Dear Reader,
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is using the back door to impose what the people of Australia already rejected at the ballot box. After the defeat of the Voice to Parliament in 2023, her government is pushing ahead with compulsory “truth-telling” sessions in every Victorian classroom, overseen by an Indigenous-only body.
Children as young as four will be forced to sit through politicised sessions about treaties and sovereignty, concepts that no kindergarten child can possibly understand. At an age when they are learning to tie shoe laces and build sand castles and should be learning to read and count, they are being enlisted into an ideological project. This is clearly not education — it is blatant indoctrination.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s education crisis deepens. Reading and mathematics results are at record lows, with international assessments showing our children slipping further behind each year. Yet instead of tackling this urgent problem, Education Minister Ben Carroll brags about filling the curriculum with more politics. More activism will not lift literacy.
The great stories of Australia’s national achievement — Federation, equality before the law, the pioneering spirit, and the fair go — are pushed aside or treated as shameful. Children are left with guilt and division, rather than pride and confidence in their country.
No one denies that Indigenous history matters. But it is only part of a bigger story. Real education gives context, balance, and honesty — teaching the full sweep of our Western democratic heritage, our freedoms, and the traditions that made Australia one of the most stable and prosperous nations in the world.
By weaponising the curriculum, Premier Allan is turning schools into political battlegrounds and children into pawns. Victorians rightly rejected the Voice because it divided Australians by race. They do not want a backdoor version imposed on their children through the classroom.
Our schools should unite young Australians, not divide them. They should equip students with the skills to think clearly and live freely, not load them with political guilt. Classrooms are for learning — not treaties.
Schools Program New Unit: David Unaipon
This unit introduces students to the life and legacy of David Unaipon, a pioneer, inventor, author, and advocate for Aboriginal rights. By investigating evidence about his contributions, students not only learn about a remarkable individual but also develop key historical inquiry skills—questioning, analysing sources, and evaluating different perspectives.
It is important because Unaipon’s story helps students consider broad issues and themes of resilience, innovation, and identity.
Through this unit, students see how individuals can shape national identity and challenge prevailing attitudes, making it a powerful way to connect history, civics, and citizenship with real human experiences.
This unit joins our collection of ‘Pioneers of Australia’ and is free to download here.
Four Times the Stress: How Bureaucracy and Ideology Are Driving Teachers Out
Australian teachers are in crisis. A new UNSW Sydney study shows they are experiencing depression, anxiety, and stress at up to four times the national average. Almost nine in ten teachers report extreme stress, two-thirds show symptoms of depression and anxiety, and 70 per cent say their workload is “largely or completely unmanageable”. Unsurprisingly, more and more are considering leaving the profession altogether.
This is not simply about long hours. Teachers are being buried under extraneous compliance paperwork, reporting demands, and an overcrowded curriculum. The cross-curriculum priorities – sustainability, identity politics, and global citizenship – force teachers to shoehorn ideological themes into every subject. The result is less time for proper education lesson planning, literacy, and numeracy, and more stress on an already stretched workforce.
If governments are serious about solving the teacher shortage and lifting educational standards, the answer is obvious: cut the bureaucracy and scrap the ideological add-ons. Give teachers back the time and space to do what matters most – teach children to read, write, and count. A back-to-basics curriculum and a healthier teaching profession are the only way to turn this around.
Merging Agencies, Missing the Point
Education Minister Jason Clare has announced plans to merge four national education bodies ACARA, AITSL, AERO, and Education Services Australia into a new Teaching and Learning Commission. The stated aim is to streamline bureaucracy, improve accountability for the $16 billion “Better and Fairer Schools” deal, and lift declining Year 12 completion rates in public schools, which have fallen sharply compared to Catholic and independent schools. The new “super-agency” will oversee curriculum, teacher training, assessment, and evidence-based reforms such as phonics checks, early numeracy screening, and tutoring.
Jason Clare’s “super-agency” is classic Canberra thinking: when the system fails, build a bigger bureaucracy. But more bureaucracy is not what teachers or students need. Australia’s education crisis is not due to a shortage of agencies; it’s due to a curriculum that has replaced literacy and numeracy with ideology, and classrooms that burden teachers with compliance and politics instead of letting them teach. The very agencies Clare wants to merge have overseen falling standards, declining Year 12 completions, and OECD results that show Australian kids going backwards. Rebranding them as a “Teaching and Learning Commission” won’t change the fact that they’re still the architects of failure. If the government were serious about fixing schools, it would strip ideology out of the curriculum, put phonics and maths back at the centre, and give teachers the time and authority to do their jobs. Australia doesn’t need a super-department, it needs a super reset of what schools are actually for.
IPA Schools Program Out and About
Published in The Spectator Australia, this opinion piece contextualises and disseminates the findings of the IPA’s research into climate anxiety in children.
On The Rita Panahi Show, Sky News Australia, to discuss the IPA’s research on Criminal Justice.
On ABC Radio 774 – regular fortnightly appearance on The Weekly Wrap with Raf Epstein and Emma Dawson on August 15th.
On the Rita Panahi Show, Sky News Australia, to discuss the IPA’s research on criminal justice.
On the Rita Panahi Show, Sky News Australia, to discuss the IPA’s research on criminal justice.
Regular fortnightly appearance on ABC 774 Radio The Weekly Wrap with Raf Epstein – 29 August 2025
Regular fortnightly appearance on ABC 774 Radio The Weekly Wrap with Raf Epstein – 19 September 2025
Quote of the month:
This quote from 1916 by Presbyterian minister William J. H. Boetcker (frequently misattributed to Abraham Lincoln) reminds us that progress comes from responsibility and effort, not via resentment and grievance-based thinking.
“You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.”
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