In late 2016, the New South Wales Coalition government lost one of its safest seats in a by-election. Several factors were important in the loss of Orange including the usual by-election swing and the campaign by some Sydney shock-jocks. The main issues were probably the government's forced amalgamations of local councils and its ban on greyhound racing.
Since the loss, Premier Baird has promised more listening and the greyhound ban has been overturned. The original decision to ban the activity completely emerged so suddenly that its acceptance by the Premier casts serious doubt on the advice he receives. This pattern of launching a policy and then withdrawing it after a backlash is reminiscent of the adventures of the recent Abbott federal Coalition government.
In some areas, government might expect little backlash and hope that its absurd policies escape criticism. The decision to sack prison education teachers is a neat example. Prisoners constitute a small but growing proportion of the population. Many of them are disenfranchised.
For years, right wing media commentators have imposed double punishment on prisoners and created community panic about them. According to their self-righteous propaganda prisoners have no rights.
When I was conducting interviews in the parliament some years ago, a senior Liberal MP said that you can save on prison expenditure by spending on preschools. Education, opportunity and respect for the law are closely linked. The provision of second-chance education for inmates is important for their rehabilitation and for cutting rates of recidivism.
Yet the current Minister in charge of Corrective Services says that sacking permanent specialist education officers will increase literacy and numeracy.
Here is another anecdote. When I worked in TAFE, a previous Coalition government conducted a review of adult literacy services. The report found that the Adult Migrant Education Service was more efficient than TAFE. Naturally, I was quite interested.
As an educator, I naively assumed that the review looked at the outcomes achieved by these providers. Indeed, I knew that the assessment of learning outcomes was a difficult and controversial topic and I hoped to learn something to apply to my own students to improve my teaching practices.
"Having providers enter prisons on short term contracts will replace the existing pedagogical commitment to the students' welfare with the profit motive. This suits the ideological purity of the Coalition, but replaces the existing ethos with the amorality of the market."
I was quickly disillusioned. The review had not been an educational review