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Anthony Morrissey [Class of '65] -2018: Letter to the Editor,
Southern Courier
20
Dec. 2018
Pat Farmer’s marathon joke!
I nearly
fell of my chair with laughter this morning when I read the article by
Marie Hogg in the Southern Courier
(18-12-2018) - “Farmer ready for toughest run”. NSW Liberal candidate
and former ultra-marathon runner, Pat Farmer, an ex-TAFE student, said
he was going to pursue a new TAFE college for Maroubra.
Walkers and joggers must have
thought I was mad as I was still laughing when I was riding my bike
later that morning.
For
the last eight years Pat must have been running ultra-marathons in the
Simpson Desert as he apparently had no idea about the TAFE disaster
engineered by Deputy Premier, John Barilaro under the state government’s
Smart
and Skilled Program.
This
marathon massacre of a program resulted in 5,550 TAFE teachers being
sacked; the fire sale of 27 TAFE Colleges of which 21 are in the
country. Consequently, TAFE enrolment has dropped from 539,146 students
in 2012 to just over 200,000 in 2017. Now TAFE courses are going to be
run in local clubs, a bigger joke than you’ll get from any stand-up
comedian.
What
is worse is the government sacked the entire TAFE teaching staff at Long
Bay jail and hired a shonky private provider who should have been
languishing behind bars – not teaching there.
Apparently, no one told Mr Farmer that
the NSW Government has been slammed by the Auditor General for the $531
million bungled TAFE computer system (EBS) and the wasted $140 million
dollars in its Smart and Skilled Program.
If I was Mr Farmer I’d be running in the opposite direction – and
work to bring back the real TAFE and not the Clayton’s version.
Tony
Morrissey
BSc (ENG) UNSW, SMIEEE,
MIE AUST CPENG
Chifley. NSW.
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