Relations scarred by dispute—Minister

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 1

Relations scarred by dispute—Minister

The Minister of Education, Mr Marshall, later told “The Press” that his relationship with the P.P.T.A. had probably been permanently scarred by the dispute.

He took much of the blame on himself for the violence of the backlash, saying he was not surprised by it as he had raised expectations of a satisfactory settlement. "I genuinely thought the package which had been worked out (between himself, an Associate Minister of Finance, Mr Caygill, and representatives of the P.P.T.A.) would get approval and I said so,” he said.

But he pointed out that his vulnerability to criticism stemmed in part from the fact that he had done “every damn thing” he could to get a deal accept-able-to the teachers. “The fact that I have failed is very unfortunate, perhaps even tragic, but if I hadn’t tried ... lam in the position now where I have been seen not to deliver something which I undertook to try to do,” he said.

To a degree, Mr Marshall is a victim of his own former success — a victim of his reputation as a Minister good at wringing money out of the Cabinet He distanced - himself from the statements some of his colleagues have made; for example, the Prime Minister’s telling a group Of protesting P.P.T.A. members to “piss off.”

“It is very easy to get defensive and to attack

others as a form of defence and it is unfortunate if we do. It was one of the things people didn’t like about Muldoon, and we have to be careful we don’t fall into the same trap,” he said. Mr Marshall feels the Government can present its case without attacking the P.P.T.A., but said the faults were not entirely on one side and that he had had to bite his tongue at some of the things people from the P.P.T.A. had said.

Factors in the pay decision had been the signals a high increase would send to .other State unions further down the line and a belief that staff shortages would not be as bad as first feared. I Also, recognition had been given the recruitment and retention problems which did exist in the secondary teaching service in the provision of an extra $l5 million above the 15.5 per cent

annual general adjustment. In spite of the vigour of yesterday’s demonstration and the threats of “a long winter of discontent,” Mr Marshall said he felt “rather more cheerful” about the prospects of achieving a reconciliation than he had on Monday. He had detected a cooling in the temperature of the dispute, he said, and was more confident that the P.P.T.A. would elect to take its claims to the Public Services Tribunal where he believed it would get “a reasonably good hearing.”

The association had earlier not been keen to do this because it had thought it was unlikely to get a fixture before midyear, but the chances of getting an earlier date

were now being explored, he said. Mr Marshall thought that if the P.P.T.A. chose this avenue, the damage to his relationship with it could at least be contained. He said he had been and still was heavily dependent on the good will of secondary teachers in instituting some of the changes he had made and wanted to make — the abolition of University Entrance, the revamping of School Certificate and the curriculum, and the removal of corporal punishment. It would take a “fair bit of time” to restore that spirit of co-operation, but while on Monday and Tuesday he had felt it was lost irretrievably he now felt they might be able to get back to “some fairly useful way of operating.” He acknowledged, however, that relations would never be the same again.