Van Badham and Ben Davison have rescheduled Wednesday to a Monday this week, to delve into the labyrinth of policy complexities surrounding the fight to end violence against women and children, highlighting the frustrations and challenges faced and dissecting the terrifying implications of a private school’s latest misconduct scandal.
As the Albanese government makes a string of announcements wiping student debt, funding practical placements and increasing fee free TAFE, we discuss why funding public schools to the minimum resource standard is imperative for Australia's future.
We also find hope in a heartening good news story about renewable batteries revitalizing old coal country.
Be part of the change for better by listening to our gentle exhortations to JOIN YOUR UNION: you can do it right now at www.australianunions.org.au/wow
And if you want to support us directly, come visit us at www.buymeacoffee.com/weekonwednesday.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Stopping male violence since education budget we have to have have good news about big batteries,
this is the week on wednesday on monday
hello welcome to the week on
wednesday recorded on a monday hey
these illnesses have been knocking us around no end
(00:20):
my name is ben davison i think still uh you're
still ben davison darling promise uh as
you can as you can tell i off air on and
off air because of illness uh i am joined as
always by the great the glorious the one and
only best author and and sellout playwright of banging denmark and a fool in
(00:44):
love an animal farm and some projects yet yet some as well as of course a musical
musical that's to go to Australia this June.
July. July. See, my brain is all over the shop. You're just going to have to
bear with me, listeners.
Yeah, no, Animal Farm in London in June. There you go.
So if you're in London, you've got two bites of cherry there.
(01:08):
South Australia, you can catch The Questions, a musical by Van Badham and her
collaborator, Richard Wise.
He's good. Ben is all right. All right.
Right. Look, today, of course, if you've been following us on social media,
you'll have seen Van published an article in The Guardian Sunday,
(01:31):
yesterday, about the scourge of male violence and violence against women in this country.
It's been a hot conversation today.
Because so many were dying at the hands of men, and of course,
the tragedy that unfolded at the shopping center in Bondi, the whole nation
(01:55):
is reeling about how to deal with this.
There was a big announcement by the federal government of $5,000 being made
available to fleeing from family violence.
There's interesting reactions to some of this stuff, Van, but really keen to get your thoughts.
(02:15):
Obviously, from my perspective, just quickly, as someone who has experienced
violence, it is horrendous to be the victim of violence.
That's as a man. I can barely imagine what it would be like to experience violence
at half size and half Half my weight from who was double my size and double
(02:40):
my weight and someone who I had trusted and perhaps lived with and perhaps had
told me that they loved me.
Well, statistically, the most dangerous place for women is in the home and that
was that I was making in my piece that,
I mean, it is so hard to face the policy of stopping violence against women, which is what we want.
(03:06):
We want violence against children to stop.
We know that in family violence situations, children...
By perpetrators or women manipulated by perpetrators because of their children
or they're going to see violence.
I mean, it's so horrendous. And for people who have not had the experience of
(03:31):
being raised in violent homes or have been subject to violence,
it's almost impossible to get your head around what makes a perpetrator, why do people do this?
And we know what makes a perpetrator and we know what informs their behaviour.
There was a study recently that was like perpetrators use violence to get what they want.
(03:54):
They want to control, they want to have service from their partners in various
ways to get their houses cleaned or their clothes washed or their meals prepared or sex applied to them.
They get off on feelings of power and
control deeply misogynistic they have
(04:15):
values that hold that women are inferior inferior they big
themselves up by pursuing violence as a means of exerting a form of physical
domination we know that the that in that in terms of violence somebody who is
raised with values to believe that women are inferior and subordinate and not
(04:35):
not subject activities, not subjects but objects,
that people with those values are more likely to violence against women, as you can imagine.
And the reality is that the experience for women who are subject to violence is different.
There are, in every single case is an individual case, the way violence happens,
(04:59):
the way that control is pursued,
There are the inventiveness of perpetrators in terms of the way that they hurt and control.
Extraordinary the locations in which they exert violence infinitely.
There was an extraordinary piece that came out last week, Leave It to Wendy,
Toy Please, that was in the Fairfax Nine papers about how there is a new industry opening up.
(05:26):
Of evidence gatherers and surveillance investigators,
people who are employed to sweep women's homes for tracking devices,
bugs and cameras that are used by perpetrators who coerce, control a target and harass them.
(05:48):
So a team comes to your house and the piece talked about women who had left
violent relationships with controlling coercive partners,
former partners, and these women found tags used in their cars to track their movements.
There's some listening devices placed around the home.
(06:11):
Spyware inserted on their phones to track their movements.
The most extraordinary one was using fridges to track women in the home to record
them, to communicate with them, to send violent messages.
And I have a complex and sad backstory in life.
(06:33):
I have been in a violent relationship many, many years ago, which very fortunately
I got out of very quickly.
But I have had experiences that are pretty brutal, pretty horrendous.
And I was reading the one about the smart fridges. fridges it's
like even i was just stunned it's
the inventiveness and it's that's the it's the performance of of cruelty that
(07:00):
is just relentless like the idea that some would say i'm i'm leaving you like
they say it directly or whether they just get out to get away from the relationship.
And so he's so obsessed with the control that they exert over another person
that they would track their car or install spyware on their phone or monitor them from a fridge,
(07:24):
this is what we're up against.
And policy conversations are really difficult in this area because every violent
relationship has its own spheres and nuances and nuances.
And if there was one-size-fits-all to end the epidemic, we would be- Because
(07:47):
that's the sort of logical next question, isn't it, Van?
Like when we're confronted with these deaths and we're confronted with these
unacceptable numbers of violence, and we see it-
infiltrating the culture and into the areas of young people,
(08:08):
which we'll talk about shortly, the question that comes up is,
well, what do we do? How do we stop it?
You know, and obviously the federal government has, you know,
held a national cabinet meeting and they've laid out some ways to begin to do it.
Those are good. There's funding there. There's money for support organizations.
(08:31):
Organizations, there's all these paid domestic violence leave,
which the union movement struggled for for so long.
And if you're not a member of your union, you really should be,
because the union movement has been at the forefront of understanding this as a work plan as well.
You go to australianunions.au to join your union.
(08:51):
But it's almost like we sort of catch the thing, and then as you say,
now they're using smart fridges.
So how do we get in front of this? How do we stop it? Well, I mean, this is the thing.
I was writing my article I did with advocates from the incest and family violence community.
(09:17):
And can I just say the bravery, the absolute,
the empathy, Empathy, generosity of people who've had those experiences in talking
about them and being advocates for something that's so horrendously awful,
such a people and such a cruelty of women and children that it's just amazing.
(09:43):
It's hard to talk about.
But the statistics that I was given in those interviews was that we know that
one in 100 children in the school system are subject to sexual abuse within
the family, and that's now. Yeah, yeah.
And so now from statistics and the Royal Commission's into family violence and
(10:04):
institutional sexual abuse,
like the institution that where the most sexual abuse takes place is the family
home and the heteronormative, patriotic, patriarchy.
And 51% of people who grow up in violent, abusive homes become victims of violence
(10:27):
and abuse as adults, 51%.
So recommendations from rural commissions. So they become victims.
So when they're victims as children and then they're victims as adults.
As adults and what advocates were saying to me was that you
don't know what you don't know if you're raised in a family of
violence and exploitation and abuse from
people who society tells you love
(10:50):
and protect you yeah of course it's more likely that those kind of elements
of relationship are something that you understand when you become older and
that love of protection love and protection or family or partnership is understood
in those terms, which is heartbreaking.
I mean, just absolutely horrendous. Recommendations have been made about early
(11:13):
intervention, better training to spot and identify and get children out of dangerous
situations and understand what the patterns are.
Adult survivors who got through their entire school education without anyone
identifying find that they were being subject to violence or abuse,
(11:33):
that family interventions.
Training, social work support systems, seems fatally crucial.
If we're talking about 51% of families,
of survivors going into those violent adult relationships.
I mean, this is the front that we want to explore. But these are complex challenges.
(11:55):
I was raised in a family that was beyond safe and had an idyllic,
perfect childhood with absolutely no violence, no violence.
And yet as an adult, I found myself in a violent relationship and subjected
to harassment and sexual assault and those things.
(12:19):
Like there's no one fits all.
And interesting that there's been, we're now understanding just the resourcefulness
of perpetrators and looking at issues around image-based abuse.
When the notion of image-based abuse was broached in Australia,
it started to become a problem. It was broached in terms of revenge porn.
(12:42):
The idea that you would be in a loving sexual relationship, that you fool around
with cameras, film yourself, homemade porn, homemade porn.
This is a framework that people understood revenge, and then you break up and then jilted ex.
Posts and more. That's not the reality. That's not the main game. Yeah.
(13:05):
Image based in Australia is used in
abusive relationships where overwhelmingly
female partners subject to sexually humiliating and this is recorded and the
footage is used as a means of blackmail and control of those women by the perpetrator
in relationships with the threat of that material being sent to partners,
(13:30):
their families, their friends.
Their workplaces in some places. Workplaces, you know, that it's another form
of co-controlling behaviour and family or intimate partner abuse.
And it's getting people's heads around just how horrendous this is.
You know, and I mean, I can't, my view for people, it becomes difficult to talk
(13:57):
about because it's so disgraceful and hurtful and cruel and lasting.
And infinitely variable. I mean, I was reading articles on the weekend about
women who were in sexual coercive relationships who were,
who took years to understand that what was happening to them was actually right. Yeah. Yeah.
(14:21):
Feeling that they were bullied into performing acts that they found painful
and unenjoyable, if they had to, that there was some kind of coercion within their relationship.
Didn't have the right to say no to their husband or boyfriend or sexual partner
around acts that they found physically innocent and painful,
(14:42):
it is absolutely extraordinary.
And of course, the psychology of survival kicks in with people that if you just
say yes, If you just go through with it, if you just, you know,
placate or please or engage,
that you'll have a few minutes of not being punched in the face or be part or
stalked or harassed or, you know, this is complex and deep and horrendous stuff.
(15:07):
And we've got to get out of just the stranger danger model or sensationalize
and reduce things to revenge porn and have a broader conversation about the
willingness of a significant community.
The idea that your K-6 primary school has four, five, six children who are being
(15:28):
sexually abused by a family member, these are the statistics that we did.
It's fairly extraordinary. And I think today there's been some more revelations about in-school boys,
Boys, girls and sharing pretty disgusting comments about girls' bodies and girls'
(15:52):
faces, and I think the primary victor come out and condemned it.
You know, it is a real cultural issue here, right?
Like, as you say, there are- A group of boys from a private school,
and I think this is really worth understanding,
okay, is that stereotypes of who is and isn't abused, you know,
(16:15):
this idea that violence against women is a poverty crime is not true.
Yeah, not true. In fact, there's an insulation for perpetrators in wealthy and
privileged communities.
There's a lot of financial abuse and coercial that goes on, particularly in worlds.
I remember having a conversation with a women's anti-violence activist,
(16:40):
who was a Tory woman, like a conservative woman, who told me that it was her
number one political issue because of the number of women in seemingly privileged
circumstances, materially privileged circumstances,
in the fancy eastern suburbs of Melbourne, that there was a nickname called Tourex Sleeves,
(17:02):
And it was when women who were being subjected to violence, to high bruises
in those communities, would be wearing long sleeves.
Even on a warm day. Even on a warm day. And the brutality is unfathomable.
And had partners who would control them financially, who would essentially use their assets,
(17:24):
control their credit cards, their ability
to purchase any of their own ability to physically get out
of violent situations using forms of social coercion
and coercive control like it's it's everywhere everywhere
and of course today the news is that is that
it's from yarrow valley grammar which is co-ed private
school so these are not it's not
(17:45):
you know impoverished community this is
not a working class community this is a private grammar school created a
spreadsheet where the boys were rating
the girls as whether they were wifey or
cuties and there was one one category can say
the word because it is so terrible so terrible unrapeable so
(18:05):
you have boys from a middle-class community whose parents have the means of
sending them a private school who have gotten together and decided the girls
who they attend school with they attend class with the girls who they know or
part of their community on their sexual attractants and their rapability.
(18:26):
And to say, I get called unrapeable on the internet all the time by men,
and I just want to point out that's actually not true. I wish it was.
It is unacceptable. You know, as a man, I find it just disgraceful,
absolutely disgraceful.
(18:50):
When I was growing up, there was this sense of, oh, boys are we boys,
and they'll grow out of it, and all this sort of stuff.
Well, they don't grow out of it. No, they just don't. This is the thing.
This is the thing that we have to accept, is if we allow that kind of behavior to normalize,
Not every boy who participated in that activity will end up committing violence against women,
(19:17):
but every person who comes to commit violence against women from that school
will have participated in that activity.
And those sort of markers need to be absolutely laid down and interventions
put in place because it shouldn't be happening. It should not be happening in any schools.
(19:39):
We're going to talk about education shortly and why education is so important,
but this is obviously, there is this undercurrent.
And the reason why we need schools to have resources is to stop this.
And part of the reason why I think private schools, frankly,
are doing a disservice to their community is because there is almost a sense of business community,
(20:04):
they realize, right, is that high-performing people who are toxic culturally,
actually really are bad.
They're not high-performers. They destroy communities.
They destroy organizations.
They destroy school communities.
And in cases like this, they can physically destroy other people.
Oh, the girls at that school are getting counseling. Can you imagine what it's
(20:27):
like being a 15-year-old girl and finding your name on a list where you are
described by your peers by the people who you see every day as unrape,
like that's psychologically cruel.
And that's a child.
And it doesn't matter that the perpetrators are other children.
And the idea that you would pay money to an institution that allowed your child
(20:55):
to be subject to that kind of bullying is extraordinary.
And Chantal Contos, who's the women and girls advocate who came through the
private school system in Australia and who became an advocate who released all
of that information a few years ago about,
you know, there was a survey experience of girls in private schools,
(21:18):
the way that they were objectified and, you know, the way that this sort of,
you know, the institutional values of social entitlement, which is the whole
of why private schools exist.
You know, this sense of superiority or, you know, enclave-ism that,
you know, those other people are out there.
But you, I mean, you went to private school, you heard the propaganda,
(21:39):
but you're the leaders of tomorrow, you're superior, you're superior.
You know, people like me are just peasants and, you know, not worth thinking about.
To be fair, we were never told people like you were peasants.
I mean, you never got the word.
We certainly, we were certainly indoctrinated with a sense of,
you know, class of two, we're the leaders of tomorrow.
You know, you have a responsibility to lead, you have a responsibility,
(22:03):
you know, to your community.
At the same time, when things, you know, went wrong that could embarrass the
school, there was always, and I'm not going to go into details here now,
but there was always efforts made by school administrators that the general
(22:23):
public was not made aware.
Where often parents were variations of a story, rather than things that we as
students knew had happened in a different way.
Like it was a very, it is very, say, an enclave.
It is, there is almost, in some of these institutions, institutions of attitude.
(22:44):
I mean, that's what you're paying for. Paying for it, that's the point.
And it is, you know, and I say cults because, of course, Of course,
we know as well, very much into the way that all of the things you've just described about control.
Objectification of women, preventing women from making decisions,
making decisions over their own bodies, their own lives. It's all about the dynamics of people.
(23:05):
And that study that came out really interviewed perpetrators who were like,
yeah, I use violence to get what I want. Oh, okay. Yeah.
And this is the thing about that whole incident.
I mean, and the horror expressed by the Premier of Victoria,
Jacinta Allen, who described it as disgusting, you know, because what we also
know is that the stereotype that, oh, feminists think all men are rapists, that's not true.
(23:31):
No, no. Do you know who thinks all men are rapists? Rapists.
And the kids who are participating in that activity and those children,
those female children on their sexual attractiveness.
Whether they're rapeable or not, that the kid who's in that community who is
(23:51):
statistically likely to be a rapist is using the participation of all those
kids to justify their own behaviour,
believing that what they will go on to do is entirely justified,
that other boys caught it.
And this is boys will be boys. is anybody who makes an account around this is
(24:12):
paying the conviction in either today or tomorrow's perpetrator.
And for people who are like, oh, well, you know, we're kids all kids alike,
listing boundaries and, you know, blah, blah, blah, they've always been like this.
It's like, well, yeah, we know because we know the history of violence against women.
We know about the number of women and children, who, in fact,
(24:34):
it's massively unreported.
And if we want to stop it
we have to stop with the traditional excuses and
the traditional facilitations i'm glad i'm glad the school has
suspended the kids who participated in this activity but are they bringing in
the social workers like will there be interventions to find out you know who
(24:55):
is the danger to the community and how much at risk you know the girls around them are.
Yeah, it is extraordinary. It is extraordinary complex.
I think that's part of what does people's head in, as we were saying before,
is that there's no one-size-fits-all model. It's really...
(25:17):
It's an evolving cultural phenomenon we have to continually and wrestle with,
you know, as technology changes, as the opportunities for people who want to
commit these sorts of crimes evolve.
(25:38):
So to do our laws, our regulations, the way that we observe and the way that
we discover how they're committing these crimes has to evolve as well.
And no one wants to believe it. I mean, this is a thing too.
And people, we've all been in those conversations.
(25:58):
Where somebody's behaviour is discussed as inappropriate or dangerous or just
completely unacceptable,
and we've been warned that it wasn't true because the social implications of
identifying someone someone who is dangerous are really tricky.
And we don't actually have losses around that.
(26:21):
Like I remember being a young woman and being told by a friend who I had thought
was a friend, a guy, had behaved with her in an extremely inappropriate way.
And I didn't want to believe it.
No. You know, I didn't want to believe that someone in my circle who'd been
in my house, you know, who'd eaten meals with my family had put her in a position
(26:42):
where she was physically afraid of his behaviour.
And it took an intellectual test to go, there is absolutely no way that she's lying to me.
Yeah. And he has done this and saying, are you going to report it?
Are you going to take it to the police? And her going, what's the point?
(27:04):
And I just ended all contact with him because I didn't know I was a young person.
Well, what was my responsibility?
She doesn't, like, it's constant and we've got to work out, out.
As a society, how we handle reporting and who do we report to and what are,
at what point do you become concerned?
At what point do you go, these were, this high school were participating in this activity.
(27:27):
What does that indicate? And who is the likely perpetrator? And what does it
mean intervention like?
How do we keep these girls safe? How do we ensure that there are effective social
punishments of this and this part?
You know, and it's certainly that thing.
It's really difficult. Where do you intervene? and when do you intervene and
(27:47):
who do you report to and more training is needed in the workplace,
at the schools, family intervention is so important.
It's interesting because I remember growing up the debate about should teachers
have to be forced to report if they suspected violence and what would that mean
(28:12):
and all the rest of it. But now, of course, that's just a given.
If a child bruises on their face, teachers will do that.
But as we're just discussing, it's evolving. It's more insidious now.
Sometimes it's actually harder to identify. And where you are the third party or the outsider.
(28:39):
How do you support them? Where do you intervene?
Where I think a lot of us wrestle with.
And obviously the key thing is to support the victim-survivors in any way we can.
And, I mean, that seems to be the track that the Commonwealth is going down by saying, look,
(29:00):
we facilitate victim-survivors to not be at least financially,
so we'll remove that, that we can at least deal with that.
We know that's a sort of, if you like, low-hanging fruit fruit
for a government to be able to go you have no financial barrier
to to stop you from getting away now some
of these other barriers are much more complex and how government can
(29:23):
can or can't can or can't to be really telling over
the coming years i think but it's it's it's
not an issue going away it has gotten worse in the
last few years you know people say covid made
it worse too you know there's so much
of people so much time together and
now there's there's just a
(29:45):
just a explosion in in post cabin
fever well i mean i think part of it so more than even cabin cabin feeble being
tracked with one another and dynamics of relationships becoming coercive or
abusive it's also a lack of lack of social engagement vision one of the things
that we know in the The work that I have done has capacities.
(30:10):
In the anti-gender violence policy area is that the women who've got the best
turnout in making it, which just sounds so horrendous to have to say,
are women with highly developed social networks.
The more we can physically see one another and the more agencies or individuals
(30:31):
we connect with, they call it effects,
and the network effects of having a very strong social community,
having really good friends having engaged aged
fambers and being part of a community that can
see you active in your union active in
your union you know active in your parents and sentence group you know active
with you with your local dog show it doesn't matter active in your neck to cause
(30:55):
perpetrators know this which is a the habit of perpetrators to socially marginalize
isolate gaslight tell women you know make women paranoid or annoyed about their friendships,
alienate their friends, threaten their friends, alienate their family members,
physically relocate women from communities where they're well-known.
And, I mean, it's so complicated. I read an article years ago about the actual
(31:20):
urban design of new housing developments in the suburbs and communities that encourage,
like, you know, facilitate perpetrators by putting women in a position where
if they don't have access to their own car.
Yeah. they can't go anywhere they can't
go anywhere they shop they can't you
know they can't leave they can't go see a lawyer they can't leave they can't
(31:44):
access police services then they're not yeah they're physically not seen by
people and if a perpetrator is taking control of a vehicle we can those those
women go i mean there are housing developments near us that look like Like that, like that.
You're a shop or a shared space, space miles.
Yeah. And you wouldn't know how many people even live in the house.
(32:07):
You wouldn't know how many people live in the house or who they were.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is what we're up against.
And when perpetrators are so absolutely relentlessly obsessed with what they
get out of perpetuating coercion, control, and violence.
They are willing to install bugs in your car or stalk you through your fridge.
(32:31):
Yeah. Like the policy imagination ride is...
Enormous yeah well look that's
you know this is this is obviously an issue that's not
unfortunately not going going away anytime soon
hopefully hopefully things will improve you
know all i can say is thank
(32:53):
you to those doing the work there are so many frontline workers who are working
with victim survivors who are facilitating groups of victim survivors who are
trying to use the policy imagination to counter the inventiveness of these perpetrators.
(33:14):
It's incredibly important work that those workers are doing.
It's undervalued as well, absolutely undervalued. I know that from talking to
people in the union movement who are in these spaces.
And I think more and more we're going to see focus on how do we resource this,
(33:34):
how do we come up with the policy solutions.
We think about it holistically, as you said, Van, urban design.
You know, I can, dollars to donuts, most of the people listening to the podcast,
myself included, would not have gone, oh, urban design is actually an actor
in the ability of traders to commit family violence.
(33:54):
You know, that's... Oh, and it's, I mean, it's the image-based abuse thing and
not, and not conceiving of being of, in family violence.
Yeah. And, you know, and, oh, complex strands of institutional engagement and
abuse and marginalization, all of these things.
And I apologize if I've spoken inelegantly. I'm obviously like,
(34:16):
like a wonderful relationship and I've been safe for a very long time. Mm-hmm.
I'm glad you feel that. Yeah, of course I do. And you're awesome,
because you're for a reason. You're awesome too.
But it's really exciting and you never forget.
No, no. You never forget what it is to be frightened. No, no. And vulnerable.
(34:39):
Even in my case, you know, I've been very safe for a very, very long time.
And I'd just like to particularly thank the incest advocates,
to the anti-incest advocates, incest victim survivors who briefed me for my
piece this week and my interview is overwhelming.
(34:59):
You know, you're amazing and if we're willing to confront this issue as a society,
we have to face things that frighten us and we have to face the fact that the
building is an unsafe place for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaking of that, what was recognized during the pandemic actually was that
(35:20):
family home was an unsafe place for a lot of people, a lot of children.
And people might remember that while schools were generally closed,
they were in fact open to those students who were considered at risk or who
needed to not be home because it was not safe.
(35:42):
Using this to segue into the fact that,
Education is such a key part of Australian culture,
not just for what it does for building up citizens to be productive workers
and members of society and how the role it can play in the development of individuals.
It's likely to be a big part of the forthcoming federal budget van.
(36:09):
Now, I know this might feel like a hard way to go from that topic to this.
But part of the reason I'm raising it is that we know that in public schools,
98%, 98% of our public school are underfunded.
People say, well, you know, they've got teachers, yes, maybe the classrooms
(36:32):
are a bit big or it's a bit difficult sometimes and if the student better behave.
Well, some of that funding that's not being provided means, of course,
it's harder to see. It means there
aren't support student support officers available in a lot of schools.
It means there aren't teaching assistants available in a lot of schools.
(36:52):
It does mean that some schools don't have a consistent teacher who will be able
to see patterns and trends in a student's behavior that might indicate there are problems.
These are practicums that when you think about- Record commissions addressing violence.
So these minimum funding guidelines that have been around now for a decade need to be put in place.
(37:18):
I'm all for some of the stuff the government has done, the federal government has done already.
This week we've sent a couple of big announcements, $3 billion that will help
three people who have help debts, debts, that's great.
We're big believers here in higher education. In addition to that,
(37:39):
it's $319.50 a week for people who are doing teaching, nursing,
and social work, practical placements.
As someone who didn't have an international major as part of his degree,
couldn't afford to take an unpaid international placement.
(38:00):
Now, I know international replacement replacements are not in this package,
but the idea that we would ask people who want to be nurses and teachers and
social workers to do unpaid practical placements and basically give up their
work for two or three weeks and expect them to somehow pay the rent.
Of course, now the government is taking steps to fix that, which is great.
(38:25):
That's thousands. I think they're talking about 650,000 people will benefit
from that program every year.
This is what we need. This is what we need. Our numbers of teachers,
our nurses, our social workers who can help us deal with some of these social crisis issues.
They've announced $1,000 grants for new energy apprenticeships,
installing solar panels, working on big batteries, electric vehicles,
(38:49):
and these investments in the future.
And, you know, Van, I don't know if you know this, but for all of the last government,
there was no infrastructure funds available for public schools from the Commonwealth.
You don't have to say the word peasants aloud to mean it. Yeah,
(39:09):
that's right. Just lay it around there.
So the JCPOA has been making these announcements one at a time,
I'm 68 million in South Wales,
17 million for South Australia, 25 million for WA, 48 million for Victoria,
and I'm going to guess, not so much of a political cynic, but given the,
(39:30):
State election in Queensland is later this year.
There's a good chance their fund will be announced in the budget.
They're coming up shortly as well.
And, of course, you can hear Jerm here expressing his concern.
And, of course, the regional study hubs. I didn't really know what these were.
(39:51):
I had to sort of look into this a bit more because, you know,
they made this big announcement, 10 new regional study hubs for regional university
students, many of whom studied distance.
I thought, was this just like a co-working space in a town?
These are like in East Arnhem Land, and the Pilbara, and East Gippsland, Cowra, Mudgee,
(40:15):
Innisfail, Warwick, places that are genuinely quite remote, so that they have resources.
These are all good announcements. I think we've talked before about the government needing a narrative.
I think this is the Egyptian budget we have to have.
(40:36):
Oh, we absolutely need to do it. We need to invest in the nation's brains.
You know, it's $6 billion.
Now people go, oh, that's a lot of money.
Well, let me tell you, just today, just today, it's been announced that there'll
be an extra $25 billion in revenue in the budget than was forecast in December.
(41:01):
And in December, about $60 billion more than was forecast in the previous June.
In Australia, we are in a really great economic spot. What the economic management
has done has meant that we have low levels of unemployment, which means high levels of employment.
(41:23):
That's a double-diamond impact on the budget. So there's less going out in terms
of social security payments, and there's more coming in in terms of tax revenue.
The Liberals are the highest taxing government in history. A,
it's not as a percentage, but the reason why the dollar amounts are so high
(41:43):
is because more people have jobs.
Not only do more people have jobs, wages are going up. So yes,
there is a higher tax take.
But on top of that, there are, unfortunately, a number of conflicts around the
world where demand for Australian resources gets driven.
So if there is a war somewhere in the world, there is a higher demand for steel
(42:05):
to make like weapon rebuild or there's a higher demand for steel, iron ore that we sell.
We are the world's largest exporter of gas.
Now, I'm not proud to be the world's largest exporter of gas.
There's a lot of problems with that. We don't tax that properly anyway.
When there are restrictions on access to the gas market domestically and yet
(42:29):
we're the largest exporter of gas in the world.
That's a problem and that's a state commonwealth issue. There are some issues
around that. Obviously, let's get off fossil.
That would be fantastic. That would be fantastic. But I'm also very thrilled
with the amount of renewable infrastructure that is being instituted.
Obviously, we can't do things overnight, but the progress is rapid, which is very exciting.
(42:51):
And that means that there are cost savings to the budget in the long term as well.
So the money is there for this to be –,
an education bud. We've seen some willingness from people like Jason Clare and
Brendan O'Connor, who are the
education and training ministers respectively, to try and do this work.
(43:17):
We really need Albo to get on board with this.
Look, some people, and then we listen to this podcast,
and I know Van, you know about this too, about taking the
money from private schools or whatever and you know
what maybe that's a good idea but let's park
that for a minute because we don't need to do that
(43:39):
on public schools the money is
there and and like and public schools need the money now yes and a culture war
like is you know we can have the culture war later i don't i don't think a single
single dollar of taxation revenue should be directed to private enterprises as it's absolutely not.
(44:00):
And, you know, and the idea that people like me who don't have children,
are funding schools like the King's
School and, you know, like just these enclaves. I find it disgusting.
I actually find it disgusting and I feel excited about that.
I pay tax for collective outcomes and there is no outcome in like enclave institutions.
(44:26):
No positive collective outcome.
No positive collective outcome, sorry. No positive collective outcome in enclave
entitlement institutions. There isn't.
But, you know, you tackle your problems in the order that they'll kill you and
the state school system deserves to dead to the student race.
Like that's number one.
(44:46):
And just maybe if we do that, that there will be enough parents with the confidence
they should have in a sister.
Which outperforms the resources it currently has, to send their children to
their local state school and get them out of the dangerous enclave.
Absolutely. And have that confidence that, yeah, actually a better decision
(45:07):
to be making in terms of social participation and all of the gains that you
get from going to state school,
like resilience and self-reliance, self-directed education,
all of those values and the values of diversity and being educated in the values
of diversity while you were there,
like these are the things that we've got to prioritise.
(45:30):
And it's interesting watching people kick off about the defence budget and defence spending.
People are usually very surprised when they find out that lovable lefty little
van here is quite pro-defence spending.
And, of course, I mean, we have our highs, our war zones.
(45:53):
Zones ukraine is fighting for
all of us for all of us to stop
the russian incursion version in europe and a
and a conflict that will have humble like an expansion of that conflict the
implication of it is horrendous you know russia is being supported by iraq also
not our friend north korea not our friend china what do you do what are you
(46:16):
doing i think this is you know to To bring this back to directly linking it to education,
young people on social media are getting influenced by those bad faith international
actors, and you can see it.
I'm seeing it. Seeing it bubbling up, where young people go,
(46:37):
oh, maybe Vladimir Putin is the good guy. Not the good guy, he's the good guy.
This is why we need to fund...
To the proper level, all public schools.
You know, we're talking about over 4 million Australian public school students
who are underfunded, 4 million.
We're talking about 98% of our public schools being underfunded.
(46:59):
If I said to you there are 4 million Australians who cannot access health care,
there are 98% of our hospitals do not have the resources they need to provide
the basic standard of care, there, you just wouldn't believe it.
You'd say it was a system under pressure. You would say that even if outcomes
are presently good, it's unsustainable. You would have concerns about the future of the system.
(47:22):
Yeah, yeah, and that's rad. We know that there is a generational teacher burnout
horizon if resources are not met to the student resourcing standard.
And I really, really hope that the legacy for this labour government is the
education revolution we deserve, you know, the education we have.
(47:45):
And, I mean, I just want to put this out there as a political offering to the Australian people.
The idea anyone in the parliament would vote against increasing resources for
state schools that educate the overwhelming majority of Australian children.
(48:05):
Yeah. Like, put your hand up, Peter Dutton, if you really say,
well, you know, 65% of the population can have less.
Go on, do it. Do it. See how your aspirations and your prime is to go.
Or if the Teals and Greens or anybody else wants to kick off about educational
choice, which involves, you know, one community, a priority getting more resources.
(48:30):
Than the majority. Let's see how that goes down and goes down in a decide.
And unfortunately, the majority of private schools are currently overfunded,
according to the school resourcing standard amounts.
So there is a divide there. And like I said, I'm happy that 3 million Australians
are going to get some help with their help debts.
(48:52):
That's great, but not Australian will be eligible for that.
And I know it is not just university students there are people who
have other forms of forms of education debt
from training training that are going
to get assistance as well but we're talking here about the vast majority of
(49:12):
everyday australians who send their kids to public schools who are being being
shinged now you know all the all the commentary about record levels of funding
or whatever that morrison the
lie that the Liberals stopped for 10 years about every budget, it was a new record.
That was just inflation. That was literally just inflation and indexation.
(49:34):
Never closed the gap. In fact, they've made it worse a decade.
And look, these programs, I don't want to call them piecemeal because I don't
think they are. I hope they're indicative.
I hope they're indicative of Labor's commitment to getting the whole system.
(49:55):
From cradle to grave, right.
The investment in early childhood education has been a game changer for so many families.
We're seeing these in health, in the study hubs,
in 655,000 fee-free cases over the last two years of Labor government.
(50:20):
Now that's huge. There's a game.
But there are are still four million Australian kids who are not getting the
resources, the knock-on effects of which are hard to tell.
And the teachers who are being exhausted and exploited, maintaining those standards
from individual energy.
(50:43):
And that's what we have to address within the system.
Australian public schools are amazing. And they perform incredibly for the disparity
in funding that's been structuralized, but based on teacher exploitation.
And we shouldn't. We should build into the system that our teachers will do
more anyway, so we won't fund it properly.
(51:04):
That's not a sustainable system.
A labor value. In fact, that's an antithesis of a labor value.
And we want more staff in schools.
We want more support staff, and we want more specialized staff.
And we want there to be facilities that can enfranchise engagements with social
and special needs support. All of these things.
(51:27):
There was an article recently in The Guardian that talked about a billion shortfall
in resourcing seeing for students with a disability.
Only 11% of principals feeling they had the resources to give a proper education
to students with a disability in their school.
Now that is shameful when we are spending so much, which we need to do,
(51:52):
which the NDIS is so vital title for people to participate in our society,
to be active participants in our Commonwealth, to be active participants in
our labour market, all those things.
But then when they're in school, they're not getting support because we've decided
we're going to rely on teachers and the goodwill and basically take advantage
(52:17):
of the goodwill of teachers and their calling to educate our kids.
Now, hopefully this will be the education we have to have.
The Australian Education Union, Principals Association, we've seen state government
ministers come out, everybody calling for this problem to be fixed.
Go check out foreverychild.au.
(52:40):
There's a campaign there you can support.
It's everywhere around the country. You can see it on our social media, For Every Child.
There are so many advantages to fixing this problem,
everything from making sure that kids who are in these situations at home get
(53:01):
the interventions they need earlier, right through to making sure that...
Kids who may well come up with the next medical breakthrough,
get the support they need to do maths and science, to finding the next... Or music or drugs.
Yeah, to finding, I was going to say, finding the next Mozart or the next Van Baten.
(53:22):
When the money gets pulled out of those systems, you know, like these are the
kind of programs that you lose.
Yeah, you know, we... The industries of the entertainment industries of the future.
All of these things relevant yeah yeah we want to have a we want to have a system that serves.
(53:43):
Everyone yeah so look check out
that check out that camp hopefully you know we'll obviously do a special episode
on the budget because that's the sort of thing we do here at the week on wednesday
i'm sorry i sound so angry and upset upset but talking about the against women
and children issue obviously is really destabilizing yeah i think yeah no people
understand that i I understand that.
(54:05):
Also, just quickly want to give a shout out to our comrades in Queensland.
It's Queensland Labor Day.
I often call it Union Christmas. Literally the most fun you will have is May Day in Queensland.
If you share our values, if you're a tip-top union person and just love being
with your community, make it a point, make it a bucket list item to go to their
(54:27):
March and May Day dinner in Queensland.
It is the absolute highlight of the union calendar. And if you're not a union
member, and particularly in Queensland, you'll be missing out.
Join your union, australianunions.org.au slash wow.
It's just phenomenal. You'll see some of the pictures on our social media.
And there is a good news story.
(54:49):
We've conversed a lot of information today, but the good news story is about solar batteries.
I love solar batteries. I'm so pro. So Collie, which people think of as a big
coal power station area,
is just absolutely diving in to electric power.
(55:12):
There's going to be a new battery, which is going to add 341 megawatts or 1,363
hours to a Collie facility, facility,
which already has 219 megawatts and 870 megawatt hours.
(55:35):
These are being built by a French renewable energy and storage company using
Tesla Megaback batteries and being done by UGL.
Now, all in all, this means that Kali battery is just huge, 560 megawatts,
2,240 megawatt It will be the biggest in Australia.
(55:58):
Bigger than Synergy's 500 megawatt battery, which is also in Kali, by the way.
And here's the point. These two in Kali, the Synergy one and the French Neon,
I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.
My French is not my first language, obviously, or second, or any language that I speak.
(56:19):
Terrible language. So that means that they'll be able to provide 40% of the
energy required for Western Australia's south-connected system.
Which is, of course, the biggest power grid system in WI. Yeah.
So 40% is coming from Collie, which is a town that could have been frightened
(56:40):
out of climate action by the implications for local industry, transitioning from...
But this is the thing, you can bring your community with you This is why renewables are the best.
This is why nuclear policy is so less because renewables create diversified
industrial opportunities and there can be local employers,
(57:02):
can draw international investment, can breathe life into the,
you know, resource economy towns.
This is absolutely fantastic and thank you to everybody who's done this because
it takes community faith as well to make infrastructure projects happen. Yeah, absolutely.
And up and running when the coal mines close, so there will be jobs from day one.
(57:27):
And that's a huge thing. It's a huge thing. It's good for the environment,
it's good for the community.
And it means overall, power prices will come down. There was a couple of days
in summer where many of Australia's energy markets, the price of electricity was negative.
Queensland, which is the world's leader in terms of rooftop solar,
(57:50):
is giving $1,000 back to every single person because they own their own system.
They've invested in renewable energy. They've got rooftop solar everywhere.
Everywhere, and they've gone, you know what, rather than us keeping the money,
back to the people who own the power system.
(58:14):
So many good stories that can be told about energy. All we hear often from mainstream
media is this fight the Tories want to have. They want to have these sort of
never-never fights, these ongoing culture war fights.
Well, here's some real news. 40% of WA's largest energy grid is going to be
coming from batteries in Collie,
(58:36):
collie once the largest coal power
station area certain way
possibly in country i think at one stage yeah i mean it is it's amazing and
i mean the great thing is ben and i had and i had a number of happy stories
that we talked about today like we're on all of these lists these list stories
(59:00):
and there are solar cars guys going going into production,
designed by Dutch students, happening in the United States.
In France, they're building solar ceilings. Yeah, right.
Because cemeteries, of course, have open spaces.
And they had some issue with water and they were putting in a drainage system
and they were like, well, why don't we put solar roofs over the cemetery,
(59:20):
which is also better for people visiting the cemetery.
Like incredible things are happening all the time.
And I want to give a shout out to Daniel Conway, who's one of our supporters,
who sends us these good news stories a lot and has provided us. I've been so unwell.
We're going to have a backlog of some of these, but we wanted to get this Collie one out.
And of course, Daniel is not our reporter. The podcast is free to listen to,
(59:44):
free to download, but we do promote it to people in Australia,
obviously, and sometimes people around the world hear it.
And we make no money out of this. This is not a profit-driven act for us, quite the opposite.
So supporters who chip in a buck a week, 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month,
(01:00:05):
there are a buck a week, extend the reach, extend the reach.
That money all goes into getting the show into more ears, on more platforms,
in front of more people, and they really help grow our list and get these messages out to more people.
And broaden the conversation as much from our Engage List listener base as we
(01:00:28):
hope we give back to them, if not more.
So as a way of congratulating our Extend the Reach and Cardrosa for helping
make this podcast happen, Ben is going to read out their names right now.
Michael Lewis, Elizabeth Walsh, Brittany Slap, Riley See, Sue Slesinger,
Jessica Davey, 26, Someone, Jason One, Jason Gichisaurus, Pat Trezise, Murray Bardwell, Ms.
(01:00:52):
Deanne Weir, Shamila Lachal, Labor Academy, Victoria, Anne Coleman,
Jeremy Moe, Ross Kenner, Ross Kenner, 888, Brom, Terry Butler,
Gail Ferguson, Rosie Elliott, Lara, Rebecca Fanning, Phil Longman,
Joe Lockery, Ellie Vance, Mary,
Blagoia, Sanj Kelly, Love Your Work, Yeet Yeti, Claire, Donald Vaughan,
Shane Horsfall, Damien Marley, Jason Dallas, Camille, Steffo,
(01:01:14):
Cameron Strauss, Trod Dragon.
Gabe Kramer, Stephen Aitken, Trish Corrie, Marky Mark, Marky Mark,
Daniel, Crazy, John DeHaan, Greg Miller, Kathy Birch, Fiona McNeil.
Karina Barley, Melanie Dinning, Penelope Judge, Jed Carnhams,
Adrian Valente, Bronman, Punchdrunk Veteran, Jenny Forster-Seven, Sharon Kelly,
(01:01:34):
Jane C. Campbell, Merceritza at Carriedale 68, Richard Graveur,
Frank Nehaus, Vita W., Cassandra Tui, Inhamson, NoTwitterForMe,
Hannae Honda, Matt Honda, Matt Bush, NoRelation,
Nandita Hannum, Brash Daniels, Maria Louise Hawker, Megan Weckett,
Erica Pizzuti, Kylie Phillips, Graham Oxley, Tracy Lucas, Someone, Leanne Shins.
(01:02:19):
And I'm sorry about the pauses We have a new A
new so it breaks our lovely lovely
database smaller chunks and i absolutely hate
it but we'll be back to normal um
sooner rather than later than later yeah that
is the week on wednesday for today monday the
day of may uh we might you might get two episodes this week because we might
(01:02:42):
even be able to do one on wednesday we'll have to wait and see um thank you
everyone with your patience and thank you and thank you for everybody who spends
health We are absolutely as in the dark as anybody else with what's in ailing
him, but we're doing our best to look after him.
Seeing a specialist again tomorrow, more doctor's appointments this week.
Hopefully my voice is heard for you this week.
(01:03:05):
And until then, love you, Vanny. Oh, I love you too. Bye.
Stopping male violence since education budget we have to have have good news about big batteries,
this is the week on wednesday on monday
hello welcome to the week on
wednesday recorded on a monday hey
these illnesses have been knocking us around no end
(00:20):
my name is ben davison i think still uh you're
still ben davison darling promise uh as
you can as you can tell i off air on and
off air because of illness uh i am joined as
always by the great the glorious the one and
only best author and and sellout playwright of banging denmark and a fool in
(00:44):
love an animal farm and some projects yet yet some as well as of course a musical
musical that's to go to Australia this June.
July. July. See, my brain is all over the shop. You're just going to have to
bear with me, listeners.
Yeah, no, Animal Farm in London in June. There you go.
So if you're in London, you've got two bites of cherry there.
(01:08):
South Australia, you can catch The Questions, a musical by Van Badham and her
collaborator, Richard Wise.
He's good. Ben is all right. All right.
Right. Look, today, of course, if you've been following us on social media,
you'll have seen Van published an article in The Guardian Sunday,
(01:31):
yesterday, about the scourge of male violence and violence against women in this country.
It's been a hot conversation today.
Because so many were dying at the hands of men, and of course,
the tragedy that unfolded at the shopping center in Bondi, the whole nation
(01:55):
is reeling about how to deal with this.
There was a big announcement by the federal government of $5,000 being made
available to fleeing from family violence.
There's interesting reactions to some of this stuff, Van, but really keen to get your thoughts.
(02:15):
Obviously, from my perspective, just quickly, as someone who has experienced
violence, it is horrendous to be the victim of violence.
That's as a man. I can barely imagine what it would be like to experience violence
at half size and half Half my weight from who was double my size and double
(02:40):
my weight and someone who I had trusted and perhaps lived with and perhaps had
told me that they loved me.
Well, statistically, the most dangerous place for women is in the home and that
was that I was making in my piece that,
I mean, it is so hard to face the policy of stopping violence against women, which is what we want.
(03:06):
We want violence against children to stop.
We know that in family violence situations, children...
By perpetrators or women manipulated by perpetrators because of their children
or they're going to see violence.
I mean, it's so horrendous. And for people who have not had the experience of
(03:31):
being raised in violent homes or have been subject to violence,
it's almost impossible to get your head around what makes a perpetrator, why do people do this?
And we know what makes a perpetrator and we know what informs their behaviour.
There was a study recently that was like perpetrators use violence to get what they want.
(03:54):
They want to control, they want to have service from their partners in various
ways to get their houses cleaned or their clothes washed or their meals prepared or sex applied to them.
They get off on feelings of power and
control deeply misogynistic they have
(04:15):
values that hold that women are inferior inferior they big
themselves up by pursuing violence as a means of exerting a form of physical
domination we know that the that in that in terms of violence somebody who is
raised with values to believe that women are inferior and subordinate and not
(04:35):
not subject activities, not subjects but objects,
that people with those values are more likely to violence against women, as you can imagine.
And the reality is that the experience for women who are subject to violence is different.
There are, in every single case is an individual case, the way violence happens,
(04:59):
the way that control is pursued,
There are the inventiveness of perpetrators in terms of the way that they hurt and control.
Extraordinary the locations in which they exert violence infinitely.
There was an extraordinary piece that came out last week, Leave It to Wendy,
Toy Please, that was in the Fairfax Nine papers about how there is a new industry opening up.
(05:26):
Of evidence gatherers and surveillance investigators,
people who are employed to sweep women's homes for tracking devices,
bugs and cameras that are used by perpetrators who coerce, control a target and harass them.
(05:48):
So a team comes to your house and the piece talked about women who had left
violent relationships with controlling coercive partners,
former partners, and these women found tags used in their cars to track their movements.
There's some listening devices placed around the home.
(06:11):
Spyware inserted on their phones to track their movements.
The most extraordinary one was using fridges to track women in the home to record
them, to communicate with them, to send violent messages.
And I have a complex and sad backstory in life.
(06:33):
I have been in a violent relationship many, many years ago, which very fortunately
I got out of very quickly.
But I have had experiences that are pretty brutal, pretty horrendous.
And I was reading the one about the smart fridges. fridges it's
like even i was just stunned it's
the inventiveness and it's that's the it's the performance of of cruelty that
(07:00):
is just relentless like the idea that some would say i'm i'm leaving you like
they say it directly or whether they just get out to get away from the relationship.
And so he's so obsessed with the control that they exert over another person
that they would track their car or install spyware on their phone or monitor them from a fridge,
(07:24):
this is what we're up against.
And policy conversations are really difficult in this area because every violent
relationship has its own spheres and nuances and nuances.
And if there was one-size-fits-all to end the epidemic, we would be- Because
(07:47):
that's the sort of logical next question, isn't it, Van?
Like when we're confronted with these deaths and we're confronted with these
unacceptable numbers of violence, and we see it-
infiltrating the culture and into the areas of young people,
(08:08):
which we'll talk about shortly, the question that comes up is,
well, what do we do? How do we stop it?
You know, and obviously the federal government has, you know,
held a national cabinet meeting and they've laid out some ways to begin to do it.
Those are good. There's funding there. There's money for support organizations.
(08:31):
Organizations, there's all these paid domestic violence leave,
which the union movement struggled for for so long.
And if you're not a member of your union, you really should be,
because the union movement has been at the forefront of understanding this as a work plan as well.
You go to australianunions.au to join your union.
(08:51):
But it's almost like we sort of catch the thing, and then as you say,
now they're using smart fridges.
So how do we get in front of this? How do we stop it? Well, I mean, this is the thing.
I was writing my article I did with advocates from the incest and family violence community.
(09:17):
And can I just say the bravery, the absolute,
the empathy, Empathy, generosity of people who've had those experiences in talking
about them and being advocates for something that's so horrendously awful,
such a people and such a cruelty of women and children that it's just amazing.
(09:43):
It's hard to talk about.
But the statistics that I was given in those interviews was that we know that
one in 100 children in the school system are subject to sexual abuse within
the family, and that's now. Yeah, yeah.
And so now from statistics and the Royal Commission's into family violence and
(10:04):
institutional sexual abuse,
like the institution that where the most sexual abuse takes place is the family
home and the heteronormative, patriotic, patriarchy.
And 51% of people who grow up in violent, abusive homes become victims of violence
(10:27):
and abuse as adults, 51%.
So recommendations from rural commissions. So they become victims.
So when they're victims as children and then they're victims as adults.
As adults and what advocates were saying to me was that you
don't know what you don't know if you're raised in a family of
violence and exploitation and abuse from
people who society tells you love
(10:50):
and protect you yeah of course it's more likely that those kind of elements
of relationship are something that you understand when you become older and
that love of protection love and protection or family or partnership is understood
in those terms, which is heartbreaking.
I mean, just absolutely horrendous. Recommendations have been made about early
(11:13):
intervention, better training to spot and identify and get children out of dangerous
situations and understand what the patterns are.
Adult survivors who got through their entire school education without anyone
identifying find that they were being subject to violence or abuse,
(11:33):
that family interventions.
Training, social work support systems, seems fatally crucial.
If we're talking about 51% of families,
of survivors going into those violent adult relationships.
I mean, this is the front that we want to explore. But these are complex challenges.
(11:55):
I was raised in a family that was beyond safe and had an idyllic,
perfect childhood with absolutely no violence, no violence.
And yet as an adult, I found myself in a violent relationship and subjected
to harassment and sexual assault and those things.
(12:19):
Like there's no one fits all.
And interesting that there's been, we're now understanding just the resourcefulness
of perpetrators and looking at issues around image-based abuse.
When the notion of image-based abuse was broached in Australia,
it started to become a problem. It was broached in terms of revenge porn.
(12:42):
The idea that you would be in a loving sexual relationship, that you fool around
with cameras, film yourself, homemade porn, homemade porn.
This is a framework that people understood revenge, and then you break up and then jilted ex.
Posts and more. That's not the reality. That's not the main game. Yeah.
(13:05):
Image based in Australia is used in
abusive relationships where overwhelmingly
female partners subject to sexually humiliating and this is recorded and the
footage is used as a means of blackmail and control of those women by the perpetrator
in relationships with the threat of that material being sent to partners,
(13:30):
their families, their friends.
Their workplaces in some places. Workplaces, you know, that it's another form
of co-controlling behaviour and family or intimate partner abuse.
And it's getting people's heads around just how horrendous this is.
You know, and I mean, I can't, my view for people, it becomes difficult to talk
(13:57):
about because it's so disgraceful and hurtful and cruel and lasting.
And infinitely variable. I mean, I was reading articles on the weekend about
women who were in sexual coercive relationships who were,
who took years to understand that what was happening to them was actually right. Yeah. Yeah.
(14:21):
Feeling that they were bullied into performing acts that they found painful
and unenjoyable, if they had to, that there was some kind of coercion within their relationship.
Didn't have the right to say no to their husband or boyfriend or sexual partner
around acts that they found physically innocent and painful,
(14:42):
it is absolutely extraordinary.
And of course, the psychology of survival kicks in with people that if you just
say yes, If you just go through with it, if you just, you know,
placate or please or engage,
that you'll have a few minutes of not being punched in the face or be part or
stalked or harassed or, you know, this is complex and deep and horrendous stuff.
(15:07):
And we've got to get out of just the stranger danger model or sensationalize
and reduce things to revenge porn and have a broader conversation about the
willingness of a significant community.
The idea that your K-6 primary school has four, five, six children who are being
(15:28):
sexually abused by a family member, these are the statistics that we did.
It's fairly extraordinary. And I think today there's been some more revelations about in-school boys,
Boys, girls and sharing pretty disgusting comments about girls' bodies and girls'
(15:52):
faces, and I think the primary victor come out and condemned it.
You know, it is a real cultural issue here, right?
Like, as you say, there are- A group of boys from a private school,
and I think this is really worth understanding,
okay, is that stereotypes of who is and isn't abused, you know,
(16:15):
this idea that violence against women is a poverty crime is not true.
Yeah, not true. In fact, there's an insulation for perpetrators in wealthy and
privileged communities.
There's a lot of financial abuse and coercial that goes on, particularly in worlds.
I remember having a conversation with a women's anti-violence activist,
(16:40):
who was a Tory woman, like a conservative woman, who told me that it was her
number one political issue because of the number of women in seemingly privileged
circumstances, materially privileged circumstances,
in the fancy eastern suburbs of Melbourne, that there was a nickname called Tourex Sleeves,
(17:02):
And it was when women who were being subjected to violence, to high bruises
in those communities, would be wearing long sleeves.
Even on a warm day. Even on a warm day. And the brutality is unfathomable.
And had partners who would control them financially, who would essentially use their assets,
(17:24):
control their credit cards, their ability
to purchase any of their own ability to physically get out
of violent situations using forms of social coercion
and coercive control like it's it's everywhere everywhere
and of course today the news is that is that
it's from yarrow valley grammar which is co-ed private
school so these are not it's not
(17:45):
you know impoverished community this is
not a working class community this is a private grammar school created a
spreadsheet where the boys were rating
the girls as whether they were wifey or
cuties and there was one one category can say
the word because it is so terrible so terrible unrapeable so
(18:05):
you have boys from a middle-class community whose parents have the means of
sending them a private school who have gotten together and decided the girls
who they attend school with they attend class with the girls who they know or
part of their community on their sexual attractants and their rapability.
(18:26):
And to say, I get called unrapeable on the internet all the time by men,
and I just want to point out that's actually not true. I wish it was.
It is unacceptable. You know, as a man, I find it just disgraceful,
absolutely disgraceful.
(18:50):
When I was growing up, there was this sense of, oh, boys are we boys,
and they'll grow out of it, and all this sort of stuff.
Well, they don't grow out of it. No, they just don't. This is the thing.
This is the thing that we have to accept, is if we allow that kind of behavior to normalize,
Not every boy who participated in that activity will end up committing violence against women,
(19:17):
but every person who comes to commit violence against women from that school
will have participated in that activity.
And those sort of markers need to be absolutely laid down and interventions
put in place because it shouldn't be happening. It should not be happening in any schools.
(19:39):
We're going to talk about education shortly and why education is so important,
but this is obviously, there is this undercurrent.
And the reason why we need schools to have resources is to stop this.
And part of the reason why I think private schools, frankly,
are doing a disservice to their community is because there is almost a sense of business community,
(20:04):
they realize, right, is that high-performing people who are toxic culturally,
actually really are bad.
They're not high-performers. They destroy communities.
They destroy organizations.
They destroy school communities.
And in cases like this, they can physically destroy other people.
Oh, the girls at that school are getting counseling. Can you imagine what it's
(20:27):
like being a 15-year-old girl and finding your name on a list where you are
described by your peers by the people who you see every day as unrape,
like that's psychologically cruel.
And that's a child.
And it doesn't matter that the perpetrators are other children.
And the idea that you would pay money to an institution that allowed your child
(20:55):
to be subject to that kind of bullying is extraordinary.
And Chantal Contos, who's the women and girls advocate who came through the
private school system in Australia and who became an advocate who released all
of that information a few years ago about,
you know, there was a survey experience of girls in private schools,
(21:18):
the way that they were objectified and, you know, the way that this sort of,
you know, the institutional values of social entitlement, which is the whole
of why private schools exist.
You know, this sense of superiority or, you know, enclave-ism that,
you know, those other people are out there.
But you, I mean, you went to private school, you heard the propaganda,
(21:39):
but you're the leaders of tomorrow, you're superior, you're superior.
You know, people like me are just peasants and, you know, not worth thinking about.
To be fair, we were never told people like you were peasants.
I mean, you never got the word.
We certainly, we were certainly indoctrinated with a sense of,
you know, class of two, we're the leaders of tomorrow.
You know, you have a responsibility to lead, you have a responsibility,
(22:03):
you know, to your community.
At the same time, when things, you know, went wrong that could embarrass the
school, there was always, and I'm not going to go into details here now,
but there was always efforts made by school administrators that the general
(22:23):
public was not made aware.
Where often parents were variations of a story, rather than things that we as
students knew had happened in a different way.
Like it was a very, it is very, say, an enclave.
It is, there is almost, in some of these institutions, institutions of attitude.
(22:44):
I mean, that's what you're paying for. Paying for it, that's the point.
And it is, you know, and I say cults because, of course, Of course,
we know as well, very much into the way that all of the things you've just described about control.
Objectification of women, preventing women from making decisions,
making decisions over their own bodies, their own lives. It's all about the dynamics of people.
(23:05):
And that study that came out really interviewed perpetrators who were like,
yeah, I use violence to get what I want. Oh, okay. Yeah.
And this is the thing about that whole incident.
I mean, and the horror expressed by the Premier of Victoria,
Jacinta Allen, who described it as disgusting, you know, because what we also
know is that the stereotype that, oh, feminists think all men are rapists, that's not true.
(23:31):
No, no. Do you know who thinks all men are rapists? Rapists.
And the kids who are participating in that activity and those children,
those female children on their sexual attractiveness.
Whether they're rapeable or not, that the kid who's in that community who is
(23:51):
statistically likely to be a rapist is using the participation of all those
kids to justify their own behaviour,
believing that what they will go on to do is entirely justified,
that other boys caught it.
And this is boys will be boys. is anybody who makes an account around this is
(24:12):
paying the conviction in either today or tomorrow's perpetrator.
And for people who are like, oh, well, you know, we're kids all kids alike,
listing boundaries and, you know, blah, blah, blah, they've always been like this.
It's like, well, yeah, we know because we know the history of violence against women.
We know about the number of women and children, who, in fact,
(24:34):
it's massively unreported.
And if we want to stop it
we have to stop with the traditional excuses and
the traditional facilitations i'm glad i'm glad the school has
suspended the kids who participated in this activity but are they bringing in
the social workers like will there be interventions to find out you know who
(24:55):
is the danger to the community and how much at risk you know the girls around them are.
Yeah, it is extraordinary. It is extraordinary complex.
I think that's part of what does people's head in, as we were saying before,
is that there's no one-size-fits-all model. It's really...
(25:17):
It's an evolving cultural phenomenon we have to continually and wrestle with,
you know, as technology changes, as the opportunities for people who want to
commit these sorts of crimes evolve.
(25:38):
So to do our laws, our regulations, the way that we observe and the way that
we discover how they're committing these crimes has to evolve as well.
And no one wants to believe it. I mean, this is a thing too.
And people, we've all been in those conversations.
(25:58):
Where somebody's behaviour is discussed as inappropriate or dangerous or just
completely unacceptable,
and we've been warned that it wasn't true because the social implications of
identifying someone someone who is dangerous are really tricky.
And we don't actually have losses around that.
(26:21):
Like I remember being a young woman and being told by a friend who I had thought
was a friend, a guy, had behaved with her in an extremely inappropriate way.
And I didn't want to believe it.
No. You know, I didn't want to believe that someone in my circle who'd been
in my house, you know, who'd eaten meals with my family had put her in a position
(26:42):
where she was physically afraid of his behaviour.
And it took an intellectual test to go, there is absolutely no way that she's lying to me.
Yeah. And he has done this and saying, are you going to report it?
Are you going to take it to the police? And her going, what's the point?
(27:04):
And I just ended all contact with him because I didn't know I was a young person.
Well, what was my responsibility?
She doesn't, like, it's constant and we've got to work out, out.
As a society, how we handle reporting and who do we report to and what are,
at what point do you become concerned?
At what point do you go, these were, this high school were participating in this activity.
(27:27):
What does that indicate? And who is the likely perpetrator? And what does it
mean intervention like?
How do we keep these girls safe? How do we ensure that there are effective social
punishments of this and this part?
You know, and it's certainly that thing.
It's really difficult. Where do you intervene? and when do you intervene and
(27:47):
who do you report to and more training is needed in the workplace,
at the schools, family intervention is so important.
It's interesting because I remember growing up the debate about should teachers
have to be forced to report if they suspected violence and what would that mean
(28:12):
and all the rest of it. But now, of course, that's just a given.
If a child bruises on their face, teachers will do that.
But as we're just discussing, it's evolving. It's more insidious now.
Sometimes it's actually harder to identify. And where you are the third party or the outsider.
(28:39):
How do you support them? Where do you intervene?
Where I think a lot of us wrestle with.
And obviously the key thing is to support the victim-survivors in any way we can.
And, I mean, that seems to be the track that the Commonwealth is going down by saying, look,
(29:00):
we facilitate victim-survivors to not be at least financially,
so we'll remove that, that we can at least deal with that.
We know that's a sort of, if you like, low-hanging fruit fruit
for a government to be able to go you have no financial barrier
to to stop you from getting away now some
of these other barriers are much more complex and how government can
(29:23):
can or can't can or can't to be really telling over
the coming years i think but it's it's it's
not an issue going away it has gotten worse in the
last few years you know people say covid made
it worse too you know there's so much
of people so much time together and
now there's there's just a
(29:45):
just a explosion in in post cabin
fever well i mean i think part of it so more than even cabin cabin feeble being
tracked with one another and dynamics of relationships becoming coercive or
abusive it's also a lack of lack of social engagement vision one of the things
that we know in the The work that I have done has capacities.
(30:10):
In the anti-gender violence policy area is that the women who've got the best
turnout in making it, which just sounds so horrendous to have to say,
are women with highly developed social networks.
The more we can physically see one another and the more agencies or individuals
(30:31):
we connect with, they call it effects,
and the network effects of having a very strong social community,
having really good friends having engaged aged
fambers and being part of a community that can
see you active in your union active in
your union you know active in your parents and sentence group you know active
with you with your local dog show it doesn't matter active in your neck to cause
(30:55):
perpetrators know this which is a the habit of perpetrators to socially marginalize
isolate gaslight tell women you know make women paranoid or annoyed about their friendships,
alienate their friends, threaten their friends, alienate their family members,
physically relocate women from communities where they're well-known.
And, I mean, it's so complicated. I read an article years ago about the actual
(31:20):
urban design of new housing developments in the suburbs and communities that encourage,
like, you know, facilitate perpetrators by putting women in a position where
if they don't have access to their own car.
Yeah. they can't go anywhere they can't
go anywhere they shop they can't you
know they can't leave they can't go see a lawyer they can't leave they can't
(31:44):
access police services then they're not yeah they're physically not seen by
people and if a perpetrator is taking control of a vehicle we can those those
women go i mean there are housing developments near us that look like Like that, like that.
You're a shop or a shared space, space miles.
Yeah. And you wouldn't know how many people even live in the house.
(32:07):
You wouldn't know how many people live in the house or who they were.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is what we're up against.
And when perpetrators are so absolutely relentlessly obsessed with what they
get out of perpetuating coercion, control, and violence.
They are willing to install bugs in your car or stalk you through your fridge.
(32:31):
Yeah. Like the policy imagination ride is...
Enormous yeah well look that's
you know this is this is obviously an issue that's not
unfortunately not going going away anytime soon
hopefully hopefully things will improve you
know all i can say is thank
(32:53):
you to those doing the work there are so many frontline workers who are working
with victim survivors who are facilitating groups of victim survivors who are
trying to use the policy imagination to counter the inventiveness of these perpetrators.
(33:14):
It's incredibly important work that those workers are doing.
It's undervalued as well, absolutely undervalued. I know that from talking to
people in the union movement who are in these spaces.
And I think more and more we're going to see focus on how do we resource this,
(33:34):
how do we come up with the policy solutions.
We think about it holistically, as you said, Van, urban design.
You know, I can, dollars to donuts, most of the people listening to the podcast,
myself included, would not have gone, oh, urban design is actually an actor
in the ability of traders to commit family violence.
(33:54):
You know, that's... Oh, and it's, I mean, it's the image-based abuse thing and
not, and not conceiving of being of, in family violence.
Yeah. And, you know, and, oh, complex strands of institutional engagement and
abuse and marginalization, all of these things.
And I apologize if I've spoken inelegantly. I'm obviously like,
(34:16):
like a wonderful relationship and I've been safe for a very long time. Mm-hmm.
I'm glad you feel that. Yeah, of course I do. And you're awesome,
because you're for a reason. You're awesome too.
But it's really exciting and you never forget.
No, no. You never forget what it is to be frightened. No, no. And vulnerable.
(34:39):
Even in my case, you know, I've been very safe for a very, very long time.
And I'd just like to particularly thank the incest advocates,
to the anti-incest advocates, incest victim survivors who briefed me for my
piece this week and my interview is overwhelming.
(34:59):
You know, you're amazing and if we're willing to confront this issue as a society,
we have to face things that frighten us and we have to face the fact that the
building is an unsafe place for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaking of that, what was recognized during the pandemic actually was that
(35:20):
family home was an unsafe place for a lot of people, a lot of children.
And people might remember that while schools were generally closed,
they were in fact open to those students who were considered at risk or who
needed to not be home because it was not safe.
(35:42):
Using this to segue into the fact that,
Education is such a key part of Australian culture,
not just for what it does for building up citizens to be productive workers
and members of society and how the role it can play in the development of individuals.
It's likely to be a big part of the forthcoming federal budget van.
(36:09):
Now, I know this might feel like a hard way to go from that topic to this.
But part of the reason I'm raising it is that we know that in public schools,
98%, 98% of our public school are underfunded.
People say, well, you know, they've got teachers, yes, maybe the classrooms
(36:32):
are a bit big or it's a bit difficult sometimes and if the student better behave.
Well, some of that funding that's not being provided means, of course,
it's harder to see. It means there
aren't support student support officers available in a lot of schools.
It means there aren't teaching assistants available in a lot of schools.
(36:52):
It does mean that some schools don't have a consistent teacher who will be able
to see patterns and trends in a student's behavior that might indicate there are problems.
These are practicums that when you think about- Record commissions addressing violence.
So these minimum funding guidelines that have been around now for a decade need to be put in place.
(37:18):
I'm all for some of the stuff the government has done, the federal government has done already.
This week we've sent a couple of big announcements, $3 billion that will help
three people who have help debts, debts, that's great.
We're big believers here in higher education. In addition to that,
(37:39):
it's $319.50 a week for people who are doing teaching, nursing,
and social work, practical placements.
As someone who didn't have an international major as part of his degree,
couldn't afford to take an unpaid international placement.
(38:00):
Now, I know international replacement replacements are not in this package,
but the idea that we would ask people who want to be nurses and teachers and
social workers to do unpaid practical placements and basically give up their
work for two or three weeks and expect them to somehow pay the rent.
Of course, now the government is taking steps to fix that, which is great.
(38:25):
That's thousands. I think they're talking about 650,000 people will benefit
from that program every year.
This is what we need. This is what we need. Our numbers of teachers,
our nurses, our social workers who can help us deal with some of these social crisis issues.
They've announced $1,000 grants for new energy apprenticeships,
installing solar panels, working on big batteries, electric vehicles,
(38:49):
and these investments in the future.
And, you know, Van, I don't know if you know this, but for all of the last government,
there was no infrastructure funds available for public schools from the Commonwealth.
You don't have to say the word peasants aloud to mean it. Yeah,
(39:09):
that's right. Just lay it around there.
So the JCPOA has been making these announcements one at a time,
I'm 68 million in South Wales,
17 million for South Australia, 25 million for WA, 48 million for Victoria,
and I'm going to guess, not so much of a political cynic, but given the,
(39:30):
State election in Queensland is later this year.
There's a good chance their fund will be announced in the budget.
They're coming up shortly as well.
And, of course, you can hear Jerm here expressing his concern.
And, of course, the regional study hubs. I didn't really know what these were.
(39:51):
I had to sort of look into this a bit more because, you know,
they made this big announcement, 10 new regional study hubs for regional university
students, many of whom studied distance.
I thought, was this just like a co-working space in a town?
These are like in East Arnhem Land, and the Pilbara, and East Gippsland, Cowra, Mudgee,
(40:15):
Innisfail, Warwick, places that are genuinely quite remote, so that they have resources.
These are all good announcements. I think we've talked before about the government needing a narrative.
I think this is the Egyptian budget we have to have.
(40:36):
Oh, we absolutely need to do it. We need to invest in the nation's brains.
You know, it's $6 billion.
Now people go, oh, that's a lot of money.
Well, let me tell you, just today, just today, it's been announced that there'll
be an extra $25 billion in revenue in the budget than was forecast in December.
(41:01):
And in December, about $60 billion more than was forecast in the previous June.
In Australia, we are in a really great economic spot. What the economic management
has done has meant that we have low levels of unemployment, which means high levels of employment.
(41:23):
That's a double-diamond impact on the budget. So there's less going out in terms
of social security payments, and there's more coming in in terms of tax revenue.
The Liberals are the highest taxing government in history. A,
it's not as a percentage, but the reason why the dollar amounts are so high
(41:43):
is because more people have jobs.
Not only do more people have jobs, wages are going up. So yes,
there is a higher tax take.
But on top of that, there are, unfortunately, a number of conflicts around the
world where demand for Australian resources gets driven.
So if there is a war somewhere in the world, there is a higher demand for steel
(42:05):
to make like weapon rebuild or there's a higher demand for steel, iron ore that we sell.
We are the world's largest exporter of gas.
Now, I'm not proud to be the world's largest exporter of gas.
There's a lot of problems with that. We don't tax that properly anyway.
When there are restrictions on access to the gas market domestically and yet
(42:29):
we're the largest exporter of gas in the world.
That's a problem and that's a state commonwealth issue. There are some issues
around that. Obviously, let's get off fossil.
That would be fantastic. That would be fantastic. But I'm also very thrilled
with the amount of renewable infrastructure that is being instituted.
Obviously, we can't do things overnight, but the progress is rapid, which is very exciting.
(42:51):
And that means that there are cost savings to the budget in the long term as well.
So the money is there for this to be –,
an education bud. We've seen some willingness from people like Jason Clare and
Brendan O'Connor, who are the
education and training ministers respectively, to try and do this work.
(43:17):
We really need Albo to get on board with this.
Look, some people, and then we listen to this podcast,
and I know Van, you know about this too, about taking the
money from private schools or whatever and you know
what maybe that's a good idea but let's park
that for a minute because we don't need to do that
(43:39):
on public schools the money is
there and and like and public schools need the money now yes and a culture war
like is you know we can have the culture war later i don't i don't think a single
single dollar of taxation revenue should be directed to private enterprises as it's absolutely not.
(44:00):
And, you know, and the idea that people like me who don't have children,
are funding schools like the King's
School and, you know, like just these enclaves. I find it disgusting.
I actually find it disgusting and I feel excited about that.
I pay tax for collective outcomes and there is no outcome in like enclave institutions.
(44:26):
No positive collective outcome.
No positive collective outcome, sorry. No positive collective outcome in enclave
entitlement institutions. There isn't.
But, you know, you tackle your problems in the order that they'll kill you and
the state school system deserves to dead to the student race.
Like that's number one.
(44:46):
And just maybe if we do that, that there will be enough parents with the confidence
they should have in a sister.
Which outperforms the resources it currently has, to send their children to
their local state school and get them out of the dangerous enclave.
Absolutely. And have that confidence that, yeah, actually a better decision
(45:07):
to be making in terms of social participation and all of the gains that you
get from going to state school,
like resilience and self-reliance, self-directed education,
all of those values and the values of diversity and being educated in the values
of diversity while you were there,
like these are the things that we've got to prioritise.
(45:30):
And it's interesting watching people kick off about the defence budget and defence spending.
People are usually very surprised when they find out that lovable lefty little
van here is quite pro-defence spending.
And, of course, I mean, we have our highs, our war zones.
(45:53):
Zones ukraine is fighting for
all of us for all of us to stop
the russian incursion version in europe and a
and a conflict that will have humble like an expansion of that conflict the
implication of it is horrendous you know russia is being supported by iraq also
not our friend north korea not our friend china what do you do what are you
(46:16):
doing i think this is you know to To bring this back to directly linking it to education,
young people on social media are getting influenced by those bad faith international
actors, and you can see it.
I'm seeing it. Seeing it bubbling up, where young people go,
(46:37):
oh, maybe Vladimir Putin is the good guy. Not the good guy, he's the good guy.
This is why we need to fund...
To the proper level, all public schools.
You know, we're talking about over 4 million Australian public school students
who are underfunded, 4 million.
We're talking about 98% of our public schools being underfunded.
(46:59):
If I said to you there are 4 million Australians who cannot access health care,
there are 98% of our hospitals do not have the resources they need to provide
the basic standard of care, there, you just wouldn't believe it.
You'd say it was a system under pressure. You would say that even if outcomes
are presently good, it's unsustainable. You would have concerns about the future of the system.
(47:22):
Yeah, yeah, and that's rad. We know that there is a generational teacher burnout
horizon if resources are not met to the student resourcing standard.
And I really, really hope that the legacy for this labour government is the
education revolution we deserve, you know, the education we have.
(47:45):
And, I mean, I just want to put this out there as a political offering to the Australian people.
The idea anyone in the parliament would vote against increasing resources for
state schools that educate the overwhelming majority of Australian children.
(48:05):
Yeah. Like, put your hand up, Peter Dutton, if you really say,
well, you know, 65% of the population can have less.
Go on, do it. Do it. See how your aspirations and your prime is to go.
Or if the Teals and Greens or anybody else wants to kick off about educational
choice, which involves, you know, one community, a priority getting more resources.
(48:30):
Than the majority. Let's see how that goes down and goes down in a decide.
And unfortunately, the majority of private schools are currently overfunded,
according to the school resourcing standard amounts.
So there is a divide there. And like I said, I'm happy that 3 million Australians
are going to get some help with their help debts.
(48:52):
That's great, but not Australian will be eligible for that.
And I know it is not just university students there are people who
have other forms of forms of education debt
from training training that are going
to get assistance as well but we're talking here about the vast majority of
(49:12):
everyday australians who send their kids to public schools who are being being
shinged now you know all the all the commentary about record levels of funding
or whatever that morrison the
lie that the Liberals stopped for 10 years about every budget, it was a new record.
That was just inflation. That was literally just inflation and indexation.
(49:34):
Never closed the gap. In fact, they've made it worse a decade.
And look, these programs, I don't want to call them piecemeal because I don't
think they are. I hope they're indicative.
I hope they're indicative of Labor's commitment to getting the whole system.
(49:55):
From cradle to grave, right.
The investment in early childhood education has been a game changer for so many families.
We're seeing these in health, in the study hubs,
in 655,000 fee-free cases over the last two years of Labor government.
(50:20):
Now that's huge. There's a game.
But there are are still four million Australian kids who are not getting the
resources, the knock-on effects of which are hard to tell.
And the teachers who are being exhausted and exploited, maintaining those standards
from individual energy.
(50:43):
And that's what we have to address within the system.
Australian public schools are amazing. And they perform incredibly for the disparity
in funding that's been structuralized, but based on teacher exploitation.
And we shouldn't. We should build into the system that our teachers will do
more anyway, so we won't fund it properly.
(51:04):
That's not a sustainable system.
A labor value. In fact, that's an antithesis of a labor value.
And we want more staff in schools.
We want more support staff, and we want more specialized staff.
And we want there to be facilities that can enfranchise engagements with social
and special needs support. All of these things.
(51:27):
There was an article recently in The Guardian that talked about a billion shortfall
in resourcing seeing for students with a disability.
Only 11% of principals feeling they had the resources to give a proper education
to students with a disability in their school.
Now that is shameful when we are spending so much, which we need to do,
(51:52):
which the NDIS is so vital title for people to participate in our society,
to be active participants in our Commonwealth, to be active participants in
our labour market, all those things.
But then when they're in school, they're not getting support because we've decided
we're going to rely on teachers and the goodwill and basically take advantage
(52:17):
of the goodwill of teachers and their calling to educate our kids.
Now, hopefully this will be the education we have to have.
The Australian Education Union, Principals Association, we've seen state government
ministers come out, everybody calling for this problem to be fixed.
Go check out foreverychild.au.
(52:40):
There's a campaign there you can support.
It's everywhere around the country. You can see it on our social media, For Every Child.
There are so many advantages to fixing this problem,
everything from making sure that kids who are in these situations at home get
(53:01):
the interventions they need earlier, right through to making sure that...
Kids who may well come up with the next medical breakthrough,
get the support they need to do maths and science, to finding the next... Or music or drugs.
Yeah, to finding, I was going to say, finding the next Mozart or the next Van Baten.
(53:22):
When the money gets pulled out of those systems, you know, like these are the
kind of programs that you lose.
Yeah, you know, we... The industries of the entertainment industries of the future.
All of these things relevant yeah yeah we want to have a we want to have a system that serves.
(53:43):
Everyone yeah so look check out
that check out that camp hopefully you know we'll obviously do a special episode
on the budget because that's the sort of thing we do here at the week on wednesday
i'm sorry i sound so angry and upset upset but talking about the against women
and children issue obviously is really destabilizing yeah i think yeah no people
understand that i I understand that.
(54:05):
Also, just quickly want to give a shout out to our comrades in Queensland.
It's Queensland Labor Day.
I often call it Union Christmas. Literally the most fun you will have is May Day in Queensland.
If you share our values, if you're a tip-top union person and just love being
with your community, make it a point, make it a bucket list item to go to their
(54:27):
March and May Day dinner in Queensland.
It is the absolute highlight of the union calendar. And if you're not a union
member, and particularly in Queensland, you'll be missing out.
Join your union, australianunions.org.au slash wow.
It's just phenomenal. You'll see some of the pictures on our social media.
And there is a good news story.
(54:49):
We've conversed a lot of information today, but the good news story is about solar batteries.
I love solar batteries. I'm so pro. So Collie, which people think of as a big
coal power station area,
is just absolutely diving in to electric power.
(55:12):
There's going to be a new battery, which is going to add 341 megawatts or 1,363
hours to a Collie facility, facility,
which already has 219 megawatts and 870 megawatt hours.
(55:35):
These are being built by a French renewable energy and storage company using
Tesla Megaback batteries and being done by UGL.
Now, all in all, this means that Kali battery is just huge, 560 megawatts,
2,240 megawatt It will be the biggest in Australia.
(55:58):
Bigger than Synergy's 500 megawatt battery, which is also in Kali, by the way.
And here's the point. These two in Kali, the Synergy one and the French Neon,
I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.
My French is not my first language, obviously, or second, or any language that I speak.
(56:19):
Terrible language. So that means that they'll be able to provide 40% of the
energy required for Western Australia's south-connected system.
Which is, of course, the biggest power grid system in WI. Yeah.
So 40% is coming from Collie, which is a town that could have been frightened
(56:40):
out of climate action by the implications for local industry, transitioning from...
But this is the thing, you can bring your community with you This is why renewables are the best.
This is why nuclear policy is so less because renewables create diversified
industrial opportunities and there can be local employers,
(57:02):
can draw international investment, can breathe life into the,
you know, resource economy towns.
This is absolutely fantastic and thank you to everybody who's done this because
it takes community faith as well to make infrastructure projects happen. Yeah, absolutely.
And up and running when the coal mines close, so there will be jobs from day one.
(57:27):
And that's a huge thing. It's a huge thing. It's good for the environment,
it's good for the community.
And it means overall, power prices will come down. There was a couple of days
in summer where many of Australia's energy markets, the price of electricity was negative.
Queensland, which is the world's leader in terms of rooftop solar,
(57:50):
is giving $1,000 back to every single person because they own their own system.
They've invested in renewable energy. They've got rooftop solar everywhere.
Everywhere, and they've gone, you know what, rather than us keeping the money,
back to the people who own the power system.
(58:14):
So many good stories that can be told about energy. All we hear often from mainstream
media is this fight the Tories want to have. They want to have these sort of
never-never fights, these ongoing culture war fights.
Well, here's some real news. 40% of WA's largest energy grid is going to be
coming from batteries in Collie,
(58:36):
collie once the largest coal power
station area certain way
possibly in country i think at one stage yeah i mean it is it's amazing and
i mean the great thing is ben and i had and i had a number of happy stories
that we talked about today like we're on all of these lists these list stories
(59:00):
and there are solar cars guys going going into production,
designed by Dutch students, happening in the United States.
In France, they're building solar ceilings. Yeah, right.
Because cemeteries, of course, have open spaces.
And they had some issue with water and they were putting in a drainage system
and they were like, well, why don't we put solar roofs over the cemetery,
(59:20):
which is also better for people visiting the cemetery.
Like incredible things are happening all the time.
And I want to give a shout out to Daniel Conway, who's one of our supporters,
who sends us these good news stories a lot and has provided us. I've been so unwell.
We're going to have a backlog of some of these, but we wanted to get this Collie one out.
And of course, Daniel is not our reporter. The podcast is free to listen to,
(59:44):
free to download, but we do promote it to people in Australia,
obviously, and sometimes people around the world hear it.
And we make no money out of this. This is not a profit-driven act for us, quite the opposite.
So supporters who chip in a buck a week, 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month,
(01:00:05):
there are a buck a week, extend the reach, extend the reach.
That money all goes into getting the show into more ears, on more platforms,
in front of more people, and they really help grow our list and get these messages out to more people.
And broaden the conversation as much from our Engage List listener base as we
(01:00:28):
hope we give back to them, if not more.
So as a way of congratulating our Extend the Reach and Cardrosa for helping
make this podcast happen, Ben is going to read out their names right now.
Michael Lewis, Elizabeth Walsh, Brittany Slap, Riley See, Sue Slesinger,
Jessica Davey, 26, Someone, Jason One, Jason Gichisaurus, Pat Trezise, Murray Bardwell, Ms.
(01:00:52):
Deanne Weir, Shamila Lachal, Labor Academy, Victoria, Anne Coleman,
Jeremy Moe, Ross Kenner, Ross Kenner, 888, Brom, Terry Butler,
Gail Ferguson, Rosie Elliott, Lara, Rebecca Fanning, Phil Longman,
Joe Lockery, Ellie Vance, Mary,
Blagoia, Sanj Kelly, Love Your Work, Yeet Yeti, Claire, Donald Vaughan,
Shane Horsfall, Damien Marley, Jason Dallas, Camille, Steffo,
(01:01:14):
Cameron Strauss, Trod Dragon.
Gabe Kramer, Stephen Aitken, Trish Corrie, Marky Mark, Marky Mark,
Daniel, Crazy, John DeHaan, Greg Miller, Kathy Birch, Fiona McNeil.
Karina Barley, Melanie Dinning, Penelope Judge, Jed Carnhams,
Adrian Valente, Bronman, Punchdrunk Veteran, Jenny Forster-Seven, Sharon Kelly,
(01:01:34):
Jane C. Campbell, Merceritza at Carriedale 68, Richard Graveur,
Frank Nehaus, Vita W., Cassandra Tui, Inhamson, NoTwitterForMe,
Hannae Honda, Matt Honda, Matt Bush, NoRelation,
Nandita Hannum, Brash Daniels, Maria Louise Hawker, Megan Weckett,
Erica Pizzuti, Kylie Phillips, Graham Oxley, Tracy Lucas, Someone, Leanne Shins.
(01:02:19):
And I'm sorry about the pauses We have a new A
new so it breaks our lovely lovely
database smaller chunks and i absolutely hate
it but we'll be back to normal um
sooner rather than later than later yeah that
is the week on wednesday for today monday the
day of may uh we might you might get two episodes this week because we might
(01:02:42):
even be able to do one on wednesday we'll have to wait and see um thank you
everyone with your patience and thank you and thank you for everybody who spends
health We are absolutely as in the dark as anybody else with what's in ailing
him, but we're doing our best to look after him.
Seeing a specialist again tomorrow, more doctor's appointments this week.
Hopefully my voice is heard for you this week.
(01:03:05):
And until then, love you, Vanny. Oh, I love you too. Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.