Former education minister Adrian Piccolo addresses parents during the ‘consultation’ on the merger of Griffith High and Wade High in 2017. Photo: Helen Dalton MP/Facebook.
We all know what the NSW Government means when they tell us it’s started a “consultation process” to rename the two high schools separated by the Murrumbidgee Regional High School de-merger.
Bureaucrats have decided what the names will be and will now proceed to organise a few poorly advertised ‘tick and flick’ roundtables, meetings or surveys to make the community feel like its input is important.
That’s why we need to make some noise to let authorities know what I’m sure is the overwhelming public consensus – Griffith and Wade high schools should revert to their original names as soon as possible.
This town can’t be blamed for being cynical when it comes to the concept of government-run consultation.
When former education minister Adrian Piccoli championed the idea of merging of the two high schools in 2017, bureaucrats held a number of consultation forums. The vast majority of teachers, students and parents expressed two clear perspectives. One, the schools shouldn’t be combined. Two, if you must merge them, do it properly and put them both on the one site.
Naturally, the then NSW Coalition government ignored both these views and proceeded with a half-hearted merger of the two schools that remained 5 km apart. The disaster that everyone predicted quickly unfolded, students endured major disruptions, and taxpayers picked up the bill to clean up the mess.
Similarly, NSW Health bureaucracy Murrumbidgee Local Health District did a lot of consultation about the construction of a new hospital. Griffith urged them not to knock down buildings that could be used for accommodation and stressed the importance of an in-patient mental health ward and orthopaedic surgery. You can guess how that panned out.
The fact that a consultation process on renaming the schools has supposedly already started was a surprise to many who read Region’s article on the topic last week. The NSW Department of Education has so far only sought the view of a small number of people.
That’s why it was welcoming to see John Robinson, who taught at the school for 30 years, succinctly express the views of the community without waiting to be asked.
“I would like to see the names go back to the original ones – Griffith and Wade high. The merger was an experiment; it failed. So why not return to the status quo?”
Opening of Wade High in 1971. Photo: David Sides/Old Griffith NSW Album.
A Region poll revealed 90 per cent of readers agreed with him.
Giving the schools Wiradjuri names instead, as has been rumoured, would be a divisive move that would only fuel the likes of Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson and whip up resentment towards Aboriginal people. From Banna to Benerembah to Jondaryan to Yenda, our area has many odes of Indigenous culture. Nobody would want to change any of those names either.
Griffith High has been called as such for 92 years. Wade was once the name of the shire and of the pioneer (Leslie) who led the development of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA). One name explains its location, the other honours our history.
That’s all we need from our two public high school names. We’ve already wasted enough time and money on this ill-fated venture. Just scrap the fake consultation, revert to the names we know and love and let the students who have already suffered get on with learning.
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