One quiet night in Moonee Ponds, Liberal ‘indoctrination’ warriors take to the stage

It’s estimated that 2-2.5% of the population actually spoke what we now think of as Italian at the time of unification in 1861. Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Capital notes this dialect was so different to the language used in other parts of the country that when school masters arrived in Sicily to start instructing people on their new native tongue — the literary, elite language of Dante — the locals mistook them for English people.

I mention this because the subtitle of Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson and conservative commentator Kevin Donnelly’s event last night — “The classroom is for education, not indoctrination” – has never been, and cannot be, strictly true. The choice of what to teach and what to leave out, particularly when applied across a nation, cannot help but be a political act. Thus, to have strong views on what should and shouldn’t be taught while also insisting there ought to be no classroom “indoctrination” requires decent sleight of hand.

If you follow these things, there is little that would surprise you in last night’s event, except perhaps the turnout. As I enter the Maribyrnong Bowls Club — which looks like the Christmas party from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about to kick off (think wood panelling, spilled blancmange carpet, caramel-coloured light fittings) — it’s a miserable Thursday night in Moonee Ponds (Labor Party heartland at both state and federal level, this is Bill Shorten territory). The place is almost full, with at least 100 people in attendance.

The content is as you’d expect: Donnelly tells those gathered that education has become “a vehicle for the socialist left, a neo-Marxist PC view”. Students are indoctrinated in “black armband” history regarding the arrival of the Europeans and their impact on Indigenous peoples, in “climate alarmism” and of course, in “gender ideology”. In explaining how we got here, the Frankfurt school gets an early mention, as does George Orwell, and in a decent turn of phrase, Donnelly laments Victoria’s descent into “Danistan, our Antipodean Venezuela”.

This is all part of Donnelly’s long-held theory of the left’s “long march” through Australia’s institutions (30 years of which neatly explains how millennials became such raging lefties, in Donnelly’s assessment). Again, he doesn’t seem to see any contradiction with his own contention that schools ought to place greater emphasis on “Western civilisation” and the event’s aversion to indoctrination.

There is some truth in there being a generally socially progressive tint to the people drawn to education institutions, but this doesn’t necessarily bear out the dark, faintly conspiratorial tone Donnelly conjures of the nation’s Marxists: denied their explicit revolution, marching through our schools trying to destroy the family unit. And certainly, citing US controversies over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (if you think he referred to a certain character as “n-word Jim”, dear reader, you would be mistaken) and To Kill A Mockingbird as examples of the dangers of the censorious left takes some serious chutzpah as Republican governments ban books at unprecedented rates.

Crikey reported earlier this year that the Coalition clearly sees a culture war around education, reconstituted locally from parts imported from the US, as a possible win for the party. And you can see why, even if not all previous attempts worked. Events like this always skew older, but it’s about as diverse in age and ethnicity as any event of this kind I’ve been to. Donnelly’s anecdotes concerning some of the more absurd recent events in schools — say, boys having to stand up at an assembly and apologise for the “behaviour of their gender” — gets groans and nods from those present, as does Henderson’s “concerns” about drag queens reading to children.

Donnelly’s content wraps up most of the culture war stuff, which leaves Henderson fairly clear to talk mechanics and fundamentals — we learn, among other things, that she’s a big fan of phonics, and giving parents a “greater voice” in what their kids are taught. Still, she does take the time to shout out now-independent state member Moira Deeming, in the audience, calling her expulsion from the party an “abomination”: “You did nothing wrong, you did nothing wrong.”

Deeming survived the Liberal Party’s initial attempt to expel her after she attended an anti-trans rights rally that was also attended by neo-Nazis. Deeming has denied any wrongdoing, but was eventually expelled from the partyroom for threatening to sue Victorian Liberals leader John Pesutto for defamation. Indeed, Deeming’s welcome presence here — the event is organised by the Donvale branch with Liberty Australia and the local state and federal electorate committees — and at other similar events shows the conflict is not at all working out how Pesutto had hoped.

And Henderson, who reportedly lobbied on Deeming’s behalf back in March, certainly isn’t distancing herself after that teary episode in the Senate back in March. The upcoming Warrandyte byelection looming on the horizon — necessary because Ryan Smith, a Deeming supporter, quit Parliament — is just another example of the Liberal Party split on these issues.

An internal war over education, a perfect nexus of many of the social preoccupations of the party’s hard right around identity and history, is the last thing Pesutto, or any other moderate Liberal, needs. But it’s what they’re very likely to get.