Madonna King: Who would want to be a male teacher?
Imagine if it was your partner, son or father who was accused of something from an anonymous complaint but innocent. Who would be a male teacher? Madonna King asks.
Who would want to be a male teacher?
One day you are standing in front of a class, explaining the world to your students.
The next day, after an anonymous complainant is lodged under the national redress scheme, you could be removed, told nothing and forced to sit at home where a secret and opaque process decides your fate.
For months, you might be suspended. You can’t talk about it. You don’t know who the complainant might be, or why they have targeted you.
That complainant - in more than 90 per cent of cases - will be given tens of thousands of dollars.
Eventually, after an investigation that - on the surface - is as shallow as some of the accusations, you might be told to return to work. But you cannot even say why you unexpectedly took leave, for months.
This is the national redress scheme, set up after the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse.
And it is so, so important. This is not an argument to disband it.
But it is open to massive abuse, where good men can be targeted by unscrupulous individuals looking for a quick buck, or encouraged to lodge a complaint by others. This is called ‘claim farming’, with sources saying a chunk of claims are coming from prisoners.
This is an argument to stop the rot.
So far, 70,000 applications have been lodged by complainants. Decisions have been made in 24,000 cases. Almost 20,000 payments have been made, totalling $1.78 billion.
On my maths - taught by the best teacher I ever had, who happened to be a male - that is $90,00 each.
For almost all, that will be deserved.
But in how many cases has it been found that a male was wrongly targeted? How many of those cases involved male school teachers?
And what happens to someone who makes a malicious complaint?
Sorry - the answers to those questions are secret. You might be a taxpayer, but you are not entitled to an answer.
“Information is not available for individual redress applications specifically targeting teachers,’’ a spokesperson for the Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety in Queensland says.
However, an education spokesman says 426 matters of alleged sexual abuse (including those under the national redress scheme) were registered with the State education department last year. On my maths, that’s more than one every day!
“The department is bound by confidentiality under law and is unable to provide further information,’’ he says.
The redress scheme, set up for all the right reasons, is ripe to be rorted, just like the infamous pink batts scheme or the dud subs deal.
Applicants are entitled to payouts even if they are unable or unwilling to identify the name of an abuser. And all along, their identity remains fiercely protected under law.
That might be fair. But it should be fair on the accused too, and this scheme allows a much lower evidentiary threshold than either a civil or criminal case.
Imagine if it was your partner or son or father who was accused, but innocent.
We don’t know - because we are not allowed to know - how many of those there might be. But they will sit at home, on leave for months, anguishing over who is behind the accusation, or why. They are not told details of the investigation or when a decision will be made.
And even when they are cleared, they are not really. They will be told there is insufficient evidence - but that big black dirty mark of an investigation sits with them, forever.
How could this possibly be okay?
Remember, this is not an argument against righting wrongs. It’s about a process that is unfair, lacks transparency, and is open to massive abuse.
In some cases, maligned teachers were not even at the school at the time of the alleged wrongdoing. When they are cleared, they are expected to return to work, and cannot even reveal the reason for their absence.
Queensland has had the highest number of applications also - almost double the next state - and it runs into thousand and thousands.
Sources say the Queensland Teachers’ Union is being called on to support a new case every few days, and principals are being regularly asked whether a teacher was at a school at the same time as a particular student.
Could we really be hosting that many abusers? Or what proportion might be the result of ‘claim farmers’ - those who coach others (including prisoners) to make fraudulent compensation claims.
New laws have been prompted in at least one state to stop that practice. But isn’t this ripe for organised crime involvement too?
You can count the dollars wasted in pink batts stuff-up or a submarine deal.
But how do you count the cost of a false - even malicious - accusation, levelled at a schoolteacher who simply wants to teach our children?
No wonder we are heading for school staffrooms without a male in sight.
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