Sky News Live interview with Peta Credlin
Subjects: Teen suicide rates; lockdown curfews; Melbourne University lecturer calling for ‘English’ to be called ‘Language Arts’; draft national curriculum.
PETA CREDLIN:
Well, to some horrible news out of Melbourne, reports that eight teenage girls committed suicide in Victoria in the first 7 months of this year. It’s part of what Professor Pat McGorry is calling the shadow pandemic, mental health tragedy playing out across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. For his reaction, I want to bring the Education Minister Alan Tudge, who joins me now from Canberra. Minister, I don’t have to tell you, it’s just not these suicides. It’s the self-harm, it’s the eating disorders, it’s the depression. It’s all of that. And we’ve seen today that Daniel Andrews has closed playgrounds and skate parks, and that night-time curfew is back. The head of the Police Union said it wasn’t sought by them, can’t find an expert that says it’s necessarily a good idea. You’re a Victorian, why are we allowing this to happen to our children?
ALAN TUDGE:
Peta, it is devastating. You’re right to point out the enormous mental health impact which school closures and closing down the playgrounds is having on our schoolkids, particularly in my home city of Melbourne. I’ve got three kids myself at school, including two teenage daughters. And it is having a devastating impact. Melbourne’s now been closed down for almost 200 days. Which means that kids have lost close to half a year of face-to-face schooling. Some won’t catch up on that schooling. Others are going to have much more serious consequences such as what we’ve been talking about, including suicide. So, my message is being that, yes, sometimes we have to close down schools, but it must be done as a very last resort once we’ve fully understood the full cost benefit analysis of doing so.
PETA CREDLIN:
I guess the anger that people feel, and you, I know, have expressed it to me, is we don’t see the health advice. We know that police didn’t want the curfew, they can’t see justification for it. We’re not taken into the confidence of anybody, we’re treated like battery hens, locked up in our homes. We’re not part of the decision making. We get a say every four years as electors, but this is all out of our hands. I think people being disempowered, Alan Tudge, is the hardest part of the pandemic.
ALAN TUDGE:
I’d certainly like to see more transparency in relation to the decision making process, particularly with such very firm decisions, such as reintroducing a curfew. I mean, we had a curfew previously in the first lockdown, and now we’re back into it in Melbourne. And people have lost a little bit of hope as to how we get out of this, Peta, this is what my real concern is in Melbourne. Now, we've got to get people vaccinated. We've got to get to that 70 per cent of people vaccinated. And I encourage anyone to go and get vaccinated as quickly as possible with the vaccines which are available, because that seems to be our pathway out. But I absolutely feel for those people who are struggling. A lot of my friends, my family, my constituents are all in this boat. And I encourage people that need that additional assistance to reach out for the services which are available and to reach out to each other, frankly, to support one another during these times.
PETA CREDLIN:
Yes, just don't get anywhere near each other or talk to each other in a park. I mean, that's going to go the police are coming out in parks again, the Premier announced today. I want to move to another issue. An influential academic, wants the English subject renamed in the national curriculum, because the claim is it asserts besieged sovereignty of the Colonial state. Dr Melitta Hogarth, she's at the University of Melbourne Sydney lecture there, told a recent teacher's conference English should be rebadged and called Languages, Literacy and Communications. I tell you, Minister, Australians are sick to their back teeth, of all of this. They just want education, the national curriculum to get back to basics. Tell my viewers you share that view.
ALAN TUDGE:
100 per cent share that view, Peta. Those sort of views should be rejected for what they are, just utter nonsense. And certainly those views would be rejected by me should they come up for approval. What's most concerning, actually, is not just that this particular academic has those views, but she is the Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Education at a top ranked university, training our future teachers. So what is it that she's imparting on to our future teachers who are then charged with educating our kids? Now, Peta, she was saying this at a conference on the teaching of English. Now, I would have thought that conference, which occurred just a few weeks ago, she should have been talking about how are we going to get these kids back up to speed from the months of lost learning, which many would have had. Or how we can regain our status in that in the top group of nations from an education perspective, because we've fallen well down the scales. Or she could have been focussed on indigenous education, and the fact that indigenous kids were already two years behind by the time the year three. But no, we have to put up with this sort of nonsense, has to be rejected. And it's deeply depressing that these sort of views infect our leading universities.
PETA CREDLIN:
Hey look, just before we go, I'm running short on time, but I've got to ask you. A lot of criticism, a lot of debate about the draft national curriculum. It's basically friendless. Are we going to scrap it and start again?
ALAN TUDGE:
Well, the curriculum authorities taking into account all of the public feedback and revising it, but I've been very clear on my views, Peta, and that is standards must increase, and must be decluttered and there must be a positive view about Australia so that people come out of schooling with a love of country and optimism, about our great country, and wanting to make a contribution. And not this negative view which presently pervades it.
PETA CREDLIN:
Thank you Alan Tudge, I know you've squeezed us in between meetings. Appreciate your time.
ALAN TUDGE:
Thanks, Peta.