JON FAINE:
Julia Gillard is Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister. Over the summer she was the Acting Prime Minister. She joins me in the studio to kick-start some of our political analysis and coverage this year. In the absence of Barry Cassidy, we thought well, if you can’t get Barry Cassidy, let’s see if we can get the Deputy Prime Minister. Julia Gillard, happy New Year.
JULIA GILLARD:
To you too, John.
JON FAINE:
And face to face, I think its congratulations. First time I’ve seen you since the electorate elected you as, and Kevin Rudd, as the government in late last year. Can we talk about the Education Revolution? You’re the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Education and Social Inclusion. And the Education Revolution was a key plank in what you pitched to the voters. I saw on the news last night that teacher union officials are already criticising you personally and your government for not doing anything already this year.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well we do have big plans that are going to be delivered this year. I think from the point of view of people like the people in the teachers union, they’re so anxious to see change – and I can understand that anxiety. They’ve waited a long time to see a government that wants to make sure our education system is world class.
We are rolling out our programs. As early as March this year, schools in the greatest need of new computers will be able to apply for assistance from our National Computer Fund. That’s part of our program to make sure every student from year nine to 12 has a computer…
JON FAINE:
But they apply in March – when might a computer turn up and arrive?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, we want to make sure computers are turning up as soon after as possible. We’ve actually got $100 million to spend this financial year. So that’s in this six month period…
JON FAINE:
How much red tape will they have to wade through?
JULIA GILLARD:
They will need to fill in an application form and we will be working with the school systems – State, independent and Catholic – to then have a system of assessment. We are working with those school systems so they can identify for us the schools they know are in the greatest need. We want to be making sure that they’re the schools that are the first cabs off the rank for this $100,000 million. But there is $1 billion to go into our Digital Education Revolution and every school will benefit through the program.
JON FAINE:
Just on the computers – when, can you say when, computers will be plugged in and turned on in those needy schools?
JULIA GILLARD:
I can’t nominate a date but the applications will be in, in March. We will assess them. Funds will be…
JON FAINE:
Who is ‘we’?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, the - we will work with an expert assessment panel to assess the applications…
JON FAINE:
Is this going to be pork-barrelling even at the start of your term? Are they going to be sent off to electorates where you want to carry favour for the next election already?
JULIA GILLARD:
The process John is we’re working with the school systems to identify the neediest schools. I’m not doing that – the schools systems are doing that. So that’s a process independent of government. Then people will apply, we’ll have an expert panel look at the applications, then we will make the funds available. Those funds will be there before the end of this financial year.
Then obviously, people have to do the purchasing. That’s why I can’t nominate a date: because different schools will be engaged in different purchasing arrangements. But they will have the money to do that this financial year.
JON FAINE:
So it’s…
JULIA GILLARD:
We can’t do it more quickly than that.
JON FAINE:
Schools will get to choose what computers they want? And they get to do the buying themselves? It’s not from a centralised pool?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well the State Government systems - the public schools - the State Governments are going to act as the authority for those schools, you would expect that. We are working with the other school sectors. It may be that the Catholic school sector also engages in central purchasing for the schools within its system. That’s a matter that we’re prepared to work through. Obviously there are some benefits in centralised purchasing; the bigger the order, the better the price – all of those sorts of things. Independent schools, they are more likely to do the purchasing themselves locally.
JON FAINE:
So you can absolutely commit that the money will be released to either the Catholic schools, the non-Catholic private schools, or to State Government education departments before the end of June this year?
JULIA GILLARD:
I can absolutely commit the first $100 million will hit those schools, the neediest schools in those sectors, this financial year.
JON FAINE:
The teacher shortage though is now being regarded as the greatest threat to your so-called Education Revolution. Where are you going to find the literally thousands of experienced and specialist teachers overnight?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well we can’t find teachers overnight. And John, can I just say we’ve just spent some time talking about computers – and that’s good, it’s a big program. But I think the fact the focus has been on that means people are underestimating the rest of the Education Revolution. Part of the Education Revolution is to encourage people into the teaching areas where we are most critically short – maths and science. We are saying to young people, if you study maths, study science, we’ll halve your HECS debt. If you go teaching in that area, we will halve it again. Now…
JON FAINE:
Didn’t work with the last round just last week. Applications to study at universities and TAFEs with teaching courses were down in popularity.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well to be fair John, I think obviously its going to take students some time to receive these messages from government. The Government’s been in office now less than 100 days. I imagine students who are putting in their applications this week probably made preliminary decisions last year, probably they made preliminary decisions several years ago, because they always wanted to a nurse or they’ve always wanted to be a vet or something like that. It’s…
JON FAINE:
Isn’t it a bigger issue though, that teaching’s on the nose? It’s not well paid – that’s the other complaint. Do you concede that?
JULIA GILLARD:
Look, what I believe is teaching has been demonised and I think young people look at it and say, well, it isn’t valued. And I want to change that message. I want government to be saying to young people – teaching is a valued profession, we want to encourage you into teaching, particularly in the areas where we are short. We want to say to you that if you go teaching, you will be working in a world class education system, because that is the aim of our Education Revolution.
On the question of pay, I believe in rewarding merit in our teaching service. I think that there are issues there with teachers pay and teachers rewards. I would like to see a system where teachers can say to themselves, the better I do, the better teacher I am the more likely it is that I will be better rewarded. Now, I think we’ve got to work through some of that. I can understand why people say, just simply looking at student results and paying on those is too simplistic. Because students in, say, Laverton, in my electorate might come from homes where they haven’t had the benefit of early literacy development. So obviously they’re in a different position from, say, kids in wealthier suburbs. So you can’t do raw student scores…
JON FAINE:
No, you can adjust for it. But the bottom line surely is, that however you measure teacher pay, it’s slipped behind where it ought be in the hierarchy; the pecking order in our community. Do you agree?
JULIA GILLARD:
I think the issue there is not so much for young teachers because if you do the comparison of starting salaries, they compare fairly well with other professions. I think the issue is keeping the best teachers teaching in classrooms as they have accrued years of service and new skills. And there are some issues to work through there…
JON FAINE:
What is a base teacher, what does a starting teacher get paid?
JULIA GILLARD:
Look, my recollection is here in Victoria, it’s around $44,000, I think is the figure.
JON FAINE:
And you think that’s alright?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well I think for a new graduate John, if you looked at comparable professions, there would be a lot of professions that you went into where in your first year out of university you didn’t earn that salary.
JON FAINE:
You come out with a HECS debt, you’re in your almost mid-20s, certainly you’re going to be at least about 22. And that’s not a lot of money, you can earn that much working in a shop.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, John, I think if you do the comparisons – and I have seen these comparisons published – with starting salaries of other graduates, the starting salaries for teaching doesn’t compare badly.
I think the big debate is how do you keep teachers who have been there 10, 15, 20 years in front of classrooms teaching rather than necessarily going out of the service or diverting into administration because that’s where they see their future. I think it’s about valuing those teachers and sending that cultural message.
It’s also about encouraging people to go into teaching. We’ve got the maths and science incentive scheme, where they know that this is a government that’s going to work in partnership with them to develop a world class education system. And of course, you know, our policies are so much broader; National curriculum, Trades in Schools - a $2.5 billion program, universal pre-school, so kids come to school ready to learn. And in the adult education space – and this is very important, because we’re facing critical skills shortages – 450,000 new training places…
JON FAINE:
Yeah, where are you going to get them all from?
JULIA GILLARD:
…as well as new investment into higher education.
JOHN FAINE:
When I was at high school we had a whole lot of American teachers imported to urgently plug gaps. Why don’t you look at doing something like that? Importing teachers; not just maybe from the US but anywhere, any English-speaking country, urgently, so you get teachers far more quickly than training them from scratch.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, we can use immigration arrangements and they have been used in the past; they are used in other professions. For example, we do import nurses, to use your terminology…
JON FAINE:
Doctors from India.
JULIA GILLARD:
Exactly. And sometimes there has been a lot of controversy around that. But we know that at the end of the day, this nation needs to be training enough people to meet our own needs. That’s the…
JON FAINE:
So you won’t look at importing teachers?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well I am sure in terms of contemporary immigration arrangements, that given that we are in the market for skilled labour that if a teacher presented they would be assessed well on the points system.
JON FAINE:
But why not recruit them? We’re recruiting all sorts of professionals - engineers, electricians, bus and train drivers. Why not teachers?
JULIA GILLARD:
But John, isn’t the actual answer to this to say we need to develop a system which will make sure that this nation has enough teachers. And we need to develop a system where those teachers are valued in the schools where they are working and where they know that the government is working in partnership with them for a world class education system.
Skills shortages abound in our community at the moment. It’s the legacy of 11 years of under-investment in education and training. We are going to absolutely have our foot flat to the floor on the accelerator delivering new training places. That’s what the delivery of 450,000 extra training places is about – trying to resolve the skills shortages that abound at the moment.
JON FAINE:
17 minutes past nine. Julia Gillard, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations, Education and Social Inclusion is my guest on the program this morning as we look at Federal politics, in the absence of Barry Cassidy, in a slightly different way. Are there any Welsh tennis players at the Australian Open?
JULIA GILLARD:
(laugh) Ah, I don’t think so. No, I’m not sure that the Welsh are known for excelling at tennis.
JON FAINE:
If…
JULIA GILLARD:
Someone will probably ring in and correct me and there is a Welsh one there…
JON FAINE:
If there was…
JULIA GILLARD:
But they would be singing. If there was, they would be singing as they were doing the forehand and backhand, I’m sure.
JON FAINE:
This is the question – were you in any way concerned about the ruckus at the tennis the other night? And Greek-Australian supporters of Greek tennis players saying they were being targeted by police?
JULIA GILLARD:
I watched the newspaper coverage and of course I was concerned about it. I mean, it’s not a great image for the world and that coverage has gone around the world. It’s obviously concerning that individuals in the crowd, who say that they were completely uninvolved in the incident ended up affected by the spray.
Having said that, I’ve also seen the police reports that they did feel that they were under threat and they needed to respond to get themselves out of a situation where they feared attack and feared injury. It’s very hard when you weren’t there yourself to get to the bottom of the facts about whether or not what happened was reasonable. And I don’t want to make a judgement when I wasn’t there myself and it seems to me that the versions vary so much as to what actually occurred on the evening.
JON FAINE:
Given that your portfolio responsibilities include social inclusion, what is it about some groups in the community that their historic and ethnic affiliations seem to override their Australianness, or their connection to Australia? What is it about fans of Greek origin that they identify so strongly with players who have come out here from Greece?
JULIA GILLARD:
Oh, I think it’s an understandable cultural connection. I don’t think that there’s any problem that people go along to the tennis or the soccer and they barrack for Australia and they barrack for the nation from which they originally came. I don’t think that that’s an odd thing.
When I’ve watched things like the World Cup, obviously I barrack for Australia but I keep a little bit of an eye on how the Welsh team is going. That’s sort of in you, when you came from another place. What we don’t want to see of course, is we don’t want to see barracking at sporting contests degenerate into aggressive conduct or aggressive behaviour. And I suppose the debate we’re having about what happened at the tennis is what side of the line the conduct was on. Clearly the police say, and an individual police officer certainly says he felt under threat - the police say that the conduct was well over the line into unacceptable and potentially violent behaviour and that’s why they reacted. But you know, barracking for a side – there’s obviously nothing wrong with that.
JON FAINE:
We’ve got more direct action by members of Victorian police against chanting tennis fans than we do against the Japanese for holding an Australian citizen against their will for now a day and a half.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, I’m not sure that’s a great analogy, John – I’ll let you make it if you like. But on the question of the whaling, let me be very clear about what is happening here: we have made a number of representations and been in continuous discussions with the Japanese government…
JON FAINE:
Just discussions?
JULIA GILLARD:
…we have agreed with the Japanese government that there must be the safe return of the two men involved – one of which, of course, is an Australian national. We clearly say that that safe return must happen without any conditions on the safe return.
We have been in contact with the Steve Irwin, through the Australian Federal Police. We have made it clear to the people on the Steve Irwin that we want to see them cooperate with the safe return of the two individuals involved. That there should be no conditions on that from their side, no conditions on that on the Japanese side - other than conditions which may relate to the physical transfer to ensure safety. So clearly arrangements have to be made…
JON FAINE:
And there you have your stalemate: the Japanese are insisting on conditions and even though the Oceanic Viking, the Australian Customs vessel is on its way down there, we had Paul Watson from the Steve Irwin, from Sea Shepherd this morning saying no contact at all between Oceanic Viking, your vessel, our vessel and the Sea Shepherd.
JULIA GILLARD:
We have been in contact with the Steve Irwin through the Australian Federal Police. Other direct efforts have been made to contact the Steve Irwin, I understand that it is not always easy to do those contacts…
JON FAINE:
It’s pretty easy, we just ring them up and talk to them on the radio.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, I think there have been some difficulties in those contacts being made but there certainly has been direct contact through the Australian Federal Police so it is not correct to say that there has been no contact from the Australian Government broadly with the Steve Irwin. We have made it clear to the Steve Irwin that we want the safe transfer of the men, no conditions. We have made that clear to the Japanese Government. The Japanese Government has agreed to the safe transfer of the men. We are actually…
JON FAINE:
But it’s not happening. It’s literally not happening.
JULIA GILLARD:
Well, we’ve made that agreement with the Japanese government. Obviously my colleague, Stephen Smith, the Minister for Foreign Affairs is constantly involved in this. He’s been constantly in contact with the Japanese government to make sure that the safe transfer happens.
JON FAINE:
Well, how much longer do you keep talking before something else needs to be done?
JULIA GILLARD:
Well John, let’s be honest about this. Obviously we have to work with the Japanese government and the Steve Irwin to get the parties together, way out there in the ocean and to have a safe transfer of the two people involved – including of course the Australian national involved. That’s what we are working towards. We have an agreement from the Japanese government for the safe transfer. We’re obviously continuing to work to make sure that safe transfer occurs as soon as it can and there should be conditions from no side on that transfer other than practical considerations about the mechanics of the transfer.
JON FAINE:
Well, we’ll see if it happens today. Deputy Prime Minister, thank you for your time.
JULIA GILLARD:
Thank you very much John.
JON FAINE:
Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations, Education and Social Inclusion joining me in the studio this morning.
ENDS