School snub

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School snub

Bass MLA Ken Smith

WONTHAGGI Secondary College barred Bass MLA Ken Smith from attending a school event he organised and sponsored.

Mr Smith was to attend the secondary college’s McBride Campus career expo last Friday, which he designed as annual event to link up school leavers with potential employers.

But an Australian Education Union (AEU) ban on State Government politicians attending school events left the veteran local member out in the cold.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all. I was extremely disappointed when the principal explained the situation to me. This is the third one of these we’ve arranged. We’ve done it on the basis of looking after the kids – to give them some sort of direction in their lives, as far as job opportunities,” Mr Smith said.

“For the teachers’ union to pull a stunt like this, to take away my opportunity to see how it was all operating, is awful. We had over 30 employers there.”
Mr Smith said he dismissed the idea of cancelling the expo, because he “had kids come to my office who were involved in organising it”.

“I just think it stinks. To have the union behave like this just shows what a disgraceful lot of people they are. I have a great relationship with the school, and have had for many years,” he said.

“This is just ridiculous. They’re going to come to me to assist them to get a new school put together. What am I supposed to think? Do these people want help or don’t they want help? Do they want me to do some work for them?
“They’ve gone about this in a very stupid and silly way.”

Deputy Premier Peter Ryan said the AEU did not have the power to ban politicians visiting schools. He said that personally he would not visit a school and risk embarrassing students and parents if he thought action was likely.

“The union is taking the hardline on it and we are prepared to recognise that is a difficult for these entirely innocent parties,” he said.

Mr Ryan said the union had put the ban in place a month ago and indicated it would continue until further notice.

He said the government was willing to continue to negotiate with the union.

President of the AEU’s Victorian Branch, Mary Bluett, said politicians and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) had been targeted in the action.

“We’re doing a range of bans and limitations. Some of them are there for the duration of the dispute and others we’re doing for short periods of time. By doing bans we can things aside from stop work action,” she said.

“One of the ongoing bans is that Coalition politicians are not welcome for the duration of the dispute. Our members are authorised to stop work if a Coalition politician were to come to a school contrary to that ban.”

A union representative from Wonthaggi Secondary College said the teachers were following an edict from the union, in implementing the ban on Mr Smith.

“They were very direct on their terms. They basically said, if a member wants to visit the school, then as part of the work ban teachers could walk off,” he said.

“To avoid that embarrassment for Ken, we gave plenty of notice. We were simply following the stipulation put down by the union.”

The union representative acknowledged that Mr Smith had been “an excellent supporter of the school”.

The AEU will strike on September 5, with a March in Melbourne.

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Posted by on Aug 28 2012. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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