Visit us at www.retirevic.com.au. 

RETIRING SOON? 

Volunteers for Isolated Students’ 

Education recruits retired teachers 

to assist families with their Distance 

Education Program. Travel and accommodation 

provided in return for six weeks 

teaching. Register at www.vise.org.au 

or George Murdoch (03) 9017 5439 

Ken Weeks (03) 9876 2680. 

VISAS IMMIGRATION 

For the professional advice you 

need — contact Ray Brown. Phone 

(03) 5792 4056 or 0409 169 147. 

Email raybrown888@bigpond.com. 

Migration Agents Registration No. 0213358. 

Big Savings for Union Members 

bathrooms, 

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*bathrooms *en suites *new or old 

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N.E. METRO AREA 

Quality work for the right price 

with over 18 years industry experience 

CALL SIMON mobile: 0414 294 824 

ph/fax: 9439 9223 

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culture 

WINE 

TALKING 

Paddy Kendler 

Bella Bellarine 

THE rebirth of Geelong wine has required a long 

and gradual gestation but there are signs that 

this once-predominant region is on the move. 

During the 1860s, Geelong was far and away 

the largest wine producer in Victoria but the 

arrival via its busy port of the vine louse phylloxera 

in 1877 largely led to its demise. 

Why the area was not more widely planted in 

the Victorian wine revival of the 1960s is puzzling. 

And while the Yarra Valley boomed from the 

1970s on and the Mornington Peninsula took off 

during the 1980s, Geelong stumbled along in fits 

and starts. 

But more recently, there has been a remarkable 

increase in the quantity and quality of 

Geelong wine, exemplified by Bellarine Estate and 

Provenance. The former boasts an excellent range 

at cellar door while the latter is more geared to 

retail and restaurant sales. Both are noted for the 

red regional specialities, pinot noir and shiraz. 

Visitors to the region should consult www. 

winegeelong.com.au for cellar door opening 

hours. 

Meanwhile, check out these impressive new 

releases: 

MUD HOUSE MARLBOROUGH SAUVIGNON BLANC 

2011 ($22): Of the seemingly hundreds of Kiwi 

sauvignons available here, most of them seem to 

come out of the same massive tank and are pretty 

ordinary. Mud House is a truly delightful exception, 

a brilliant example of the style. www. 

mudhouse.co.nz. 

RIPAROSSO MONTEPULCIANO 

D’ABRUZZO 2009 ($10): A handy 

and versatile dry red, holding an 

enjoyable measure of sweet and 

savoury fruit flavours within a 

modest structure. Ideally suited to 

casual Italian meals and barbequed 

meats. Available from Safeway, 

Dan Murphy and BWS. 

MOUNT LANGHI GHIRAN CLIFF EDGE SHIRAZ 2009 

($30): A very smart wine, genuinely interesting 

with lovely sweet berry flavours laced with spicy 

and well integrated oak. The real deal. ◆ 

Stare crazy 

THERE’S an overwhelming 

tiredness creeping 

around our staffroom. In the 

midst of reports, sickness 

and general “how long ’til 

the holidays?” vibe, teachers 

are flat out. There’s no 

sense of people slacking off 

or putting in minimal effort. 

But Ted Baillieu wants more 

out of us. 

Asking teachers to work 

harder proves his ignorance. 

We can’t work any harder 

— we’re already pushing 

it as it is. Teachers are 

multi-tasking masters and, 

even in the throes of report 

writing, turned out in their 

thousands to Hisense Arena 

to express their disgust at 

the Government’s attitude 

towards them. 

“I should be at home 

writing reports!” yelled one 

enthusiastic primary school 

teacher, waving a larger than 

life pencil in the air. “But this 

is important!” 

Groups of teachers with pre-determined 

meeting points greeted their colleagues excitedly 

before the rally. Like a well-planned excursion, 

they dressed in red and checked their mobile 

phones for other attendees — all with expressions 

that read “Don’t mess with us, Baillieu.” 

I wonder what Baillieu would think if 

confronted with a huge crowd of teachers 

all giving him “the stare”. We’ve all got “the 

stare”. It’s guaranteed to stop a rioting class, 

sends chills down the spine of even the most 

challenging student and, so we keep being told, 

irritates the hell out of our partners and families. 

(“Stop giving me the teacher stare — I’m not 

one of your students!”) 

I wonder how long Baillieu could keep up his 

deluded arguments with a mass teacher stare 

bearing down upon him. 

Only a small number of staff remained at our 

school. The principal team supported the strike 

and so did most parents. The day before, my 

Year 12s showed their support. 

“We know how hard you work, Miss.” 

“Yeah, all of the teachers do.” 

“Are you going to strike again next term?” 

Even though the last question may have been 

motivated by prospect of another school-free 

day, most school communities are well aware 

of the hours and effort that teachers put in. 

Of course, though, with every strike, come the 

teacher bashers. 

“I wish I had 12 weeks of paid holidays every 

year — stop your whingeing.” 

Well, we do not have 12 weeks of holidays 

a year — we have 12 weeks without classes, 

to mark, cross-mark and plan curriculum. If 

you don’t use that time, you will never survive 

in the classroom. Let’s see Ted spend one 

term teaching a full allotment, attending staff 

meetings, calling parents, running detentions, 

attending camps, helping out with the school play, 

doing yard duty and and all the other extras that 

come with being a teacher. 

I’ve got a Year 9 class I would be happy to 

donate for the experience. ◆ 

Comedian Christina Adams thinks there’s nothing 

funnier than performance pay. 


culture 

Playground talk 

Ned Manning has distilled a lifetime of teaching into a 

book that tells it like it is. 

Cynthia Karena AEU News 

ITHOUT any change in pay 

“Wrate, my two four-hour classes 

morphed into four 24-hour days,” 

writes drama teacher and actor Ned 

Manning in his new book Playground 

Duty, as he describes the start of 

a funny, stressful, and inspiring 

excursion with some performing arts 

students. 

Teachers all know their pay is not 

commensurate with the hours they 

put in, but this book aims to help 

the general public reach the same 

conclusion by giving a glimpse of a 

teacher’s life and an understanding of 

what teaching involves. 

From the inner-city schools of 

Sydney to country NSW, this is a 

warts-and-all look at Manning’s 

teaching experiences, full of joy, 

exhilaration and frustration. 

Manning, who recently moved to 

Victoria, wrote the book to “paint a 

picture” of teachers so people could 

have a conversation about teaching 

with an understanding of what 

they do. 

“I want to change the debate. I 

was sick of years of attending rallies 

and demonstrations trying to get a 

point across, and then seeing how it 

was reported in the press. (Typically) 

negative about teachers, they never 

had anything positive to say, implying 

that teachers are bludgers and lazy, 

and it got to me. 

“So I wrote the book to reflect 

on the nature of the job, and what 

teaching is about.” 

The book is also very funny. 

From Manning’s sartorial choice 

of a purple body shirt in the ’70s, 

to embarrassing himself helping 

students understand how to perform 

a character, the book conveys the 

comedy of teaching. 

But what always shines through 

is Manning’s passion for the job 

and his compassion for students. 

Readers will see that most teachers 

care about their students, want the 

best for them, and work hard to help 

them reach their 

potential. Like 

most teachers, 

Manning does 

extra work out 

of hours to help 

students, without 

being paid for it. 

For teachers 

and former 

teachers, it will 

bring smiles of 

understanding 

and recognition, 

but there is 

nothing new for 

them here. Many 

of them could write a book like this. 

But this book is important for what 

it tells the general public. 

“For people that have two kids, 

think about dealing with a classroom 

full of them!” Manning says. 

“I want the general public to have 

some sort of empathy about how 

demanding the job is — emotionally 

demanding as well. Since I left 

full-time teaching, I am healthier, less 

stressed, and I have fewer migraines. 

“I’m not an educational theorist, 

but this book is about getting people 

to understand the value of 

teachers.” ◆ 

Playground Duty by Ned Manning is 

published by New South Publishing, 

RRP $34.99. 


PROTECTING WHAT MATTERS 

Retirement Victoria has provided AEU members with strategic financial advice for two 

decades. 

We are now able to offer comprehensive personal advice in another area critical to the welfare 

of AEU members and their families — risk insurance — including Income Protection, Death, 

Trauma, Disability and Business Insurance. 

Over time we have become increasingly aware that AEU members (and their children) are 

under insured or not insured at all against the risks that life can present. Most have not 

considered a thorough risk assessment leading to an appropriate level of insurance cover. 

Scott Plunkett is our dedicated Insurance Adviser with a wealth of experience and a personal 

style backed by technical excellence consistent with Retirement Victoria’s approach to financial planning. He can design a personal protection 

plan and recommend the most appropriate insurance policies that will maximise your financial and lifestyle security. 

APPOINTMENTS WITH SCOTT 

To arrange a complimentary appointment for yourself, or for another family member telephone Retirement Victoria on (03) 9820 8088. 

Retirement Victoria Pty Ltd is an Authorised Corporate Representative of Millennium3 Financial Services Pty Ltd AFSL 244252 


WIN teaching resources 

AEU NEWS is giving members the opportunity to win a variety of Australian resources for their school 

libraries from our good friends at ABC Books, Ford Street Publishing and Pan MacMillan Australia. 

To enter, simply email us at giveaways@aeuvic.asn.au by 10am Tuesday, July 24. 

Include your name and school or workplace. Write “Win Teaching Resources” in the subject line. 

Prizes will be sent to the winner’s school or workplace with a special inscription recognising the winner. Good luck! 

SUBSCRIBE TO THE AEU 

E-NEWSLETTER AT 

www.aeuvic.asn.au 

FOR THE CHANCE TO 

WIN MORE GIVEAWAYS! 

giveaways 

Fearless in Love 

By Colin Thompson 

& illustrated by 

Sarah Davis 

FEARLESS the bulldog was taught that 

life is much nicer if you love everyone. 

But loving everyone is much more 

complicated than he imagined. 

Until he meets Primrose ... 

 

RRP $24.99, ABC Books 

Riley and the 

Grumpy Wombat 

By Tania McCartney 

& illustrated by 

Kieron Pratt 

RILEY has discovered a wombat in 

his nanny’s garden. But why is this 

furry creature so grumpy? Travel on 

a journey around Melbourne to find a 

home for a wombat. 

 


The Spies of Gerander — Book Two 

By Frances Watts 

ALISTAIR, Alice and Alex have returned home safe from their adventures, but now that they know their 

homeland is in danger they can’t sit by and do nothing. With their friend Tibby Rose, they join FIG, an 

organisation working to free Gerander from the rule of greedy Queen Eugenia of Souris. 

 


In the Beech Forest 

By Gary Crew and illustrated by Den Scheer 

AN ORDINARY boy takes a path leading him from the safety of his home into a dark forest. His head is full of 

the fearful images of the computer games that so excite, yet terrify him; battles between heroes and dreadful 

beasts that may haunt this primal landscape. Become his companion. Take the journey. 

 

RRP $29.95, Ford Street Publishing 

Arkie Sparkle, Treasure Hunter: Code Crimson 

By Petra James 

THE first in an exciting new seven-book series that combines archaeology, action, high-tech gadgets, history, 

humour, a supersonic mini-jet, treasure hunting, fashion, two best friends and a bassett hound. 

Arkie’s archaeologist parents have been kidnapped. With the help of her cousin TJ and basset hound Cleo, 

she must find seven treasures across the seven continents in seven days. 

 

RRP $6.99, Pan Macmillan Australia 

Congratulations to our winners from AEU News issue 3 2012: Day to Remember: the story of ANZAC Day — Kerron Worsdell, Springside P-9 College; Outpost — Tania Marshall, Kent Park Primary 

School; Queen of the Night — Bronwyn Knight, Oberon High School; Ten Mile River — Joanne Thompson, Western Port Secondary College; King Jack and the Dragon — Diane McLennan, Barriburn Preschool. 

There’s more to life 

than paying a mortgage. 

That’s why we offer our Basic Home 

Loan. It has special features including a 

repayment pause 1 , options on payment 

frequency and free redraw. All designed 

to help you live well. 

Get back to basics with: 

A low variable interest rate 

Flexible repayments 

Free redraw facility 

Repayment pause 1 

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$8 monthly fee 

Learn more and apply online at 

bankmecu.com.au/basic or call 132 888. 

mecu Limited ABN 21 087 651 607 AFSL/Australian Credit Licence Number 238431 trading as bankmecu. Terms, conditions, fees and charges apply and are available on application. 

Loans subject to normal lending criteria and approval. 1. Loans must be established for a full 12 months and a maximum loan to value ratio of 90% (Family-Pause) or 80% (Eco-Pause) applies. 

Pausing repayments will result in interest continuing to accrue on the loan, potentially increasing the term of your loan. Full conditions available from bankmecu. AEU 33543 


Smile ... 

we’ve got 

you 

covered . 

Teachers Federation Health Ltd ABN 86 097 030 414 trading as Teachers Health Centre. THC-R-AD-L1-06/12. 

FREE 

Sunglasses 

(valued at $ 99 RRP) and 

Colgate Dental Travel Pack with your 

first Eyecare OR Dental appointment * 

Your new state of the art Health Centre is opening 2 July 2012 at 

52 Bridge Road, Richmond! You can see the same friendly team you’ve 

come to know at Swanston Street. PLUS you’ll enjoy our great Eyecare 

and Dental services and exclusive member discounts under the one roof. 

Don’t miss out! Pre-book your school holiday appointment today. 

Call 8412 0200 or visit teachershealth.com.au/richmond 

* Offer available to Teachers Health Fund members and the general public, upon completion of an eye examination OR dental consultation from 

2 July 2012 at the Teachers Health Centre, 52 Bridge Road Richmond VIC 3121. This offer is only available while stocks last. Some eye examinations 

and dental consultations may attract an out-of-pocket charge. For full terms and conditions, visit teachershealth.com.au/richmond 

Scan with your 

QR Reader App for 

more info on this offer.

Australian Education Union, Victorian Branch

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