Grievance Debate

Teachers Registration Board

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:15): I am torn between talking about education and the environment. I am going to do my best to do both, but I will start with education because we have seen over 11,000 signatures today presented from teachers, from both private and public schools, outraged and hurt that the minister and the government have disregarded their professionalism to the extent that they have tried to put through parliament a bill that deprives the Teachers Registration Board, which is the professional standards board, of having very many teachers on it.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order: the member is reflecting on a bill that is currently before this house.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I caution the member and I trust that she will reflect on my ruling to not reflect on a bill that is before the house, but I will listen carefully to her contribution.

Dr CLOSE: I have merely referred to the bill that is in the house to the extent that it has prompted a petition that has been allowed to be tabled today. But what I would like to muse on is the question of the level of respect, or in fact disrespect, that this government shows to teachers.

What happened during the COVID crisis? We hear a lot of rhetoric. 'We thought our teachers were great and our teachers did such a terrific job,' but the government in fact treated teachers with a huge amount of disrespect. Did it make sure that every school and every classroom had sufficient soap and sufficient hand sanitiser immediately? No, it did not. Did it give the teachers time to go onto online teaching? No, for a couple of weeks they had to try to prepare both. They had to deliver both.

Then it finally gave them some time off, leading into the school holidays. Those teachers worked every day of that last week and every day of the school holidays moving online. With three days' notice, suddenly they were told, 'We don't want you to do that anymore. We want you to abandon the timetabling that you have done. We want you to abandon all the work that you have done. You can now go back to teaching face to face.' That treats teachers as if they are simply a machine that can be turned on and off.

Teachers were understandably very concerned about the risk in schools. It is not ridiculous to think that there might be a risk of virus transmission inside a school. We know, and we are so grateful amidst this horror, that at least young children do not appear to get a bad version of this virus or at least very infrequently, but that was not clearly known early on. Nor is it true that there are only young children at schools. One of my children is taller than I am. He may still be at school, but how is he any different from a young adult who is known to be a superspreader? Of course, all the teachers and all the other staff are adults interacting with each other. They are being forced to go out and are not able to self-isolate. They were concerned.

This government did a report, which we now know was dated at the end of March, looking into the health impacts and the consequences of interacting at school, and that report had a lot of questions. It was not settled that it was 100 per cent safe. 'Of course, don't be so silly. Go straight back to work.' Was it released? Was it given to the teachers as professionals so that they would be able to make their own judgements? No, it was not because this government tried to hide it until The Advertiser got hold of it towards the end of May.

But I can tell you what this government did think was kind of cute and what the minister thought would be quite nice. He picked up that teachers were a bit annoyed with him. He picked up that they thought they were being treated as babysitting machines and were being removed from their board that we must not speak about, so he sent them all a chocolate. On the front of the little card he wrote, 'Thanks for being a rock when the world is (Violet) Crumbling.' It was a Violet Crumble chocolate.

Members interjecting:

Dr CLOSE: I know; that is nice. I am not saying that is not nice, but do you know what is really nice? Treating teachers with respect and treating teachers as the professionals they are. I hope the government, now having received that petition, has heard that message.

I want to very briefly turn to this question of the minister thinking that he was not wrong when he said that the environment movement was 'largely on board with the changes for the marine park sanctuaries'. Not only was he wrong about that, because the environment movement is absolutely furious—and I have received thousands of emails from South Australians who are begging this government not to remove the protections from the sanctuaries—but he is also wrong to suggest that there is any justification from his own report.

His own report that he commissioned—that he did not choose to share with the fishing industry and that he did not choose to share with the environmentalists when they were undertaking their consultation and discussions—said that this had absolutely no justification. It said that it will 'reduce the effectiveness of the marine park network in protecting and conserving marine biodiversity habitats'. That is a disgraceful decision to make, yet this government spent $120,000 on that report.