Trying to reignite Howard history wars: Dutton’s woke schools criticism blasted

Education Minister Jason Clare said the curriculum the Opposition Leader was criticising was “designed, developed and signed off by the government he was a senior member of”.

Peter Dutton visits a polling station at Lysterfield Primary School in southeastern Melbourne in support of Liberal Party candidate for Aston Roshena Campbell in 2023. Picture: Luis Ascui/NewsWire.

Peter Dutton has been accused of trying to reignite the “Howard history wars” after he raised the alarm about “indoctrination” in Australia’s education system and declared it would be an issue in the upcoming election.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the curriculum the Opposition Leader was criticising was “designed, developed, and signed off by the government he was a senior member of”.

“When the Liberal Party was last in power they ripped the guts out of school funding and they will do it again if they win the next election,” he told The Australian.

“We are fixing the mess they left. We are increasing funding to our schools, but it is not a blank cheque. It is tied to evidence-based reforms to teach children to read, write and do maths.

“The biggest risk to our education system is Peter Dutton.”

The Coalition previously has pushed back on Labor’s assertion that it cut school funding during its time in government.

Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson accused Mr Clare of “blatant lies” for his latest accusation and said school funding went from $13bn in 2013 to $25.3bn in 2022.

In an interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Dutton recently said he thought there was a “groundswell” on school teaching. “I think it is an issue at the election,” he said. “I think parents have had a gutful of kids coming home preached to and indoctrinated on all sorts of agendas except maths and English.”

On Sunday, Senator Henderson said the nat­ional curriculum was “over­crowded, too complex and infused with ideology”.

“With one in three children failing NAPLAN, parents have had enough, which is why the Coalition is determined to get back to basics with an unrelenting focus on explicit teaching and other evidence-based teaching methods to improve literacy and numeracy so that every young Australian can reach his or her best potential,” she said.

“The classroom is for education, not indoctrination, but Education Minister Jason Clare has shown no interest in the need for a concise, knowledge-rich national curriculum aligned with international best practice.

“This includes a behaviour curriculum to better support teachers and students, given the alarming rates of classroom disruption in so many schools.”

The peak public education union on Sunday also blasted Mr Dutton’s position. “We had almost a decade of the Coalition government attacking teachers, calling public school teachers duds and trying to reignite the Howard history wars,” Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said.

“It is disappointing to see that this divisive and retrograde approach is being continued by Peter Dutton. As we head into the federal election, our members are clear in that they want a federal government that puts public education first, that’s what we will be campaigning for.”

Public policy think tank Centre for Independent Studies executive director Tom Switzer said political debate should be focused on “productivity-enhancing reform that will increase real wages and living standards”. “Without such an agenda, our political leaders could condemn our nation to the economic malaise that has haunted Japan and Europe’s cradle-to-grave welfare states in recent decades,” he said.