Position Vacant</strong
A position as Director-General of Education in N.S.W (Australia) is being offered to any former convicted criminal who has served his time in prison.
He should be genuinely and truly sorry for his drug trafficking conviction.
The successful applicant will be described by some in the media as a fine example to our youth. You might have been a drug trafficker but that will actually be an advantage since young people will no longer have to fear that a criminal record will harm their professional career. So go for it young man, cause all will be forgiven.
As for experience in the educational field, well, it really doesn't matter if you have none at all as long as you have relatives in high places.
Farcical isn't it? But it has actually happened.
Michael Coutts-Trotter, a former convicted drug trafficker, has been appointed to the job of directing the future education of young people in N.S.W. His wife, Tanya Plibersek, who is a current frontbencher in the N.S.W Labor government, says that her husband is a really nice person.
She told talk-back radio host John Laws, that she has known all along about her husband’s criminal record and that he should be regarded as an example to children who get into trouble. John Laws agreed with her that Coutts-Trotter is what Australia is all about—sinners being given another chance. He said that Coutts-Trotter was “keeping the dream alive.”
It’s all about redemption, apparently, but Laws did admit that he was a little uncomfortable about the Director-General having trafficked in drugs.
There is no question that the new Director-General of Education is indeed a lucky man for had he been caught in S.E. Asia he would not be granted a senior position in the public service. In fact he would be either dead or languishing in a prison for at least twenty years.
Granted that Coutts-Trotter has served his sentence and wants to put the past behind him, his current promotion to the top job in education, is totally inappropriate. He could have been given a senior position in any other field but education. We have experts trying to teach our young that taking drugs, and worse still, trafficking in drugs can ruin your life.
As if!
LiliGans.com 
What’s with your posts lately? Everything’s about symbolism. Do you actually think some school student is more likely to use or traffic drugs because of something the Director-General of Education did as a teenager? If not, what’s your problem?
I can believe that kids are influenced by their parents, their peers and their cultural icons. But their bureaucrats? The only people who’d be influenced (in their drug-taking decisions) by Coutts-Trotter’s story are convicted drug traffickers contemplating whether or not there’s any point in going straight.
As for, ‘any other field but education”, so you’d have no problem with him being Police Commissioner? Head of the health department? Prime Minister? As if. (I guess you’d love him to be the next Mufti.)
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Seeing that I’m not a fan of bureaucrats since I’ve had personal experience with a rather nasty top dog Director-General myself, I would not be at all surprised who became a Director-General.
As for symbolism, well, that’s what creates our culture and values. If we are willing to put ex-cons in charge of the future of our children SYMBOLICALLY then it reveals a lot about our willingness to lower our levels of expectation.
As for children being influenced by their parents, I frankly doubt that it is the case in reality. I have found that children often want to be contrary to their parents’ values and that’s ok because the grandchildren will probably become more like their grandparents—if you get my drift.
I had not thought about whether I would like Coutts-Trotter to be the next Mufti, but I’m going to give it some serious consideration. Happy now?
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