Read how a young male teacher - a first year graduate - was driven out of work in Queensland:
SING : Silence Is Not Golden
Call for papers for the 2010 workplace bullying and harassment conference that will be held in
The Conference website can be found at: http://www.bullying2010.com/
The Centre for Research on Workplace Behaviours (CRWB) website can be found at: http://workplacebehaviours.research.glam.ac.uk/
4 July, 2009
Mr Crooke said he was often aware of politicians and senior public servants who did not seek the Integrity Commissioner's advice because they believed in their own ethical standards.
"They fall into the trap of engaging in a practice that, objectively, is seen to be inappropriate."
"... There a developing tendency in public administration for people to say: 'If we just do it and tough it out people will forget about it'," he said.
3 July, 2009
Twenty years ago today Tony Fitzgerald QC delivered to Parliament the final report of the 1987-1989 commission of inquiry into police corruption and official misconduct in Queensland.
The two-year "Fitzgerald inquiry" examined the system of governance that allowed corruption and misconduct to flourish in Queensland.
The work of the Fitzgerald inquiry and its legacy need to be respected, nurtured, and reinforced -
In September 2001 Mr Gordon Nuttall, then Minister for Industrial Relations, originally recommended that mining executive Mr Harold Shand be appointed to the board of WorkCover Queensland.
On September 17, 2001 the Queensland Cabinet approved Mr Shand's appointment at a cabinet meeting at the Brothers Leagues Club in Cairns.
Dealing With The Mob comments:
This September 17, 2001 date does not seem to be correct.
The Cairns Community Cabinet meeting was on 23 June 2002.
I am sure of the date because I spoke to Anna Bligh and Jim Varghese directly after that meeeting.
I told them that, when Queensland teachers were bullied at work, the Queensland Teachers' Union's only advice to teachers was to "accept the things you cannot change" and that there was no hope of justice because the Education Queensland Grievance process did not work.
On April 12, 2002 Mr Nuttall, 56, is accused of having corruptly received a one-off $60,000 secret commission from Mr Shand.
On June 10, 2003 Mr Shand was reappointed to the board of WorkCover Queensland at another cabinet meeting.
The reappointment led to Mr Shand earning $75,000 over three years.
Former cabinet secretary Ms Susan Horton said that Mr Nuttall did not declare an interest nor a conflict of interest at either of these cabinet meetings.
Were all appointments to the board of WorkCover being made in this manner?
Is this why bullied Queensland teachers were being advised by the Queensland Teachers' Union to "accept the things you cannot change"?
Education graduates in Queensland will be tested on their literacy and numeracy skills.
Primary school teaching graduates will be tested from the end of 2011 at the earliest.
Education graduates who fail the test will be allowed to the test again and again till they eventually pass, and they will be registered as teachers as long as they do eventually pass the test.
Tests for high-school teaching graduates will be introduced at a later date.
What does this tell us about the standards at Queensland universities?
Education students need to attain basic literacy BEFORE they begin university study.
This is really degrading the teaching profession.
The Government is yet to figure out what would constitute a pass mark for the tests, which will judge proficiency in literacy, numeracy and science.
The Queensland College of Teachers will be responsible for developing and administering the tests.
But what exactly are the qualifications of the staff of the Queensland College of Teachers?
Labor party membership?
Not rocking the boat?
Not knowing?
Not understanding?
Not finding any evidence of ?
Smiling?
Bluffing?
Pulling the wool over the eyes of?
29 June, 2009
Shadow Education spokesman Dr Bruce Flegg said that the Opposition had endorsed Professor Master's review into Primary Educaion in Queensland.
But Dr Flegg was still concerned that a Year 5 student in Queensland today learned less than they did in the 1960s.
"By Grade 5, they are about two years behind in what they were learning in the 1960s," Dr Flegg said.
Dr Flegg said Queensland's education system had once been the leader in teaching maths and science.
"We are now getting the F."
25 June, 2009
Leaks to journalists or opposition politicians drawing attention to corruption, gross incompetence, abuse of powers or other conduct against the public interest are important in the functioning of a vigorous democracy.
Unfortunately, political witch-hunts are nothing new either.
One of the most disgraceful examples in the Howard years concerned former Customs officer Allan Kessing, who was accused of leaking details of security weaknesses at Sydney airport to this newspaper.
The Rudd government's proposed whistleblower laws are disappointing.
At least 300 federal and state laws contain secrecy provisions for no good reason other than the Orwellian excuse that the laws provide for secrecy.
Judicious leaks that expose vital information in the public interest are essential to avoid the encroachment of the secret state, to which too many authorities aspire.
21 June 2009
"Mulligrubs" comments in Indymedia that the New South Wales Department of Education usually deal with teachers experiencing difficulties by-
But the teacher may not actually be "experiencing difficulties" at all.
The teacher may simply have attempted to expose some form of corruption.
Some NSW teachers are going to be reassigned to an administrative-type position which does not involve classroom teaching:
Teachers who provide reading, numeracy and literacy support for special-needs children are going to be be given administrative jobs as "co-ordinators".
They will help parents contact the Department of Community Services and other departments, as well as welfare, drug and alcohol support agencies.
NSW Teachers Federation president Bob Lipscombe believes that the reclassification of these teachers is a cost-cutting measure.
Mulligrubs comments that the Teachers Federation relies on teachers being bullied and harassed by supervisors and principals, as well as other teachers, to justify its surival.
"Never once has the Teachers Federation attempted to prevent one of its members being forcibly ‘examined’ by a dishonest, corrupt psychiatrist at HealthQuest."
"The thing that seems to be missing from the focus in the education revolution is a focus on quality of teaching," Curtin University head of education Jenny Nicol said.
Professor Nicol's views were backed by Robyn Ewing, Sydney University's acting Dean of Education and Social Work.
Robyn Ewing said much greater investment was needed in the professional development of teachers.
The problem is not the teachers.
The problem is the poor behaviour of some students and the lack of support from parents, principals and bureaucrats in dealing with those difficult students.
If teachers are properly supported, intelligent people will want to work as teachers.
But if teachers are bullied, harassed, victimised and "paid back" for discussing the problems in schools, intelligent people will not want to stay in teaching.
Independent valuations obtained by the school council made a mockery of the official valuations.
By late April his colleagues were complaining that they were being harassed into signing off on building plans they didn't want.
Bullying was on many lips.
"I have been told countless stories not disimilar to our own and I can understand the public silence - fear of retribution holds many back," Henry Grossek writes.
"What chance do our kids have as adults if a culture of bullying exists in the higher echelons of our educational bureaucracy?"
A spokeswoman for Education Minister Julia Gillard said Victorian authorities had informed her that the school would get $3m to build its preferred tenplate with the extra classrooms requested.
Mr Mayne's concerns were echoed by Rick Elsey, another parent at Holland Park State School.
"This program needs someone who knows what a shovel is to oversee the dumbness," Mr Elsey says in a letter to the editor sent to The Australian.
Ipswich teachers are being forced to keep unruly and violent students in school to ensure the official number of suspensions and exclusions falls.
Queensland Teachers' Union Moreton organiser Barry Welch claims that the pressure to keep troubled youngsters in schools is causing chaos in classrooms and endangering the safety of staff.
He said high suspension and expulsion rates were not necessarily bad as it meant principals had a zero-tolerance policy for bad behaviour.
“When a student is violent to a teacher, that should be an offence warranting exclusion," Mr Welch said.
A teacher from an Ipswich region school, who spoke to The Queensland Times on the condition of anonymity, said students, some as young as five, had thrown chairs, bitten and kicked students and staff and walked out of class, and there were sometimes up to four unruly children per classroom.
“Teachers are spending most of their time doing behaviour modification rather than teaching,” she said.
1 June 2009
The Queensland Catholic Education Commission wants an OP of around 12 to be the minimum entry requirement for university teaching courses.
Saturday 30 May, 2009
Paul McGinity has been the local doctor at Scottsdale, a timber town in Tasmania's northeast, for 32 years.
But his career has been brought to a humiliating halt.
The Medical Council of Tasmania has suspended Paul McGinity's general practitioner's registration pending an investigation.
Complaints to the Medical Council of Tasmania have linked Paul McGinity to the deaths of seven patients.
Dr McGinity claims his accusers are "vexacious".
He claims that his chief accuser - Department of health and Human Services primary health adviser Dr George Cerchez - has a potential conflict of interest.
Dr McGinity's patients support him.
Complaints have been made against Dr McGinity relating to 23 patients.
But none of the complaints were made by the patients themselves, or by their families.
So who is complaining?
Dr McGinity understands that all but four complaints were submitted by Dr George Cerchez.
Dr Cerchez is on the board of a local doctors' group - "GP North".
GP North has obtained $500,000 in federal funding to build a new $1.2 million medical complex in Scottsdale.
Dr McGinity does not want to work at this new clinic.
The remaining four complainants are, apparently, Linda Clow, Jim Wilson, Natalie Burch and Gretchen Stone, all GPs at Scottsdale's other practice.
But they insist that they have "nothing to do with" these allegations.
These four "complainants" will, it seems, move to the new clinic.
And if Dr McGinity loses his registration, his 3000 patients will be forced to go to this new clinic.
GP North chief executive Phil Edmondson said "I have no knowledge of the nature of the complaints against Dr McGinity.
From the perspective of GP North, there is absolutely and categorically no link whatsoever between the matters."
Thursday 28 May, 2009
I spent three years of my life studying for a Certificate in Education, three years studying part-time for a B.A., two years studying part-time for a B.Ed and three years studying part-time for a Masters' degree in Education.
But when I was bullied at work by an incompetent Education Queensland "acting principal" with all the knowledge of Education Queensland policies that could be contained on a sticky-note, the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission ( CMC ) advised me that they did not have the resources to investigate my complaint.
So, if our government does not have the "resources" to protect Queensland teachers from workplace abuse, what does our government have the "resources" to do?
What does our government and the Australian community value more highly than the health and welfare of Queensland teachers?
As many as 16,000 dead people have received federal government stimulus payments of $900 each.
It is likely that more than $14 million dollars was given to dead people by the federal government.
The tax office admits it does not know where the payments to dead people ultimately finish up.
27,000 expatriate Australians have also received up to $26 million dollars worth of federal government stimulus payments.
Non- Australians who have lived Australia for six months or more and then returned home will also receive a $900 federal government stimulus.
Some prisoners will receive the $900 federal government stimulus.
More than $11 million was spent telling the dead people, backpackers, prisoners and Australians living overseas that they were going to be given a $900 stimulus by the federal government.
99.6 per cent of Australian teachers report that they are being bullied at work.
But the Queensland CMC claims that it does not have the resources to deal with the workplace bullying in Queensland schools.
It isn't good enough, Robert Needham.
It isn't good enough, Anna Bligh.
It isn't good enough, Kevin Rudd.
Thursday 28 May, 2009
I spent three years of my life studying for a Certificate in Education, three years studying part-time for a B.A., two years studying part-time for a B.Ed and three years studying part-time for a Masters' degree in Education.
But when I was bullied at work by an incompetent Education Queensland "acting principal" with all the knowledge of Education Queensland policies that could be contained on a sticky-note, the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission ( CMC ) advised me that they did not have the resources to investigate my complaint.
So, if our government does not have the "resources" to protect Queensland teachers from workplace abuse, what does our government have the "resources" to do?
What does our government and the Australian community value more highly than the health and welfare of Queensland teachers?
As many as 16,000 dead people have received federal government stimulus payments of $900 each.
It is likely that more than $14 million dollars was given to dead people by the federal government.
The tax office admits it does not know where the payments to dead people ultimately finish up.
27,000 expatriate Australians have also received up to $26 million dollars worth of federal government stimulus payments.
Non- Australians who have lived Australia for six months or more and then returned home will also receive a $900 federal government stimulus.
Some prisoners will receive the $900 federal government stimulus.
More than $11 million was spent telling the dead people, backpackers, prisoners and Australians living overseas that they were going to be given a $900 stimulus by the federal government.
99.6 per cent of Australian teachers report that they are being bullied at work.
But the Queensland CMC claims that it does not have the resources to deal with the abuse.
It isn't good enough, Robert Needham.
It isn't good enough, Anna Bligh.
It isn't good enough, Kevin Rudd.
Saturday 23 May, 2003
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh made an election commitment not to sack her senior public service staff.
But a leaked email has revealed that a top-level review is under way into -
The email indicated that job cuts were likely.
Dear Ms Bligh,
I would be happy to provide you with a list of Directors-General who are not achieving anything.
These men and women spend their days smiling with all of their charming teeth and resolutely "not knowing".
I would also be happy to provide you with a list of senior public servants who spend their days wasting taxpayers money writing misleading Briefings For The Minister.
Yours sincerely,
Dealing With The Mob
Des Houghton of The Courier-Mail reports that no one could adequately explain to him why the teachers had left or exactly where they had gone.
Des Houghton suspects that the reason is teacher burnout and the rise of aggressively unruly students.
The figures can be found in the annual report of the Queensland College of Teachers.
The college reports that there were 96,985 teachers registered in Queensland.
However, nearly 40,000 of them were listed as "not known to be teaching".
College figures show only 57 per cent of all registered teachers are teaching.
Billions have been spent training teachers who subsequently drop out.
Peter Renshaw, from the University of Queensland, said up to 50 per cent of teachers do not see themselves remaining in the profession for longer than 10 years.
Queensland University of Technology researcher Leanne Crosswell said that there was dissatisfaction with the way principals dealt with unruly behaviour - by parents as well as students.
Dr Crosswell said abuse from parents was a growing problem.
Notice that nobody mentions abuse of classroom teachers by school principals.
This is part of the problem - the reluctance to discuss the problem.
Tuesday May 19, 2009
More than 1000 teachers from across the Far North packed into the grandstand at Cazalys stadium in Cairns.
Another 500 teachers from Cape York and the Torres Strait also met in protest.
Queesland Teachers Union Far Northern organiser Maureen Duffy led today's strike action in Cairns.
She said that Queensland teacher's pay was among the lowest in the country.
And that teachers in other states are paid up to $7000 more a year.
Later in the day the Bad Apple Bullies investigative reporter reported that the Cairns Central shopping centre was full of smiling teachers, enjoying a day away from the stress of teaching.
The coffee shops were full.
And every shop in Cairns Central seemed to be full of busy customers.
A Queensland teachers' strike seems to be very good for the Cairns economy.
Let's hope, for the sake of the shopkeepers in Cairns Central, that a Queensland teachers' strike becomes a regular event.
Monday May 18, 2009
The Right to Information Bill will be introduced to Queensland parliament this week.
The Queensland government claims that the law is intended to boost government transparency.
A Privacy Bill will, it is claimed, "enable easier access and the ability to fix mistakes in personal information held by the government".
But how many years will this process take?
And one provision of the new laws seems to be intended to discourage applicants.
Information released to applicants will be published online within 24 hours of its release to the journalist or outlet that paid for the application.
Great.
I have discovered under Freedom of Information that after I retired from teaching a huge mass of falsified documents, detrimental to my interests, were secretly placed on my Department of Education records in breach of many official departmental polices.
Presumably this is common practice in Queensland.
And, under the new policy, 24 hours after releasing this mass of falsified documents to me, the Queensland government would release this mass of falsified "records" on the internet.
What a really stupid idea, Anna Bligh.
People will commit suicide.
"It was paid for by the public purse, it's the taxpayer that pays for the collection of records, for the archiving of records, the production of the material and the keeping of the information," Premier Anna Bligh said.
"It's public information, and the mere fact that one individual or one organisation asks for it doesn't deny the fact."
This is payback, Anna.
Your new laws won't facilitate Freedom of Information.
They will payback decent people who are trying to find out what secret lies Queensland public servants have placed on their "official record".
A group of six students involved in a fight have shared $235,000 in compensation, according to figures released to the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information laws.
Lawyer Barrie Woollacott, from firm Slater and Gordon, said schools were often sued for failing to act properly when there was trouble brewing among students.
"They allow volatile situations to continue in circumstances where a quick response would have defused them," he said.
"But because they haven't responded appropriately, something's happened and one of the victims has been assaulted. And then he's said to the school, 'You didn't look after me properly'."
Let me see if I understand this situation correctly.
Six students fight each other.
Then they share $235,000 compensation because their teacher did not stop them from fighting each other.
Hmmm ... isn't this rewarding the students for fighting?
The teacher is to blame because he or she "did not respond quickly enough".
The teacher "allowed the volatile situation to continue".
The teacher did not "respond appropriately".
So "something happened"-
The students attacked each other.
Because the teacher "wasn't looking after them properly".
"In some cases, people are not taking responsibility for their own actions. It's becoming too litigious," Association of School Councils in Victoria CEO Stephen Franzi-Ford said.
"If a kid climbs a tree and the teacher doesn't see it and the kid is hurt, who's responsible?"
Queensland teachers are being terrorised by their students.
State School students have -
One special school teacher had her jaw broken and multiple teeth knocked out by a student.
Another suffered extensive eye socket and rib damage after being assaulted by a student.
There were more than 150 attacks on Education Queensland staff and students from intruders during 2008.
And teachers in prep classes face rising violence.
A teacher who specialises in behaviour management contacted The Courier-Mail last week to report that during the past fortnight-
An Education Queensland spkeswoman said violence had no place in the sector.
It is really annoying the way that "departmental spokespersons" trot out this sort of meaningless gobbledy-gook.
When I was bullied the Director-General wrote to me to tell me that there was no place for workplace abuse in Queensland schools.
Meanwhile, the bully had been given a whopping great promotion.
More than 17,000 students were suspended for violence in Queensland state schools in 2007-2008.
Almost 300 state school students were expelled for violence.
Saturday May 16, 2009
Commonwealth Ombudsman John McMillan says that simple administrative mistakes by public servants can cause great damage.
They can cause great anguish or disadvantage to members of the public.
They can shake public confidence in governmental decision-making.
My confidence in Queensland governmental decision-making has been shaken, Mr McMillan.
It has been shaken by the mistakes of inexperienced and incompetent administrators.
But it has been shaken even more by the sort of deliberate "mistakes" which disguise serious systemic abuse.
"A problem or complaint in a single case can point to a larger issue that may need to be addressed by an agency," Mr McMillan says.
I have been pointing at the systemic abuse of the Grievance and Diminished Workplace Performance (now called Managing Unsatisfactory Performance) policies to bully good queensland teachers into ill health retirement since August 31 2001, Mr McMillan.
And I am still pointing.
But the Queensland Government doesn't seem to want to look where I am pointing.
John McMillan will be the keynote speaker at next week's Ethical leadership and Governance in the Public Sector conference at the National Convention Centre in Canberra next Tuesday and Wednesday. :
The conference will also be attended by Sue Chapman, general manager of the corporate services group in the Attorney-General's Department, who will speak on the department's approach to corporate governance.
And Michael Schafer, acting senior director of assurance and risk advisory services in Queensland Health, who will speak on the importance of the whistleblower function.
But Mr Schafer - didn't Queensland Health sack whistleblower Karen Smith just a few days before the Queensland election?
So will you be speaking about the importance of the sacking function when dealing with whistleblowers?
Thursday 14 May, 2009
The biggest threat of corruption is through public sector complacency, Robert Needham, the Chairperson of the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) has said.
In announcing its line-up for the Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption (APSAC) Conference, to be held in Brisbane in July, Robert Needham said that standards had noticeably slipped.
"While I don't believe systemic corruption exists in Queensland, ..."
I didn't believe it either, Mr Needham.
I didn't believe it in November 2001 when the Queensland Teachers' Union (QTU) advised me that there was no hope for a Queensland teacher who was being bullied at work.
I didn't believe the QTU when they advised me that the only thing to do was to "accept the things you cannot change".
But in May 2009 - I believe it.
And I believe that the "processes" adopted by the CMC are part of the problem.
The way that CMC officers accept any gibberish that Education Queensland officers tell them, for example.
It's not good enough, Mr Needham.
Wednesday 13 May, 2009
In a national online survey of more than 800 teachers, 99.6 per cent said they had experienced bullying in the workplace.
State school principals received the worst rating for bullying.
"In government schools, the principal receives a significantly higher nomination as a frequent or persistent bully than found in independent or Catholic schools," Professor Duncan said.
Teachers also reported being bullied by parents.
Queensland Teachers' Union president Steve Ryan said teacher bullying "does represent an issue we are well aware of".
But you don't talk about the workplace bullying in Queensland schools very much, do you Steve?
And who called in the security guards when a retired teacher tried to talk about it at the last AGM?
Who shouted at the retired teacher and threatened to call the police if she talked about workplace bullying again?
Who is the union sheepdog?
Education Minister Geoff Wilson said the research was a concern and he would ask his department to look into it.
No, don't ask "your department" to look into it, Geoff Wilson, they have been "not knowing" about it since August 31 2001.
Your department won't tell you the truth.
Take responsibility for looking into it yourself.
Make dealing with the workplace bullying in Queensland schools your priority.
The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, chaired by Mark Dreyfus, inquired into whistleblowing and reported on February 25, 2009.
The 2009 Dreyfus Report is a regression from the standard set by the 1994 Senate Select Committee on Public Interest Whistleblowing.
The 1994 Senate Committee listened to and recommended for whistleblowers.
The Dreyfus Report is about managing the whistleblowing problem.
It is written for legislators not whistleblowers.
But who regulates the regulators?
This is the problem that Dreyfus ignores.
Whistleblowing is best studied longitudinally, namely over a period of time.
A longitudinal study reveals the repeated regulatory failure that whistleblowers on systemic problems typically encounter.
The protections for whistleblowers that the Committee recommended are meaningless.
There are no prescribed penalties for those who "payback" or victimise whistleblowers.
There is no suggestion that the career of the whistleblower should be monitored for some time after the whistleblowing.
Discrimination against a whistleblower doesn't end with the whistleblowing; it persists for years afterwards.
We have regressed a lot in 18 years.
The 1994 Senate Committee listened to whistleblowers.
They learnt about regulatory failure.
The Dreyfus Committee should have done the same.
Monday 11 May, 2009
Queensland teachers will go on strike for 24 hours on Tuesday 19 May 2009.
The government has offered three annual rises of 4.5 per cent, four per cent and four per cent.
But Queensland teachers claim that they are the lowest paid teachers in the country.
Premier Anna Bligh said a strike would not help the negotiations.
"I hope they do take into account the need for our children to be safe in classrooms and don't disrupt learning times."
Mrs Bligh, if you really care about Queensland children you need to care about their teachers.
Give their teachers decent working conditions and fair pay.
You are responsible for the current working conditions of Queensland teachers.
You have been a bad boss.
Fewer and fewer intelligent teachers want to work for you.
There were 156 readers comments on this Courier-Mail story between 10:19 am and 2:29, which suggests a high level of community interest in the story.
Almost 70% of readers had voted (when I checked at 2:40 pm) in support of the teachers being given a better pay rise, which is a pretty amazing level of community support for Queensland teachers.
The recent Masters report found that 25 to 35 per cent of Queensland indigenous students performed below national minimal literacy and numeracy standards, compared with 5 to 10 per cent of non-indigenous students.
"By Year 9, the gap between non-indigenous Queensland students and indigenous students living in very remote locations is, on average, equivalent to six to seven years of school, " Professor Geoff Masters wrote.
Indigenous Education Leadership Institute executive director Chris Sarra said that a toxic culture in the upper echelons of the Education Department, which had recently been "flushed out" in a restructure, was partly to blame.
Tanya Chilcott and The Courier-Mail - can you give us more details of this toxic culture and the "flushing out" process that Chris Sarra claims has taken place?
Do we really have change?
Late last year, the Bligh Government was embarrassed by earlier NAPLAN scores - and by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study - in which Year 4 Queensland children scored lower than kids in Kazakhstan.
It was such an appalling outcome for the Smart State that Premier Anna Bligh last December commissioned Professor Geoff Masters to inquire into Education in Queensland.
But, since Professor Masters delivered his report 10 days ago, the Government has gone silent, with not so much as a press release to keep public interest alive in what is undoubtedly Queensland's most intractable development crisis after the global financial meltdown.
We pray the wheels of change are furiously turning behind the scenes.
We simply cannot afford to let yet another education report gather dust on yet another minister's desk.
Saturday 9 May, 2009
There were at least 152 Queensland school invasions during the 2008 school year.
Violent intruders, including some armed with weapons, are attacking and hurling abuse at teachers and students almost daily in Queensland schools.
Students at Yeronga State High School last year "displayed signs of trauma" for days after a stranger attacked two staffers in front of children and claimed to be a terrorist with an AK-47 assault rifle.
The Courier-Mail has provided a complete list of schools which reported intruders, violence and staff being verbally abused:
Wednesday 6 May, 2009
There is an entrenched mindset within Queensland's education bureaucracy that resists drawing attention to academic excellence.
Teachers with excellent academic records, for example, are attacked and destroyed.
Because excellence in not valued in Queensland.
OP 19s rule in Education Queensland, right?
Tuesday 5 May, 2009
The maths skills of Queensland school students fell so greatly during the 1970s and 1980s that researchers have likened it to losing two years of learning.
Education expert Geoff Masters dismissed the argument that Queensland students have 12 months less schooling than their primary school counterparts on the same year level in other states, saying the state's underperformance continued into lower secondary school.
Geoff Masters told the Bligh Government that the state recorded the biggest national decline in junior secondary school mathematics in the 30 years up until 1995.
Geoff Masters said that his recent review of primary education in Queensland was told of underperforming school leaders.
"A theme that emerged from the review was the fundamental importance of having all players – teachers, students, parents, school leaders, system leaders – working in a consistent and mutually supportive way," Professor Masters said.
Monday 4 May, 2009
A University of New England study has revealed that almost all Australian school teachers have been bullied in the workplace, often by senior staff or the principal.
Sunday 3 May, 2009
Premier Anna Bligh will head the Labor Day march in Brisbane tomorrow with Queensland Teachers' Union General Secretary John Battams - who is also president of the Queensland Council of unions (QCU) - and QCU General Secretary Ron Monaghan.
Thousands of union members would be marching to celebrate more than a century of achievements.
Queensland Teachers' Union members, for example, are the lowest paid teachers in Australia.
99.8 per cent of Australian teachers - almost all union members - report that they have been abused at work.
And up to 50 per cent of Queensland teachers leave the profession after five years.
Steve Ryan, president of the Queensland Teachers' Union, will be marching with Anna Bligh and John Battams.
Will Steve Ryan and John Battams have the guts and integrity to ask Anna Bligh when she is going to deal with the workplace abuse that blights the lives of Queensland teachers?
Will they have the integrity to ask Anna Bligh what exactly she expects Queensland teachers to celebrate?
Smoke and mirrors?
Saturday 2 May, 2009
Commerce, industry and newspapers have been telling Queensland authorities for decades that Queensland schools have been failing to educate students to a satisfactory standard.
Today's Queensland teachers who struggle with the basics were yesterday's students in Queensland schools.
Those students were let down by Education Queensland.
Education Queensland bureaucrats demonstrate a zealous commitment -
- not a commitment to educating children, but a commitment to keeping their failures under lock and key.
Whistleblower protection laws recommended by a parliamentary committee headed by Labor backbencher Mark Dreyfus, QC, are actually aimed at keeping the lid on public disclosures.
The committee lists the key values that guided it as privacy, confidentiality, procedural fairness, and "the importance for people to make disclosures internally".
The committee would establish an elaborate bureaucratic maze, purportedly to "enable" public servants to report corruption, maladministration and other misbehaviour.
Allan Kessing was convicted of whistleblowing - of exposing security flaws at Australia's airports.
Mr Kessing has consistently asserted his innocence.
He is making a High Court challenge against his conviction.
Mr Kessing has used the last of his superannuation to pay in advance for the special leave hearing.
Attorney--General Robert McClelland has urged Allan Kessing to seek government funding for his High Court challenge.
Mr McClelland has written to Mr Kessing suggesting his planned High Court challenge could be covered by a scheme that pays for cases that are "of public importance either because they raise matters in the public interest or the questions are in the nature of a test case".
Mr Kessing's case is being opposed by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
Why does the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions need to destroy Allan Kessing?
Mr Kessing seems to be an innocent man.
Is he just being used as a scapegoat - to warn public servants what the Australian Government will do to whistleblowers?
Even whistleblowers who are clearly acting in the public interest?
Even public servants who do not actually whistleblow?
Is Allan Kessing being destroyed to maintain a culture of fear in the Australian public service?
Friday 1 May, 2009
Education expert Professor Geoff Masters today handed down a report into improving Queensland students' literacy, numeracy and science levels.
Geoff Masters made five recommendations to improve standards, including -
A. Teachers should be required to achieve a basic standard of literacy, numeracy and science before they are accepted into a University Education course.
Students cannot benefit from these courses if they are struggling with literacy.
B. Queensland school principals should be required to sit tests to demonstrate -
a) their reading, writing, listening and comprehension skills
b) and their understanding of Education Queensland policies
- before they are promoted.
Because too many Queensland classroom teachers are suffering under illiterate and incompetent school principals.
c) a great deal will depend on the quality of the distance education course.
A poor course could enforce state-wide mediocrity.
The readers' comments on this article are interesting.
more comments -
Tuesday 28 April, 2009
Ray Halligan is the chair of Joint Standing Committee on the Corruption and Crime Commission in Western Australia (WA), the WA version of the Queensland Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee (PCMC).
Mr Halligan says that the Queensland system that allows party politics to throw out complaints concerning official misconduct is "totally and utterly wrong".
In Queensland, the government holds a majority on the PCMC.
This allows Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee decisions on complaints concerning official misconduct and corruption to be made on a political basis.
Saturday 25 April 2009
Queensland's deputy public service commissioner Gary Barnes has been appointed the new head of the Northern Territory Education Department.
But how did Gary Barnes deal with workplace bullying in Queensland schools?
What did he actually do about the bullying?
What were the results of his actions?
Did the workplace bullying in Queensland schools decrease?
Teaching Australia are inviting proposals from interested organisations and individuals capable of undertaking a project for the design, development and delivery of a national professional learning program for aspiring school principals.
Actually this is a really good idea.
My own bully seems to have been an incompetent who knew nothing at all about Education Queensland policies.
Her total knowledge of the DWP process was contained on one square sticky note.
But with this one square sticky-note she was able to destroy my career.
I had two good degrees, one with the college medal.
I had studied part-time for eight years to gain those degrees.
But an incompetent Queensland principal was able to destroy my health and my career in two days with all the knowledge that can be contained on a sticky-note.
Cos sticky-notes rule in Queensland, OK?
And the worst of it was that other principals, the District Director and several members of the District Office staff knew that my bully principal knew next to nothing about the DWP process - but they simply abandoned me to her incompetence.
This was disgraceful systemic negligence and it has to change.
But what we don't need are woofly courses about nothing very much that will arm psychopathic principals with high-sounding woofly phrases that they can parrot to justify their abuse of classroom teachers.
What we need are courses that train principals in the policies of their particular state.
And we need testing.
Smiles are not enough.
We need school principals who are able to read, write and comprehend to a basic standard.
We need lots of testing.
Because we need documented evidence that the psychopaths have understood the policies.
Then the psychopaths won't be able to "throw off" responsibility for their psychopath-attacks onto other people.
Principals - including psychopathic principals - must be held accountable for their abuse of classroom teachers.
Friday 24 April 2009
This is a really good article on Workplace Mobbing:
http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/pdf/0804/0804CP_Article4.pdf
I found Davenport et al's list of the ten key factors of the mobbing syndrome particularly relevant to my own experience of mobbing:
Source: Adapted with permission from Davenport N, Schwartz RD, Elliot GP. Mobbing: emotional abuse in the American workplace, Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing; 1999:41
Workplace mobbing: Are they really out to get your patient? James Randolph Hillard, MD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Michigan State University, pp 45-51, Current Psychiatry Vol 8, No. 4.
http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/pdf/0804/0804CP_Article4.pdf
Sunday 19 April, 2009
Some recent reviews have prompted me to think about the similarity between the behaviour of people in Nazi Germany - who refused to "know" about the Nazi concentration camps - and the behaviour of Queensland public servants - who refuse to "know" about the workplace abuse in Queensland schools.
"Good is a British film set in Nazi Germany in the 1930's.
It raises old questions about the so-called good German, the essentially decent, reasonable and conscientious citizen who despised Nazism (we must suppose) but managed to survive, perhaps even prosper, through a tacit accommodation with the regime.
Were such men good Germans or cowards and hypocrites?
How much did they know of what was happening?
And if they knew, were they justified, as loyal citizens, in putting their own interests ahead of a duty to resist?"
I was bullied by the acting principal.
It was radiantly obvious from the first moment that I was being bullied.
Seven classroom teachers who had seen me teach had a formal meeting with the acting principal and told her clearly that she was bullying.
But the local mob - the acting deputy principal, the usual principal and at least one member of the District office staff - joined in with the acting principal's bullying.
Then tens, perhaps hundreds of Queensland public servants simply passed my protesting emails and letters back to the local mob who were doing the bullying.
What kind of people do this every day?
What kind of human beings passively facilitate the abuse of fellow human beings?
"... For many Germans there was a life of comfort, duty and reward that dulled even the most sensitive spirits.
Much of Good unfolds at elegant receptions, in well-furnished offices and apartments ...
Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann and other recognisable monsters behave with affable civility."
My usual principal charmed me into remaining at his school.
I had applied to leave because I was so worried about the problems at the school.
My usual principal charmed me and assured me that he would deal with the problems at the school.
I respected this man and trusted him absolutely.
Then, while he was on leave, this man whom I respected and trusted absolutely made an agreement with the acting principal that I would be on a punishment program the next year.
And, when he returned to the school, my usual principal continued to smile at me and to charm me.
Each day since then this smiling man has returned to his luxurious house high on a hill.
To his wife and children who love him.
Knowing that he has earned these rewards by lying about a teacher and bullying her out of work
I often wonder how my usual principal can live with himself.
And I suspect that he lives with himself very easily.
And that he smiles.
And last weekend Stephen Matchett asked :
"What would any of us do in a society governed by bullies with no respect for the rights or lives of others ...?
A society where people are imprisoned for not deferring to moral cripples ...?
A society where everybody understands what happens to individuals who do not keep their heads down and mouths shut?"
Mr Matchett, it is obvious you do not live in Queensland.
This is the way that Queensland teachers are living today.
"It's not the sort of question Australians ask of ourselves because this sort of threat is so alien to our experience."
Not here, not in Queensland, Mr Matchett, not alien at all.
" But ... there is no reason we couldn't become such a society if enough people stayed silent."
They are silent in Queensland Mr Matchett.
They are silent in Queensland hospitals, Queensland schools, Queensland public service offices, the Queensland Ombudsman's offices, the Queensland CMC offices ... all silent.
Silence is their "Code of Conduct".
"While some civil servants argued against the abuse of power long before the outbreak of war, the Nazis had completely corrupted the rule of law, and almost everybody looked the other way."
Silence, a passive silence, is the rule of law for Queensland public servants.
Monday 13 April, 2009
My bully was such an amazingly convincing "spinner" - even I believed her at first.
And she certainly seemed to believe what she was saying at each given moment, even if it directly contradicted what she had said the moment before.
She even managed to persuaded the Director-General of Education that she deserved his sympathy and support.
How does this research deal with the evidence of a psychopath?
Are they classified as innocent victims?
Or as psychopathic liars?
And if somebody is a psychopath - are they really lying?
Or do they honestly believe the stories that they are continually changing?
Saturday 11 April, 2009
Can you tell facts from gibberish?
Queensland teachers urgently need you to apply today for a job as a Senior Investigator with the Office of the Queensland Ombudsman.
Salary $80,862.60 - $86,707.40 p.a.
Inquiries : Louise Rosemann (07) 3005 7000
"A large part of our role is to work with ordinary Australians who come to us with complaints about conditions in their workplace," Workplace Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson says.
"That might relate to being ... maltreated or some other issue."
According to the International Ombudsman Institute, ombudsman-type roles evolved to protect people against -
They also serve to make government actions more open and the government and its servants more accountable to the public.
In the case of Education Queensland, the Queensland Ombudsmen are failing dismally to deal with abuse in all of these identified areas.
Queensland teachers need Ombudsmen who will deal with the workpace abuse in Queensland schools.
"Though formal qualifications can help potential employees demonstrate their interest in workplace relations, people who work in this field tend to have a broad and hard-to-define range of skills."
Primarily the capacity to refuse to accept the gibberish that they are told by senior officers of the Queensland Department of Education.
For instance, among those who have found satisfying positions within the Workplace Ombudsman's office are people who have previously been lawyers, police officers, teachers and nurses, says Wilson.
Wilson says more and more ordinary Australians have become aware there is someone they can turn to if they believe they are being unfairly treated.
This "awareness that there is someone they can turn to" is, however, an illusion.
There is no-one there.
I, for example, turned to the Queensland Ombudsman in January 2003.
And Education Queensland simply fobbed the Ombudsman off with gibberish.
The Ombudsman copied out the Education Queensland gibberish and declared my case "closed".
Leaving me howling, "But this is all gibberish!" into the Great Queensland Public Service Void.
And the Ombudsman has been busily copying out the Education Queensland gibberish and declaring my case "closed" ever since.
And I - well, I am now called a "vexacious applicant" because I keep telling the Ombudsman that he is being fobbed off with gibberish.
"Good" applicants give up hope and accept the gibberish.
"As far as possible we seek voluntary compliance," Wilson says.
You are not getting compliance, Mr Wilson.
You are getting gibberish.
"Litigation is considered only where ... one party is unwilling to recognise and fix the problem."
Education Queensland are not willing, Mr Wilson.
They are not fixing the problem.
They are fixing you more gibberish right now.
Now here's a curious development.
On page 4 of The Weekend Australian, the Queensland Government are advertising for a new Director-General for the Department of Education and Training.
Wasn't Julie Grantham going to be the new Director-General for Not Knowing and Not Understanding and Being Too Busy And Important To Deal With Education?
Please ring Kathy McLean of Fish & Nankivell 0414 376 698 if you are willing to "know about" and to deal effectively with the high levels of workplace abuse in Queensland schools.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Each day in New York 700 teachers do not go to work in schools.
They go to sit together in "rubber rooms", a sort of prison for teachers.
Imagine being trapped in a room day after day for months and perhaps years with a group of very disturbed and depressed people.
It is hard to believe that American teachers are being treated this way in 2009.
http://www.mobbingportal.com/rubberroom.html
Monday 6 April, 2009
Leonie Wood writes in The Age about the problems facing whistleblowers:
Persons contemplating whistleblowing need to realise that the disclosure of their identity may cause them harm in ways they never find out — employment or promotions not offered, friendships undermined.
Last week, the name of a whistleblower was named publicly during an intriguing court case in which ASIC was trying to protect his identity.
The whistleblower does not want public attention.
But Federal Court judge Alan Goldberg heard that in April 2008 during a phone conversation with Dianne Schulman, a private investigator hired by lawyers representing Multiplex shareholders in a class action, the whistleblower indicated that he had endured a difficult, stressful and expensive few years after sounding the alarm.
He said he was "just an ordinary person trying to do the right thing".
The whole experience, he told Ms Schulman, had been "quite an ordeal".
Maurice Blackburn principle Andrew Watson told the judge that the whistleblower seemed "disillusioned" about being a whistleblower: he gave the impression he felt "hung out to dry … by ASIC".
He was very aggrieved by the fact that he had spent … $100,000 of his own money on lawyers."
Australian regulators face a dilema as private litigants demand access to sensitive transcripts of confidential interviews and other material obtained during investigations.
When informers have requested confidentiality, a conflict emerges between the regulators' public duties of delivering material to third parties and the promise to preserve confidential sources.
Saturday 4 April, 2009
Allan Kessing was accused of leaking two highly-confidential Australian Customs Service reports to The Australian newspaper in 2005, sparking the biggest overhaul of airport security in the country's history.
Kessing was found guilty by a NSW District Court jury in March 2007 and given a suspended sentence.
Kessing said the Rudd government's proposed laws would limit protection to whistleblowers who pass issues to their superiors and not those who go public, unless there was an imminent threat to public health or safety.
"First of all you take it to your immediate superior, they then pass it up to their superior, but what if it is your superior who is under threat? He's not going to pass it on," he told the Sunday Profile program on ABC Radio.
"Why would the person who has suppressed it be inclined to investigate it?
"It is laughable."
Exactly.
The CMC and Education Queensland repeatedly allowed the people that I had complained about to investigate themselves and "find no evidence" of their own misconduct.
The problem is systemic.
There is a systemic indifference to corruption.
And the workplace abuse of Queensland teachers continues to this day.
"From what my ex-colleagues in Customs tell me, no, in fact just recently there have been problems at the airport and all my ex-colleagues have been told, "say nothing to anybody otherwise the same thing will happen to you as Alan Kessing'."
"I've done my best, I've fought the government and they've broken me.
"Personally, no. But financially, yes," Kessing said.
Monday 30 March, 2009
Will the eight new ministers will be in any way different from the plodders who preceded them?
We are assured that this new, energised government will be different.
Does that mean distorting the truth until it has become unrecognisable will no longer be standard practice?
Does it mean that the Government will cease spending millions of dollars on self-congratulatory publicity campaigns and millions more employing hundreds upon hundreds of journalists, their sole purpose being to tell us what a fantastic job Premier Anna Bligh is doing?
Will there be a genuine attempt to reform Freedom of Information laws, as promised?
Sunday 29 March, 2009
How a 58-year old American teacher was driven out of work: http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Schwartz.html
Some of the strategies used to drive her out of work are similar to strategies used by Bad Apple Bully principals in Queensland.
Saturday 28 March, 2009
On April 28, 2006, Shellharbour Hospital boss, Michael Brodnik, distributed an email.
A decision had been made, he wrote, to set up a new unit within the emergency department.
"The unit will be … four beds, ... using the concept of 'virtual beds'."
Patients who arrived at emergency and needed admission would be assigned a virtual bed if no official in-patient bed was available, remaining physically in emergency.
The rationale was to get patients off the emergency department's books within eight hours of arrival - a watershed imposed by government as a so-called "key performance indicator" or KPI, amid political pressure over backed-up hospitals and ambulances unable to offload patients.
For a while Dr Simon Leslie, the head of the hospital's emergency department, continued a vocal opposition to the imaginary beds.
The directive to reclassify patients "according to any objective look at it was fraudulent", he told the Herald last week.
"It required staff in my emergency department to write down records that were incorrect."
That could have been the end of it, but then Peter Garling, SC, came to town.
On April 14 last year, at one of the inquiry's 34 public hearings, "Dr Leslie told me the 'virtual ward' was a fiction to compensate for the fact that Shellharbour Hospital does not have a short stay unit," Garling recounted in his report.
Leslie's evidence resulted - finally - in the virtual ward's abrupt termination.
Though this, as he had previously observed to Browbank, was, "easy because it doesn't actually exist".
Three weeks later, Sue Browbank, Michael Brodnik's boss, informed Dr Leslie of the abolition of his position.
When Dr Leslie updated the inquiry on the personal fallout from his testimony, Garling in late September 2008 ordered four days of extra hearings, devoted to the doctor's treatment.
Dr Leslie's treatment was "unreasonable, repeated, unwelcome, unsolicited, offensive, intimidating, humiliating and threatening," Garling wrote.
"I find it amounted to bullying and harassment in accordance with NSW Health's own guidelines."
"The workplace culture in NSW public hospitals is characterised by lack of respect and trust, absence of empathy and compassion, inability to celebrate the success of others, failure to communicate, and a lack of collaboration," was Garling's damning verdict after his journey to the heart of the health system.
Its anti-bullying policy had failed, dissent was quashed and persecution was rife.
Garling said Leslie's situation went unresolved because Shellharbour managers "did not demonstrate … the slightest knowledge of what constituted bullying and unacceptable behaviour".
Leslie will now take his case to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission.
Peter Garling, SC, is a man of courage and integrity.
It would only takes one man like Peter Garling to break the grip of the Bad Apple workplace bully-mob on Queensland schools and hospitals.
One man - or woman - with the courage and integrity to "know" about the workplace abuse.
Julie Grantham, will you have the courage to "know"?
Or will you collect your generous salary while carefully "not knowing" and "not understanding" about the workplace abuse in Queensland schools?
Friday 27 March, 2009
The ALP's Fiona Simpson described the "culture of fear" that existed in Queensland's public service.
Whistleblowing, by definition, is first and foremost about dedicated and conscientious public servants whose primary motive is to ensure the departments and the agencies in which they work fulfil their duty to the public.
Last month, Mark Dreyfus tabled a report of the legal and constitutional affairs committee in the House of Representatives that recommended a comprehensive whistleblowing scheme for the commonwealth public service.
This report, currently being considered by the Government, will lead to "the strongest whistleblower protection regime in any Australian jurisdiction".
The report recommends a model for disclosure first to the relevant agency, then to an external agency such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
The committee recommends that protections for whistleblowers should include immunity from criminal liability, from liability for civil penalties, from civil actions such as defamation and breach of confidence, and from administrative sanction.
The right to make a disclosure should also be defined as a workplace right, with recourse to the Commonwealth Workplace Ombudsman.
As well, the report recommends protection for disclosure to members of parliament, legal advisers, professional associations and unions for certain purposes, and the media in limited circumstances.
Requiring internal disclosure as a first step guards against interference with investigations and ensures natural justice for those against whom complaints are made.
And it allows for all documentary evidence to be "lost" or destroyed.
And it allows for investigations to be delayed for years so that corrupt public servants can claim to have "forgotten" what they did and why they did it.
The CPSU is the union that covers "the dedicated public servants who sort out wrongdoing".
Sort of like the CMC in Queensland, who write you letters full of gibberish and then refuse to allow you to tell them that they have had the wool pulled over their eyes?
To suggest that a complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman is "likely to be a bureaucratic nightmare, befouled by politics" misunderstands the independent stature of one of the most highly respected public agencies in the country.
Mr Dreyfus ... you are so innocent.
You clearly have no experience of whistleblowing.
The committee recommended that the onus is on each agency head to delegate staff within the agency to receive and act on disclosures.
By "losing" all but the first page of your disclosure, "misunderstanding" your complaint, rubber-stamping your disclosure "No Response Required. File away" etc. etc. as per usual.
Thursday 26 March, 20009
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh is to cut the number of government departments from 23 to 13 in a major overhaul of the public service.
She told reporters that she planned to trim the number of departments by 10, in six cluster areas.
But she said public servants' jobs would be guaranteed.
The chairs on the deck of Education Queensland have also been shuffled.
Rachel Hunter, Director-General of Education for the past several years, so they claim, has been shufftied back to Justice and Attorney-General.
Julie Grantham will be the new Director-General for Not Knowing and Not Understanding and Being Too Busy And Important To Deal With Education.
Craig Johnstone reports that she is "well-regarded".
Apparently Ken Smith is a "big winner" and has now accumulated even more power to Not Know and Not Understand and To Be Much Too Busy and Important To Deal With The Premier and Cabinet.
Superannuation industry spokeswoman Pauline Vamos told The Australian yesterday that the states had taken a "holiday" from making contributions to their pension schemes when the economy was booming.
Did you ever hear of anything so stupid?
So Labor?
Did you stop paying money into your super when rates were high?
No, of course you didn't.
But Labor did on your behalf.
An investigation by The Australian has found the unfunded superannuation pensions of Australian state teachers, nurses and other public sector workers blew out by more than $30 billion in the second half of last year to nearly $80 billion.
This has emerged as the single biggest factor limiting the ability of the states and territories to respond to the global financial crisis.
So pensioner teachers and nurses are now going to be blamed for the global economic crisis.
Queensland carries a significant superannuation liability on its books.
The collapse in superannuation assets, as a result of the global collapse in equity prices, has devastated public and private pension schemes alike.
However, the effect on the states is heightened because about 680,000 of their employees remain on defined benefits schemes.
During the early 1990's many - I believe as many as 95 per cent of Queensland teachers - moved from a defined benefit scheme to an accumulation plan, in which their benefits depend on their own payments, the contributions of their employers and the earnings of their funds.
These teachers were pushed out to sea alone, to row their own way to retirement.
Did your union warn you that it was a very bad idea to move into an accumulation plan, especially as you were getting older and more likely to be disabled?
Queensland has voted for three more years of this Labor government and their grinning senior public servant mates.
But - there is a positive side - if the grinning fat cat public servants had gone, they could not have been held responsible for their incompetence.
Maybe it is better that they stay, so that they can be held accountable.
Wednesday 25 March, 2009
On early figures, Australian university applications and enrolments in education have recorded an average 20.4 per cent increase, according to the country's deans of education.
"Nationwide it appears that teacher education has either held steady or increased, and in some cases increased dramatically, although the really dramatic increases have typically been on a small base," Australian Council of Deans of Education president and Monash dean Sue Willis told the HES.
Despite 500 new early childhood places this year, most institutions that offered the discipline reported they had filled their places.
Tuesday 24 March, 2009
When Labor was in Opposition in Australia, it pledged changes to freedom of information laws.
It promised protection for whistleblowers, and it promised shield protection for journalists such as the Herald Sun's top reporters, Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey, who were fined $7000 each and given criminal records for refusing to reveal their sources on a story about lax airport security that was correct and in the public interest.
These changes are necessary and overdue.
The ordinary member of the public probably has no idea how difficult it is to get even the simplest information out of government.
Under existing law and protocol, anybody employed by the government - that can mean a teacher, a nurse, a police officer or a bus driver - is threatened with disciplinary action if they speak to the media.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland says the Evidence Amendment (Journalists' Privilege) Bill 2009 will provide "much-needed protection for journalists".
But it won't do any such thing.
McClelland says the new law should be read in conjunction with the Government's planned laws to protect whistleblowers, which are likely to be introduced later this year.
The whistleblower laws are likely to be informed by the findings of a legal and constitutional affairs committee headed by Mark Dreyfus QC.
That committee suggests that whistleblowers first take their concerns to a superior of some kind (and, in the process, probably wreck their career).
Then, if that doesn't work, they should complain to an external body such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman (a process that is itself likely to be a bureaucratic nightmare, befouled by politics).
If - or when - that fails, the whistleblower must wait a reasonable period (whatever that may mean) before taking their concerns to journalists, and then only if the matter concerns "an immediate and serious threat to public health and safety".
University of Queensland business school lecturer Bill De Maria has described the planned reform of whistleblower law as "mean and narrow in its vision" and "embarrassingly conservative in its proposals".
Sunday 22 March, 2009
Governments rob us of our freedoms, all the while pretending to do precisely the opposite.
Governments erode our freedoms of association and expression while making it an offence to speak of their fraudulence.
Under the pretext of protecting us from corruption on the internet, a government of a different colour hides its abuses of power behind another veil.
And it threatens punitive damages against anyone who lifts the veil and exposes its stupidity.
The list of websites banned in Australia is a dark secret shared by the Australian Government, the ACMA and a favoured few who stand to get fat by perfecting the internet filter.
This is a Kafkaesque exercise in mindless tyranny.
This is very similar to what has quietly been going on in English classes in High Schools.
Young voters have been trained to have "right thoughts".
And the internet filtering will make sure that they are never exposed to any "wrong thoughts".
Thursday 19 March 2009
Bullying can ruin a person's health - sometimes permanently.
And bullying wastes money, because when someone is being bullied they are not able to think properly about the job that they are being paid to do.
Bullies intimidate the people that they are working with.
They suppress good ideas.
They block talent from rising.
The readers' comments on this article are very well worth reading.
Dr Anne Wyatt and Dr Carlo Caponecchia from the School of risk and Safety Sciences at the University of NSW say that internal investigations of workplace bullying often make the situation worse. Internal investigations are often badly handled and they drag on for too long.
The investigator becomes the "meat in the sandwich" because of their responsibilities to both the employer and the employees.
In many cases the main focus of the investigation is on minimising the legal risk to the organisation rather than changing the workplace culture to stamp out bullying.
Employers need to appoint third party specialists to investigate bullying allegations.
And the third party specialist must be allowed to actually investigate the bullying.
It is not OK to allow the bully / negligent senior public servant who has been complained about to -
Dr Anne Wyatt and Dr Carlo Caponecchia say that bullying is an organisational problem, not a "personality clash" or a "Bad Apple" problem.
They are the founders of www.beyondbullying.com.au , a website that provides resources to stop bullying.
Tough times ... a new survey reveals bullying and sexual harassment are rife in Australian workplaces.
Australian workers put up with workplace bullying and sexual harassment because they are afraid that their career would be destroyed if they made a complaint.
62 per cent of Australian workers say that they have been bullied at work, according to a survey by CareerOne.com.au
59 per cent of workers said that they did not report the incident.
Australian Human Rights Commission sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said the present economic situation would reinforce the culture of silence.
Wednesday 18 March 2009
Federal parliament is exacerbating the problem of workplace bullying by setting an appalling example to public sector managers and CEO's, according to academics.
Professor and consultant in organisational behaviour and development at Monash University, Charmine Hartel, told Government News that Parliament question time, of which sections are broadcast daily free-to-air, illustrated how bullying had become an accepted part of working culture in the public sector.
"Why would anybody in the public service think that sort of behaviour is unacceptable, when it is what the leaders at the very top demonstrate on a daily basis?"
Wollongong University's Academic Senate Chair, Diana Kelly said that managers needed to know that there would be serious consequences for bullying.
"You have to ask 'What value does the policy have? What happens if you don't follow them?
If it's just 'you will be called a naughty boy', then people will ignore it."
Education Queensland seem to have a policy of promoting and celebrating principals who bully.
Queensland's public service needs a comprehensive overhaul.
The next government, as a matter of priority, should conduct a complete review of the state public sector to make sure it is working as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Too many times recently we have seen evidence of a public service not operating as it should.
The government of the day should be demanding the highest levels of performance from their departments and agencies.
Queenslanders deserve better than they are getting from large parts of the public service.
Tuesday 17 March 2009
Richard Pullman is filing a whistleblower retaliation complaint.He says that management retaliated against him for speaking out about asbestos hazards at the National Air and Space Museum.
Richard Pullman claims that management knew for years that there was asbestos in the museum, but they allowed workers to disturb asbestos-containing material without protective equipment.
Pullman now has asbestosis.
And asbestos-containing repair debris is still sitting around the Museum.
I have long wondered about the work that is being done in many Queensland schools to install air-conditioners.
Does the drilling into walls disturb the asbestos?
"One of the main problems (at Queensland independent schools) seems to me to be the curriculum imposed on them, or at least the English curriculum ...
My son is in Year 11 at one of these schools. It's a well-known school. And it is subject to an English curriculum imposed by the state that forces school kids to do English assignments ... on things such as advertisments. These kids have to "deconstruct" the ad. ...
This awful discourse stuff has a few unintended consequences that are good ones. The main one is that it creates an awful lot of cynicism about this junk. The kids overwhelmingly think it is garbage. And if you can talk to the English teachers away from his or her boss, then most of them will quietly tell you it's garbage too. How awful it must be to have to teach this nonsense when you actually know it's nonsense. ..."
This is the sort of problem Jenna Lee is going to face.
In many ways her intelligence will disadvantage her as a Queensland teacher.
She will be trapped in a job where much of what she is expected to do is pointless.
And if she tries to discuss the situation, she may well be attacked and punished by an OP 19 principal until she agrees to stop having "wrong thoughts".
Monday 16 March, 2009
Jenna Lee attained an OP1 rating and chose primary school teaching as her first preference of study.
Jenna Lee will need to be protected from OP19-attack.
In Queensland an intelligent teacher can be put into a punishment program by an OP 19 administrator for having "wrong ideas".
An intelligent teacher can be punished till she agrees to think like an OP 19.
The Courier-Mail should check back with Jenna after her first five years of primary teaching and see if she still feels safe at work.
Outgoing Education Minister Rod Welford is, apparently, urging teachers to be better trained, better paid and more appreciated.
Mr Welford, you have been Minister of education for the past several years.
What have you actually done to ensure that teachers were better trained, better paid and more appreciated?
For example, in 2007 99.8% of teachers said that they had been bullied at work.
Workplace bullying was said to be "rife" in Queensland schools.
What have you done about it?
Sunday 15 March, 2009
Torres Strait health and Community leaders are demanding the total re-instatement of Cindy Morseu, the senior health executive in the Torres Strait.
And they want a full public apology.
They say that Cindy Morseu is being punished for political reasons.
If only the Queensland Teachers' Union would stand behind bullied members as strongly as the Torres Strait Community stands behind Cindy Morseu.
The Community say that white public servants who do things wrong while working in the Torres Strait are not charged.
But innocent local people are punished.
It is very much the same in Education Queensland.
Nothing at all can be "beaten up" by a malicious principal into a reason to drive a good teacher out of work.
While the abusive principals and administrators are allowed to investigate themselves and "find no evidence" of their own abusive behaviour.
Mr Mills said that the truth had not been revealed.
A senior officer had sat on the maintenance requests.
That officer was allowed to retire and to retain all of his entitlements.
Pedro Stephen, Chairman of the Community Health Council, said that the Council has asked the Director-General to provide them with a copy of the full report.
They have only been allowed to read the executive summary.
They want to know the reason why Cindy Morseu had to be punished.
They say that lock on the main door to the accommodation at the new health centre at Mabuiag was in perfect condition.
The door had been left unlocked.
Cindy Morseu was not afforded Natural Justice.
She has been made a political scapegoat.
Friday 13 March 2009
Police are investigating complaints from two commonwealth government-contracted employees after men allegedly broke into their accommodation while they slept and attempted to rape them.
The women, one of whom was allegedly attacked twice at separate communities in a matter of weeks, have told police they fought off the men.
On all three occasions -- in the communities of Aurukun, Kowanyama and Lockhart River -- the women were staying in council-provided guesthouses.
A dental nurse, who was part of a travelling dental team, says she was assaulted in a remote Aboriginal community in late 2007.
She was allegedly attacked in her bedroom in a council-owned hostel.
This is a disgraceful situation.
Nobody should have to work in these sorts of conditions.
But I have travelled to these remote communities myself and pressure is put on women - and men - to accept very poor living conditions.
I once stayed in Aurukun in a hut that looked like my father's hen-house.
It was covered in wire and locked with a padlock.
The kitchen was not functioning, so each evening I had to walk in the dark over broken glass to a teacher's house for dinner.
Then walk back in the dark over the broken glass.
It was a very dangerous situation.
Queensland teachers and nurses should not be expected to put themselves at such risk of harm.
Thursday 12 March 2009
Lawrence Springborg has said that some of Queensland's highest profile public servants would keep their jobs under a new LNP government.
Peter Beattie would be paid to stay in America.
Anna Bligh's husband Greg Withers would keep his job.
Department of Premier and Cabinet Director-General Ken Smith might stay.
There would be no mass sackings of Directors-General.
Why not?
Why are we paying these characters huge salaries when their Departments do nothing at all?
Lawrence Springborg is not going to encourage former premier Peter Beattie to return to Queensland.
Mr Springborg will pay Mr Beattie to stay in LA as the "Queensland trade commissioner" if the LNP wins power next weekend.
"I think that Peter Beattie is perfectly suited for Hollywood and I couldn't think of any other person to actually be over there," he said.
Mr Springborg has also revealed he did not plan "mass sackings" of directors-general who head government departments.
He specifically named Under-Treasurer Gerard Bradley and Premier and Cabinet director-general Ken Smith as senior public servants he would be interested in retaining.
Since Anna Bligh became Premier in September 2007, few controversies have come close to claiming as many headlines as the sexual assault of a nurse on Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait.
A stunned public discovered that the victim told by her superiors that she would be docked pay if she left the island after the attack.
And that the quarters she was living in had next to no security despite the Government being officially told 16 months before her attack that nurses working in the Torres Strait islands faced extreme personal risk.
It was as much the cold, imperious way in which Queensland Health dealt with its staff as the sexual assault itself that was at the heart of the scandal.
How hollow do Labor's warnings sound about what an LNP government would do to public service staff when this is how Queensland Health continues to treat some of its most dedicated nurses?
Wednesday 11 March 2009
Dr Peter Lazzari, a strident critic of the Victorian public health system, was given his marching orders by Eastern Health management earlier today.
The consultant physician, an employee of the Upper Ferntree Gully hospital for the past 13 years, told The Knox Leader he was given no reason for his dismissal.
But he said he had no doubt it was because of his stinging criticism of Eastern Health and the State Government.
Angliss Hospital/Yarra Ranges Health general manager Natalie Sullivan said Eastern Health did not sack Dr Lazzari, but -
“Eastern Health can confirm that it has not renewed its contract with physician Dr Peter Lazzari.’’
The woman sacked after blowing the whistle on pedophile MP Milton Orkopoulos is protesting outside New South Wales Parliament House.
Orkopoulos, the former state Aboriginal affairs minister, locked his electorate officer Gillian Sneddon out of their Newcastle office in 2006 after learning she was helping police investigate claims made against him.
He was jailed in May last year for at least nine years and three months, after being convicted of 30 child sex and drugs charges.
Ms Sneddon said that she was being punished for reporting Orkopoulos to the police.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson has failed to fix most of the dangerous health staff housing identified almost a year ago as "high" risk.
The Courier-Mail can reveal only 41 dwellings have been fixed in the past 10 months, while another 60 remain hazardous, including five ranked as an "extreme" risk.
Mr Robertson yesterday admitted staff were still living in the dilapidated buildings, despite him promising last May to ensure the 101 residences across the state would be fixed within a few months. "If they spent as much time fixing things as they do spin doctoring and making excuses, then things would be done," Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said.
Monday 9 March, 2009
Children in Western Australia are starting school without knowledge of basic words, according to Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan and Education Minister Liz Constable.
It is important for parents to start talk to their children from infancy because if youngsters don't develop language skills in their first three years of life, this can greatly affect later learning, they said.
"They (children) don't know words - the word for nose, or eye, or head,'' Ms MacTiernan told PerthNow.
"They don't know colours.
... It's so hard to play catch-up because once you're beyond two or three years-old, it is a lot harder to acquire those skills.''
"They (children) don't know some of the simple concepts you'd expect them to,'' Dr Constable said in a recent interview with PerthNow.
Childcare Queensland, Queensland's peak childcare industry organisation, has called on the State Government to employ a second full-time teacher in each preparatory year classroom.
President Gwynn Bridge said prep teachers currently had to deal with 25 students and only had assistance from a part-time teacher aide for 10 hours a week.
Ms Bridge said the teachers had particular trouble dealing with problem children.
"If you have one or two students with behavioural issues you're going to lose the whole group," she said.
Opposition education spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said prep teachers were under pressure and needed support from full-time teacher aides.
"I've heard of children coming to prep year who aren't even toilet trained,'' he told brisbanetimes.com.au.
Sunday 8 March, 2009
The Torres Strait community is outraged by the action taken against Cindy Morseu, District Manager of the Torres Strait and NPA Health Services.
Ms Morseu was "stood aside" by Mick Reid, the Director-General of Health following the release of the Crime and Misconduct Commission's review of the Health Department's hearing into an assault on a nurse at Mabuiag island last year.
Health Department staff fear for their jobs if they speak openly about the situation.
But they all agree that Ms Morseu has been made a scape-goat for the systemic problems in Queensland Health.
Torres Shire Mayor and Chairman of the health community Council Pedro Stephen says that he is "very disappointed" with the decision.
"One can't help but question the timing of the action and the release of the details because of the election."
You have to admire the way that the Torres Strait community "stand up for" Cindy Morseu's workplace rights.
It is much harder to bully an member of an indigenous community because they not only have the support (or lack of support) of their union, they also have the support of their community.
Saturday 7 March, 2009
Increasing numbers of school-leavers and early victims of the job crunch in other industries are cramming into education courses to what they believe is a new, safer career.
In the former boom state of Western Australia anecdotal evidence suggests a significant rise in the number of applicants to teaching courses since the global slump in demand for resources brought the mining super-cycle to an abrupt halt.
"As a teacher, you not only ride out bad times, you don't even notice them," Connie Watson, principal of Fitzroy North Primary School in Melbourne, told The Weekend Australian.
"You trade off a higher wage in the short term but you have solid employment and a predictable income."
This is the great illusion.
The truth is that you earn a lowish wage during the boom times and you have no job security at all - at any moment a psychopathic principal can destroy your health and your career.
Connie Watson said she had recently hired several mature-aged graduate teachers who had come from the private sector.
"They have decided they would really like to teach and the security of teaching appeals to them after the ups and downs of the private sector," she said. "I am sure one of the strong appeals is the security of the job."
"Being a teacher, you are never wealthy but you are going to be comfortable," Mrs Watson said.
Being a teacher, you are going to work very hard under great stress.
And, if you try to engage in professional discussion, you are going to be be attacked and driven into ill health and out of work.
The Australian Council for Educational Research's Steve Dinham said the new teaching aspirants were people made redundant from other jobs and school-leavers looking for a secure occupation.
He predicted this trend would be confirmed by the intake for next year's teaching courses across Australia.
Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said she had noticed a rise in the number of mature-aged students changing careers and studying teaching.
Maths teachers are leaving the public education system for private schools' larger pay cheque, but that is just one factor in what is becoming a generational crisis.
The National Committee for the Mathematical Sciences said in a recent report that student access to quality mathematics education was a 'national disgrace' and called for a nationwide strategy to boost the discipline.
The nationwide strategy that should be employed is rote learning.
We've now had close to 40 years of a system which has tried to teach our children math-ematics via osmosis.
A short trip to any supermarket will uncover a generation of teenagers and young adults who cannot add a series of numbers or do simple multiplication without the aid of a calculator, mobile phone or cash register.
The rote learn-ing of times tables, and other mathematical basics leads to those thinking patterns becoming an automatic reflex.
There isn't a maths teacher under 40 working today who understands this principle because they weren't taught that way themselves, and therein lies the problem.
A system introduced in the '70s has ruined a generation's chances of thinking analytically, and has eliminated any semblance of discipline in our young people's minds.
And Queensland teachers who try to engage in professional discussion - about this or any other professional issue - are driven into ill health and out of work.
Thursday 5 March, 2009
Jason Blaik, an organisational psychologist, said yesterday that psychopaths created workplace conflict, caused top talent to flee, and could damage a company's reputation.
Mr Blaik, of Brisbane-based human resources firm Onetest said psychopaths-
Mr Blaik said psychopaths actually exhibit characteristics highly valued by the business world because-
Signs an employee might be a corporate psychopath included-
May I suggest some answers to the maths crisis in Australian schools ("Maths in crisis as teachers go private”, 4/3)?
One could also apply this to teaching English.
No one under 50 has any notion of grammar and punctuation.
A.M. Chatterton, Gawler, SA
One surmises that ... there are class actions waiting to be launched once the students of the past three decades, and some of their parents, realise how much they have been duped by facilitators pretending to be teachers, and edubabbling masquerading as schooling.
Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay, Tas.
...We are heading for slave status where clever (rich) countries will use Australia as a farm and a quarry.
The state systems have for decades been concerned almost exclusively with an ideological agenda: social justice, equity and inclusivity.
Jim Wilson , Beaumont, SA
Wednesday 4 March, 2009
A 46-year-old mine worker reverted to a childlike state and began calling his wife "mummy" after being threatened with sexual assault during two years of torment at the hands of workplace bullies, a court has heard.
The 50 year old worker plans to sue mining giant Xstrata over his treatment by colleagues and supervisors at the Ernest Henry copper and gold mine at Cloncurry, in northwest Queensland, where he worked as a truck driver from 2002 until suffering a breakdown in November 2004.
His former wife said that the bullied worker's personality changed in the time he worked for Xstrata.
"He lost all interest in family activities and instead just came home from work and went straight to bed," she said.
"Our two eldest children ended up leaving home to live elsewhere in the midst of their secondary studies because his behaviour became unbearable."
This is a dreadful story.
What kind of human beings would treat a fellow worker in this way?
Have they ever expressed any remorse?
What union do they belong to?
What is their union doing about this abuse?
"We take the issue of workplace discrimination and harassment extremely seriously and we are currently reviewing the decision," an Xtrata spokeswoman said.
Advanced mathematics is disappearing from public school classrooms, leaving students able to learn only basic maths, because the few qualified teachers are being snapped up by the private sector.
The shortage of maths teachers will become more acute as fewer students continue maths at university, undermining the nation's skills base in engineering, the sciences and technology, scientists warn.
"Students not having access to (higher level maths) in government schools is really disadvantaging them in a number of important areas of study," Professor Hyam Rubinstein, chairman of the national Committee for the Mathematical Sciences said.
Mathematical Association of Victoria head Simon Pryor said principals, hit by limited resources, were being forced to staff maths classes with teachers lacking maths qualifications.
Tuesday 3 March, 2009
Intruders carrying out often violent assaults on NSW school grounds at a rate of more than one a day include suspected criminals, aggressive ex-students and deranged parents.
Mr Springborg said that natural attrition would focus on "fat cats at the top end" of the bureaucracy.
The fat lazy Queensland public service cats who spend their days carefully "not knowing" and "not finding any evidence of".
They are a total waste of taxpayers money.
What do Directors-General in the Queensland public service actually do, other than "not know" and encourage their underlings to "adopt a NRR stance in relation to your concerns"?
Monday 2 March, 2009
Dr Bill De Maria, lecturer at The University of Queensland's business school, says that for men and women of conscience in the Australian public service, February 25 will be noted despondently as a day when their parliamentary representatives again failed to step up to the plate and protect people who wish to disclose official wrongdoing.
On this day a parliamentary committee published its report on new commonwealth whistleblowing proposals that will proceed languidly to parliament for consideration.
The report is mean and narrow in its vision, embarrassingly conservative in its proposals and will do nothing more than send commonwealth whistleblowers, like lab rats, into management-controlled bureaucratic mazes.
Whistleblower legislation has been on state statute books in Australia since 1993.
But in 2007-08 only 74 verifiable public interest allegations under the Queensland Whistleblower Protection Act 1994 were processed by the Crime and Misconduct Commission and Queensland public sector agencies.
The commonwealth public sector landscape is not one of robust public interest voice but of deep self-protecting silence.
The report won't give protection to ordinary members of the public wishing to report instances of commonwealth wrongdoing.
Why?
It won't give protection to people fed up with bureaucratic obstruction and harassment who go to the media.
The only way you will get protection if you go to the media is if the bureaucracy has taken an unreasonable amount of time to process your complaint (whatever that means) and it is a matter of public health or safety.
The history of whistleblowing in Australia provides through-the-keyhole insights into one of the most fundamental changes occurring in the workplace, the attack on, if not the slow burn down of collective forms of workplace dissent.
So whistleblowing is what you have when you no longer have a collective voice.
This is a very interesting point.
What went wrong?
For a start the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs was a very young backbench committee.
Half of its members came into parliament at the end of 2007.
At the announcement of the inquiry (July 10, 2008) these five (including the chair of the committee, Mark Dreyfus) only had five months' parliamentary experience.
If this proposal released on February 25 becomes law, my advice to commonwealth whistleblowers of the future is to keep your mouth shut.
Rising violence among Prep students has sparked calls for full-time teacher aides to be employed in classrooms to control the youngsters.
"When there are two adults in the room children are scaffolded in their behaviour and you can control them a lot more easily," Early Childhood teachers Association president Kim Walters said.
"Even in childcare centres they don't have a ratio of one to 25," Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart said.
Sunday 1 March, 2009
A 17-year-old student has been expelled from Elanora State High School because he bared his backside in front of a young female teacher during a student protest against being asked to wear the correct school uniform.
A crowd of students were rebelling against the new Elanora acting principal, who is cracking down on bad behaviour and dress code breaches.
Miami State High School principal Jim Baker was transferred to the acting role at Elanora on February 16 after the death of former principal Roslyn Wilson.
Mr Baker said he had spoken to students about the code of behaviour, a document drafted by the parents and citizens association in consultation with the community.
Mr Baker said societal norms had shifted and kids were far more argumentative.
"They ask questions, probe and speak up.
They back chat, they challenge, they want to know."
Students who spoke with The Bulletin believed Mr Baker's actions were 'too strict'.
"He's just a relief principal," said one student.
"People should be able to have piercings and dye their hair and have as much make-up as they want."
The Gold Coast Bulletin believes Mr Baker should be commended for his actions to clean up the school.
Saturday 28 February, 2009
A second nurse, who was attacked in her bedroom in a remote Cape York community, has accused Queensland Health of acting without sensitivity.
The dental nurse was part of a travelling dental team visiting remote far north Queensland communities in late 2007 when she was assaulted.
Mark O'Connor, of Brisbane law firm, Bennett and Philp, said the dental nurse was staying in a fenced hostel at the community because secure Queensland Health accommodation was not available.
She awoke in the early hours one weekend morning to find a man on top of her.
She fought him off and later reported the attack to her head office and police.
The Queensland Department of Education say they have been forced to suspend out-of-control four and five-year-olds from Prep classes to protect teachers from being kicked, bitten and hit.
Unless, of course, the teacher is being attacked by an out-of-control school principal.
In which case the principal is promoted.
Friday 27 February, 2009
Many new teachers admit struggling to cope with difficult parents and colleagues.
A survey released yesterday has painted a bleak picture of the level of training teachers receive, job pressures, and sexual or racial discrimination within the profession.
More than 86 per cent of new teachers say they are not properly trained to deal with difficult parents and staff.
70 per cent of new teachers find it hard to teach difficult students, children with disabilities, or those from migrant families.
The Australian Education Union poll of more than 1500 young teachers presents a challenge for state and federal governments, which have sought to improve the education system, in part, by lifting the quality of teachers.
The survey also found:
The biggest concerns for new teachers are-
Steve Peck, a father of five, has defended his son, who was yesterday pictured on the front page of The Bulletin bridge jumping at Currumbin.
His teenage son was expelled from Palm Beach-Currumbin High School more than 18 months ago for fighting back a bully and accidentally striking a teacher.
"Back in the day if you pushed it too far at school you'd get the cane and it would settle you down for a month or so," Mr Peck said.
The only solution to the school problem and the bad behaviour of kids is to kick them out.
"Then once they're kicked out of school what do they do?"
"He really needs to be back in school and he wants to go back to his old school because that's where he feels he can commit and finish his schooling."
"I wish Education Queensland would give him another chance," Mr Peck said.
"People tend to blame the parents, but I don't drink at all, I work my backside off and give a lot for my kids."
This is an interesting comment by a father of an expelled student.
He makes a good point.
If his son had been caned, it would have been unpleasant for the student and the teacher.
But the student's life would not have been ruined.
This child and his father really are, to a certain extent, victims of the failure of Queensland School Behaviour Management policies, and possibly also of the decision to remove the cane from Queensland schools.
Queensland's Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC), which costs taxpayers $40 million a year, handed the Mabuiag Island rape back to the Health Department to investigate.
It does the same with most complaints.
Former premier Peter Beattie watered down the powers of the CMC, formerly the CJC, so much that the organisation is now an expensive ornament serving no real purpose.
The CMC should be abolished.
The Health Department did not provide safe accommodation on Mabuiag Island, despite having been warned for four years that the situation was critical.
It then treated the nurse with disdain when she was assaulted.
The Queensland Government has yet again relied on the wimpy CMC to get it off the hook.
It is to be hoped that parents who have daughters working in remote parts of Queensland as nurses, teachers, police or in other public service positions note how the Bligh Government values their children, and give it appropriate consideration when casting their vote on March 21.
Well said, Tony Koch.
Thursday 26 February, 2009
Queensland's public education system is in desperate need of an overhaul with student behaviour at the heart of the problem.
Yesterday a 15-year-old boy was reportedly drunk and armed with a knife at Upper Coomera State College sparking a full-scale man hunt.
Meanwhile, a group of young people including some who were dressed in Palm Beach Currumbin High School uniforms spent their school time watching friends jump off a bridge into Currumbin Creek.
These separate incidents involving school students are the tip of the iceberg and have thrown our failing education system into the spotlight.
"The kids have too much power and teachers have their hands tied," said a teacher with more than 10 years experience, who did not wish to be named for fear of losing his job.
Opposition education spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said he believed the education system needed to be rebuilt, starting with rehabilitating badly behaved students.
Nurses claimed they had raised security concerns about their accommodation as far back as 2005, but they were ignored.
Queensland Health has already stood aside Torres Strait-Northern Peninsula District Health Service chief executive Cindy Morseu.
Queensland Health director-general Michael Reid today said the entire executive team was responsible for providing safe and secure accommodation.
Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson said he was concerned staff had not been doing their jobs properly over an extended period of time.
"In the Torres Strait, part of their job was to provide safe and secure accommodation for our staff on the islands but it has been shown some of the individuals have not done that job."
Mr Reid said he could not be sure all 100 houses on the island had received safety upgrades since the sexual assault.
What?
What?
Mr Reid should have made this a priority.
Queensland Health officers acted inappropriately and insensitively when notified of a nurse being sexually assaulted on Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait last year, a report has found.
The morning after the attack last February, the nurse was allegedly told by superiors to forget about the incident and return to work.
Her boyfriend chartered an aircraft to take her to safety.
A Queensland Health ethical standards unit investigation found "substantial evidence" of a systemic failure of the district executive to acknowledge and address workplace safety issues over a long period.
The report's findings were released on the Queensland Health website last night after a news conference planned for mid-afternoon was called off.
Queensland Health director-general Mick Reid said the partner of the woman concerned had been advised about the report's findings.
"I've offered him and her a full briefing regarding the findings," he said.
In my experience, these "Briefings" are of no value at all.
They can be seriously misleading.
Mick Reid can demonstrate his integrity by handing this couple a full copy of the written report.
And has Queensland Health repaid the nurse's boyfriend the cost of chartering that aircraft to rescue her?
This nurse's health and career were carelessly destroyed by Queensland public service negligence.
Sweeping changes are needed to protect public servants, federal police and soldiers who blow the whistle on commonwealth corruption and mismanagement.
The recommendations are from a bipartisan parliamentary committee, the legal and constitutional affairs committee.
The committee chairman, Mark Dreyfus QC, said the reforms would transform the culture of the public service and protect whistleblowers from reprisals.
But A.J.Brown of Griffith University, who released a groundbreaking report last year on whistleblowing, said it was crucial to protect disclosures to the media as a last resort, so senior public servants had an incentive to resolve issues.
And John Hartigan, spokesman for the media industry's Right to Know coalition, said that "the report fails to recommend protection for whistleblowers who expose corruption or maladministration, even if the problem is ignored by the bureaucracy, or where an investigation has taken too long or has failed to resolve the issue."
"Clearly this is not in the public interest."
The Daily Telegraph can reveal psychologically damaged teachers have claimed tens of thousands of dollars in workers compensation over the past two years due to bullying.
WorkCover has slapped improvement notices on a high school torn apart by bullying teachers and infighting among staff.
Two notices ordered the Department of Education and Training to stop workplace bullying and improve teacher safety and welfare at Queanbeyan High School.
Documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph allege-
Wednesday 25 February, 2009
Liberal National Party (LNP) leader Lawrence Springborg has called on the Queensland government to release a completed report into a sexual attack on a 27-year-old nurse on Mabuiag Island the Torres Strait.
A Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) spokeswoman told AAP the report, by Queensland Health's ethical standards unit, had been reviewed and found to be "satisfactory".
The CMC seem to accept any "report" written by Education Queensland, however poor the standard.
Mr Springborg said that the report should be released immediately.
Yes, don't keep this nurse waiting for two years to discover under FOI that the Queensland Health "investigation" was a sham.
Let her find out now, during the Queensland election.
Couriermail.com.au readers have backed the actions of a frustrated school bus driver who took a coach load of children to a police station.
The driver reacted after he was hit in the back of the head by a flying lolly.
Local police then entered the bus and gave the students "a good dressing down".
This driver has been given huge support by readers of The Courier-Mail.
His actions were also supported by the local police, to their credit.
The problem that Queensland classroom teachers have is that their attempts to discipline unruly students are often undermined by parents and even by the school principal.
Queensland classroom teachers need a lot more support in dealing with poor student behaviour.
Monday 23 February, 2009
Premier Anna Bligh claims that Queensland Government media advisers are not publicly funded political propagandists.
She says that they are simply suppliers of information.
Queensland Health director-general Mick Reid says his department has not been politicised.
One allegedly independent public servant described a letter written by a doctor critical of Queensland Health as "another diatribe".
A woman who complained of her treatment by Queensland Health to a newspaper was dismissed by an "independent" public servant as seizing "an opportunity to jump on the poor-treatment bandwagon"?
In another email, other people who have been critical of Queensland Health have had their concerns dismissed as "unbalanced and emotive".
These people have a political agenda and exist, battalions of them at enormous public expense, to detect and deal with any anti-government exposure in the media.
Their existence casts a dark shadow over the credibility of the bureaucracy.
This is a really interesting article:
The federal Government will release a crucial report on whistleblower law reform this week.
Criminal penalties are currently imposed for all unauthorised disclosures by federal public servants regardless of whether their actions are in the public interest.
In Whistleblowing in the Australian Public Sector A.J. Brown recommended a three-stage system aimed at giving government agencies a strong incentive to address internal complaints about misconduct.
Dr Brown's proposal was that if agencies ignored complaints by public servants about misconduct, they would risk intervention by a powerful outside agency.
If complaints remained unaddressed, public servants who took their concerns to the media would be protected from legal liability.
Dr Brown told The Australian that the incentive that made his proposal work was the fact that senior public servants would know that if they ignored complaints, public interest disclosures to the media would be protected.
Friday 20 February, 2009
Shadow Treasurer Tim Nicholls claimed this afternoon that the Queensland Government's superannuation scheme was unfunded.
Treasurer Andrew Fraser had to inject an extra $86 million to cover Queensland Treasury Corporation superannuation payments.
The State Government Government's superannuation scheme was transferred to the Queensland Treasury Corporation in 2008-09 because returns were so volatile.
QTC is now required to provide an average 7.5 per cent return to the State Government.
"The State's superannuation scheme is, for the first time unfunded and needs a $86 million injection to protect the superannuation entitlements of public servants in Queensland," Mr Nicholls said.
Monday 16 February, 2009
But it will hardly surprise teachers.
More than 55,000 suspensions were handed out for unruly and violent behaviour during 2007-08.
This represents an increase of 20 per cent over 2005-06.
How did it come to this?
What circumstances permit children in a resource-rich state such as Queensland to become so socially and culturally alienated that they appear unable to function in normal school settings?
The State Government has the moral obligation to provide the material and human resources necessary to ensure no child is lost to the system.
Too many teachers report that classroom behaviour is a problem on the verge of catastrophe.
This is the Great Australian Myth.
Australians - well Queenslanders, anyway, live fearful lives.
All is spin and festivals.
The threats are real, I see them every day:
The media remains our primary source of information about decisions that politicians make on our behalf, how governments spend our taxes and how courts operate and deliver us justice.
Professional journalists employed by companies such as News Limited have the time and the resources to research, interrogate and publish.
They are the eyes and ears for the general public.
Free people need the opportunity to criticise, debate and challenge what's happening.
Information is the tool that allows us to freely make up our own minds, to decide whether politicians should be re-elected, to speak up when we're offended, angry or worried.
The Australian media came together in May 2007 to form a coalition called Australia's Right to Know.
We want reform so this country can be as free as it deserves to be.
In Australia there's no guaranteed presumption of free speech.
Secrecy and spin have become the norm.
The fear that some information might be embarrassing, or held against them, leads to a default of secrecy that effectively denies Australians even the most benign, but still useful, information.
Right across the board, government-employed workers, from nurses and police officers, to bus drivers and bureaucrats, have been left in no doubt that if they ever talk to the media they will face losing their jobs, and possibly prosecution, even for releasing the simplest and most harmless information.
The message is clear: shut up or else.
This has bred a culture of secrecy in the bureaucracy.
Freedom of information:
How can there be debate without information?
Freedom of Information has become an oxymoron: it often fails to provide information.
And FOI is achingly slow - some searches can take years.
Tell me about it.
Whistleblowers:
Public servants are the most likely people to discover cases of maladministration, or in the most extreme cases, corruption, within their ranks.
It is clearly in the public interest for a public servant to bring such problems to light, but it has been made difficult and even risky to do so.
Most whistleblowers have already taken their concerns to superiors in their own department, or to a watchdog agency such as the ombudsman or a corruption commission.
If this fails, a whistleblower will sometimes turn to someone else as a last resort, usually the media.
But when a government employee does this in Australia, they are usually committing a crime as well as breaching their employment contract.
Now they tell me.
Increasingly, whistleblowers are being hunted down by police or state-based integrity commissions, and charged.
They can be jailed.
Some lose their life savings or superannuation defending themselves.
Others lose their jobs, or are silently ostracised and victimised at work -
and in their community -
- their careers effectively over.
And all of this just because you try to discuss the unsupervised groups of Grade 7 children who are roaming about the school, disrupting the other classes?
What becames of the whistleblower whose conscience and desperation led to leaking a report in the Public Interest?
Does the Government thank the whistleblower for their courage?
No.
An internal witch hunt is conducted.
Reporters who refuse to disclose the source of their story can be convicted of contempt of court.
The law ignores the fact that their story is in the public interest.
Toni Hoffman, a nurse at Bundaberg Hospital in Queensland, repeatedly raised concerns about one of the medical staff, Jayant Patel, with her employers, the police and the Queensland Coroner.
Despite her repeated complaints, Patel was allowed to continue working.
In despair, Hoffman went to her local MP and ultimately the media.
Patel was later extradited from the US to face criminal charges.
Hoffman's action was a crime.
Since then, whistleblowing to a Queensland MP has been legitimised, but whistleblowing to the media has not.
In Queensland, parliament has just passed legislation that will compel journalists to disclose their sources to their corruption commission or face jail if they refuse.
There is no legal basis on which the journalist can refuse and avoid prosecution.
I work in a State High School.
Each year we are replacing senior Maths, Science and English teachers who need to have a deep understanding of their subject matter, with primary school trained teachers who have just left University.
They got into these courses as there is a glut of primary education places, which means an OP of 15 or worse will get you in.
People who were below average students are teaching your children five years after leaving school, and in subjects they have not been trained to teach.
The only way to get quality people into the profession is to improve conditions for teachers to work in and improve the salaries of teachers.
Private tutors interviewed by The Sunday Mail say they regularly encounter teenagers reading three to four years below their age.
It is understood the internal testing that highlights the problem was done in schools at Logan and the northern Gold Coast.
But many educators say similar reading level issues can be found state-wide.
Sources say some students are being taught one subject by as many as 12 different teachers as state high schools attempt to deal with staff shortages.
At one school, three senior classes were combined and seated in a sports hall recently with the students told to do crosswords because of a lack of teachers, the sources told The Sunday Mail.
The Sunday Mail understands up to eight teachers at one school, employed to teach maths, are only qualified in physical education.
Rod Welford, Minister of Education, says 150 new teaching spots will be permanent appointments in mainly manual arts, maths and science.
"These are roles which have been traditionally difficult to fill because their skills were so much in demand outside of teaching," he said.
"With demand slowing in other sectors we are hoping to see more of these skilled workers moving back into teaching-
where the jobs are available, secure and stable."
And where an incompetent principal can destroy your health and career with malicious gossip and sticky-notes.
This is very similar to the suggestion of the Webmaster of Bad Apple Bullies in her 18 January 2009 letter to Professor Geoff Masters http://www.badapplebullies.com/letters.htm :
"Retired teachers could be encouraged to follow a “Grey Nomad Teachers to Remote Schools” trail.
They could run short programs at the remote schools in their specialist areas.
The Grey Nomad teachers would bring money into the local economy.
They could park their caravans in the school grounds and use the school facilities.
They could volunteer or be paid a small wage to supplement their pensions."
Presumably the children's behaviour would also improve.
Children would be much safer at school, and so would their teachers.
Let's hope it is all worth it, Toni.
... When adult women bully each other, they are mostly indirect.
They use weapons that are hard to detect and that leave wounds invisible to the eye.
The adjectives psychologists and bullying experts use to describe such shadowy methods are “covert”, “subtle” and “manipulative”.
The tactics are ostracism, exclusion, spreading rumours and playing favourites.
Information is withheld; secrets are kept; a victim’s contributions – to either a conversation or a workplace – are ignored.
It’s bullying by stealth.
Tell me about it.
Read The Weekend Australian Magazine for Shelley Gare's full analysis of female bullying.
The state election is due in September, although there is heightened speculation of a February or March poll.
Saturday 17 January, 2009
Mr Gavrielatos proposed a number of models to be considered, including extending the school day and year, and making schools a hub for after-hours activities, offering programs in collaboration with other government agencies such as health and sport.
He said innovative approaches to staffing should be explored, such as bringing in extra teachers for periods of time.
"There are a number of models available where we could look at the temporary deployment of expert teachers into the more difficult-to-staff and isolated settings," he said.
"Without taking anything away from beginning teachers, teacher experience, continuity and stability contribute significantly to improved student outcomes."
Experienced teachers seem to be coming back into favour.
And that the bad Apple Bullies webmaster emailed a letter to him on this very topic on 23 October 2008:
http://teacherbullyingqueensland.typepad.com/teacher_bullying_in_queen/
The big problem with the CMC - and the Queensland public service in general - is that they don't actually read complainant's letters.
They just copy from the letters that other Education Queensland public servants send to them.
You can't penetrate "the process".
The process of "not knowing".
Worrying shadow over police service, Editorial, The Courier-Mail: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24642247-13360,00.html
Monday 10 November, 2008
Sunday 9 November, 2008
Thursday November 6, 2008
Many Australian children with the potential to excel may not be getting an excellent education-
In the 2000 PISA tests we had 17.6 per cent of students performing at the top literacy level, the third highest proportion in the OECD.
In the 2006 tests we had just 8.6 per cent of students in the top group, putting us at ninth place.
And in the TIMSS 2003 results-
Australia had 7 per cent of Year 8 students achieving at the highest level in maths.
But-
Singapore had 44 per cent of its students in the top performance level.
We worry about our educational underachievers.
But the proportion of students in the lowest achievement bands has been stable through time and is close to or less than the international average.
Australian children who have the potential to excel do not seem to be getting a good deal.
In his new book Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing American Schools Back to Reality, Charles Murray argues that we need to expend more effort on thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.
Failure to do so will have effects far beyond international test results, reaching into the calibre of our universities, our global competitiveness in technology and innovation, and even the quality of our future governments.
Wednesday 5 November, 2008
Tuesday 4 November 2000
The pay rises would take the salary of an experienced teacher to $88,190 by 2010, a rise of more than $19,000.
Premier Colin Barnett said the state's 21,000 public school teachers would be the best paid in Australia.
First-year graduates would receive a starting wage of $67,380 by 2010, a rise of almost $20,000.
The principal of a large school would earn almost $140,000 by 2010, up $25,000.
A demand that teachers do 15 hours of unpaid professional development training in their own time was dropped.
Thursday 30 October, 2008
"The people of Cairns have supported the regional sitting", Premier Anna Bligh says.
"We've seen at least as many, and in most cases, more people in the public gallery than we would see on a general sitting day in Brisbane," she told reporters.
Speaker Mike Reynolds earlier criticised "Brisbane-centric coverage", which had noted small crowd numbers in the first two days of daylight sittings, and thanked local media for their "positive" coverage.
Dealing With The Mob understands that when Mike Reynolds said that there were only ten people in the Public Gallery.
Annie Applepie represented the Bad Apple Bullies website at the demonstrations on Tuesday, holding up a banner saying "Queensland teachers are Bullied at Work".
There were several hundred demonstrators, many of them respectable local retirees, demonstrating about grandparents rights, crime in the local community, inappropriate development, etc.
We were made to stand under some trees over the road from the Convention Centre.
There was absolutely no hope at all of anybody inside hearing us.
At lunchtime a few politicians came out to talk to us - thanks Mr Springborg and Mr Katter - but most stayed inside and ignored us.
On Tuesday night Annie Applepie cut up two Vistaprint T-Shirts and sewed the prints back and front of a black T-shirt.
The prints said:
"99.8% of teachers are bullied."
And on Wednesday Annie Applepie was allowed to go into the public gallery and listen to the proceedings, wearing her T-shirt.
It was interesting.
Annie noticed that the Members all called out and argued with the person who was speaking.
But we members of the public clearly were not allowed to call out because there were security guards sitting all around us.
On Thursday, when Annie Applepie arrived for Question Time, she was told that The Speaker had ruled that she could only watch the proceedings if she took her T-shirt off and wore it inside out.
Annie pointed out that the words were not her opinion, they were facts, based on UNE research.
But apparently it made no difference.
The speaker did not want any facts written on T-shirts disrupting the proceedings.
The security guards were very courteous.
Anne Applepie came back at lunchtime to try to speak to a few members and tell them about the website.
She did manage to speak to quite a few.
Thanks to those Members who listened and who said that they would look at the website.
Annie Applepie offered Dr Flegg a free Bad Apple Bullies T-shirt.
But he didn't seem keen.
There is no doubt that the people of Cairns wanted to speak to the Members of Parliament.
But the Members just wanted the people of Cairns to stand across the road.
Or to sit in silence with their T-shirts inside out.
The Members didn't want to be bothered with our facts.
Annie Applepie has a suggestion for the Members of Parliament..
When you come to Cairns next time, take more interest in the people, and they might take more interest in you.
Why not allow the local groups into the Convention Centre to speak for one session?
Why not allow each local group five minutes to speak to Parliament about their concerns?
In a two-hour session you would learn a lot about our community.
I don't think that you did learn a lot about our community this week.
You just all sat and talked to each other.
And laughed at each other.
Just as you usually do.
Wednesday October 29, 2008
The Bad Apple Bulies website is read all aound the world, including in countries that we are taught to believe are repressive, such as communist China.
But it seems to be blocked on all Queensland State School computers.
So this is how "democracy" works in Australia.
Instead of dealing with the problem of workplace abuse in Queensland schools, Education Queensland have taken the much quicker and easier path of stopping Queensland teachers from discussing the abuse.
Will the Federal Government block this and other websites that discuss social problems?
It would be so much quicker and cheaper than actually dealing with the problems.
Internet censorship is draconian, Editorial, The Courier-Mail: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24573877-13360,00.html
Tuesday 28 October, 2008
Bundaberg hospital whistleblower Toni Hoffman gave evidence today in a closed hearing of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.
Ms Hoffman said to The Australian that a robust independent body, independent of government influence and with "real teeth" is needed to deal with complaints made by whistleblowers.
“I think you should still have to go through the internal processes (such as in a hospital) first, but if you don't get any satisfaction, I think there should be some sort of independent organisation you can go to.”
"In a small town there's all sorts of alliances, there's political alliances, familial alliances ... that influence...."
Under current legislation, Australian public servants face harsh repercussions for exposing malpractices within their organisation.
"Especially when you're threatened with jail if you do go outside ... to the media, or you go to a member of parliament," she said.
"That's what you're threatened with - you're threatened with jail."
Toni Hoffman is right.
As far as Queensland teachers are concerned, the CMC / Education Queensland "investigation" process is not working.
The administrative bullies are laughing.
And they are not just laughing at the classroom teachers whose health and careers they destroy.
They are laughing at the CMC.
Griffith University law lecturer Dr AJ Brown told the inquiry that governments should not fear whistleblowers.
He's right too.
How will things ever improve if you punish people who try to suggest improvements?
Peter Bowden, an ethics lecturer at the University of Sydney, urged the committee to treat whistleblowing as a public interest issue.
He said legislation should give whistleblowers permission to approach the media.
And the right to sue if they were victimised.
