What Joy Burch should really be apologising for

I don’t understand the controversy. Pyne is a c***. No use denying it.

Pyne has a point. All the Gonski $$ in the world won’t necesarrily improve things. There are a lot of lazy, incompetent time servers working as teachers and plodding, ordinary principals.

Thanks to Joy for raising the level of the Assembly. It wasn’t much before.

housebound said :

Amongst the various explanations for her conduct:[…]

I read on some news site last week that Ms Birch immediately owned up to accidentally retweeting the offending item herself. No need for speculation on this point.

Amongst the various explanations for her conduct:
a) Joy Burch is incompetent: she does not know how to use twitter, even after several years of practice
b) Joy Burch is illiterate: she could not read what she retweeted or, if she could read it, have sufficient comprehension skills to recognise it could cause offence
c) Joy Burch is a cyberbully: a practice that is discouraged in ACT schools
d) Joy Burch didn’t actually do the tweet herself (even though she says she did), so she is not truthful and one of the above options applies to her staff.

None of them is a good look for an education minister.

On the other hand, if we were governed by a glorified shire council, then perhaps all options but (c) wouldn’t really matter.

Wow, really worked up there hey JB?

I wonder if the furious muttering would be the same if it were a Lib minister that retweeted such a classy bit of mini-literature?

“Anyone who cares what anyone else re-tweets is, inherently, an oxygen thief who would improve the world by their passing from it.”

I see. On that basis then we should not object if a senior government figure – let’s say the Minister for Education – enthusiastically re-tweets material endorsing racism or homophobia? Anyone who does object is an “oxygen thief who would improve the world by their passing from it”?

Pyne is a prick, no doubt. A seemingly nasty, arrogant piece of work.

But at least we now know that it is perfectly acceptable to call Burch a c*nt, as long it is a supposed ‘mistake’.

The woman is a walking embarrassment and completely incompetent. Anyone remember the hands over ears, ‘la la la la’ episode at Bimberi?

Whoops, sorry, I accidentally posted that….

And I’m accidentally wondering whether, should (perish the thought) the proverbial bus create a casual vacancy in the ACT Ministry, the lovely Lynne could be persuaded to step up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuwZAW-Negs

Equally accidentally, and in the interests of balance – having watched the umpteenth repeat of Blazing Saddles the other night, I pondered whether Hedley Lamarr has re-made himself as Australian Education Minister.

neanderthalsis said :

IrishPete said :

HiddenDragon said :

The increase in the Pre-School & not defined was the regulatory framework that was developed for childcare and early childhood education. So not a real increase, just a one off expence that produced a “quality” framework.

The last Labor Govt really destroyed any credentials that Labor had for being the party that supports education. They made the right noises publicly but the reality was that they just cut and burned and shifted dollars from one bucket (Higher ed) to another (schools) in order to be able to say that they were putting more money into education. The Libs have no credibility in the education space, so they’re at least consistent.

Our PISA results are slipping, a high percentage of school leavers and HE grads are considered unemployable on completion, adult literacy rates are stagnant (at 46%of adults being not functionally literate) and the number of apprentices has fallen by a third since 2011. Governments of all flavours are doing a lot of grandstanding but bugger all else to fix the problems.

And by the typos in that my education standards are slipping too.

IrishPete said :

HiddenDragon said :

Ghost of PJK really has got into character – from echoes of Keats to the c bomb in five words – very classy.

Beyond the hyperventilation and oh-so-satisfying vulgarity – $1.2bn over four years – in the context of this:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5518.0.55.001

Can’t wait to see what they say about the Commission of Audit report and the 2014-15 Budget.

p.s. I just did some arithmetic, and government spending on education went up 0.25% from 2010-11 to 2011-12. That’s less than CPI, and when you take into account population growth is probably a real 4% cut. Why?

Primary and Secondary went down, but there’s so much in the “Pre–school & education not definable by level” and the Education n.e.c.” categories that I don’t want to infer too much from that.

IP

The increase in the Pre-School & not defined was the regulatory framework that was developed for childcare and early childhood education. So not a real increase, just a one off expence that produced a “quality” framework.

The last Labor Govt really destroyed any credentials that Labor had for being the party that supports education. They made the right noises publicly but the reality was that they just cut and burned and shifted dollars from one bucket (Higher ed) to another (schools) in order to be able to say that they were putting more money into education. The Libs have no credibility in the education space, so they’re at least consistent.

Our PISA results are slipping, a high percentage of school leavers and HE grads are considered unemployable on completion, adult literacy rates are stagnant (at 46%of adults being not functionally literate) and the number of apprentices has fallen by a third since 2011. Governments of all flavours are doing a lot of grandstanding but bugger all else to fix the problems.

johnboy said :

Pretty easy.

For the RiotACT Twitter feed I use a totally different app that is marked out in a bright and totally different colour to normal twitter blue.

With plenty of decent twitter apps out there i’d recommend it for avoiding mode confusion.

I still think there are plenty of pollies out there who can barely make their phones work at all, let alone use social media properly, so asking them to use specific apps is likely to be futile. But point taken JB.

In this day and age it should be second nature to set up these kinds of things in a manner which makes it near to impossible to have mistakes occurring such as posting from the wrong account. Especially if said mistake could have significant fallout ala Birch’s mishap.

Didn’t Gough Whitlam call someone a runt once?

JessP said :

Inappropriate by a Minister to use that word. Inappropriate for anyone to use that word, particularly a public figure.

Sorry Joy and Katy – an apology does not cut it.

Consider if a Minister of the Commonwealth Government had tweeted this? Imagine the uproar from the media and how fast would they be – deservedly – sacked.

Shame.

Plenty of politicians say pretty disgraceful things and make bad errors in judgement these days. Not very many of them face any real consequences. The idea of sacking someone for these kind of indiscretions has been thrown out the window by both sides of politics for a fair while now, so no chance of a sacking.

That said, it has been poorly handled. You either take full accountability for the poor decision, apologise and hope the story runs out of oxygen, or you acknowledge that you have no idea how to actually use twitter yourself andf that one of your staffers who does manage the account made an error of judgement and retweeted something they shouldn’t have, whether or not they agrred with the statement or not.

I have access to a sporting clubs twitter account I am involved with and when I get notifications for that account on my phone and open them up, it automatically switches me to that account. So if I open it up again in an hour, it’s on the clubs account, not my personal one. There is a lot of overlap between what both accounts follow, so I have certainly retweeted soimething before thinking it was me personally when it was the club and had to go back and un-retweet it, so it’s an easy mistake.

You still have to take responsibility for it though.

Inappropriate by a Minister to use that word. Inappropriate for anyone to use that word, particularly a public figure.

Sorry Joy and Katy – an apology does not cut it.

Consider if a Minister of the Commonwealth Government had tweeted this? Imagine the uproar from the media and how fast would they be – deservedly – sacked.

Shame.

I think Joy Burch has violated Chris Pyne’s Human Rights.

Whether Joy Burch intended retweeting that Christopher Pyne resembles the female genitalia is arguable. What is not in issue is that Ms Burch acted like a prize d***head.

HiddenDragon said :

Ghost of PJK really has got into character – from echoes of Keats to the c bomb in five words – very classy.

Beyond the hyperventilation and oh-so-satisfying vulgarity – $1.2bn over four years – in the context of this:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5518.0.55.001

Can’t wait to see what they say about the Commission of Audit report and the 2014-15 Budget.

p.s. I just did some arithmetic, and government spending on education went up 0.25% from 2010-11 to 2011-12. That’s less than CPI, and when you take into account population growth is probably a real 4% cut. Why?

Primary and Secondary went down, but there’s so much in the “Pre–school & education not definable by level” and the Education n.e.c.” categories that I don’t want to infer too much from that.

IP

HiddenDragon said :

Ghost of PJK really has got into character – from echoes of Keats to the c bomb in five words – very classy.

Beyond the hyperventilation and oh-so-satisfying vulgarity – $1.2bn over four years – in the context of this:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5518.0.55.001

Can’t wait to see what they say about the Commission of Audit report and the 2014-15 Budget.

Thanks for that link, very instructive. A fair whack of that student transport budget is probably ferrying kids to schools further away than they need to go to (like private schools or Catholic schools, another subsidy…)

Of course using c+nt as a pejorative is not terribly creative or intelligent, and not particularly gender-friendly either. By all means call him a prick (though it’s also not creative), and apparently that doesn’t need to be censored by the RiotACT Thought Police either. Go figure.

IP

Ghost of PJK really has got into character – from echoes of Keats to the c bomb in five words – very classy.

Beyond the hyperventilation and oh-so-satisfying vulgarity – $1.2bn over four years – in the context of this:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5518.0.55.001

Can’t wait to see what they say about the Commission of Audit report and the 2014-15 Budget.

rosscoact said :

Skidbladnir said :

Good on Joy.
I don’t mind my representatives calling it like it is.
If it waddles, swims, and quacks, then it’s probably a duck.

Better question: When will we get an apology for calling the c*** an Education Minister?

NIce work there!

I thought that. In my opinion, Pyne is the biggest c*#t in the world God ever shoveled guts into. No one else’s face on TV rubs me the wrong way like his does.

The bit I love is how an incident like this is an immediate call for resignation, as though running away from a wrongdoing is the only thing to do. Y’know, instead of just taking responsibility. Nice lesson for the kiddies.

Skidbladnir said :

Good on Joy.
I don’t mind my representatives calling it like it is.
If it waddles, swims, and quacks, then it’s probably a duck.

Better question: When will we get an apology for calling the c*** an Education Minister?

NIce work there!

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

PantsMan said :

This is really a cop-out by The-Riotact.

You would have been all over it if it were Pyne tweeting about Joy Burch.

What makes you say that?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

PantsMan said :

This is really a cop-out by The-Riotact.

You would have been all over it if it were Pyne tweeting about Joy Burch.

What makes you say that?

PantsMan said :

This is really a cop-out by The-Riotact.

You would have been all over it if it were Pyne tweeting about Joy Burch.

Katy and Joy wouldn’t have any probs whatsoever if the shoe was on the other foot……carry on, there’s nothing to be seen here…..no siree…….

At least I now know what to call Birch when I see her in public – except to maybe preface it with “useless” or “dumb”.

The issue is perhaps more Burch’s lack of judgement, foresight and self-control than her language.

I doubt very much that she retweeted this by accident but even so it’s hardly anything to get worked up about. It’s just Twitter, nothing important on the scale of things. Plenty of other things she has and hasn’t done that should be in the spotlight.

Don’t know why politicians in general are so spineless they can’t just fess up and say “Yes, I did it, I farked up, momentary lapse of reason/blonde moment”.

IMO, Pyne and Burch cancel each other out, as they are both seriously cr*p Education Ministers. I thought the stand-out Minister during the Gonski ‘fall out’ was the NSW Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli. I wish we had HIM representing our educational interests here in the ACT.

Anyone who cares what anyone else re-tweets is, inherently, an oxygen thief who would improve the world by their passing from it.
So despite numerous people trying to egg us on about Joy Burch ill advisedly retweeting a crude character assessment of the Peter Pan of Young Liberals, Christopher Pyne, we decided to prove our fitness for continued life by not giving a crap.
Sadly oxygen thieves are in no short supply in the ACT and before long it was all over all sorts of media and the Canberra Liberals were working themselves into some confected outrage.
Bear in mind that Joy Burch’s inept staff have, in the past, lead her to directly call everyone reading her tweets a Mother F***er.
By contrast merely amplifying someone else describing Minister Pyne as a female sexual organ seems tame.
The greatest sin is that this incompetence has allowed Miranda Devine in the Sunday Telegraph to make a victim of out the former teenage toecutter, before going on to canonise him for his many, in her eyes, sterling virtues.
I’d quite like to see a media release apologising for this. But while still active on Twitter we seem to have stopped make media releases available.

You left out this bit….

Written and authorised by Riotact on behalf of the Australian Labor Party

This is really a cop-out by The-Riotact.

You would have been all over it if it were Pyne tweeting about Joy Burch.

Good on Joy.
I don’t mind my representatives calling it like it is.
If it waddles, swims, and quacks, then it’s probably a duck.

Better question: When will we get an apology for calling the c*** an Education Minister?