"You get what you ask for," says Peter Osborne, Libertarianz Associate Spokesman for Education Deregulation, reacting to the PPTA's announcement that they had rejected the latest short-term pay settlement from Mr Mallard. Teachers have never been completely satisfied says Osborne, who suggests teachers begin to understand the source of their problem. "The problem lies," he says, "in what it is you have been asking for."

"You have been sleeping with the State all this time - and THAT is the problem," he asserts. Osborne says that if teachers had any self-respect they would be lobbying to get the state out of education altogether, rather than ganging up year after year to demand decent pay from a state that "regularly demonstrates it doesn't really care either way."

"The State will never pay teachers their true value," points out Osborne, who says teachers are at the mercy of a monopolistic system that gives them very little bargaining power - the only party they can 'bargain' with is the Government, "and the government doesn't bargain, it bullies."

"Without a free market in education - without a willing buyer and a willing seller - it is literally impossible to ascertain what teachers are actually worth," asserts Osborne. Instead, he says, teachers find they are worth "only what they can extract from an unwilling minister."

Mr Osborne says the individual teacher's big mistake is that "they have allowed the PPTA to lumber all teachers into one big basket, which then runs to government pleading to be filled up." Teachers who excel in their work are being given the same value as those who are incompetent, he points out. "The predicament is of teachers' own making, and it will continue unless they face up to the reality that the state is only concerned with the health of the state - and nothing else."

Mr Osborne also has some advice for Trevor Mallard, the Minister of Factory Education "Resign immediately Mr Mallard. You are not competent enough to know what a decent education is. You have no right forcibly extracting money off the populace of New Zealand to pay for an education system that is nothing better than a PC propaganda machine. You and your century-old system have already dumbed down too many young minds, the results of which are showing themselves in adulthood now."

It's enough to make you vote Libertarianz!

ENDS

For more information contact: Peter Osborne LIBERTARIANZ ASSOC. SPOKESMAN TO DEREGULATE EDUCATION Phone: 0274 326 005, e-mail: ospar@xtra.co.nz

www.libertarianz.org.nz www.libz.org

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