Over the weekend, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) was accused of attempting to “indoctrinate school children” over the classroom materials it has produced regarding the debate on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The lesson plan is part of the IPA’s “Class Action” program, a collection of lesson plans making the long-neglected culture and history of “Western civilisation” a priority, targeting the definitely real and absolutely existing critical race theory “bias of the current curriculum”.
The lesson plan built around the Voice referendum tests students’ ability to persuasively present the No case, but offers no equivalent activity regarding arguments in favour of the Voice.
In rejecting criticism of the program — led by the Australian Education Union, an organisation that supports the Voice but is not directing its members to vote any particular way — the IPA told the ABC it “does not support or oppose the Voice to Parliament”.
So that settles it then — the IPA is completely neutral on the Voice. But it seems someone forgot to tell Colleen Harkin, the IPA’s national manager of the Class Action program. She let her connections on LinkedIn know exactly how she feels about the proposal earlier this month.
Sharing a map breaking down Australia by Indigenous nations and languages, she wrote:
… There is already hundreds of different tax payer funded organisations specifically serving the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
‘The Voice’ is a dangerous proposal for a new layer of bureaucracy serving the urban elite, that will swallow up more tax payer funds and never reach those really in need.
AUDITING AND ACCOUNTABILITY is what is required not a Voice.
She followed that three days ago by sharing a 2018 speech from Yes advocate Noel Pearson, talking about the possibility of a treaty following the Voice. “The ‘Yes’ campaign is desperate to keep this information hidden from voters,” she writes. “Share it widely.”
My own views, not those of my employer, and all that.
Harkin’s IPA page notes that she’s worked as “a classroom teacher in both primary and secondary schools, across government and private schools. She has also worked as an education consultant in Australia and in Japan”. The bio skips one section of her CV, incidentally — her time as what anonymous senior Liberals called a “serial candidate” for the party. At last year’s federal election, she ran in Macnamara against Labor’s Josh Burns.
She provided the nation’s journos with plenty of copy during the campaign, backing Israel Folau and Katherine Deves, responding to questions about domestic violence by pointing to “bad behaviour by both genders”, and saying the current focus on the climate emergency borders on child abuse. She later conceded this was “clumsy” language.
