These days, there aren’t many victories against attacks on working-class people by neoliberal governments and greedy, ruthless corporations.
This makes the victory in the campaign to save Melbourne’s only Aboriginal school, the Ballerrt Mooroop College in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Glenroy, especially important.
Late on September 12, the state education minister Martin Dixon sent an email to campaigners saying that he had agreed to the compromise plan that had been negotiated between the Ballerrt Mooroop College and the Glenroy Specialist School for disabled children (GSS).
The original plan from the education department — made under the former Brumby Labor government — was for the Glenroy Specialist School to be shifted to the Ballerrt Mooroop College site.
Glenroy Specialist School would have taken over the Ballerrt Mooroop’s spirit tree, ceremonial ground and Gathering Place (school gym).
If this plan had been carried out, the Ballerrt Mooroop College would be been starved of facilities and students.
Those campaigning to save Ballerrt Mooroop College decided to negotiate with the Glenroy Specialist School for a compromise resolution — GlenroySpecialist School would share part of the school site but the school gym, ceremonial ground and the spirit tree would stay part of Ballerrt Mooroop.
This compromise wasn’t ideal because it would preclude the reopening of a fully operating Aboriginal school from pre-school through to Year 12. But it preserved the most important parts of the college.
Moreland Council agreed to mediate discussions between the two schools. Over three meetings, they negotiated a compromise.
Supporters of the campaign to save the college held a victory celebration on September 16.
One of the campaigners, Mariella Teuira, told Green Left Weekly the outcome was significant because it preserved the biggest Gathering Place for the Aboriginal community in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
She said: “I was one of those kids that the mainstream schools rejected. They said I was too troubled. Look at me today, I’m a successful businesswoman."
Teuira pointed to other former students, such as “Dotty Bamblett, in the third year of a teachers degree; Tjimba Possum-Burns [of hip hop group Yung Warriors], who is doing a tour with [Aboriginal band] Coloured Stone; Geoff Tighe, a fully qualified chef; and Nathan Lovett-Murray, a successful Essendon football player."
“You might hear in the media that we’ve only got 16 students,” Teuira said. “My two brothers attend Ballerrt Mooroop College now. My two brothers deserve an education just like the other person’s child.
“This is what [the college] is all about. We are more than just a school. We are a community. A lot of people think we are nothing. Our kids aren’t nothing, our community isn’t nothing.
“We stood strong to tell the government that we’re not going to put up with your crap any more. That’s what we did to win this fight. We stood there and fought the fight.”
Teuira told the celebration what it had been like to be part of the core group occupying the Gathering Place to prevent it from being bulldozed.
She said that she had spent only about five nights at home with her partner and six children in the previous four months.
“Thank you to my partner. Thank you to my kids who sacrificed so much. My kids had to give up a fair bit for this mum’s commitments. I was fighting, not only for my child’s education but also other women’s children deserve that right for education. Everybody’s child deserves education.”
Teuira said that one of the important things was that “our kids see this victory and are part of the victory. It means that they can say ‘we’ll stick it up the government, we can win a fight too’.”