Dear Beagle Editor, How easily and confidently Ann Sudmalis Gilmore MP, in her recent comments, dismisses concerns from teachers, students and the community, about the Turnbull government’s Neoliberal “market driven” privatisation of the Adult Education Migrant Program (AEMP) and the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) to the for-profit sector.
In Senate Estimates Labor Senator Doug Cameron questioned the government about Navitas, the for-profit company contracted to deliver AEMP and SEE, and that Navitas has outsourced AEMP and SEE to a non-complying provider.
It is not as though we have no previous experience with a Liberal governments “market driven” TAFE privatisation disaster.
In his criticism of the NSW Baird government’s privatisation of the VET courses disaster, ACCC Chairman Rod Simms said “rather than providing quality education at efficient prices, VET providers provided poor education at inflated prices...due to insufficient protection from some unscrupulous training organisations.”
Speaking at the 2017 Dame Mary Gilmore Oration Ged Kearney Head of the ACTU spoke passionately about growing inequality in Australia. Ms Kearney spoke of structural inequality as a result of the Turnbull government’s policy decisions that put big business interests before the public’s interest.
Moreover an unhealthy power imbalance exists between the government/big business and the people.
Investigative journalist and writer George Monbiot speaks of Neoliberal market- driven ideology as a “world-eating, flesh eating system into which we have been forced.” Saying “the free market is a political construction...far from being in a neutral forum, the market is dominated by powerful agents...who use their position to demand contracts, handouts, tax breaks... ”
After 21 years being held by the Liberal Party, Gilmore has the highest unemployment and the lowest work participation rate in NSW. How can Ms Sudmalis risk another TAFE privatisation disaster that will threaten job security and education opportunities? Maureen Searson Batemans Bay
