STATUTES AMENDMENT AND REPEAL (TAFE SA CONSEQUENTIAL PROVISIONS) BILL

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council's message.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: I move:

That the disagreement to amendments Nos 1 and 7 be insisted upon and that the alternative amendments to amendments Nos 2, 3, 4 and 5 be disagreed to.

We have gone through these arguments before. The alternative amendments were moved in the upper house. While they may achieve the goal set out by the member for Unley and the Liberal Party, my arguments on the position have not really changed. They do not make any changes to the substantive thrust of the bill itself; they merely seek to have a whack at the union to try to take the union out of the equation, and to try to take the employee representatives out of the equation. They have just taken the opportunity to whack the union while the act has been open.

It is a complete dearth of policy alternative, and there is no contribution to the alternative. There is no attempt to change the act to make it a more productive or useful act or bill. It is merely just having a crack at the Australian Education Union. I think it is indicative of what will happen in the event that the Liberal Party is elected. They will seek to attack unions at every opportunity. I think they will take every opportunity open to them to attack unions to make the life of unionists more difficult and to make the life of employee representatives harder.

I do not agree that that is the right thing to do. I do not think the amendments moved by the member for Unley and Liberal Party members in another place improve the bill, and the government does not agree that they are the appropriate way to proceed. We merely had the intent of replicating all the provisions that currently exist in the TAFE legislation and moving them over to the new TAFE act. These amendments do not contribute to that goal, and we therefore do not support them.

Mr PISONI: Obviously, the Liberal Party amendments and the amendment from the Hon. John Darley were of the same thrust, and I just need to make it clear to the house that it was the government that opened up the Education Act and used the opportunity of the TAFE bill to tidy up the Education Act in reference to the Australian Education Union.

It was that occasion that the Liberal Party took to look at the success of the Victorian example. In Victoria, there is no restriction as to membership of a club or union in order to be appointed to their equivalent of our SACE Board, our Teachers Appeal Board or other appointments which, under this act as it stands today, require you to be a union member. It is only fair, in this day and age, that every member of teaching staff is treated equally. This amendment is all about fairness, equality and democracy in our education system. We do not believe that you need to be a member of a club in order to represent your profession in a capacity through the department or through another agency or board in the education service here in South Australia.

One example of how the government has got it so wrong in relation to objecting to these amendments is: we are told that, if we are to believe the education union, 70 per cent of teachers are in unions. Of course, they are not required to prove that claim. They can repeat that claim as often as they like without any requirement to prove it. There are about 21,000 full-time equivalent teachers in the education system.

A massive campaign was launched by the education union for its members to contact Isobel Redmond, the Leader of the Opposition, to explain the dangers of these amendments and to protest in the biggest, strongest form that what was happening was outrageous. However, only several hundred form emails were sent to Isobel Redmond's office. It just so happened that a couple of those teachers taught my children, so I rang them and said, 'Do you understand what the amendments actually do?' They said, 'The union said that you're going to stop them representing us as teachers.' I said, 'Well, that's not true at all. That's a total misrepresentation of this bill. What these amendments actually do is open up the Education Act so that your colleagues, regardless of whether they are union members or not, can be elected to positions on, for example, the SACE board, the Teachers Appeal Board and review panels without the need to be union members.'

They immediately came back and said, 'Well, that's alright. I don't see anything wrong with that.' That is the truth of the matter. The truth is that a very small percentage of the union membership that was active on this issue was active because of a union lie and, when they were told the truth, they were perfectly comfortable with the amendments as they were. I think it is only fair—

Members interjecting:

Mr PISONI: There are interjections from the other side. 'You are either with us or against us'—that is their argument over there. What we are saying is, 'Let's all work together on this. Union members and non-union members, let's all work together.' Why is there a prequalification to be a union member? They do not have it in Victoria, and Victoria happens to have the highest NAPLAN scores in the country, some of the best educational results in the country. It happens to be one of the most autonomous education systems in the country. Principals can actually run their schools in Victoria, and the educational results are there for everybody to see and compare with the rest of Australia. However, we can not walk away from the findings of the Gonski review, that Australia has fallen behind the rest of the region: our neighbours, the countries with whom we compare ourselves in regards to education standards.

The federal education minister Peter Garrett said that 10 years ago we were in the top five. Now they are telling us that their aim is that in 13 years' time—after every single education system in this country was run by Labor governments over the last decade—we are going to get back to where we were 10 years ago under the Gonski plan. That is how it was described on Monday by this government. Their aspiration is to get back to where we were just 10 years ago.

These amendments, which were supported overwhelmingly in the Legislative Council, are the first step in democratising and opening up the education system, making it fairer, and bringing in some changes that do not prohibit any member of teaching staff putting themselves forward for important positions that are at the moment exclusively only available to union members under the Education Act.

Motion carried.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland—Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for Recreation and Sport) (16:00): I move:

That a message be sent to the Legislative Council requesting a conference be granted to this house respecting certain amendments from the Legislative Council in the bill and that the Legislative Council be informed that, in the event of a conference being agreed to, this house will be represented at such conference by five managers and that Mr Odenwalder, Mrs Vlahos, Mr Pisoni, Ms Chapman and the mover be managers of the conference on the part of the House of Assembly.

Motion carried.