Abstract
This chapter reflects on available explanations for why an Australian Labor Party (ALP) government introduced the My School website in 2010. The chapter opens with a description of a union boycott against My School that was called off at the last moment. It then canvasses the responsible minister’s own views and explanations, considers the possibility that the long-standing and extensive influence of News Corp shaped the ALP’s education policies, and considers an explanation based on the way the path dependency of institutions constrains what actors can do. It concludes that a combination of the three explanations provides the best answer to why My School came about when it did.
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Notes
- 1.
In Australia, Murdoch’s company was called News Limited. In Britain, it was called News International. In America and now globally, it is called News Corp. For the sake of simplicity, the last label is applied for all newspapers and media ever owned by Murdoch .
- 2.
Here terminology is contentious, and somewhat confusing. I follow Australian and Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) convention so ‘public’ refers to government schools (run and funded by the states) and ‘private’ refers to all non-government schools in the Catholic system along with various stand-alone schools (all of which depend upon federal funding). The private schools prefer a contrast between ‘state’ and ‘independent’ schools. The Australian Bureau of Statistics uses ‘government’ and ‘non-government’. The OECD uses ‘government’, ‘private—government dependent’ and ‘Private—independent’ (in Australia, all private schools depend on government funding).
- 3.
David Colley, AEU, correspondence with the author, March 2017.
- 4.
The National Party was called the Country Party (1920–1975), and the National Country Party (1975–1982). It represents graziers, farmers, and regional voters. Since 1923 it has formed a coalition with the Liberal Party (or its forerunners), which represents business interests and metropolitan voters.
- 5.
In the first half of the 1800s, ‘squatters’ moved beyond the boundaries of the convict settlements, took possession of supposedly unoccupied crown land, fought ongoing battles with the dispossessed Aborigines, established large sheep runs, and in time became wealthy pillars of society.
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Vandenberg, A. (2018). Why Did the ALP Introduce the My School Website?. In: Education Policy and the Australian Education Union. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68047-7_2
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