Natasha Bita, part time education editor for The Australian and full time shill for the Liberal Party, is not the classiest of reporters. Regular readers will remember that Bita proudly and ludicrously applauded the approval of the Liberals’ appalling Curriculum and now, without batting an eyelid, is applauding the Liberals’ trashing of their own Curriculum. Bita also recently got walloped by Media Watch for her absurd “sensitive national security” story attacking an (unnamed) ANU academic: a story that is still up but about which Bita has seemingly not uttered a word of defence or correction or apology. What a gal.
Bita’s latest column* lauding the wonderfulness of the Liberals’ education policies appeared yesterday, and it is appalling. Sarah Henderson is front and centre, of course, complete with stately photograph and free-kick quotes. Never mind that Henderson has all the discernment of a Rottweiler and half the brains. Bita’s advertisement column is centred on the universities:
Coalition declares war on ‘woke’ teaching
The Coalition has pledged to wipe out “woke” activism and “ideological agendas” in universities through an unprecedented level of ministerial intervention in course content.
Rottweiler, heal thyself.
The idea that the Feds directing university course content is a solution to “indoctrination”, rather than simply indoctrination of a different flavour from a much more concerning source, is utterly insane.
But everybody loves a good war. So how do the Libs plan on waging this one?
Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson, spelling out the Coalition’s higher education policy for the first time during the election campaign, said she would direct the Tertiary Quality Education Quality and Standards Agency to take action against “indoctrination’’.
So SETQA, which “already has the authority to examine the quality and appropriateness of course content’’, will do Henderson’s urging and purging. Great plan. We’re sure SETQA will be thrilled. Plus,
The Australian understands that Senator Henderson also plans to force universities to publish detailed course outlines, so students know what they are signing up for before they enrol in a degree.
Oh, goodie: more red tape. One must know absolutely nothing about universities and their teaching to not understand how pointless, how unworkable, how utterly insane is this idea.
After giving Henderson the run of the field, Bita gets on to Thug Dutton:
The Coalition’s war on woke teaching [no quotation marks] also extends to schools: after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would use federal funding to prevent students being “indoctrinated’’ in classrooms.
He said a Coalition government would “reflect community standards in relation to what is being taught at our schools and our universities”.
The standards of the community of Queensland cops, perhaps?
Citing a recent controversy about a law course at Macquarie University that marked students on their delivery of an acknowledgment of country, and protests attended by school teachers, Mr Dutton said on Tuesday that this was being “translated into the classroom”.
“That’s not something I support,’’ he said.
So, no support for teachers’ right to attend protests? What a shock, coming from Copper Pete. And how, exactly, does this protest get “translated into the classroom”? It doesn’t, of course; it is entirely irrelevant.
Bita’s column comes on the back of the Australian’s extended whacking of some DEI nonsense at a few universities. Some of this seems worth whacking, some less so, none of it really the main point. And all of it a pretext for naked campaigning for the Liberals.
One can genuinely be concerned with political and social biases at universities. One can consider that it rises, on occasion, to “indoctrination”. Somehow the “indoctrination” that is routine in business schools or a Menzies Institute is all fine and dandy, but no matter. One has to be blind or a liar not to acknowledge there are serious issues in universities, particularly in the humanities, and including in education faculties. But the very worst, most dangerous way to deal with such concerns is through a government imposed orthodoxy. It is McCarthyism at its cartooniest.
Still, Henderson and Dutton and Shill Bita may be on a winner: it may well be what The People want. The truth is, everybody loves an authoritarian thug, just as long as it is someone they dislike that is being thugged. Never mind that they are all hypocrites.
*) Second latest. While polishing off this post, I discovered Bita’s latest: Election 2025: Catholic schools want to scrap ‘woke’ national curriculum. Bita produces this nonsense faster than I can critique it.
I gave up reading anything from the Australian awhile ago, it’s more like Pravda than a serious newspaper these days.
I only read it, and only the education bits, because I figure it’s my job.