Discrimination on the grounds of-

Political belief.

 

On 25 November 1999 I applied for a transfer.

I did not want to work at Lynch-Mob State School in 2000.

FOI Document 2733 File G Administrative Law Services Branch documents 49-51 (using the numbers at the bottom of the page) are copies of my application for a transfer to Brisbane to work as an English as a Second Language teacher.

I had very good qualifications in that area.

 

Why didn't I want to work at Lynch-Mob State School during 2000?

Acting principal G.R. and I were both active members of the Labor party.

I had met acting principal G.R. through the Labor party before either of us began working at Lynch-Mob State School - the school where she bullied me into ill health and out of work.

During 1998 I had organised groups of Labor party supporters to go canvassing for Local Member C on Sunday afternoons.

G.R. was in her first year as a Queensland teacher, working as a librarian at one of the local schools.

I uderstand she had previously worked in another state as a principal in a private school.

But in 1998 she appeared in our town with no job and she began doing casual teaching work at local schools.

G.R.'s name was on a list of Labor party supporters, so I would ring her up to ask her if she could come and help with the canvassing.

She never helped.

I first met G.R face-to-face at the party to celebrate Local Member C winning the 1998 state election.

The next year, 1999, I began working at Lynch-Mob State School.

And I found that G.R. had been appointed deputy principal at the school.

During Term 4 2000, Lynch-Mob State School usual principal E.L. was on leave.

So G.R. took over as acting principal of Lynch-Mob State School.

And A.L., a reading teacher who usually sat at the desk next to mine in our shared office, was chosen by G.R. and E.L. to be acting deputy principal.

 

to be continued

 

I worked as a teacher for 30 years in England, New South Wales and Queensland.

Durning that 30 years I never saw any principal behave towards any teacher in the way that G.R. behaved towards me.

She did not seem to be relating to me as a school principal normally relates to a teacher.

She seemed to be relating towards me as a politician relates to a political opponent.

 

For example:

Contrived Outrage.

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman accused Labor members of Brisbane City Council of adopting a "contrived outrage" strategy to divert attention from an issue involving Labor councillor Kim Flesser.

"This is nothing more than contrived outrage to cover up the fact that their councillor has been caught out," he said in a statement.

 

How does the "contrived outrage" strategy work?

When you make a mistake you "contrive outrage" at some trivial thing that your political opponent may or may not have done.

The "contrived outrage" distracts attention from your own mistake.

 

So - when I tried to discuss the groups of Grade 7 children who were missing from the Grade 7 classrooms, roaming unsupervised about the school, disrupting the other classes, the acting principal did not respond in the way that a school principal normally responds to this sort of issue.

She did not deal with the groups of unsupervised Grade 7 children roaming about the school.

The acting principal responded in the way that a politician would respond to an issue raised by a political opponent.

She, who had not been into my classroom or looked at my program all year, suddenly "contrived outrage" about some real or imaginary "lots of allegations" concerning me.

 

Falsification of records:

For example:

Documents 2421 F 28-32 were described by the Education Queensland Freedom of Information officer, Stephannie Kalas, on March 23, 2004 as -

"Notes of meeting between (acting principal G.R.), (acting deputy principal A.L.), (usual principal E.L.) and (my name) on 27/11/00."

Stephannie Kalas refused to send me a copy of the document.

I made an application for an internal review of her refusal.

I said that the documents must be falsified because usual principal E.L. was not present at this meeting.

The usual principal E.L. was not present at any meeting during Term 4 2000.

He was on leave.

 

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity-trained Education Queensland 'discrimination solicitor' who conducted the internal FOI review allowed me a copy of the document.

But it was not the same document.

It was headed:

"Meeting with (my name), (the name of the local QTU organiser), (acting principal G.R.) and (acting deputy principal A.L.) 27th November, 2000."

These are different names in a different order.

 

This second version of the 2421 F 28-32 'record' was written by acting deputy principal A.L.

It was not an accurate record.

So,

or

• or acting deputy principal A.L. was acting in the way that a subordinate normally acts when they are under political pressure, because Labor politicians normally pressure their staff to falsify or change 'records' of meetings.

For example:

"A former staffer of Belinda Neal has told how the federal Labor MP pressured her to lie in a statutory declaration by omitting damaging key details about what was said ...

Melissa Batten said last night she crumbled under pressure when Ms Neal directed her to rewrite a statutory declaration so it did not contain any unfavourable "loopholes".

She claimed the original statement was then shredded in Ms Neal's electorate office.

... Ms Batten said Ms Neal directed her to delete from her sworn statement ...

... With other staff of Ms Neal also required to fill out statutory declarations supporting the Labor MP, Ms Batten said she heard one of them say: "Any scrap stat decs, give them to me, and I'll shred them."

Ms Batten said that Ms Neal, during an earlier hour-long phone call, had also pressured her to change her story by not including ...

Ms Neal allegedly said to Ms Batten: "You didn't hear that."

The staffer said she felt pressured and did not include the comment later in her sworn statement."

• Neal 'pressured' staffer to tell lie, Brad Norington and Mathew Franklin, p.1, and p. 4, The Australian, Tuesday June 24, 2008.

 

And discrimination on the grounds of -

Race.

It is difficult to separate discrimination on the grounds of race from discrimination on the grounds of age.

I was brought up in a small country town in England in the 1950's.

I have the values of a person of my race and my age.

Every morning of my secondary schooling we all sang "Fight the good fight with all your might. ..."

We were taught that it was our responsiblity to speak up about issues of concern to the community, to defend the weak, to fight any form of corruption, etc.

We absorbed values such as "a man is as good as his word".

 

I never knew any grown man or woman in my home town to lie.

We would have thought that the liar had degraded themselves.

Before I was bullied in Queensland I had no experience of corruption.

That's why I couldn't believe the advice of the QTU that I should "accept the things you cannot change". 

I could not believe the QTU when they told me that there was no hope of justice because, they advised me, the Education Queensland Grievance process did not work. 

I believed in the Queensland Department of Education, the Queensland Government and the Labor party.

I believed the words that I read in the shiny Queensland government policy brochures.

There are similarities between my own experience, that of the Canadian teacher working at Mandurah High School, WA and that of

Robert Bartholomew, the American sociology professor working in the Northern Territory (as discussed on

http://www.badapplebullies.com/teacherstories.htm ) that support the argument that this is a genuine cultural / racial difference.

 

The Canadian teacher, the American sociology professor and I tried to deal with problems at our schools.

We did not realise that in Aussie culture dealing with problems is not valued.

In Aussie culture not talking about problems is valued.

I suspect this is related to the convict roots of Aussie culture.

Every early Aussie convict had to work in silent obedience for seven years in order to gain his or her 'ticket of leave'.

And Aussie teachers are treated like convicts - sent out to remote areas, far away from their families, to work fearfully till they have earned their 'ticket of leave' - the right to return home.

Aussie culture still seems to value silent compliance.

And so problems in Australian schools are allowed to fester for years, because teachers who try to deal with the problems are attacked and denigrated as 'arrogant troublemakers'.

 

and also-

The person who was chosen to conduct an 'internal review' into my complaint during 2004 was an Aboriginal.

This was concealed from me for several years.

So, not only was I trying to communicate with an Australian, I was (although it was being concealed from me) trying to communicate with an Aboriginal Australian.

A person of quite a different race.

A person from an oral culture, not a written culture

- and I was never, ever allowed to speak to him.

But the senior Education Queensland officer whose negligence I had complained about was allowed to meet the Aboriginal "internal reviewer", discuss my complaint about his own conduct, read his draft "reports"-

and to liaise with the CMC concerning the "internal review" of my complaint about his own behaviour!

 

I wrote to the "internal reviewer" several times to tell him that a mass of documents on my "official record" had been falsified and placed secretly on my file without my knowledge.

But he decided to copy from the falsified documents.

And to ignore my responses to the falsified documents.

 

My experience of Aboriginal people in public service positions of responsibility has been positive, very positive.

I have observed their skill with language and their kindness and attention to the individual.

 

But I had reported child abuse by a male teacher in late 1999, one year earlier.

And -

"... in remote Aboriginal communities,

where vigilante justice is aimed not at perpetrators but at whistleblowers, and reporting child sexual abuse is so terrifyingly dangerous

that even the strict secrecy codes of the nation's top crime commission cannot encourage those who know to speak up. ...

Inquirer was told of a case in another central Australian community of a child witnessing the rape of a toddler. The alleged perpetrator was a 12-year-old boy. After a child witness confided to an adult about the incident, it was reported to authorities.

The whistleblower was hunted for weeks by members of of the communities powerful families. ...

Australian Crime Commission chief executive Alistair Milroy says the National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Task Force ... has discovered high levels of under-reporting of abuse.

"Intimidation, fear and threat of retribution is a key cause of under-reporting," Milroy says.

If you live in a small community and disclose abuse, there is the real possibility of retribution from the offender's family, from your own family or from your community."

• Secrets in the shadows, The intervention: One year on, Natasha Robinson, p.22, Inquirer, The Weekend Australian, June 21-22, 2008.

 

I have always presumed that the Aboriginal 'internal reviewer' was simply being used as a puppet.

The fact that all copies of his September 2004 "draft internal review" seem to have vanished from the official records suggested to me that his original September 2004 "draft internal review" had been re-written by somebody else, possibly by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity-Trained Education Queensland "discrimination solicitor".

 

But this newspaper article suggests that it was discriminatory for Education Queensland senior officers to select an Aboriginal person to conduct the "internal review".

Because of -

• his very different language background.

 

• his oral culture.

 

• his different thinking style.

 

• the different values of the aboriginal community with which he identifies - in which whistleblowers - such as myself - are hunted down and attacked. 

 

• the different values which might also cause an Aboriginal employee to particularly fear being attacked by his public service community if he reported that I was being bullied. Because then he would have become a "whistleblower" himself.

 

And discrimination on the grounds of -

Disability.

 

And discrimination on the grounds of -

Sex.