The 26 hard and fast facts that prove Labor is gaslighting Australians with its 'nothing to see here' approach to woke indoctrination in our education system

While Mr Peter Dutton has not used the word "woke" when arguing education should not be used to indoctrinate students, anyone vaguely aware of what is taught in the nation’s schools and universities understands how prevalent cultural-left ideology is.

The following list shows the examples of this in no particular order, significance or date.

1. The Victorian Association for the Teachers of English telling teachers they should present the ‘Yes’ case for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to students at the November 2022 annual professional development.

2. The Australian Association for the Teachers of English (AATE), criticised teachers for not properly teaching critical thinking in an editorial published in 2004 because too many young people had voted for the return of the then Howard Government.

3. The AATE published a dedication in 2018 to an LGBTIQA+ agenda, and criticised senior school literature for being heteronormative and binary.

4. A report on the 2024 Victorian Year 12 English examination praising one student for encouraging Generation Z activists to destroy a statue of Captain Cook by decapitating his head.

5. A second student’s essay being praised for condemning America as a structurally racist society and suggesting high rates of black criminality are caused by intergenerational trauma.

6. The children’s fairy tale Sleeping Beauty being criticised because the prince fails to get the princess’s consent before waking her with a kiss.

7. The reference to “gay" in the children’s song ‘Kookaburra Sits of the Old Gumtree” being deleted after it sparked controversy.

8. Children in primary and secondary school being taught boys can be girls and girls can be boys as gender and sexuality are non-binary and fluid.

9. One of the academics, Roz Ward, responsible for the Safe Schools gender program, admitting it has nothing to do with stopping bullying, rather it was developed to impose a radical Marxist view of sexuality and gender on Australian students.

10. The Safe Schools material criticising the heteronormative and homophobic aspects of Australian society and telling students not to use descriptions like “manpower" and "policeman" or phrases like “ladies and gentlemen” and “boys and girls”.

11. The Australian Education Union, has over the last 30 years, argued that Australian society is racist and oppressive and that the school curriculum must be used to radically transform society.

12. In a 1982 text set for teacher training, the academics arguing all teachers “have a responsibility for the way the social struggle about education turns out, and whether the conservative hegemony recently established can be reversed” and “in such circumstances education becomes a risky enterprise. Teachers must decide whose side they are on”.

13. The Victorian education minister and soon after the premier Joan Kirner arguing at a Fabian meeting held in 1984 that education has to be reshaped to be “part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system”.

14. The then-President of the Australian Education Union, Pat Byrne, at a 2005 and 2007 union conference arguing the left was losing the culture wars and that teachers must continue to fight against the then Howard government she condemned as conservative.

15. The Australian national curriculum prioritising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and spirituality from prep to year 10 in all subjects while ignoring the importance of Judaeo-Christianity (while there are literally hundreds of indigenous references, there is minimal reference to the religion that underpins Western, liberal democracies like Australia).

16. The national curriculum suggesting students should be taught Aboriginal science and algebra.

17. The national curriculum failing to ensure students are taught about ancient Egypt, ancient Rome and ancient Greece. As argued by Geoffrey Blainey, the civilisations that are the origins and foundation of today’s Western civilisation.

18. School students being taught the world is about to end because of man-made climate change without any attempt to acknowledge opposing arguments.

19. Schools celebrating IDAHOBIT Day, cancelling Christmas carols considered religious in nature and changing Father’s Day to Parents and Carers Day.

20. Academics, as a result of cultural-left post-colonial theory, arguing that the tertiary curriculum is guilty of “‘whiteness”’ and “Eurocentrism”.

21. Academics at Sydney University arguing against establishing a Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation because it would be guilty of teaching white supremacism.

22. Melbourne University’s feminist academic Holly Lawford-Smith being vilified for refusing to accept the cultural-left’s argument that men can be women and women can be men.

23. Peter Ridd, an academic at James Cook University, being punished for suggesting the Great Barrier Reef was not facing catastrophic destruction because of man-made global warming.

24. Academics at the University of Western Australia pressuring the university to cancel the agreement to establish a climate change institute under the direction of Bjørn Lomborg.

25. Universities now having trigger warnings, safe spaces and diversity and wellness guides to safeguard students against anything considered politically incorrect and offensive.

26. A 2020 survey by the Institute of Public Affairs evaluating how humanities is taught in Australian universities concluding the majority of courses are dominated by neo-Marxist inspired critical race theory and identity politics.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is the author of 'Wake Up To Woke: It’s Time, Australia'