But what is your point?

Creative tension seems a very generous interpretation of the concerted campaign in the history wars, education, social policy, etc which this ideology machine has produced in recent times. Remember we are not just talking about one paper, but a stable of them. The most telling recent event was the promotion of Chris Mitchell from The Courier Mail to The Australian. It's hard to see it as anything other than a reward for the culture wars he instigated in the Brisbane paper.

A right wing newspaper is almost a tautology, since, as has been observed by others, newspapers do not merely favour big business, they ARE big business (though this doesn't necessarily explain the cultural move to the right). The strident radicalism of the right wing rent-a-crowd which has dominated The Australian in recent times is sheer journalistic irresponsibility.

Yes, what is the point this article is making? Is it an extract from a longer piece? Will part two be run tomorrow?

The Australian pushes a particular ideological line. It has been going on about supposedly “powerful” teacher unions and their “provider capture” of education for years.

In “Left in the shade to monument of reform” (28/7/2005), the Mike Nahan of the IPA, a prominent right-wing think tank that helped set the agenda for the Kennett Government, claims that Jeff Kennett ‘rationalised the number of schools, drastically reduced over-manning, made schools accountable to parents, introduced choice and reformed the curriculum’.

I replied (31/7/2005):
‘Not one of Mike Nahan’s claims in support of Jeff Kennett’s government’s changes to Victorian education (28/7) is in fact true, but that of course has never stopped such claims being published ad nauseam, usually with no right of reply by any of the victims…’ [REFUSED PUBLICATION]

In “Educational idiocy” (27-28/8/2005), the editorialist claims that ‘state ministers…are desperate not to annoy the powerful education unions’.

I replied on 28/8/2005:
‘The claim that teacher unions are powerful (27-28/8) is one of the many statements made about education by The Australian that are simply untrue, and it will stay untrue no matter how often it is repeated. The facts show that teacher unions have been losing their battles for decent pay and conditions for almost thirty years now…’ [REFUSED PUBLICATION]

In the second letter under “Labor has no monopoly on social responsibility” (30/10/2006), J. Morrissey claims that in ‘Victoria for seven years it has been snouts in the trough all round’ and asks where are the ‘thousands more nurses, teachers and police’.

I replied on 30/10/2006 in “Primary Focus”:
‘J. Morrissey asks where the thousands of extra teachers appointed by the Bracks Government are (“Labor has no monopoly on social responsibility”, 30/10).

‘They are mostly in primary schools where they have been used to improve the pupil-teacher ratio to 16.1:1 from the 17.2:1 it had been pushed out to by the previous Liberal government. This is not far short of the 15.8:1 it was in 1992 and has enabled primary school classes from Prep to Grade 2 to be set at 21 students…’ [REFUSED PUBLICATION]

In “Last hurrah for the old industrial relations club” (29/6/2006), P. P. McGuinness claims that ‘The unions, especially the public sector unions (most glaringly in the education industry, where consumer interests are continually sacrificed to the employees), are so blinded by their own narrow self-interest that they neglect the interests of the community as a whole.’

I replied on 29/6/2006 in “Last hurrah for the old standards of truth”:
‘You managed to get through a whole week without publishing one of your totally dumb attacks on outcomes-based education, so I am not surprised you had to put one in today (“No place for New Age school syllabus”, 29/6) and to follow up yesterday’s lie that “teacher union officials and their state education minister allies…really wanted to protect…teachers who disguise their poor classroom performance behind edu-speak” (“Horror of happiness”, 28/6) with another one today, this time from P. P. McGuinness (“Last hurrah for the old industrial relations club”, 29/6)….’ [REFUSED PUBLICATION]

In “And another thing…” (15/2/2008) the editorialist claims that there is “provider capture” of education.

I replied on 15/2/2008:
‘I would like an explanation of how a powerful union supposedly in control of education can result in a $34,000 relative drop in Victorian teacher pay since 1975, an almost 2,000-teacher cut to secondary staffing since 1981, a ten per cent increase in teaching loads since 1983 and an explosion in short-term contract employment since 1992.

‘After getting teachers to cave in and accept a worsening of their working lives in the 2004 EBA, the Victorian Labor Government has spent the last year resisting teacher union demands to reverse the substantial worsening of pay, staffing, working conditions and security of employment that the union has been unable to prevent over the last three decades….’ [REFUSED PUBLICATION]

Overall, I sent 71 letters in 2005-06 and had three published, making an overall success rate of 4.2 per cent. Public opinion is formed simply by the number of times a particular claim is made and challenges to it are denied publication.

A comprehensive account is provided at:
http://pub39.bravenet.com/forum/3280197123/show/601755

Good on you Chris C. I admire your tenacity. I'm not at all shocked by the newspapers' unwillingness to publish your lucid and well-argued letters.

I would have intuited that The Australian would be the least willing to publish a challenge to the tired old cliches about punctuation and spelling. If they or OLO recycles one more shoddy article by Kevin Donnelly I'll scream.

I hadn't seen the PLATO site before. It looks like a good alternative resource on education topics. Thanks for drawing it to our attention.