For many people, illness has a narrative: a clear beginning, middle and end. If we’re lucky, the ending is actually a fresh start where the illness is gone and our hero is returned to normal life, changed but stronger because of their ordeals. In the lives of those with chronic…
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I find myself sailing through uncharted and turbulent waters. The nature of education has changed over the past few weeks. The rapid deployment of alternative learning provisions has left many teachers, parents and students feeling off-kilter. Technological teething pains have resulted in angst and frustration for everyone involved.
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Teachers are used to rolling with the punches; in any school day a hundred plans can change in a hundred different ways. But these are — to use the phrase of the year — unprecedented times.
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In the front half of 2019, radio shock jock and Sky News commentator Alan Jones — aided by former prime ministerial chief of staff Peta Credlin — went on a bizarre tirade about climate change. In this rant, Jones used a bowl of rice to make a point regarding the…
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Over the past two months Scott Morrison has experienced a spectacular fall from grace. He’s gone from being the miracle man who won the unwinnable election, to a Coalition leader who can’t show his face in rural Australia without being heckled out of town.
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Recently, as I perused the cover of a local news rag, I spotted an article lamenting state government decisions that were ‘endangering’ the jobs of coal miners. In this article was a substantial presupposition: that coal jobs are worth saving.
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Nearly four million people — inspired by the example of teen activist Greta Thunberg — took to the streets to demand climate action in September. Even before the protests were over, conservatives took to their keyboards to make smug comments about the apparent hypocrisy of young people, whose worst crime was…
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Australia is experiencing an energy crisis on multiple fronts. In the short-term we are facing skyrocketing power prices, and grid stability issues. In the long-but-getting-shorter-by-the-day-term Australia’s disproportionate contribution to climate change is still a massive problem. Neither of these situations is sustainable.
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Emotional blackmail is the rotten foundation on which teacher working conditions are built. We don’t do it for the money, we are constantly told. We do it ‘for the kids’.
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Do drug users deserve to die? Maybe I’m just a bleeding-heart lefty, but I hope that most people would answer this question with a ‘no’. Unfortunately, if you read the comment section of any news story on the recent spate of drug-related deaths at music festivals you will find a…
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It’s Movember: the wonderful time of year when people are encouraged to grow out their flavour savers and soup strainers to raise awareness and money in aid of men’s health.
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Scandalous data published by the ABC has revealed the shockingly low threshold for entry into tertiary teaching programs. These low standards, it is insinuated, are directly linked to the declining outcomes of Australian students in international tests.
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I have the controversial opinion among my colleagues that teachers, on average, actually get paid pretty well. Averaging, however, is the crux of debate on teacher workload. Yes, if a teacher’s job is averaged over the year, their pay is reasonable and their workload is manageable.
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This year the New South Wales Government announced, as part of its initiative to tackle sexual violence, that it is moving forward with a campaign to encourage active consent. Active or affirmative consent is not a new idea, but in recent years it has gained traction in the wake of…
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