Why the NTEU should stop taking political positions

Everybody is aware of that Monty Python’s Lifetime of Brian is basically concerning the British left within the late Seventies (“Peoples Entrance of Judaea”https://www.crikey.com.au/”splitters!”https://www.crikey.com.au/”What have the Romans ever finished for us?”), however few realise that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is concerning the British left within the early Seventies — and the failure of the wave of strikes on the time to roll on right into a revolutionary state of affairs. Within the closing scene, as Arthur is prancing about, the entire historical past is became cosplay when a cop automobile roars into the scene and thug Met cops soar out and shut the entire movie down, with a hand going over the digital camera and an “alright, that is sufficient”.

That is just about how I really feel concerning the NTEU, typically. The tertiary teachers union does important work, beneath robust situations, on the very actual matter of what kind of lives information employees of a sure kind could have: are individuals going to be supplied respectable jobs, with safety, or is their love of a self-discipline and scholarship going to be exploited to squeeze each final signifier out of them? 

And but, the political cosplay of historic battles, in a deadly new setting, by no means totally goes away. The union’s management and lively membership are to date to the left that its outdated guard — accused (unfairly for my part) of complacency and siding with the college institution — are a mixture of ex-Trotskyists and normal leftists. Have been they to show up for an SDA election, they’d kinda simply be arrested or one thing, right away. Their opponents within the latest elections, who’ve steered that informal teachers are getting a uncooked serve from the offers made within the COVID interval, are a mixture of new Trots, leftists and various life-style fanatics.