A letter to The “Honourable” Christopher Pyne MP Member for Sturt

Launceston, Tasmania
June 8, 2014

Mate.

How are you?

The Coalition has had a good few months to get its act together but things don’t seem to be going all that well for you. I mean, I know you’ve been a politician for a very long time, since you left school really, and gosh—how long ago was that? Thirty years? Gee, how time flies.

(You’re probably lucky though; Tony Abbott still thinks it’s 1957.)

Anyway, I thought I would help you out a bit. I’m not a politician, mind you, and usually I try really hard not to vote because I know that sort of behaviour only encourages you and your old-school-tie brethren. But, as it happens (and for my sins) I am a teacher, and education is something you seem to know almost nothing about. Which is really very surprising, since you’re the federal Education Minister.

First things first, though. Please find enclosed an invoice for your HECS bill, very kindly supplied by those hardworking journalists at Crikey. (I know you must be terribly busy, what with having to learn new rude words to use in the House all the time and practicing your secret signals to the Witch who sits in the big chair, so you probably don’t read Crikey, but I can recommend it. It’s really very enlightening.)

Now, I know that you were jolly fortunate enough to attend University when it was free. I know, it was before I got my degree too, so I had to cough up a HECS debt when I started earning enough. It must have been A Better Time really, with no pesky boats turning up and Clive Palmer quietly making millions while still leaving everyone alone. But let’s imagine that you have some moral fibre, or even a tiny little wisp of integrity somewhere. After all, someone who wants to do the same degree you did will start their professional life with an enormous debt burden, thanks to the Coalition budget—and I’m not sure I have the time today to fully illustrate just what a disgraceful, unjust, cruel and vindictive document the 2014 Federal Budget is.

I don’t expect you necessarily to pay this money back to the ATO. Heavens, that would be silly! They’ve probably never even heard of you. No, but the amount of money on your invoice would go a long way to helping cure cancer, perhaps, or providing shelter for homeless people. Speaking of which, how every kind of you to participate in this year’s CEO Sleepout. Your tokenism in doing so warms the cockles of your heart, I’m sure, and I have faith that real homeless people will feel so much better about their situation because you spent a few hours sleeping outside. I hope your sleeping bag is warm enough, Mr Pyne. Mate.

So perhaps you would consider making a donation. You don’t even have to donate all of the money. A tenth of it might make a difference. You just never know.

And speaking of paying things back, would you mind having a word to Mr Abbott? Or, at least, perhaps you can explain something to me. So the bloke takes his daughters (who, let’s be honest, are pretty easy on the eye, am I right?) on the campaign trail and flaunts them to the media to help him get elected. Again, if I’m honest, he could have taken a couple of dead fish and a refrigerator on the campaign trail and he would have been elected, so that’s not really the point. When it suited him, there they were, flashing those killer smiles and being totally gorgeous, right on cue. One of them even held his hand. Eeeewwwww.

So how terribly inconvenient it is for one of them to have received a $60,000 scholarship from a Liberal Mate for her Design degree. And how utterly hypocritical it is of the Prime Minister to declare they were “off limits” when this sordid news came to light during Budget Week.

Now look, Mr Pyne Mate, I’ll be honest again. I attended public schools and I’ve worked to get what I have, which isn’t much but it’ll do. I don’t have a problem, in principle, with a ‘user pays’ approach to education, but then as I said earlier—I paid for my education degree, and postgraduate study I’ve done since. So I’m a bit galled, really very galled indeed, to learn (in a week when your mate Joe Hockey decided to treble the HECS fees of some University courses) that the PM’s daughter got a free kick, courtesy of a Liberal Mate.

Perhaps she got the scholarship on merit. In my opinion, the ‘on merit’ concept can very much be in the eye of the beholder. Regardless, it is a disgusting look for the Coalition. Just disgusting. Perhaps you haven’t learned that, often, it’s how things look in politics that resonates with the voters. This looks bloody awful, Mate, like Bronwyn without her makeup on. And Frances should not be off limits, since she was perfectly happy to get her father elected in the first place. If you want to play the game, you might to need to be tackled occasionally. That’s how it is. Heat, kitchen, blah blah blah.

She and Tony should both make a donation. It doesn’t have to be to the same charity as yours.

Now, I said I wanted to help you out a bit. This letter has probably gone through the shredder by now, but if you’re still reading, thank you.

Please get rid of NAPLAN. Just ditch it. There are plenty of better instruments schools can use if they want to test their students. Doing so nationally, measuring a tiny slice of student ability, is a total waste of everyone’s time. High stakes testing in the US created a culture of corruption; and having to ‘teach to the test’ in some schools there meant that lunch times were reduced, in some cases, to about twenty minutes. Now, don’t get me wrong, Americans are a pack of gun-toting loonies and we really don’t want to be like them, do we? If you are at all serious about creating an effective educational culture in this country, go to Finland. Stay there for next couple of years, until the next Federal Election at least, when hopefully you’ll be returned to opposition anyway and I won’t have to waste my time writing to you.

If you see George Brandis around the traps, can you please ask him to send me some of the books that he paid for with my taxes? Thanks so much. I don’t need many. I can forward my address if he needs it.

Oh, Bronwyn. I called her a Witch earlier! Naughty me. I know you hate that word, although it didn’t stop Mr Abbott Mate from standing in front of a placard that referred to Julia Gillard as one. Credit where it’s due, Mr Pyne, you Liberals know a thing or two about double standards, don’t you? It’s almost impressive, really. But if I have to pick a Moment when I knew you would have a hard time in government (and, honesty hats on again, it really has been very shambolic, hasn’t it?) it was when when you elected Bronwyn as your Speaker.

What were you thinking?

I will admit to some small prejudice here: I recall your Speaker saying some very rude and ridiculous about Tasmania a little while ago. Something to do with the state of education here, I think. I know, people often laugh at us and indeed there are lots of good Tasmanian jokes. Such as Andrew Nikolic*—have you met him yet? He is a Liar and an Idiot but goodness he takes it all very seriously, bless him, poor exmilitary flown-in stooge that he is. But that’s beside the point. Eric Abetz is pretty funny too, but in a different, rather more sociopathic kind of way.

Sorry, I’ve digressed. Your Speaker is very clearly and blatantly biased. She should not be attending party room meetings and she should not be conducting Liberal Party fundraisers in her office. She is not Setting a Very Good Example at all.

Please replace her.

Look, I know you all probably feel a bit sorry for her, seeing as she’s so old and no one in your Party has the heart to tell her she’s so far over the hill she’s behind you. But, really, it’s okay for her to retire. She can put her feet up and employ someone to write her pointless memoirs and enjoy a lifetime of free travel and her unbelievably generous superannuation payouts and leave us all to continue believing that the Liberal Party actually knows what it means to be fair.

Look, I could go on and on. You really weren’t prepared at all for government, were you? You with your embarrassing Gonksi back and forward flip and shooting your mouth off about collecting HECS debts from dead people, and Brandis and Barnaby attending a wedding at my expense and Morrison preferring to forget that a man died on Manus Island while he was rehearsing what not to say to journalists about the boats. Goodness me. You’d spend all your time in a detention if you were school students.

Such a shame, Mr Pyne Mate. You could have been contenders. Instead you’re a pathetic pack of snobby self-interested halfwits who have clearly targeted the sick, the unemployed, the elderly and atheists. (What is WITH the school chaplaincy program? Jobs for Jesus? Seriously, Mr Pyne Mate?) I know you can talk the talk, and I know that one of my socks could have been won government at last year’s election, but I hope fervently that people realise how conned they’ve been before the next one.

Perhaps, if you lose the next election, you might consider leaving parliament and getting a real job.

Thanks for listening,

Cameron Hindrum,
Launceston Tasmania

*Nikolic is not actually Tasmanian, by the way. He moved here so he could get elected. I’ve also stripped Campbell Newman of his Tasmanian citizenship. I can do that, you know. I was born here, Mate.