Teacher claims harassment by South Australian minister

A criticised school teacher has compared herself to Julia Gillard, who she said was another victim of ‘sexism’.

Teacher Regina Wilson from Woodville High School in South Australia.

A school teacher and union dele­gate who vowed to “ensure the next generation of voters in my classroom don’t vote Liberal” has compared herself to Julia Gillard, who she said was also a victim of “sexism”, and complained of “harass­ment” by South Australian Liberal Treas­urer Rob Lucas.

But Mr Lucas, who had not publicly named the teacher, said yesterday that, “the gender of the teacher is irrelevant to this issue — it wouldn’t matter whether the teacher was male, female or trans, these statements were absolutely outrageous and unacceptable”.

South Australian teacher ­Regina Wilson faces two ­investig­ations into her conduct after her post on the Australian Education Union’s Facebook page was reveale­d by The Australian on Wednesday.

The Weekend Australian under­stands Ms Wilson, 58, is being investigated by the Education ­Department at the behest of chief executive Rick Persse. This comes after the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, Erma Ranieri, said she was seeking a “full ­account” of the matter from Mr Persse, and AEU state president Howard Spreadbury said Ms ­Wilson’s “intent needs to be ­investigated”.

The now-deleted post, which Ms Wilson insisted was meant to be private, said she would ensure her students “don’t vote Liberal” when they graduated by developing their critical thinking so they “question those in power and ­especially those who seek to keep the status quo for the rich, upper classes and refuse to acknowledge the rest of us”.

Her comments reignited a ­debate about political interfer­ence in the classroom by union-affiliated teachers. The former Fair Work inspector is an inter­national student program manager who also teaches classes in Years 8, 9 and 11 at the 1000-­student Woodville High School in Adelaide. Former scholars include sports commentator Bruce McAvaney and former Olympic basketball coach Jan Stirling.

Ms Wilson told The Weekend Australian that she was being targete­d in a “pattern of sexism” as had been the case “in the past with (Julia) Gillard”.

“I would not do anything as unprofessional as the uninformed politician who does not care, know me or my beliefs or what I stand for and has made assumptions on one thing I wrote,” she said. “This (is) harassment by a politician who has power and parliame­ntary privilege to hide ­behind to discredit me.”

But Mr Lucas said yesterday there had been “widespread community outrage”.

“Any claims that parliamentary privilege has been used to discredit the teacher are ridiculous and a feeble attempt at defending the indefensible,” Mr Lucas said.

“Most of my statements have been made outside the parliament and, as Treasurer, I am only interested in defending the interests of students and ensuring that the values of the Education Department and Public Sector Code of Ethics have been followed.”

Mr Lucas said the refusal of South Australian Labor “to condemn these remarks is a disgrace”.

State Labor’s education spokes­woman, Susan Close, said yesterday: “Party politics should be kept out of the classroom.”

This came a day after federal Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek joined federal Education Minister Dan Tehan in calling on schools to ensure children were not being indoctrinated with the political ideologies of teachers.

Secondary Principals Association state president Peter Mader said some teachers would have “emotional responses that would lead them to, on reflection, make a poor decision with regards to ­social media”.

But Jennifer Buckingham, a senior research fellow at the ­Centre for Independent Studies, said left-wing political bias in publi­c school classrooms was “fairly common”. “A lot of public schools have union campaign materia­ls on their school gates and school fences very promin­ently displayed and that’s a political statement,’’ she said.