Teachers: exhausted, underpaid, and deserve better

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If only the issues were as basic as Chip Le Grand (Comment, 25/6) suggests, but they’re not. I have been teaching in public education for more than 35 years and voted against the agreement for the first time in my career. I’m not a rampant socialist or Trotskyite and most of the teachers in the AEU take the ideas of this faction with a grain of salt, if not an eye roll. I voted against the agreement because it fails to address the workload issues that have never been so great and so pressing in the profession. The demands on teachers to respond to technological change, design quality lessons for a new curriculum without adequate time, taking on all-consuming leadership roles, personalising learning for students who have mental health issues, neurodiversity or a disability without sufficient learning assistance in the classroom setting; not to mention the perennial issue of marking and assessment that spills into personal time when we should be caring for our own children and family relationships. Teachers deserve both better money and time to do a very important job.
I am retiring in a few years and worry that we won’t be able to attract teachers who see teaching as a vocation, a lifelong commitment. I work with enthusiastic young teachers who want to do the very best they can for their kids but are feeling increasingly thwarted by a system that does not allow them to do this. They are exhausted, underpaid and deserve better.
Kimberly Cornell, Heathmont

There’s simply not enough time to do my job
Chip Le Grand makes teachers who voted no to the in-principle agreement look like suckers who turned down a great deal for someone else’s ideological agenda. I can only speak for myself (a teacher of 18 years, all of them in the public system), but I voted no to the pay rise because the agreement doesn’t address my real problem: I do not have enough time to do my job.
The stress, frustration and burnout experienced by almost all the teachers I know stem from the workload – the face-to-face teaching hours, the meetings, and the documentation requirements – which means we do not have enough time in our working day to plan and assess effectively.
This is why I work (and am paid) at 0.8: I factor in an unpaid day every week to do my marking so that I can spend the weekend with my kids. Despite my constant efforts to be more efficient, it takes me six hours to mark a class set of Year 12 English essays. That is all the preparation time I am officially allocated in a week, and it’s taken up by one class. The agreement’s three additional days across the year for this kind of work do not come close to being enough.
Public sentiment may well have turned against “greedy” teachers, but please understand that it is not just about the money. We will keep losing great teachers if we do not address workload as well.
Clare Ridgway-Faye, Northcote

No vote meant supporting the support staff
Chip Le Grand misses the point. He claims Marxist and social justice advocates have agitated to AEU members resulting in the no vote to the deal hammered out between AEU leadership and the government. Talking to my teaching colleagues most of them voted no because education support staff, (ES) who are critical in helping teachers in their work, weren’t offered a comparative pay rise to teachers. It’s why I voted no.
We were insulted that the union leadership and the government thought, by offering teachers, who make up the majority of AEU members an OK pay raise and back pay, that we’d vote yes and ignore the ESs in the process. In this day and age of hyper individualism, solidarity may be out of fashion but the no vote was an exercise in solidarity, and one we should all be proud of.
The no vote will force the government and union leadership to see the incredible work the underpaid and unacknowledged Education Support Staff do and not to treat teachers like selfish stooges to be manipulated by promises of a pay rise. We see ESs and want them to be seen too. Solidarity is not a swear word, it makes us human.
Rohan Wightman, Brunswick

THE FORUM

Trust is earned
The Age’s editorial (24/6) on the $1.5 billion forestry transition fund, alongside Bayside Council’s court action (″⁣Bayside in court bid for secret documents″⁣, 24/6) seeking access to planning documents, raises the same fundamental question: why has transparency become so difficult?
Victorians should not have to rely on investigative journalists, forensic accountants and court proceedings to discover how public money has been spent or how major decisions were made.
Public money belongs to taxpayers, not governments. Major government decisions should be accompanied by the evidence on which they are based, not shielded from public scrutiny.
If the Allan government is confident in its decisions, why not release the evidence?
There is much talk of declining public trust and the rise of populist politics. Governments often ask the public to trust them. To trust that decisions are justified, that alternatives have been properly assessed, that vested interests have not influenced outcomes and that taxpayer funds are being spent wisely. But why should Victorians be expected to take this on faith when the evidence is routinely withheld?
The Allan government should remember that trust is earned through transparency and accountability, not secrecy and control.
Suzette Miller, Ashburton

What a state of play
Some recent polling suggests that at the next state election to be held in November, One Nation is a possibility to either form government or be part of a coalition with the current opposition. Currently, upper house member Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell is the only One Nation representative in the Victorian parliament.
The One Nation Victoria website features Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, both federal members, who have no affiliation with Victoria. So, who would lead One Nation at the next state election and potentially become the next premier? Who is going to be their candidate in my electorate? The state election is only five months away, yet voters are unable to scrutinise the One Nation leader or candidates and interrogate their policies and the future direction they envisage for the state. Currently, they have no policies, no candidates and no vision for Victoria.
Chris McCallum, Nathalia

No alternative
While I agree with your correspondent (Letters, 24/6) that the Victorian Labor Party is “manifestly incompetent”, I am not convinced a Liberal/One Nation coalition is the answer. We know exactly what One Nation will offer in government. Hanson’s solutions to the issues confronting Australia are simplistic, divisive, unworkable and chilling. If the Liberals can only achieve government with a One Nation coalition, perhaps, despite my serious misgivings, Labor might still be the better option.
Neil Hudson, East Melbourne

Joys of diversity
Having grown up in North Caulfield in the ’70s, I thoroughly enjoyed Rob O’Brien’s celebration of the diversity of the suburb (Life in the Burbs, 23/6).
My education owes much to the multicultural character of North Caulfield. It’s where I learnt about the Jewish religion and its practices. I was the first in my friendship group to replace blankets with a doona on my bed. My mother and I loved discovering unfamiliar foods at the Polish delicatessen before rye bread, poppyseed cake, bagels, yoghurt and continental frankfurts were the norm. Our Greek neighbours initiated a love of figs when we didn’t know what to do with the bountiful crop from our backyard tree and showed me how to freshen bread by sprinkling it with water and putting it in the oven.
Sadly, Pauline Hanson would have us growing up exclusively with Vegemite and meat pies ignorant of life beyond her narrow cultural view.
Belinda DuPont, Surrey Hills

No sacrificial lamb here
Your correspondent in Western Australia (Letters, 25/6) hopes One Nation polls well in the Victorian election to show Australia ″⁣how hapless and hopeless″⁣ they would be. We don’t deserve to be the sacrificial lamb. My hope is that community independents poll well in the Victorian elections and get us back on track.
Belinda Burke, Hawthorn

Heat warning
Re the article ″⁣Red alerts spread as heatwave claim lives″⁣ (24/6), the heatwave in Europe should be sounding alarm bells worldwide. As lives are being lost and the impact on environments, here we have the likes of Pauline Hanson saying the climate crisis is a ″⁣hoax″⁣. She and other deniers should read the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It warns the world is behind in cutting emissions and likely to go beyond 1.5 degrees of warming. The opportunities to reverse this are rapidly closing. We in Australia are not immune to the consequences as experienced in Europe.
Judith Morrison, Nunawading

Still, there is poverty
No Australian child should be living in poverty (An Age Ago, 25/6). I remember that statement well it was always going to be a big ask but Bob Hawke’s sentiments were right on. Why has it not happened? Some things have improved, but it’s hard to fathom why in a wealthy country so many people are still living in poverty. It’s not the old type of poverty from before the war when food was scarce, it’s a new form.
Governments are spending in the wrong areas. At least in the old days we made things so people had work, but that has gone overseas. It comes down to the same story – an inequitable society that still exists and we have the threat of it increasing now with extreme far-right politicians like Pauline Hanson trying to take hold.
We need to somehow create a better future for our young people no matter what part of the world they come from.
Nola Cormick, Albert Park

Climate doesn’t lie
If only climate deniers like Pauline Hanson and her party faithfuls could acknowledge what is happening in Europe at the moment with record summer temperatures and people dying from heatwave conditions. Deadly temperatures of 43 degrees is unprecedented in many cities in the UK and on the Continent. Unlike us, they are not prepared for this kind of extreme heat. Hanson should try telling Europeans and those delegates attending the London Climate conference that climate change is a hoax and see what response she gets. The hoax is Pauline Hanson and those dinosaurs in the Coalition who think they speak for mainstream Australians. They do not and never will.
Nick Toovey, Beaumaris

Denial exhaustion
I am just exhausted by Pauline Hanson’s climate denial. It’s 2026. Surely, we left this behind us and can move on to important discussions of how to address it, not whether the warming climate exists at all. The tired old denial, and then the next step of “nothing Australia does is going to make a difference anyway” should be firmly in the rear-view mirror.
Scandinavian countries have zoomed ahead in their use of renewable energy and pay less for their energy than EU neighbours. If these tiny countries can lead the way, why can’t Australia also be an example in energy transformation? This will benefit not only our citizens with lower energy costs but the entire planet with less net carbon into the atmosphere. The resistance to this path seems to be the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industries and their wealth, which is helping to prop up the likes of One Nation to further drag the feet of change.
Kim Abraham, Fairhaven

I shake my head
In the ’80s, I attended my first geography teachers’ conference. By the time we got to the last speaker I was mentally exhausted and ready to go home. But when she began to speak I sat up and took notice. She was speaking about something called “global warming” and she had all the scientific charts and graphs to support her view. She laid out what we could expect to happen in the next 20 years and every one of her dire predictions has come to pass. Temperatures have risen by 1.4 per cent, droughts and bushfires are yearly events and now another El Nino is on the way.
Which brings me to Pauline Hanson, who claims that global warming is a “hoax” and that attempts to boost renewables is to blame for “national poverty”.
I can only shake my head in disbelief.
The biggest problem is, how do we get to those people who believe her nonsense? Not everyone reads The Age and watches the ABC.
Sue Tuckerman, Kew

The weight of grammar
Your correspondent (Letters, 25/6) asks the pedant community, of which I am one, “Fellow pedants, when did ″⁣It was such fun″⁣, become ″⁣it was so fun″⁣? Perhaps it was when people started to have “a fun time”? Or could it have been when they became “bored of” grammar?
Deborah Morrison, Malvern East

My word, it’s changed
I have to love the letters showing us how we have ruined the language.
Language is a living evolving thing. Do I enjoy the impact rather than the affect or effect. No, it grates, but it is showing the changes that do occur. I recall my childhood days of “programme” rather than “program” only to learn that program is the original usage.
Do I wish to spend my older years railing against the growth and changes to the English I learnt as a child? No! I will enjoy how evolution does not only impact species but impacts language.
David Raymond, Doncaster East

AND ANOTHER THING

Hanson
In Pauline Hanson’s monoculture Australia, we will not suffer the climate change hoax. She will deport El Nino.
George Reed, Wheelers Hill

When will Pauline Hanson declare the heat dome as a hoax?
Bernd Rieve, Brighton

Every person representing Australia in a team wears a matching outfit – whether it’s the Socceroos or Wallabies or Matildas or Olympians. It’s called a uniform Pauline Hanson, not a monoculture.
Anne Austin, Flinders

I back Australia’s best monoculture, and our strongest growth industry. Let’s call it the Wheat Australia Policy.
Tudor Holton, Maribyrnong

One Nation through Gina Rinehart is purely Trump policy.
Michael McKenna, Warragul

Furthermore
Why doesn’t the state government put more effort into housing Victorians rather than preference the data centres? People need shelter and a healthy environment.
Helena Kilingerova, Vermont

Angus Taylor, until you win back Sussan Ley’s lost seat, and the teal seats lost under Scott Morrison, you’re failing as a political leader.
David Cayzer, Clifton Hill

Donald Trump set out to “drain the swamp” but drained the pool instead.
David Hunt, Barongarook

Donald Trump’s follow-up to his The Art of the Deal: How not to prosecute a war.
Gerry Balding, Nth Hobart

How good it is to read each day of more and more battery storage of power. The way it’s going the last of our coal-fired generators will soon be redundant.
John Walsh, Watsonia

I wouldn’t worry about a dog in a pub, it’s when you see a pink elephant you have a problem.
Margaret Skeen, Ocean Grove

Why do most dog owners assume everyone likes dogs in any setting? What’s next, watching movies in a cinema?
Greig Morris, Essendon