Your views: Population, planning and education
CAROL MARTIN, Councillor, City of Port Adelaide Enfield: Re Rau wants elected councillors out of planning (InDaily, 30 September 2013), it is a wonderful learning venture being an elected member on the Develppment Assessment Panel working with the highly skilled independent members with the skills they bring to the DAP.
On the other hand, as an elected member of the council I really find whilst you are on the DAP you are no help to your residents as you can’t advocate for them in planning matters. Recently I represented a resident before the panel and the other point is your residents don’t actually understand why you can’t advocate for them if you are on the panel.
John Rau’s push to have no elected members on the panel doesn’t bother me at all if our staff will still handle all of the planning matters and if they come before council for the councillors to review we would have more of an input into the areas that we represent.
ROB SILVA: In response to Michael Schilling (Your views, InDaily, 30 September 2013), I can say that without a shadow of a doubt the problems in the Department for Education and Child Development identified by the Allen report certainly date back at least to the time of minister Trish White. Certainly they accelerated during the time of Jane Lomax-Smith, at the height of the Rann Government when it was still fashionable to think that Ministers knew best.
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At the end of the day, though, DECD is an enormous bureacracy which has become quite decoupled from its true purpose. So, we end up with crazy situations like a Teacher’s Registration Board that checks that a re-registering teacher hasn’t been convicted of any crimes but makes no inquiry as to their basic competence. Or an IT department that upgrades enterprise software with no consideration as to the impact on the thousands of school administrators who have to use it every day. Or procurement policies which deliberately bypass the very businesses that form part of a school’s community. Or placement processes which take only fleeting account of a teacher’s suitability for a role. Or enormous committees whose membership is designed only to support a claim of consultation. I could go on. Let it be a lesson to all politicians that Allen found what should have been obvious to any Education Minister who took seriously what Governing Councils, Principals, Teachers & Parents have been saying for as long as I can remember.
GREG OATES, SA Co-ordinator, Stable Population Party: Opposition Leader Steven Marshall might suggest there is a “distinct and clear alternative” between Liberal and Labor (Marshall to lobby for more migrants, InDaily, 30 September 2013). But with his apparent eagerness to pander to developers’ interests and insecurity about South Australia’s population not growing at a sufficiently unsustainable rate, perhaps the difference is not as clear as he claims?
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