Category Archives: Australian education

Data shows ‘collapse’ in full-time roles – as it happened

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Pat Conroy says Ukraine-requested helicopters are not cleared for flight

The defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, is speaking to ABC RN about a request from Ukraine to receive Australia’s retired fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters. The helicopters were retired earlier than planned after a crash in Queensland killed four Defence personnel during a training exercise last year:

Anyone who suggests that these aircraft have been cleared is wrong and they are making, quite frankly, really offensive suggestions at a time when people are really grieving.

I think it’s really important that those investigations keep working to establish the cause of that accident. These aircraft are [not in] flying condition, and we still do not know whether they’re safe to fly.

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News live: Australia was ‘aware in advance’ of Nauru’s decision to sever ties with Taiwan, Conroy says

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Meanwhile, Penny Wong begins Middle East visit amid mounting fears of escalating violence in the crisis-torn region. Follow the day’s news live

Western Australian police have confirmed that child abuse detectives are currently in Broome as part of an ongoing investigation into historic child sex offences.

The ABC reported that they were searching a property owned by the Catholic Church, where Broome’s former Catholic bishop Christopher Saunders lived up until late last year.

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Nearly 80% Australian students say they ‘didn’t fully try’ in latest Pisa tests

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Exclusive: Unpublished OECD data on students’ motivation and sense of belonging at school calls into question validity of national rankings, experts say

More than three-quarters of Australian students say they didn’t fully try in the latest Pisa tests, unpublished data reveals, calling into question the real source behind a continued decline in rankings.

The Programme for International Student Assessment has measured the academic performance of 15-year-olds every three years since 2000, providing the most comprehensive international rankings in science, reading and mathematics.

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‘I never expected to do this well’: top performing NSW students celebrate high-flying Atars

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Students across the state take to social media to share reactions to top marks while premier says results are ‘just a step on your journey’

When Charlie Ashton and his mates plugged his HSC marks into an Atar calculator, he assumed it was broken. There was no way he’d scored a near-perfect 99.90.

But there’d been no mistake. “I was pretty surprised,” said the student from Sydney private school Shore.

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Tropical Cyclone Jasper live update tracker: category 2 storm hits North Qld, more than 14,000 homes lose power, BoM radar track map – latest

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BoM tracker map shows forecast path of category 2 cyclone will hit north of Cairns and Port Douglas on the Queensland coast at about 1pm with heavy rain, 140km/h winds and storm surge predicted. Follow the latest Australia news and weather updates today

Ceasefire ‘can’t be one-sided’

Emergency management minister Murray Watt is also speaking to ABC RN this morning, and was asked about the PM’s joint letter with his New Zealand and Canadian counterparts urging a ceasefire.

[It] shows that we want to work with like-minded countries towards what would be a just and enduring peace. I think the whole world has been pleased to see the release of hostages and the pause in hostilities that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, but what we need to do is move towards a sustainable ceasefire …

I think everyone who watches this conflict unfolds on their television screens, is really disturbed about the loss of life that we’re seeing go on at the moment.

I think that’s the value that a country like Australia can play here by really taking that even-handed approach that does call out the abhorrent behaviour by Hamas, but also as a friend of Israel, calls on them to respect international humanitarian law.

We are alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.

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Australia news live: Shannon Fentiman announces tilt at Queensland Labor leadership

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Palaszczuk made decision ‘in the interest of the state’, Swan says

ALP national secretary Wayne Swan has spoken to ABC RN about Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s resignation announcement yesterday.

That’s always ever present for any leader at any time but I think she made the decision in the interest of the state and I think in her own interest as well.

I think people are sensibly discussing what the options are and if one candidate has a pretty clear majority then I think it would be unlikely that you’d see a battle, because it would simply be very difficult for the government over a period of time when they need to re-establish a leader in the job.

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Labor targets student and some worker visas in overhaul of Australia’s temporary migration program

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Government says temporary migration system is ‘broken’ and changes to student and skilled worker visas are needed to address exploitation

The Albanese government will lift the bar for international students and some workers to get a visa and as it seeks to overhaul what it says is Australia’s “broken” temporary migration program.

A new 10-year temporary migration strategy to be released on Monday will include moves to crack down on the use of student visas as a “back door” entry for employers looking to import low-skilled workers, while the government will also create new visas targeting highly skilled workers, particularly those in growth industries. It comes with the government flagging that overseas migration has peaked and is set to fall in the next 12 months.

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Australia news live: Daniel Andrews fires up over ‘Dictator Dan’ moniker; festival-goers warned about heatwave conditions

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Former Victorian premier gives first interview after resignation, saying ‘the haters hate and the rest vote Labor’. Follow the day’s news live

James Ashby to stand for One Nation in Queensland seat

James Ashby, the chief of staff to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, will stand for the party in the seat of Keppel at next year’s Queensland state election, AAP reports.

The Nationals are dead in Queensland’s parliament while the Liberals are lurching further left in their attempts to secure inner-Brisbane seats.

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Final question time of the year – as it happened

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MPs don casual wear for late-night sitting

Given the late sitting (the house has been doing “family friendly” hours for most of the year, which has made sittings past 8pm or 8.30pm rare) there were a few more casual looks on the benches than we are used to.

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Teachers to get training to deal with poor behaviour in Australian classrooms but experts say more must be done

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Government reveals $3.5m plan to reduce disruption but Greens say focus should be on socioeconomic and psychosocial challenges facing students

One in three educators are losing teaching time due to disruption, with experts calling for more to be done to address rising rates of poor behaviour in Australian classrooms.

According to the OECD’s disciplinary climate index, Australian classrooms are among the world’s most disorderly, affecting teacher safety and work satisfaction and school-leaving results.

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Stage set for national cabinet clash over GST – as it happened

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The NSW Australian Paramedics Association will take part in a 12-hour strike today, from 7am to 7pm, despite the threat of legal action.

Members will still attend emergency “lights and sirens” jobs as part of an ongoing pay dispute.

We want to assure the public that emergencies will still be attended to, with our focus intensifying on life-threatening cases.

Our decision to limit responses to non-emergency jobs enhances our capacity to manage critical cases.

Facing potential legal repercussions and a substantial fine of up to $20,000 per day, our commitment remains firm.

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Australia politics live: PM delivers national apology to thalidomide survivors; Pocock and Plibersek strike deal on Murray-Darling

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Plan will remove a cap on buybacks and extend deadlines for water recovery targets. Follow the day’s news live

For what kinds of crimes would preventive detention be used?

Preventive detention can be used for terrorists or terrorism suspects already (yes, we already do this) so what other crimes will be added to the list? (Not all of the cohort have committed crimes.)

What I can tell you is that we’ll work through the detail of the law over the coming days. We’ve had a high court decision for about 17 hours now.

But the high court decision actually specifically refers to child sexual abuse as one of the grounds on which preventive detention might also be lawful.

We will work through these issues and will do so in a way that is fast but also constitutional. What we have seen on the other side of politics is a pretty torrid history of rushing laws, doing it improperly and writing things that aren’t constitutional, that are later thrown out by the high court and the consequence is that the Australian community is less safe.

We don’t want to make that mistake. We will work through this carefully.

The most important thing to understand from the high court’s ruling is that the high court has said that politicians don’t get to make that decision (indefinite detention).

And so politicians have previously been allowed to hold people in immigration detention for very long periods of time. The high court has told us that that’s not constitutional under these circumstances.

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Stephanie Foster appointed new home affairs secretary – as it happened

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The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) has backed the campaign for a royal commission into immigration detention – including onshore and offshore detention on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the campaign will be launched in Canberra today.

Our mandatory, arbitrary immigration detention regime is unnecessarily cruel and degrading. Instead of offering refuge for those who seek the safety of our shores, we imprison people, strip them of their humanity and allow them to be demonised in our media and by our politicians. It is a system that conditions the Australian public to dehumanise others. This cruelty has persisted for decades.

Increased discussion and debate around gender equality, a tight labour market and impending legislative reform have helped drive action on workplace gender equality over the last year.

We see an increase in the proportion of women in management and at the upper pay quartiles, and we also see the proportion of women being promoted and appointed at manager level is higher than the proportion of women managers overall. As this trend continues, we can expect to see the gender pay gap continue to fall.

The management opportunities for part-time employees are negligible; the number of men taking paid primary carer parental leave has barely shifted; and the number of women in CEO roles and on boards has stagnated.

If we want real change, we need employers to take bold action. We need employers to look across the drivers of gender inequality and be imaginative in their solutions.

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Australia news live: Bruce Lehrmann back in the witness box as defamation case kicks off third day

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Former Liberal staffer’s defamation trial against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson continues in the federal court. Follow the day’s news live

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has said the government is yet to decide how to best consult with First Nations people after the loss of the Indigenous voice referendum.

Burney was on RN Breakfast earlier and said today’s Closing the Gap meeting, the first since the referendum, would focus on the silver linings from the loss.

What we have seen is a group of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people get involved in the political process.

We had 6 million Australians say yes. And the thing that really excited me about the outcome in places like the Tiwi Islands, where … Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wanted this change. And those votes are really important.

Education is the most powerful cause for good in this world, that is where you learn.

If you want to protest, do it on the weekend. School is on, we expect them to be there.

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Man found dead after statewide search – as it happened

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Hostage release essential if truce to last, Paterson says

Rewinding to Liberal MP James Paterson’s appearance on RN Breakfast this morning, wheN he said more needs to be done to free the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza.

We don’t know how many of them are still alive, and their continued release would be essential for any continuing ceasefire because otherwise Israel continues to have a legitimate military objective.

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Melbourne school students defy education minister and strike in support of Palestine

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Hundreds rally in CBD to call for an end to the war in Gaza and for Australia to stop military aid to Israel

Amid chants of “free, free Palestine”, hundreds of Victoria school students have walked out of classrooms to call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and for Australia to stop military aid to Israel.

Students gathered at the steps of Flinders Street station in the Melbourne CBD on Thursday afternoon, rallying for Palestine. The crowd spilled out on to the road, bringing traffic to a standstill at the busy Flinders and Swanston Street intersection.

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Australia’s 100 wealthiest schools earned almost $4.8bn in 2021, data reveals

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Exclusive: education department figures reveal the private schools received about $767m in government money amid a public schools funding shortfall

Australia’s 100 wealthiest schools had a combined income of $4.8bn in 2021, data reveals, as calls grow for the federal government to urgently address inequity in the education system.

About $767m of that income came from government funding; the rest from fees, private contributions and donations.

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Australia news live: school strike for climate protests draw huge crowds in Melbourne and Sydney; Albanese says Apec leaders ‘very interested’ in Tuvalu deal

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‘A ceasefire is where we need to get to,’ Zoe Daniel says

Asked by RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas if she supports calls for a ceasefire, Zoe Daniel says:

If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.

At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.

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‘Desensitised’: calls for better education after research suggests Victorian boys less likely to stop harassment

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Study of students finds marked drop from Year 7 to Year 9 in proportion of those willing to intervene

Chanel Contos, a sexual consent education advocate, says teenagers may be getting so desensitised to porn that it’s affecting their reaction to sexual harassment, with research suggesting male students become less likely to intervene when a female classmate is targeted as they reach Year 9.

The study of Victorian school students by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (Anrows), released on Wednesday, found that 20.2% of Year 7 boys intended to intervene when sexual harassment was taking place. However, just 12.8% of those in Year 9 shared that attitude.

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Optus confirms ‘network event’ behind outage – as it happened

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Rowland: ‘consumers were clearly frustrated with lack of information’ over outage

Rowland says the key issue of the Optus outage was “getting some more understanding of the nature of the problem”. She tells ABC TV:

I made it clear from the outset that consumers were clearly frustrated with the lack of information. Australians are reasonable people. They understand that things need to be resolved and that may take some time, but the key issue here was getting some understanding of the nature of the problem, how long it may take and what the impacts would be.

And I think it goes to the issue of how reliant we are on our digital devices and connectivity overall, including for consuming messages and news media. And, in this case, the broadcasting platforms were there to be utilised and I did encourage Optus to do that as well.

It’s important, I believe, to have a post-incident review that is both thorough in scope but also is completed expeditiously and goes to the precise issues of what has caused this, considering the considerable amount of disruption, the distress it has caused, but also the economic impact as well. And to understand what [can] be done in future by the sector as a whole to take the lesson and mitigate that going forward.

So this is important, because Australians expect that there will be follow-up, that there will be lessons learned. But, importantly for the sector as a whole, it’s important to understand how this can be certainly avoided in future.

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