Latest news with #JohnPaulLangbroek
ABC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Report reveals $441 million backlog of repairs for Queensland state schools
Teachers and students at schools across Queensland have been subject to rotting ceilings, dilapidated sport courts and unsafe infrastructure, a new report has found. The Department of Education's Comprehensive Review of Infrastructure Renewal report, commissioned by the former Labor government in 2022, highlights a multi-million-dollar maintenance shortfall. Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said it shows "significant underinvestment by Labor". "Our maintenance backlog is now $441-million in our state school system," he said. The report, handed to the government in February, lists a backlog figure double the annual maintenance allocation of $226-million for state schools. It states there are consequences of not funding the backlog gap. "[The] backlog will further increase, for example by the end of 2028-29 the renewal backlog will be over $900-million," the report said. Mr Langbroek said the same issues were significant when he last served as education minister between 2012 and 2015. "Labor have neglected this for 10 years, [they] chose to kick the can down the road," he said. "The report shows [the backlog] cannot be fixed in one year. The report lists the Metro North region as having the highest percentage of assets in poor or very poor condition, at 58 per cent, followed by Metro South at 53 per cent. The Far North Queensland region recorded 40 per cent of assets at state schools to be in poor or very poor condition. On a recent visit to Winton, the education minister said he had seen an unsafe staircase fenced off. "It's to the detriment of teachers and students." Mr Langbroek believes the current state of school infrastructure contributed to more than 50,000 teachers striking for 24-hours across the state this week. 13 per cent of students and around 9 per cent of teachers still attended state schools during Wednesday's industrial action. The minister said the move was an example of teachers "airing their frustration" at issues, including the state of infrastructure, and he looked forward to continuing conciliation in the coming days. "We made an offer that's above inflation ... and attempting to deal with many of the issues expressed by teachers," he said. "We look forward to sitting with an independent umpire — the Industrial Relations Commission — to continue our offer ... to enhance the offer we have made." The Queensland Teachers' Union (QTU) said they were striking for not only better pay, but also reducing occupational violence and improving respect for the profession. Mr Langbroek said the government intended to announce a workforce strategy in the coming weeks, aiming to address some of the QTU's concerns. "We'll be turning our minds to that very soon," he said. The opposition has been contacted for comment.
ABC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Disability discrimination commissioner calls on Queensland to scrap plan for new special schools
Australia's disability discrimination commissioner wants Queensland to scrap plans to build more special schools, but the state government says there has been an increased demand for them. Commissioner Rosemary Kayess said she was "disappointed" by the Queensland government's announcement of six new special schools. The prominent human rights lawyer told the ABC she had been speaking to education ministers across the country about the development of a national road map to inclusive education. The road map was a recommendation from the disability royal commission's final report handed down in 2023 and had been agreed to "in principle" by all levels of governments last year. Commissioner Kayess said it would essentially be a move away from "segregating kids" and "transform mainstream education so all kids can go to school together". Commissioner Kayess has written to Premier David Crisafulli and Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to express her "deep concerns" following the announcement in June. "The Queensland government is locking the state into a failed ableist model of the past which penalises people with disability," she said. It comes as the teachers in the state's 1,266 public schools are set to strike on Wednesday after protracted enterprise bargaining negotiations with the government. Mr Langbroek said enrolments at the state's 46 special schools had increased by more than 38 per cent since 2019. "We cannot ignore the growing demand from parents and carers who need or want to send their child to a special school," he said in a statement. He said the government had announced its largest investment into special schools as part of its $21.9 billion education budget for 2025-26 to cater for the growth. Mr Langbroek said the government was committed to providing "world-class education to all children regardless of the school they attend". "We will continue to provide choice and support for families to help them make the decision that best suits their family's needs," he said. Queensland Association of Special Education Leaders president Andrew Thompson said the new schools would be near mainstream schools to allow for strong relationships to be formed between the two. Mr Thompson's organisation represents almost 700 members who work in special education across special, primary and secondary schools. He said he believed mainstream schools struggled to accommodate for students with a disability due to a workforce shortage and a lack of expertise taught at university. Mr Thompson said he supported "parents being able to make a choice of either a mainstream school or a special school". Inclusive Educators Australia's (IEA) chairperson, Loren Swancutt, said the government should be investing in supporting "regular teachers in regular schools" working to include students with a disability in their classrooms. "This investment is not just a policy misstep, it is a profound moral and human rights failure," the Queensland secondary educator said. "Segregating students based on disability sends a damaging message that some children do not belong in their local schools or communities." Ms Swancutt said IEA represented more than 10,000 educators across the country committed to "building genuinely inclusive schools". She said the state had "nation-leading and award-winning inclusive education policy". "But unfortunately, we have not seen the commitment and follow-through," Ms Swancutt said. Ms Swancutt, who has worked in education for 15 years, said she wanted "actual commitment" from all levels of government to develop and fulfil the national road map. The federal education department said all governments supported the disability royal commission's vision for more accessible and inclusive education for students with disability. "To ensure accountability, all governments have agreed to biannual reporting to the Disability Reform Ministerial Council and the community on implementation of recommendations," the spokesperson said. "The first report is expected within coming weeks." The department said discussions to support the development of policy responses to the royal commission, including the design of the national road map, "have commenced and regular officials-level meetings are ongoing". "It is anticipated that advice for education ministers will be prepared in late 2025 and that people with lived experience of disability and other stakeholders will be a key part of the development of the road map and policy responses," the department spokesperson said. Commissioner Kayess said there had been a lot of focus on the division amongst the disability royal commissioners, who were unable to reach a consensus on the future of special schools in the final report. "What we're forgetting is the unanimous position that all commissioners held that there needs to be a transformation of our mainstream education system to make it inclusive," Commissioner Kayess said. "The royal commission spoke about the well-oiled pathway from special schools to segregated employment, and that really is not a bright future for those kids."
ABC News
09-07-2025
- ABC News
Queensland government to introduce annual mandatory safety training for childcare workers
Queensland childcare workers will have mandatory safety training each year in an Australian-first, as the state government calls for a national register for employees. Education minister John-Paul Langbroek held a roundtable in Cairns with early childhood stakeholders, the Queensland Family and Child Commissioner and the Australian Early Childhood Quality Authority on Wednesday morning. The meeting was convened following allegations made against Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, who was charged with more than 70 offences last week. It was also informed by an ongoing independent review into one of the nation's worst paedophiles, Ashley Paul Griffith, and how he was able to offend for almost 20 years. The training will teach workers how to identify warning signs of potential predatory behaviour, both in the hiring process and at work, as well as how to raise concerns safely. Currently, mandatory training for childcare workers revolves solely around identifying signs of abuse outside of the centre by parents or guardians. Mr Langbroek said the government wanted to roll out the initiative as quickly as possible. "As the sector changes and as predators change their behaviours, it's important for the staff to be trained regularly in these types of issues, as happens in other professions," he said. He said Queensland would be pushing for a Commonwealth register of childcare employees at a meeting in August with federal education minister Jason Clare and other state ministers. "We've already seen from some of the cases that have been in the past that someone could just leave a state and go to another state jurisdiction and work," he said. In a statement, Mr Clare said ministers had "agreed to accelerate work already underway to develop nationwide registration of early educators". On Tuesday, Australia's biggest private childcare operator G8 Education announced it would install CCTV in all 400 of its centres following child abuse charges being laid against Joshua Dale Brown. Goodstart Early Learning chief executive Ros Baxter said the not-for-profit, which runs 650 centres nationwide, was trialling the usage of CCTV. However, she noted there were complexities around the technology and civil liberties. "I think for all of us who have children, we understand that children have rights and dignity as well, and we need to think about these measures within the context of those rights and that dignity." Mr Langbroek was questioned on whether the government would consider stopping childcare workers from using their phones at work, to further protect children. "A phone ban is much more complex. We've got four different ways of people doing early childhood [care], including family daycare centres, which means that they're in someone's home," he said. "Are we going to tell that person they can't have their own phone?" He said more investigation was needed into solutions that people saw as "a simple answer to a complex problem". Mr Langbroek labelled suggestions for a ban on males working in the sector as a "knee-jerk reaction". "We have to make sure that we're doing things that space that are based on research, and then we can make appropriate decisions," he said. Goodstart centres already implement mandatory training for their employees, but Dr Baxter said a consistent statewide approach was needed. "There is also already a lot of work and thinking that goes into keeping your children safe when they are at our centres," she said. "This is a really important extra piece of the puzzle. All of our hearts are breaking at the moment. "It's a terrible moment for those who have children and young children, for those of us who work in the sector." Creche and Kindergarten Association chief executive Sandra Cheeseman said the roundtable had kick-started important conversations. "This is a really important, foundational step in ensuring that everybody who works with young children has the core knowledge that they need to be able to understand how to keep children safe, and how to develop an organisational and a statewide culture of keeping children safe," she said.
ABC News
19-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Queensland government refuses to say when it'll release landmark school review
The Queensland government is refusing to say when it will release a two-year landmark review into teacher resourcing. The Comprehensive Review of School Resourcing, conducted from 2023, examined factors including funding, teacher shortages and workload, and staff and student welfare. It's expected to recommend a new resourcing model to manage the issues. The government is currently locked in pay negotiations with the Queensland Teachers Union (QTU), with its bargaining agreement due to expire in two weeks. On Wednesday afternoon, it offered a wage increase of 8 per cent over three years, short of what the union is seeking. The QTU has previously said a pay offer also needed to include a commitment to implement the outcomes of the review. Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the review was "being worked on" and would be "revealed in the relatively near future", but that wouldn't be before the wage agreement ended. "There are no sinister reasons for us not having had more public discussions about the school resourcing review. The enterprise bargaining agreement expires in 11 days," he said. The government received the report in December and state cabinet has not yet considered it. "It's the first review in over 30 years of school resourcing, so we had to work through it methodically and calmly," Mr Langbroek said. "It also needs to go to cabinet and we don't talk about what happens in cabinet." In a statement, the QTU said it was "appalled" by the government's refusal to release the review. It said it was using it to "strengthen its position ahead of enterprise bargaining negotiations". "Clearly, the decision to hide this report from public view is strategic and not in the interests of transparency and accountability, two key elements the premier campaigned on at the state election. "In simple terms, this government is hiding a detailed report to ignore the true issues because it doesn't fit its agenda." Opposition leader Steven Miles called on the state government to release the review. "Queensland parents want to know that their schools are properly resourced. Queensland teachers want to know that their government and their minister have their back. "I'd simply say to John-Paul Langbroek, what are you hiding here? Why are you afraid of this report?" In a letter, Department of Education Director-General Sharon Schimming offered teachers a 3 per cent pay increase next financial year and a 2.5 per cent increase for the following two years. "This offer also aims to create a replacement agreement that is easy to navigate, has a focus on employee entitlements, is clearer and more accessible for principals and senior leaders to understand their industrial obligations and supports greater workforce flexibility," she said. Prior to the pay offer being made, Mr Langbroek said "significant negotiations" had taken place. The QTU — boasting 48,000 members — has stated it would push for "nation-leading salaries and conditions". Teachers are the latest frontline workers the government needs to secure new bargaining agreements with. Pay negotiations with the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union broke down last month, with the health workers taking industrial action for the first time since 2002. Agreements with police and firefighters also need to be brokered, totalling more than 260,000 public sector employees.
The Guardian
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Speaking out on Gaza: Australian creatives and arts organisations struggle to reconcile competing pressures
When Michelle de Kretser accepted the 2025 Stella prize on 23 May, the celebrated author shared a warning. 'All the time I was writing these words, a voice in my head whispered, 'You will be punished. You will be smeared with labels as potent and ugly as they're false,'' De Kretser told the Sydney writers' festival crowd. ''Career own goal,' warned the voice.' Earlier in her prerecorded speech, De Kretser had denounced what she called a 'program of suppression' against creatives, scholars and journalists for 'expressing anti-genocide views' in relation to Israel and Gaza. The speech received a standing ovation. It had been taped weeks earlier but arrived in the immediate fallout of exactly the kind of episode De Kretser was talking about. Three days before the Stella announcement, the Martu author KA Ren Wyld revealed she had been stripped of a $15,000 black&write! fellowship from the State Library of Queensland, just hours before it was due to be announced. A day earlier, the library's board received a written direction from the Queensland arts minister, John-Paul Langbroek, expressing his 'firm view' that Wyld should not receive the prize because of a Twitter post about the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in October, which referred to him as a martyr who was 'resisting colonisation until his last breath, fighting the genocidal oppressors like a hero, sacrificing his life for love of his people and ancestral land'. Wyld has said she was not fully aware of Sinwar's Hamas ties at the time of posting. By the time De Kretser's speech aired, several judges of the library's Queensland Literary awards quit in protest. Sara El Sayed, an Egyptian Australian author and three-time judge was one of them. She says the minister's intervention 'undermines the whole process' of independent judging and makes it 'impossible to continue to work with the library'. 'I don't know how someone supporting the Palestinian people, supporting an oppressed people, people who are facing starvation, genocide every day … I just don't understand how the reaction is to take an opportunity away,' El Sayed says. 'That's the ultimate form of censorship, to me.' El Sayed says many artists now grapple with a choice between taking career opportunities and standing up for their beliefs. 'I think a lot of people, especially artists, feel a moral obligation to speak out against what is occurring,' she says. A State Library spokesperson said the library 'respects the decision of judges' and 'value[s] the conversations we have had with many judges and the writing community and acknowledge the concerns they have raised'. The Wyld case highlights a growing crisis for arts organisations and their management in how they respond to political statements that range from mild to polarising, but may be entirely unconnected to the subject matter of the artist's work. From the Khaled Sabsabi-Creative Australia furore to pianist Jayson Gillham's dispute with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), arts institutions have struggled to reconcile commitments to intellectual freedom and creative expression with official positions of political neutrality and intense scrutiny from media and politicians, who in some cases may have an influence on their funding. At the MSO, the fallout has included the resignation of its longtime chief executive, high-profile event postponements and a long legal battle. The employment lawyer Josh Bornstein, who has represented the journalist Antoinette Lattouf in her unlawful termination case against the ABC over online posts about Gaza, says in his view a 'cancel culture' fostered by pressure from sections of the media, politicians and lobby groups is leading organisations to make fast, panicked decisions. 'An organisation goes into brand management mode and the usual denouement in the post-October 7 atmosphere is to eliminate the source of complaints from the organisation,' he says, speaking generally. But Bornstein also points to the University of Queensland's treatment of the UQP publisher Aviva Tuffield, who wore a 'Readers and Writers Against the Genocide' T-shirt to the Australian Book Industry Awards in May. In response to questions from The Australian, the university said its freedom of speech policy allowed Tuffield to express her lawful, personal views, which did not represent the university's. 'That's the sort of approach that should be adopted,' Bornstein says. Louise Adler is a veteran publisher and artistic director who faced criticism for programming Palestinian voices long before 7 October 2023, including Susan Abulhawa, who called the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a 'Nazi-promoting Zionist' in a social media post. Adler says many arts organisations have tried to abstain from the issue of the war in Gaza, despite demands by many artists that they take a position and defend the artists' right to speak. 'The tensions between the boards, the management and the artists have only increased, and one arts organisation after another has either publicly buckled or privately preemptively buckled on the pretext that art is not political,' Adler says. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion 'Of course, insisting on silence on the conflict in the Middle East issue is a deeply political position – it's just one that suits particular interest groups. 'The problem for arts organisations is that artists – not all artists, but many artists – want to speak to the issues of the day. So when arts managers and their boards fail to protect the right of artists to speak, a principle that should be sacrosanct, one has to question whether they have lost sight of the fundamentals.' Adler says there are some free speech frontiers that no publicly funded arts festival or organisation would cross, but the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and the conflation of support for Palestine with support for terrorism, has made organisations shy away from defending artists' freedom of expression. 'I think there are lines for all of us; certainly in my current role, or when I was a publisher, I am not going to offer the microphone to people who are involved in hate speech or incitement to violence or racism. I don't think that's a question of free speech. 'No decent person wants to be accused of antisemitism, of any kind of racism. But once criticism of Israel is conflated with antisemitism … you've successfully manufactured the catalogue of silenced artists we have witnessed in recent years.' As with Creative Australia in response to the Sabsabi controversy, the State Library of Queensland announced an independent review following the withdrawal of Wyld's fellowship, the terms of which are still being prepared. It's the latest in a pattern of reviews and consultations in the wake of contentious decision-making. Earlier this year the State Library of Victoria unveiled a 'Ways of Working' framework, developed after it canned a Teen Writing Bootcamp in 2024. Freedom of information requests subsequently revealed that library management had scrutinised the social media posts of the three authors who were due to lead the workshops for content related to the Israel-Hamas war. In a statement the State Library of Victoria said it was 'crucial that we are a place of freedom of expression and respect for all', and that the 'sector-leading' framework established 'mutual obligations between the Library and anyone who works with us'. Since January, writers and artists engaged by the library have been obliged to agree that when making public statements, they 'clearly state that these views and opinions do not reflect or represent the views or positions of State Library Victoria, or any other person, company or organisation' from the moment a contract is signed. Jinghua Qian, one of the writers involved in the 2024 bootcamp, remains sceptical. 'If you contract someone for a one-hour panel or workshop, do you have the right to limit, police and punish them for their creative expression outside of that booking?' Qian wrote on Bluesky. For some creatives, these decisions expose contradictions in institutions that have tried to diversify their audiences and offer a platform to previously under-represented voices. Days before De Kretser's Stella speech, Nam Le, the newly crowned book of the year winner at the New South Wales Literary awards, asked a Sydney audience whether the 'goal of multiculturalism should be coexistence or cohesion'. 'If cohesion, how do we make sure that 'social cohesion' doesn't become 'social coercion' – a means of preserving the status quo, of preserving power?' Le asked, in a speech delivered by his manager. Like De Kretser's, Le's words would only become more pointed as the week progressed. 'What good is harmony if it only and always exists on terms dictated by power? If it's built on injustice, or enforced civility – enforced silence?'
